Fairies And Angels Quotes

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.

To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth—deep down, I always did. I was just a girl.

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.

All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself. Tears are the melting ice of snow. All angels are close to the crying person.

As a self-respecting dude, I'd never believed in fairy tales, but in that moment, I did. I'd found my angel to live happily-ever-after with.

Somehow the idea of Montgomery as a fairy doesn't have the same effect on me as it appears to have on you. -Raphael

Do you know when they say soul-mates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. "Soul-mate wanted". It doesn't mean too much now. But soul mates- think about it. When your soul-whatever that is anyway-something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape-when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to-even if you can't be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul's wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. In must be like all the weddings in the world-gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets,showers of roses. And after that happens-that's it, this is it. But sometimes you have to let that person go. When you are little, people , movie and fairy tales all tell you that one day you're going to meet this person. So you keep waiting and it's a lot harder than they make it sound. Then you meet and you think, okay, now we can just get on with it but you find out that sometimes your sould brother partner lover has other ideas about that.

Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessings few, But dreams tonight will shelter you. Let the vampire's creaking wing Hide the stars while banshees sing; Let the ghouls gorge all night long; Dreams will keep you safe and strong. Skeletons with poison teeth, Risen from the world beneath, Ogre, troll, and loup-garou, Bloody wraith who looks like you, Shadow on the window shade, Harpies in a midnight raid, Goblins seeking tender prey, Dreams will chase them all away. Dreams are like a magic cloak Woven by the fairy folk, Covering from top to toe, Keeping you from winds and woe. And should the Angel come this night To fetch your soul away from light, Cross yourself, and face the wall: Dreams will help you not at all.

Oh No! My wings are effed up!

There are two types of monsters in this universe: Fairy tale monsters that will never hurt you. And human monsters living around you who will never hesitate to harm you.

I regretted that I hadn't turned myself into the kind of man that you could be with. That it wouldn't be just for me to be with you, even if you wanted me. Our lives started in the same shit hole, Elene, but somehow you've turned into you, and I've turned into this. I don't like what I've done. I don't like who I've become. You don't deserve a fairy tale? I don't deserve another chance, but I'm asking you for one. You're afraid that love is too risky? I've seen what happens when you don't risk it. [...] I'm willing to risk it to see the world through your eyes.

Love can transform us. It can be a healing force or a disaster, a tidal wave, a tornado. It can burn and scar us or heal our scars. It can be the ghost that haunts us, or the best friend who reads our every thought. Love may arrive like an angel of mercy, a fairy with raven wings or a hairy beast that will tear us apart limb from limb, kill and savor us down to the bones.

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps bug stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lipgloss in the rearview mirror, . . . Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her.

I think when you are born an angel should say to you, hopefully kindly and not in that fake voice of an airline attendant: Here you go on this long, long dream. Don’t even try to wake up. Just let it go until it is over. You will learn many things. Just relax and observe because there just is pain and that’s it mostly and you aren’t going to be able to escape no matter what. Eventually it will all be over anyway. Good Luck.

Fairies with gossamer wings, Bring forth beauty, grace and joyful things. Fairies of the earth are caretakers of our soil, water and trees, They watch over beautiful creatures such as bears, bunnies and bees. Fairies ask that you breathe in and appreciate the vantage point from which you stand, Then trod carefully and respectfully with each intentional step you make across this beautiful land.

All the atoms of our bodies will be blown into space in the disintegration of the Solar System, to live on forever as mass or energy. That’s what we should be teaching our children, not fairy tales about angels and seeing grandma in heaven.

Rosehill was shady and beautiful, the most serene place I could imagine. It had been closed to the public for years, and sometimes as I wandered alone - and often lonely - through the lush fern beds and long curtains of silvery moss, I pretended the crumbling angels were wood nymphs and fairies and I their ruler, queen of my own graveyard kingdom.

In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable.

I used to be a girl who believed in fairy tales. You know, the whole knight in shining armour riding in on a white horse that would lead me to my happily-ever-after. About eight months ago I lost hope and faith that I would ever find my prince, or to be more exact, that my prince would ever realise I was the one for him as he tried out all the other princesses. But what I discovered was that I was in the wrong damn fairytale the whole time, chasing the wrong damn prince. There' a Psyche for every Eros, an Elizabeth for every Darcy, an Abby for every Travis. And I only hope you still want me to be the Angel to your Rat. All along I was wearing the wrong wings.

Truth is to be found in dreams,” the King said, looking down at them. From this angle, Emma could see that odd splitting of his face ended at his throat, which was ordinary skin. “Tell me, Shadowhunters: you enter a cave. Inside the cave is and egg, lit from within and glowing. You know that it beats with you dreams-not the ones you have during the day, but the ones you half-remember in the morning. It splits open.What emerges?” “A rose,” said Mark. “With thorns.” Cristina cut her eyes toward him in surprise but remained motionless. “An angel,” she said. “With bloody hands.” “A knife,” said Emma. “Pure and clean.” “Bars,” Julian said quietly. “The bars of a prison cell.

