Radical Fairies

I did a search on Radical Fairies and came across this web sight http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~religion/newifo/religions/alternative/index/faeries/essay1.shtml there you can find some history of the Radical Fairy movement in the 70's and 80's, supposedly it started here in New Mexico, hmm.  

While this article is focused on gay fairies, i have met recent ones and they are not always gay, but yes very pagan.

The following poem was also on this web page by gay author Michael Rumaker, i like this very much!

"The Fairies Are Dancing All Over the World"

The fairies are dancing all over the world
In the dreams of the President
they are dancing
although he dares not mention this at his cabinet meetings
In the baby blood of the brand new
they are dancing O most rapturously
and over the graves of the fathers and mothers
who are dead
and around the heads of the fathers and mothers who are not dead
in celebration of the sons and daughters
they've given the earth
The fairies are dancing in the paws and the muzzles
of dogs larking in the broad field next to the church
The fairies have always danced in the blood of the untamed
in the muscular horned goat
and in the shining snake
in the blood of Henry Thoreau
and most certainly Emily Dickinson
And they skip in the blood of the marine recruit
in his barracks at night
his bones aching with fatigue and loneliness
and pure dreams of women
and his good buddy in the next bunk
They are most lovely in the eyes of the black kid
trucking in front of the jukebox
at the local pizzeria,
more timorous in the eyes of his white friend
whose hips are a little bit more calcified
with hereditary denunciation of the fairies
May the fairies swivel his hips
On sap green evenings in early summer
the fairies danced under the moon in country places
danced among native american teepees
and hung in the rough hair of buffalos racing across the prairies
and are dancing still
most hidden
and everywhere
In some, only in the eyes
in others a reach of the arm
a sudden yelp of joy
reveals their presence The fairies are dancing from coast to coast
all over dead middle America
they're bumping and grinding on the Kremlin walls
the tap of their feet is eroding all the walls
all over the world as they dance
In the way of the western world
the fairies' dance has become small
a bleating, crabbed jerkiness
but there for all that, a bit of healthy green in the dead wood
that spreads an invisible green fire
around and around the globe
encircling it in its dance
of intimacy with the secret of all living things
The fairies are dancing in even the Pope's nose
and in the heart of the most stubborn macho
who will not and will not
and the fairies will
most insistently
because he will not
In the Pentagon the fairies are dancing
under the scrambled egg hats
of those who see no reason why youths should live to old age
The fairies bide their time and wait
They dance in invisible circlets of joy
around and around and over the planet
They are the green rings unseen by spaceships
their breath is the earth of the first spring evening
They explode in the black buds of deadwood winter
Welcome them with open arms
They are allies courting in the bloodstreams
welcome them and dance with them

Walking in the river for my dad's healing

Last Sunday I entered the Santa Fe River with the intention to walk for my dad’s health.  He has prostrate cancer and will be getting radiation treatments.  Earlier in the day it came to me to make a healing wand for him using this piece of wood I’ve had for probably fifteen years.  This wood has a kind of face on it and branches like arms that can hold things.  For a long time this branch held for me a baby I had carved out of wood.

I figured maybe I would find a heart rock for it in the river.  My x is Native American and years ago she had taught me about entering nature to “find medicine” for healing.  It has been a very long time since I have done this practice consciously even though my walks in the river have probably been influenced by this old practice.

It was more like walking with my dad; I invited his presence to be with me and imagined how much he would enjoy being there.  After only walking for a bit I said out load with focus, “dad” and immediately saw out of the corner of my eye something on the ground.  There was something black and round sticking out of the rocks, I unburied it and discover a small mirror.  I have never found one of these in the river before; this was very exciting. I was not expecting to put a mirror in the arms of this wand!  It fit perfectly!

Now after a few days have past I am doubting the find of this mirror because it’s cracked.  I know all the usual metaphors for a cracked mirror and I don’t like them and certainly don’t want to wish bad luck on my dad or an inability for him to see himself clearly.

But it just seems to me when creating magic some times things are upside down and in that is the transformation.  Anyways, it is my experience in life that I actually see my true self better when things are broken and falling apart not when things are shiny perfect – too easy then for illusions to exist.  I’m ok with not always understanding the why of something, nature usually knows best.  And, I am open to hearing other ideas about this.

Here is all that I found on the walk

There has already been a cold spell here so there aren’t many flowers still out.  So when I came across this one it stood out to me as if it was saying, “Hello, come admire me.”  I haven’t been able to identify this plant yet but am curious if it has any healing properties.

