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The Sluagh-Sídhe have long been accredited with wonderful yet terrible powers. They
are immortal and may have lived in Celtic lands long before the Celts themselves arrived.
They are great magicians, diviners of the future and craefty herbalists who can whip you
up a cure from the plants growing wherever you are. But watch out! If you are healed by
a Faery, you will be indebted to them.
If you do a favor for one of the Sluagh-Sídhe, however, they will be indebted to you.
Either way, this can be a beneficial relationship for the both of you, if you treat the Faery
with respect.
Mortals may engage in communications with the Sluagh-Sídhe at wells (1) in order to
learn their magical arts and philosophy, (2) in the hope of learning more about ancient
Celtic worlds (which the Faery remember, being immortal; at least by our standards) and
(3) as a way of deepening one's knowledge of folklore and thereby increasing one's
"store of ancient verse." Contrary to later Christianized ideas about them, the
Sluagh-Sídhe are not generally malicious or vindictive; nor are they 'demons.' While they
like their privacy and do not usually appreciate being ordered around or interrupted
(especially when they are sleeping or singing), they don't generally object to being asked
serious questions about the past, about magic and myths or about how to deepen one's
mystical communion with Earth & Cosmos. Approached with caution and a certain
politeness, they may become devoted allies.
It is said that if you go to a well on either a Full Moon night or on the day before a New
Moon is born, you increase your chances of encountering a ghost (Gaelic: tais;
pronounced "tash"). The Full Moon's light is said to make ghosts 'shine' subtly. Like fog,
moonlight becomes a medium in which ghosts and other spirits can be 'seen' as
movements in the swirls. The New Moon symbolizes the point at which souls in the
otherworld can be born again into the flesh, and thus it is also a time when they can cross
+ back and forth through sídhe and at wells to visit with the living.
Ghosts (Gaelic: taidhbhse; pronounced "thev-shee"), in the Celtic worldview, are not
'trapped here,' nor are they necessarily 'frightening' (unless you did something to them in
this life), though they are to be respected and revered, as they represent our ancestors
generally. You might go to a well seeking communion with the ghost of a loved one or
friend who has died, or perhaps to encounter an ancestor of your clan. To leave flowers
(perhaps of Dame's Violet, Vervain or Wild Aster) at a well is a sign that you want to
have an audience with a particular spirit or ghost. To further facilitate the intended
meeting, legends say, you should scratch the name of the spirit or ghost you wish to meet
with in the dirt - usually to the west of the well, as this is the direction from which spirits
are generally said to come to visit wells.
As you become more familiar with springs & wells, you will come to understand the
mystical properties of water and what can happen where water is present. From springs
you can venture down along streams to rivers, thus following the natural course of water
in the earth, perhaps learning some of its mystic secrets. From wells you can imagine
flowing under the earth to all manner of strange and always haunted worlds.
Imaginatively journeying out from a spring or down through a well is a great way to
draw near to the horizons of the ever-present Otherworld where all of those alternate
landscapes exist in which so much of Celtic myth, legend and folklore has taken place.
Once you become intimate with a spring or well and have spent quality time there over a
period of seasons or years, other, more profound, experiences may become possible, of
which it would be presumptuous of me to try and speak within the space of this
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