In the meantime, when he went on his way back, the seed had grown into a tree which reached up to the sky. Then thought the peasant, 'As thou hast the chance, thou must just see what the angels are doing up there above, and for once have them before thine eyes.' So he climbed up, and saw that the angels above were threshing oats, and he looked on.

You can't deny we work well together. I could be your sidekick, if you want. Like Superman and Lois Lane. Or Peter Pan and Tinker Bell." "Tinker Bell isn't menacing." "Which proves how much you need me," I insisted. "Fairies are terrifying." He sat up straighter and dusted off his pants. "Fairies don't exist. Neither do Graymasons." "That's what humans say about vampires and werewolves," I argued. "So we're agreed.

Why do I feel this response makes Kartik much like governesses who tell their charges grisly fairy tales before bed and then expect them to sleep peacefully through the night?

Fairy tales are not real. However, myths are the historical notes of those who were much wiser than ourselves. We therefore have no right to judge legends; lest we dare challenge demigods and angels.

Sure, because it's a fairy tale. They're always so tediously moral. Nobody gets away with anything fun and all the interesting people are bad guys.

Elle smiled angelically. If I have to endure this, I’m going to make sure you are just as miserable as I am.

He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone – which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.

From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done. I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy … I made you look like a Renaissance angel … I made you Adam and Eve … Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.. As the world went up I remade us both. I hid me in you … I hid you in me. And when we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God.

Here and there and not just in books we catch glimpses of a world of once upon a time and they lived happily ever after, of a world where there is a wizard to give courage and a heart, an angel with a white stone that has written on it our true and secret name, and it is so easy to dismiss it all that it is hardly worth bothering to do. ... But if the world of the fairy tale and our glimpses of it here and there are only a dream, they are one of the most haunting and powerful dreams that the world has ever dreamed...

The adult world may seem a cold and empty place, with no fairies and no Father Christmas, no Toyland or Narnia, no Happy Hunting Ground where mourned pets go, and no angels - guardian or garden variety. But there are also no devils, no hellfire, no wicked witches, no ghosts, no haunted houses, no daemonic possession, no bogeymen or ogres. Yes, Teddy and Dolly turn out not to be really alive. But there are warm, live, speaking, thinking, adult bedf ellows to hold, and many of us find it a more rewarding kind of love than the childish affection for stuffed toys, however soft and cuddly they may be.

Conner raised an eyebrow. 'Who told you that?' 'Well,' she said, not knowing how to describe what she experienced. 'Um . . . a moth did.' Conner squinted at her and his mouth fell open. He was expecting a much better answer than that. 'A moth told you?' 'Yes -- but it wasn't a regular moth, it was more like an angel.' 'An angel moth?' 'Well, it came from somewhere in the stars. I think Grandma sent it.' 'Grandma sent you an angel moth from outer space?' 'Kind of! Anyway, the moth took me to a forest and then turned into a bunch of orbs that re-created a memory -- stop looking at me like that, Conner!

And fairy tales are make-believe. They are the stories we tell to small children to make them believe the world is a far better place than it really is.

She is beautiful like an angel, charming like a fairy and sweet like honey.

Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, and he learnt them well.

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two. Autumn in Fairyland is all that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland Forest or the morbidity of a Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces’ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland. And so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly cold air on their snorting, roaring high wheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September’s head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel to mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

What can the love in my soul be compared to another wonderful soul which is so far and yet so close of my self? What can this symbiosis between two souls can be? What can love be when you feel you cannot sleep at night, that every drop of dew becomes a crystal in your heart, when every breeze of wind has magical meanings? What can love be when you feel that you want nothing more in this world that to be with the soul you love? But what can love be in other transcendental realities? What about our souls? Are our souls a waterfall, a true Niagara or a smile, a flirt of an angel? Are our souls a mere mood of a fairy or a lightening in a summer rain? Our souls could be all of this and much more. But what really happens in that transcendental reality when we feel we are truly in love, that we love so much that it hurts? That the air in the room is unbreathable, that the sentimental, spiritual or physical distances kill us? What happens when dawn find us sadder than ever, looking for an excuse or an argument for the person we love so much, our Great Love? What are all thses? What are the looks lost in the desert horizons of unfulfilment or those in the eyes that deeply loose each other in the others inside the souls?

