THE RECENT CASE OF CUTTING A SHADOW
I'm violating my previous pattern of Little People posts today. The reason is that the case I'll discuss is sort of running rampant around Fairyworld conversations and has popped up in my communication exchanges in three different ways over the last few days. SO .... I feel moved to write it up here and talk, just a little, about it. Hopefully you'll like the approach.
Where this case came from: There is a wonderful Canadian documentary which was mentioned on this site by a reader. It is entitled THE FAIRY FAITH and it is by John Walker who did a great job.
There are lots of interesting things therein. But one, this case, stands out.
I didn't catch the year (sometime within the past ten --- whoops just found out that the documentary isn't really brand new, so, place this case in about the 1990s) near Glasgow, Scotland at a place called Fairy Hill (Perthshire) a single man, a laborer, was doing something that he often does and enjoys: walking on the hills and enjoying Nature. Out of a clear sky, he was surprised by the development around him of a dewy fog, complete with a beautiful rainbow. He was thrilled by the atmosphere --- delighted by what he felt was a privileged moment.
As he reached the crest of a small decline, the Sun broke through and cast his shadow down the hillside. He stood there now hearing enchanting harp like "fairy music."
The witness yelled "OYE!!" and the two fairy folk just popped out of existence, or at least out of sight.
This witness appeared on the film in an attitude and presentation which was one of the best I've ever seen. HIGHLY impressive as a good commonsense even-keeled fellow, who anyone would like and trust. I liked him and it.
........... but what could this shadow business have been about? No one could know the meaning of this of course, but we can throw a few ideas out.
In the Greek world, and following the Roman world, there was The Land of Shades --- Shadows --- something so fundamental to the nature of human beings that they were almost the equivalent of "the Soul" or "the Ghost" or some extremely significant revenant or left-over of the person post-Death. Such ideas exist in cultures all over the world --- Japan, Africa, ... nearly anywhere. The connection which almost all the old cultures felt between the person's shadow and the person's life in this world was seemingly obvious. Some cultures even felt that when you lay down to sleep, your shadow absorbed into your body while your consciousness temporarily left the world.
In Japan, there also was an idea that there existed creatures which did not have shadows at all. These creatures were felt to be "demons", but my reading of these demons is that they are more like "tricksters" than devils. In that, they might even be thought of as Celtic people thought of some of The Little People.
Do Little People have shadows? Or are they part of a parallel appearing but non-physical form of reality, which is not founded upon the textbook physical laws (like, light interrupted by matter creates a shadow.)
All of that is me BSing about things that I cannot know well enough to have earned an opinion. But, taken with that humility, one can still daydream about a denizen of a world without shadows (Faery) symbolically cutting off a human's shadow. Could such an action be seen as a precedent for taking the human away into fairyland? Or, was this fairy "kidding" to just mess around with a person as a trickster would do?
That's all I've got for now. The case is a very neat one, and worth putting out there.
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