After walking for nearly an hour, I was determined for this to be a long walk today; I spotted a bright green grasshopper in the sand.  I’ve seen these before in New Mexico but not yet in the river.  It was very still and I assumed it was dead.  I moved my hand close to it and it kind of leaned into it. “No, it was alive.”  In fact I realized it was laying eggs, its tail deeply buried in the sand.  I don’t know why I do things sometimes, there’s not usually a real conscious thought out process, this was one of those incidents.  It was as if I was playing like a child.  I lay down next to the grasshopper and asked it, “will you bless my dad’s healing wand please?”  And I put the wand down with the mirror facing the grasshopper.  It just felt right.  Then I remembered I had my camera and how cool to be able to share photos of this grasshopper with my dad as well.

After coming home I looked on line for the symbolic meaning of grasshopper and it actually feels appropriate, good luck (counter act the bad luck of the mirror), new beginnings, longevity, good health, fertility, good news…  well now all that is in the mirror for my dad, perfect.

Here's a video of a grasshopper laying eggs, mine wasn't doing all that pulsing movement, it really looked dead.

This was the first time walking in the river that it has gotten dark before I got home.  I took the following photos of the sun just barely showing threw the path of the riverbed and trees.

As i took these shots i heard the words "rise up dad, rise up"

to see the all the photos from this walk go HERE

I don’t know really why, but since finding out my dad has prostrate cancer I’ve been thinking a lot about how my dad is so beautifully feminine.

Actually I sometimes weep with a deep sense of knowing and gratitude that I get my goddess wisdom and love for the feminine from him.
I talked to him a bit about it, I’m never sure over the phone how much he understands me because of his hearing aid, but I think he got it.  I told him that I sometimes wonder if he was born in a different age if he would have been a radical fairy.  I described to him how they meet out on the land together.  He said, “well sometimes I have felt jealous of gay men, that they can dress so freely.”  I explained that in this new generation a man doesn’t have to be gay to dress like a fairy.  He seemed to really like this and went on to talk about growing up and how there was just one way to dress as a man.  He grew up in Chicago’s Polish town, his parent’s Lithuanian immigrants.  It was a big deal for my dad to enter the field of psychology.  My mom’s father used to harass him for being in a sissy profession.  And my mom told me that part of the reason she was originally attracted to my dad was because he wasn’t like her own father, that my dad was soft and gentle.  But ultimately she said as she aged she wanted more of a man for her husband.  They divorced when I was twelve.
There are times when I have felt that my masculine self is more feminine than my feminine self and that my feminine self is more masculine. 
This can create some confusion.  But recently I’m starting to appreciate this internal “freakishness.”  And I even brought it up to my dad because we started to talk about the masculine feminine thing and was there any connection to what was going on with his prostrate.  He expressed how he sometimes feels like he is too feminine and can’t access his male self.  I appreciate this, I have felt this myself as a wanting access to more of myself.  And I have also gotten really down on myself about it like my father was in this conversation and like our culture has taught us to believe that somehow we are “out of balance and sick.”  But in that moment talking to my dad some new wisdom came to me and I know now I was not just talking to him but also myself.  I told him that perhaps the cancer is not from needing to balance your masculine and feminine self, maybe you’re actually the balanced one and the rest of the world is out of balance.  Maybe the cancer is here to tell you to celebrate your balance of masculine and feminine, rejoice in all that you are!  There’s that broken mirror talking threw me.

I don’t think it is just a coincidence that I have recently started to let my masculine self show itself to others, well, even to myself.  Along with all this feminine energy in my early childhood came a kind of repression of all things masculine.  So ultimately denying that masculine within my own self, and he was there and he did go into hiding.  So it has been a bit frightening to reveal him to myself.  And like my father this inner masculine self has its own unique expression of what it means to be masculine.  It seems to be more like a line with masculinity on one end and femininity on the other.  And it seems my masculine self is probably just over the middle line towards the masculine side, probably the same for my feminine self, just over the middle line but on the feminine side (but not yet ready to reveal this closeness to the masculine).
Whew I’m getting tired of using those two words, is any one else tired?  It still feels a bit confusing.  And may I say it can also be confusing in the arena of dating, and especially after ten years of celibacy and five years later still confused about what I’m attracted to.  I’m guessing though, that the more I allow these truer expressions of myself to be felt and seen the less confusing it will be. 
“As I heal myself I heal all my ancestors ten generations in each direction” (each direction of that masculine feminine line also).  This is the medicine of the broken mirror, we are all connected and mirrors of each other and yet not each other but our own unique expression.