There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith. ("Reason and Unreason")

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. She is always carrying bags of clothes, bouquets of roses, take-out Chinese containers, or bagels. Museum tags fill her pockets and purses, along with perfume samples and invitations to art gallery openings. When she is walking to work, to ward off bums or psychos, her face resembles the Statue of Liberty, but at home in her candlelit, dove-colored apartment, the stony look fades away and she smiles like the sterling roses she has brought for herself to make up for the fact that she is single and her feet are sore.

On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for. You can’t tell by looking at them that they’ve had a childhood, and you don’t dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it. You suspect that they’ve used some secret shortcut and donned their adult form many years ahead of time. They did it one day when they were home alone and their childhood lay like three bands of iron around their heart, like Iron Hans in Grimms’ fairy tale, whose bands broke only when his master was freed. But if you don’t know such a shortcut, childhood must be endured and trudged through hour by hour, through an absolutely interminable number of years. Only death can free you from it, so you think a lot about death, and picture it as a white-robed, friendly angel who some night will kiss your eyelids so that they never will open again.

Subconsciously, every one believes in angels, fairies, magic and a happy ever after.

They don't know. It's not their fault. What are they supposed to do when they've been told their whole lives not to believe in fairy tales?

All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need…fantasies to make life bearable.” REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. “They’re not the same at all!” YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—” MY POINT EXACTLY. She tried to assemble her thoughts. THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT’S RIGHT. “Yes, but people don’t think about that,” said Susan. “Somewhere there was a bed…” CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A…A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT. “Talent?” OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS. “You make us sound mad,” said Susan. A nice warm bed… NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death

So many people hate snakes. I think it's because they threaten people's worldview- they're alien, limbless, impossible, black magic: a stick come to life. But maybe we're all sticks come to life...We want to think we're exceptional, ensouled, angel fairies or God's special children. The magic of being animate matter isn't enough.

She'd heard the word before; seraphim were some high order of angels, at least according to the Christian mythos, for which Brimstone had utter contempt, as he did for all religion. 'Humans have gotten glimpses of things over time,' he'd said. 'Just enough to make the rest up. It's all a quilt of fairy tales with a patch here and there of truth.

People had contested the whole basis of the idea of God’s power on earth, and they had done it with reasoning that was beautiful and compelling. Darwin said creation stories were a fairy tale. Freud said we had power over ourselves. Spinoza said there were no miracles, no angels, no need to pray to anything outside ourselves: God was us, and nature. Emil Durkheim said humans fantasized religion to give themselves a sense of security.

Stars are everything and nothing that we think they are. They are their own world, but through an act of will we make them part of ours. They are the diamonds of the gods, the lights at a stadium where angels play a midnight game of baseball. They’re fairy farts that have been set ablaze! Mostly, they’re just an untouchable beauty that’s so far away, it’s the only place safe enough to store our secret hopes and dreams. When we see a shooting start, we all make a wish. But what nobody admits is how afraid they are of actually catching something that fell from heaven. I’m not afraid to burn. ~Hadrian

We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that's not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn't stay that way.

Faeries are known to be tenders of plants and energizing inhabitants of gardens. They are more elusive than Angels and often have lively, mercurial temperaments. They are active in preserving what little wilderness remains on the Earth.

In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing. Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision. She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you. All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature.

What are they supposed to do when they've been told their whole lives not to believe in fairy tales?

When skies above were not yet named Nor earth below pronounced by name There was water...

Angels do not whisper in our ears. Predestination is a fairy tale, a bedtime story for adults scared of meaningless death.

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people.

Messengers often come when you struggle with a decision, need support or are trying to find your balance. They can come as animals like coyote and lizard appeared for Kate and for me. They can be spirit guides, angels, family members, ancestors and friends. A messenger can even be me! Many of them you will not notice because you are too preoccupied to see them. There may come a time, however, when you might sense the millions of angels too small to be witnessed, like fairies that live in the curve of a leaf or who sleep under the tiniest rose petal.

Though it isn't obvious from the bowdlerized versions in Walt Disney , the tales are filled with murder,infanticide,cannibalism, mutilation, and sexual abuse - grimm fairy tales indeed.

THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME “That day, the saucer day the zombie day The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars, And all the bells of London were sounded, the day Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day, The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day, You didn’t notice any of this because you were sitting in your room, not doing anything not even reading, not really, just looking at your telephone, wondering if I was going to call.

Back on the beach, everyone was tearing off their costumes piece by piece. It was like some kind of crazy dream, the sight of all those people emerging from their disguises, shedding the fake muscles and plastic armor, the fairy wings and angel wings, and devils horns, all of it piled up like a mass grave for make-believe.

What's Facebook? It's where moms like me post about how much we love the husbands who annoy the living bejesus out of us, and share expertly edited photos of our kids and generally talk about our loves like we're living in an enchanted fairy tale blessed by rainbow angel unicorns. In short, it's for lying. But I'm addicted.

