The Mythical Critters of everyday life

Over the last couple of years, I've come up with the theory that many of the historically common archetypes of mythical creatures, are based on personalities, and constitutions of people that we find around us in our lives here.  We talk about someone being “elf like”, or “dwarf” or “fairy”, but upon closer examination, these labels can really go so deeply into the parallels that we draw between daily life and the mythical world in the background, that we can gain some insight from them.

Barbara and I have done so much contemplation on this, that we wonder if there might not be a therapeutic model in correlating ones-self with a mythical archetype, just as there are so many other archetypes which can help people to understand or justify at least some portion of their nature.

On contemplation, we realize that the basic archetype can be limiting though.  Take for example the “fairy” – a tiny winged creature with magical powers.  First off, if we look “within” to try to intuit truth to a thing that we can’t really “know”, asking the question “is that all that a fairy is”, at least for me, results in a resounding “NO!”.  It appears, for instance, that fairies are often creatures that desire community, but for whatever reason often live a more singular life.  They often have little sense of time, or at least, little appreciation for its linearity. They often have a quality which may appear to be “entitled” – as if they deserve a comfy existence, just from their being. Also, often, they feel like they should be able to make things happen here more easily – that they shouldn’t have to “push” or “try” as hard as they do to affect a positive outcome.  This leads to a categorization as being a “dreamer” – but what if their nature is simply different… What if they are from a space where , in fact, life was “easier” – that manifestation was how things worked, you got stuff done by wishing for it to be done.  Imagine a world with relatively few beings, homogeneous in nature, no perdition, little competition for resource. It is a world of collective cooperation and planning – where every birth, every major decision is planned by the collective group, for the benefit of the all.  Food falls as dew drops – like manna from heaven.  Seasons are light, so the passing of time is marked more as a story, reenacted over the millennia, than as a warning for “cold times ahead”.

Thinking more about the fairies, it seems like there are different folks, different “clans” of the fairy folks. The air fairies, of above, are the most common example. But, perhaps mermaids are just “water fairies” – similar in so many other ways.  It turns out that there are not only salt water mermaids of the open seas, but also fresh water mermaids – bound to interface between the sea and the land.  I’ve come to realize that for whatever reason, I attract and love fairies – even though I’m not one myself.