Do you need to adventure to enter Faerie, instead of crossing a threshold?
“You can venture forth and seek the threshold to Faerie but you will find, in the course of your travels, that it is not a threshold you will find but the Way that is the adventure. The journey, dearest kindred, is the destination. Especially, if you are adventuring with those you love.“
Writer Pierre Dubois has expressed the idea that entering Faerie doesn’t involve a physical threshold. Which is to say a specific place where one can cross over as one crosses from one country to another or crosses a bridge over a river that leads from one region to another, but rather that it is adventure or adventuring that leads one into Faerie. Also, he adds that trials (and we expect tribulations will do the trick as well, although that’s a bit too Biblical for our elvish tastes), that one often encounters on adventures, will do the trick and enchantments and spells or love itself will also serve to open the way to Faerie.
We must say that we just have to agree. Well, we don’t have to agree, we could be contrary about it but it feels right to us and it rings true in as much as our own experience confirms the validity of these notions. Adventures do and have given us a sense of Faerie and otherworldliness. There is something about being in places that are unfamiliar and apart from one’s daily routines that invite one to feel and touch and enter into Faerie. And adventures, as we said, often are accompanied by various trials. One’s sleep patterns are often disturbed and there is a sense of being slightly ‘out of it’ and thus open to being in touch with other things that one wouldn’t usually encounter or notice.
This is much like the energy one encounters when one is on a Vision Quest and it is just such an altered sense of being that the Vision Quest is meant to evoke. And, of course, adventures usually involve traveling. One journeys through unfamiliar territory among strangers and all of this, again, evokes the sense of the eldritch aspects of Faerie.
Adventuring and traveling also heightens one’s senses, on the one hand, and often slows down one’s perception of time, on the other. One is paying attention (usually to keep from getting lost and enabling one to find one’s way). Going to previously unknown territory takes a good deal longer (at least subjectively) than coming back upon the now familiar road to the place where one has been. This slowing of time is an aspect of moving closer to the speed of light (in this case in a psychological sense) and also helps lead to longevity, for one ages less quickly. And longevity, of course, is nearly always associated with Faerie and we elfae folk who abide there.
At the same time, not everyone who goes on an adventure or experiences trials in their lives perceive it as being associated with stepping into the Faerie Realms. Enchantment does have a great part in it. Yet, even then, most people can be enchanted by something that they encounter on a journey but they still don’t have a consciousness that it involves or arises from Faerie. A spell is often cast on one when one travels and adventures, it is true. One is taken partially ‘out of time’ for a bit. But understanding that this has something to do with Faerie is a special thing. And that involves loving Faerie in the first place and wishing with all one’s heart and soul to connect to Faerie. Faerie comes in response to longing.
And yes, love itself, especially young love, love at first sight and the mere act of falling in love can evoke Faerie. It surely draws Faerie’s attention, for Faerie is attracted to love. If you truly love others, the way to Faerie is always open to you. And Faerie, for its part, is rather like Cupid, its arrows evoke love. Or so Shakespeare tells us in a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tradition has it that elf arrows poison people, but our elf arrows cause people to become romantically inclined. Still, for mankind, love is often seen as a type of poison, making one weak, or so we’ve heard them say.
And we should remember that the Hobbits in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and also the men and dwarves, didn’t encounter the elven folk and thus Faerie, until they went on an adventure. Which, at least, in terms of fiction, tends to confirm the essential idea that adventure leads to Faerie.
Nonetheless, we have to face the fact that not everyone will find Faerie by going on an adventure, unless they are journeying on an adventure in hopes of finding Faerie. You can venture forth and seek the threshold to Faerie but you will find, in the course of your travels, that it is not a threshold you will find but the Way that is the adventure. The journey, dearest kindred, is the destination. Especially, if you are adventuring with those you love.
This article is an excerpt from our newest published The Silver Elves book: From the Point Of View of Elves: Answers to Questions About Being an Elf and Following the Elven Path, Volume 9 (available on Amazon internationally, there is no specific order to read these books from our question and answer series)
— The Silver Elves
Fardas Lovur Tae Lan (Dancing toward the dawn)
https://silverelves.angelfire.com
If you enjoyed this article on entering the Realm of Faerie, then you will surely also enjoy the following articles as well:
What Can We Do To Help Manifest Elfin in this Material World?
https://silverelves.wordpress.com/2019/08/23/what-can-we-do-to-help-manifest-elfin-in-this-material-world
Are There Actually Portals to Elfin?
https://silverelves.wordpress.com/2019/12/03/are-there-actually-portals-to-elfin
https://silverelves.wordpress.com/2019/10/15/how-do-we-find-faerie-and-how-do-we-deal-with-being-an-elf-or-otherkin-while-living-in-the-mundane-world
Is the Faerie Realm seen with one’s heart before it is seen with one’s eyes?
https://thesilverelves.blogspot.com/2024/03/is-faerie-realm-seen-with-ones-heart.html
You can find all the 78 The Silver Elves books on The Elven Way on our author Amazon international pages here:
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“A map to Faerie is like the sand on the seashore,
every time the tide comes in it changes.”