And Kay and Gerda looked in each other’s eyes, and all at once they understood the old hymn: “The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet, And angels descend there the children to greet.” There sat the two grown-up persons; grown-up, and yet children; children at least in heart; and it was summer-time; summer, glorious summer!

I held my breath, and refused to blink; he placed his hand on the bed to brace himself as he leaned towards me. Slowly, carefully, his lips--soft, warm, and perfect--found their way to mine. I want to say that it was magical, that I saw rainbows and fairy dust or something fantastic like that, but I couldn't. It was more. Much more. It was as though the world has fallen down around us, and everything was frozen in ice. But I wasn't cold. I was blazing hot, the fire starting where our lips joined, where angel met mortal, and I could feel the flames flickering out towards the limbs that I was fighting with desperately to keep still, not wanting them to latch onto him, not wanting to seem out of control because at that moment, I would have given anything to be just that.

Mr Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone – which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.

Even Ignatius Loyola wavered. That dark night of the soul, man. No one’s immune. It would all be meaningless if you didn’t wonder and doubt. That’s what makes it real. That’s what makes us people. God could have sent angels to flutter around like fairies, delivering rum punch and manna all day on a cosmic cruise ship. But what would that avail us?

To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all.

The famous field altar came from the Jewish firm of Moritz Mahler in Vienna, which manufactured all kinds of accessories for mass as well as religious objects like rosaries and images of saints. The altar was made up of three parts, lberally provided with sham gilt like the whole glory of the Holy Church. It was not possible without considerable ingenuity to detect what the pictures painted on these three parts actually represented. What was certain was that it was an altar which could have been used equally well by heathens in Zambesi or by the Shamans of the Buriats and Mongols. Painted in screaming colors it appeared from a distance like a coloured chart intended for colour-blind railway workers. One figure stood out prominently - a naked man with a halo and a body which was turning green, like the parson's nose of a goose which has begun to rot and is already stinking. No one was doing anything to this saint. On the contrary, he had on both sides of him two winged creatures which were supposed to represent angels. But anyone looking at them had the impression that this holy naked man was shrieking with horror at the company around him, for the angels looked like fairy-tale monsters and were a cross between a winged wild cat and the beast of the apocalypse. Opposite this was a picture which was meant to represent the Holy Trinity. By and large the painter had been unable to ruin the dove. He had painted a kind of bird which could equally well have been a pigeon or a White Wyandotte. God the Father looked like a bandit from the Wild West served up to the public in an American film thriller. The Son of God on the other hand was a gay young man with a handsome stomach draped in something like bathing drawers. Altogether he looked a sporting type. The cross which he had in his hand he held as elegantly as if it had been a tennis racquet. Seen from afar however all these details ran into each other and gave the impression of a train going into a station.

He was the complete male in miniature, the tiny acorn from which the mighty oak must grow, the heir of all ages, the inheritor of unfulfilled renown, the child of progress, the darling of the budding Golden Age, and, what's more, Fortune and her Fairies, not content with well-nigh smothering him with their blessings of time and family, saved him up carefully until Progress was rotten-ripe with Glory.

It’s the anniversary of the first day I realized I was madly in love with you. That night, we went to your friend’s Halloween party. I remember the black dress you wore. You had feathery black angel wings attached to your back and glitter all over your body like you were a fairy from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “I dressed as a fallen angel that year.” “You were my angel. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

I am not sure whether I can make you understand it. It was something more than a prudent desire to avoid creatures alien in kind, very powerful, and very intelligent. The truth was that all I heard about them served to connect two things which one's mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one sort of a shock. We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label "scientific" and "supernatural" respectively. We think, in one mood, of Mr. Wells' Martians (very unlike the real Malacandrians, by the bye), or his Selenites. In quite a different mood we let our minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghosts, fairies, and the like. But the very moment we are compelled to recognise a creature in either class as real, the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it is a creature like an eldil the distinction vanishes altogether. These things were not animals-to that extent one had to classify them with the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group. The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and when it had done so, one realised how great a comfort it had been-how it had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think of both in the same context.

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple and even simultaneous careers: I've been a chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I've been a painter. A furniture restorer. A personal shopper. A veterinarian's assistant and sometimes the veterinarian. I've been an accountant, a banker and on occasion, a broker. I've been a beautician. A map. A psychic. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The T.V. Guide. A movie reviewer. An angel. God. A nurse and a nursemaid. A psychiatrist and psychologist. Evangelist. For a long time I have felt like I inadvertently got my master's in How To Take Care of Everybody Except Yourself and then a Ph.D. in How to Pretend Like You Don't Mind. But I do mind.

Before he could start asking, a family joined them in the wait for the elevator, the daughters running around, the parents looking like they were stuck in a version of hell that smelled like bubble gum, and was populated by short demons in matching fairy princess outfits that asked for ice cream every three minutes.

-You find the metal, I’ll make the bell,” said Liam. “Listen, this rampage sounds like it’s going to make a real mess out of the city. I just got my studio rebuilt from the last fire, and I’m fairly certain my insurance doesn’t cover ‘acts of archangels.’ At least, not without a large deductible. Any ideas on how to stop the ritual?"-

Humans have nothing to do with angels and fairies, then why still I love you?

As Kyle came fluttering down the aisle in her simple blue dress, Beckett swore aloud in the empty room. “Shit, Fairy Princess, you’re an angel.

The games of gods play out upon the backbones of mortals.

There was a scientist who did not believe in gods or fairies or supernatural creatures of any sort. But she had once known an angel, and had talked to her every day.

Fairies are animals’ guardian angels.

He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it’s obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi. I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking and drugs. My hope for humanity - and I think sensible science fiction has a beneficial influence in this direction - is that one day everyone born will be whole in body and brain, will live a long life free from physical and emotional pain, will participate in a fulfilling way in their contribution to existence, will enjoy true love and friendship, will pity us 20th century barbarians who lived and died in an atrocious, anachronistic atmosphere of arson, rape, robbery, kidnapping, child abuse, insanity, murder, terrorism, war, smog, pollution, starvation and the other negative “norms” of our current civilization. I have devoted my life to amassing over a quarter million pieces of sf and fantasy as a present to posterity and I hope to be remembered as an altruist who would have been an accepted citizen of Utopia.

Fear My dictionary informs me that the word “fear” comes from the Old English word faer, which is related to the word faerie and means to cast enchantments. Faerie, or fairy, has roots in the word fae or fay, meaning of the Fates, or fate, which in turn is linked to faith, derived from the Latin word meaning to trust… He appeared, when I fist sumoned him, tall and stooped, big, hooded, and draped in mists and swathes of gray, from pale to almost black. There was a line between him and me. He walked over the line and stood just behind my left shoulder. He’s there now. He stoops and whispers in my ear, “Watch out!” “Don’t trust what you’re hearing,” “Slow down the car down,” “Trust the omens!” He is Fear. He warns me of probable danger, and I listen to him because he is always correct. Fear is your ally! It is your instinct to survive. Worry is a useless thing, it achieves nothing. Resolution is the key to success.

Who're them?" says he to the curate. "Them are the fallen angels," says the curate. They had a human form, no wings. God took the wings off of 'em after Lucifer rebelled - that way they couldn't go back, d'you see. They had no wings. But there was so many of 'em that you couldn't drive a knife down between 'em. They were as thick as hair on a dog's back. They were the finest people he ever seen. And whatever way he looked at 'em, some o' the finest girls he ever seen was in it, he said. They had to be good-looking, you know! 'Twas the sin o' pride put Lucifer down, d'you see. The best-looking angel in Heaven, 'twas the sin o' pride put him down. I s'pose they were nearly all as good-looking.

In the immortal children's Christmas pantomime Peter Pan, there comes a climactic moment when the little angel Tinkerbell seems to be dying. The glowing light that represents her on the stage begins to dim, and there is only one possible way to save the dire situation. An actor steps up to the front of the house and asks all the children, "Do you believe in fairies?" If they keep confidently answering "YES!" then the tiny light will start to brighten again. Who can object to this ? One wants not to spoil children's belief in magic—there will be plenty of time later for disillusionment—and nobody is waiting at the exit asking them hoarsely to contribute their piggy banks to the Tinkerbell Salvation Church.

In The Garret Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, All fashioned and filled, long ago, By children now in their prime. Four little keys hung side by side, With faded ribbons, brave and gay When fastened there, with childish pride, Long ago, on a rainy day. Four little names, one on each lid, Carved out by a boyish hand, And underneath there lieth hid Histories of the happy band Once playing here, and pausing oft To hear the sweet refrain, That came and went on the roof aloft, In the falling summer rain. 'Meg' on the first lid, smooth and fair. I look in with loving eyes, For folded here, with well-known care, A goodly gathering lies, The record of a peaceful life-- Gifts to gentle child and girl, A bridal gown, lines to a wife, A tiny shoe, a baby curl. No toys in this first chest remain, For all are carried away, In their old age, to join again In another small Meg's play. Ah, happy mother! Well I know You hear, like a sweet refrain, Lullabies ever soft and low In the falling summer rain. 'Jo' on the next lid, scratched and worn, And within a motley store Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain-- 'Be worthy, love, and love will come,' In the falling summer rain. My Beth! the dust is always swept From the lid that bears your name, As if by loving eyes that wept, By careful hands that often came. Death canonized for us one saint, Ever less human than divine, And still we lay, with tender plaint, Relics in this household shrine-- The silver bell, so seldom rung, The little cap which last she wore, The fair, dead Catherine that hung By angels borne above her door. The songs she sang, without lament, In her prison-house of pain, Forever are they sweetly blent With the falling summer rain. Upon the last lid's polished field-- Legend now both fair and true A gallant knight bears on his shield, 'Amy' in letters gold and blue. Within lie snoods that bound her hair, Slippers that have danced their last, Faded flowers laid by with care, Fans whose airy toils are past, Gay valentines, all ardent flames, Trifles that have borne their part In girlish hopes and fears and shames, The record of a maiden heart Now learning fairer, truer spells, Hearing, like a blithe refrain, The silver sound of bridal bells In the falling summer rain. Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, Four women, taught by weal and woe To love and labor in their prime. Four sisters, parted for an hour, None lost, one only gone before, Made by love's immortal power, Nearest and dearest evermore. Oh, when these hidden stores of ours Lie open to the Father's sight, May they be rich in golden hours, Deeds that show fairer for the light, Lives whose brave music long shall ring, Like a spirit-stirring strain, Souls that shall gladly soar and sing In the long sunshine after rain

In the morn when they woke, it was Halloween Day. There was bobbing for apples and rides in the hay. There were costume parties, and games to be played. Cupcakes and candy and, of course, a parade! After dinner was served, and the kids were done eating, it was finally time to go trick-or-treating! Moms re-painted faces, and straightened clown hats, put wings back on fairies, angels, and bats. Jack-o-lanterns were set out on porches with care. Their grins seemed to say, “Knock if you dare.

And you must tell the child the legends I told you—as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of people—fairies, elves, dwarfs and such. You must tell of the great ghosts that haunted your father’s people and of the evil eye which a hex put on your aunt. You must teach the child of the signs that come to the women of our family when there is trouble and death to be. And the child must believe in the Lord God and Jesus, His Only Son.” She crossed herself. “Oh, and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six.” “Mother, I know there are no ghosts or fairies. I would be teaching the child foolish lies.” Mary spoke sharply. “You do not know whether there are not ghosts on earth or angels in heaven.” “I know there is no Santa Claus.” “Yet you must teach the child that these things are so.” “Why? When I, myself, do not believe?” “Because,” explained Mary Rommely simply, “the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.” “The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed.” “That is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one’s self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.” “If that is so,” commented Katie bitterly, “then we Rommelys are rich.” “We are poor, yes. We suffer. Our way is very hard. But we are better people because we know of the things I have told you. I could not read but I told you of all of the things I learned from living. You must tell them to your child and add on to them such things as you will learn as you grow older.

Let us come to the point now. It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs are craft from a superior space-civilization, because this is a hypothesis science fiction has made widely acceptable, and because we are not altogether unprepared, scientifically and even, perhaps, militarily, to deal with such visitors. Unfortunately, however, the theory that flying saucers are material objects from outer space manned by a race originating on some other planet is not a complete answer. However strong the current belief in saucers from space, it cannot be stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the medieval belief in lutins, or the fear throughout the Christian lands, in the first centuries of our era, of demons and satyrs and fauns. Certainly, it cannot be stronger than the faith that inspired the writers of the Bible—a faith rooted in daily experiences with angelic visitation.

A modern princess—of England, say, or Monaco— serves the purpose of being an adornment in the fantasy life of the public. Consequently, she receives the kind of education that one might think of giving to a particularly splendid papier-mâché angel before putting it at the top of the Christmas tree: an education whose main goal is proficiency in the arts of looking pretty and standing straight. Our century, whatever virtues it may have, is not an optimal time for princesses. Things were different in the Renaissance. Intelligence had a primary value then. At almost every level of the social order, education was meant to create true amateurs—people who were in love with quality. A gentleman or lady needed to be at least minimally skilled in many arts, because that was considered the fittest way of appreciating the good things in life and honoring the goodness itself. Nor did being well-rounded mean smoothing over your finest points and becoming like the reflection of a smile in a polished teaspoon. Intelligence walked hand in hand with individuality, although having finely sharpened points of view did not, it was felt, require you to poke other people with them. If wit was a rapier, courtesy was the button at the end of the blade.

Though Beckett remained confined to the same claustrophobic hotel room that had housed him for weeks now, he’d attended the wedding in every sense but literally. He dressed for the occasion, and Eve helped him get his bow tie just right before she left, promising once again that her hummingbird pin would send him every detail it could. Riveted to the live feed from Eve’s transmitter on his hotel room TV, Beckett stood when the congregation stood, and he sat when they sat. And when he noticed that the camera had bounced even lower, Beckett knelt. As Kyle came fluttering down the aisle in her simple blue dress, Beckett swore aloud in the empty room. “Shit, Fairy Princess, you’re an angel.

Mother, I know there are no ghosts or fairies. I would be teaching the child foolish lies.” Mary spoke sharply. “You do not know whether there are not ghosts on earth or angels in heaven.” “I know there is no Santa Claus.” “Yet you must teach the child that these things are so.” “Why? When I, myself, do not believe?” “Because,” explained Mary Rommely simply, “the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination.

The concept itself likely grew out of the depiction of angels and devils in artwork, as well as human souls, that showed them winged. This would have naturally lent itself to the need for a visual aid to help an audience identify a character as Otherworldly. And while angels had bird wings and demons had bat wings fairies took on insect like wings, paralleling the wider associations growing between fairies and insects across this period

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant.

Theist religions, such as biblical Judaism, justified the agricultural economy through new cosmological myths. Animist religions had previously depicted the universe as a grand Chinese opera with a limitless cast of colourful actors. Elephants and oak trees, crocodiles and rivers, mountains and frogs, ghosts and fairies, angels and demons – each had a role in the cosmic opera. Theist religions rewrote the script, turning the universe into a bleak Ibsen drama with just two main characters: man and God. The

I love the way the rain melts the colors together, like a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. There is a moment, just after sunset, when the shops turn on their lights and steam starts to fog up the windows of the cafés. In French, this twilight time implies a hint of danger. It's called entre chien et loup, between the dog and the wolf. It was just beginning to get dark as we walked through the small garden of Palais Royal. We watched as carefully dressed children in toggled peacoats and striped woolen mittens finished the same game of improvised soccer we had seen in the Place Sainte Marthe. Behind the Palais Royal the wide avenues around the Louvre gave way to narrow streets, small boutiques, and bistros. It started to drizzle. Gwendal turned a corner, and tucked in between two storefronts, barely wider than a set of double doors, I found myself staring down a corridor of fairy lights. A series of arches stretched into the distance, topped with panes of glass, like a greenhouse, that echoed the plip-plop of the rain. It was as if we'd stepped through the witch's wardrobe, the phantom tollbooth, what have you, into another era. The Passage Vivienne was nineteenth-century Paris's answer to a shopping mall, a small interior street lined with boutiques and tearooms where ladies could browse at their leisure without wetting the bustles of their long dresses or the plumes of their new hats. It was certainly a far cry from the shopping malls of my youth, with their piped-in Muzak and neon food courts. Plaster reliefs of Greek goddesses in diaphanous tunics lined the walls. Three-pronged brass lamps hung from the ceiling on long chains. About halfway down, there was an antique store selling nothing but old kitchenware- ridged ceramic bowls for hot chocolate, burnished copper molds in the shape of fish, and a pewter mold for madeleines, so worn around the edges it might have belonged to Proust himself. At the end of the gallery, underneath a clock held aloft by two busty angels, was a bookstore. There were gold stencils on the glass door. Maison fondée en 1826.

Oh, and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six." "Mother, I know there are no ghosts or fairies. I would be teaching the child foolish lies." Mary spoke sharply. "You do not know whether there are not ghosts on earth or angels in heaven." "I know there is no Santa Claus." "Yet you must teach the child that these things are so." "Why? When I, myself, do not believe?" "Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass one arty. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for." "The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed." "This is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character." "If that is so," commented Katie bitterly, "then we Rommelys are rich." "We are poor yes. We suffer. Our way is very hard. But we are better people because we know of the things I have told you. I could not read but I told you of all of the things I learned from living. You must tell them to your child and add on to them such things as ou will learn as you grow older." "What more must I teach the child?" "The child must be made to believe in heaven. A heaven, not filled with flying angels with God on a throne...but a heaven which means a wondrous place that people may dream of--as of a place where desires come true. This is probably a different kind of religion. I do not know.

said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need…fantasies to make life bearable.” REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. “They’re not the same at all!” YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—” MY POINT EXACTLY. She

The kids helped keep me together as well. One day they came in from playing after dinner, and I told them I was just completely exhausted by work and everything else. I said I’d take a shower as soon as I finished up; then we’d read and get ready for bed. They warmed up some towels in the dryer while I was showering and had them waiting for me when I was done. They made some hot coffee--not really understanding that coffee before bed isn’t the best strategy. But it was just the way I like it, and waiting on the bed stand. They turned down the bedcovers and even fluffed my pillows. Most of the time, their gifts are unintentional. Angel recently decided that, since the Tooth Fairy is so nice, someone should be nice to her. My daughter wrote a little note and left it under her pillow with some coins and her tooth. Right? The Tooth Fairy was very taken with that, and wrote a note back. “I’m not allowed to take money from the children I visit,” she wrote. “But I was so grateful. Thank you.” Then there was the time the kids were rummaging through one of Chris’s closets and discovered the Christmas Elf. Now everyone knows that the Christmas Elf only appears on Christmas Eve. He stays for a short while as part of holiday cheer, then magically disappears for the rest of the year. “What was he doing here!” they said, very concerned, as they brought the little elf to me. “And in Daddy’s closet!” I called on the special brain cells parents get when they give birth. “He must have missed Daddy so much that he got special permission to come down and hang out in his stuff. I wonder how long he’ll be with us?” Just until I could find another hiding place, of course. What? Evidence that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, you say? Keep it to yourself. In this house, we believe.

His body was racked with movement and in the semi-darkness he looked like some kind of fairy-tale goblin engaged in a flurry of hocus-pocus. In the harsh spotlight that lit up the rostrum his face was fascinatingly ugly and had a ghastly pallor, ringed as it was by his waving hair. Every little shift in the orchestra was reflected in his sensitive features: one moment he would be dampening something down, which would knot the skin round his eyes into grim folds accompanied by a lifting of his nose; the next moment he would be smiling in confluence with the sweet strains of the orchestra, radiating his approval and enjoyment, so that it was a case of both devils and angels crossing his visage in turn. Lightning flashed from his spectacle lenses with each sharp movement of his head, and from behind the lenses his eyes shone forth, watchful, assertive and demanding attention - every inch of his frame was simultaneously both an instrument of command and a means of expression.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s famous essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” in Tree and Leaf (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 1–82. The consolation . . . the joy of the happy ending . . . the sudden joyous ‘turn’ . . . this joy which . . . stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist’ nor ‘fugitive.’ . . . It is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure. Indeed, the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. Rather, it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat, and thus is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. It is the mark of a good story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give . . . when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality. In . . . the ‘turn’ . . . we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.” Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” pp. 68–69. Later Tolkien argues that the ultimate story—the gospel—is the essence of all other stories with the joy-giving happy ending. “This ‘joy’ . . . merits more consideration. The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in a successful Fantasy can . . . be explained as a sudden glimpse of an underlying . . . Reality. . . . The Gospels contain . . . a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain . . . the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered history and the primary world. . . . The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story ends in joy. . . . There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. . . . [T]his story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.” Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” pp. 71–73.

As to my intense wish never to come into contact with the eldila myself, I am not sure whether I can make you understand it. It was something more than a prudent desire to avoid creatures alien in kind, very powerful and very intelligent. The truth was that all I heard about them served to connect two things which one’s mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one a sort of shock. We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label “scientific” and “supernatural” respectively. We think, in one mood, of Mr. Wells’ Martians…In quite a different mood we let our minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghosts, fairies, and the like. But the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class as real the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it is a creature like and eldil the distinction vanishes altogether. These things were not animals—to that extent one had to classify them with the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group. The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and when it had done so, one realised how great a comfort it had been—how it has eased the burden of tolerable strangeness which this universe imposes on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think of both in the same context. What price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security and accepted confusion of thought is another matter.

Even as the feminine principle was venerated for its fertile, life-giving properties, there are also many examples of Goddesses who embodied the entire life process: birth, life, death, and regeneration. This is important because it can be tempting to romanticise the Goddess as a sort of angelic Fairy Godmother or abundant Good Mother. The feminine principle is more complex and more powerful than that. There are many stories from mythology that tell of the different faces of the Goddess. One such myth tells of the ancient Sumerian goddess who “outweighed, overshadowed, and outlasted them all . . .Inanna, Queen of Heaven.”[xxvi] This story originated in ancient Mesopotamia, five or six thousand years ago. In the myth, Inanna, who rules as queen over the upper world (birth and life), decides to visit Ereshkigal, queen of the Underworld (death and transformation). As Inanna descends into her sister’s realm, she is stripped of all the symbols of her upper world sovereignty, so that she comes before Ereshkigal naked and bowed low. Her enforced stay in the Underworld and the return after three days predates the Christian story by thousands of years. It is one of the first stories of ritual descent from the realm of life to the realm of death and the return to life after a time of incubation in the Underworld. This is also the theme of most ancient initiation rituals like the Orphic mysteries, the Eleusinian mysteries, and of much of the Egyptian sacred teachings. At the time when the story of Inanna’s journey first appeared, the increasingly male dominated Sumerian culture was separating from earlier matrilineal forms. Before the descent myth, another story tells how Inanna, in order to rule, had to take power from the God, Enki, assuming his symbols of sovereignty as her own. Ereshkigal, queen of the Underworld, represents the archaic feminine, the dark mysteries of the older religion which had been sent underground. The descent story can, therefore, be understood as Inanna balancing her heroic victories in the upper (masculine) world by reconnecting with the rhythms and cycles of the under (feminine) world. Based on clinical experience, one analyst called this a “pattern of a woman’s passage from cultural adaptation to an encounter with her essential nature”.