Psychic Synchronicity
In the years since I started doing psychic readings professionally clients who had been trying to find the right psychic for them often came to me as a result of a chain of Synchronicities that defied the laws of probability as we
know them. One case in particular came to mind this morning when I was meditating. The client, Marina, was from Trieste, the only person from that city that I had ever met. She had emigrated to Canada in 1981 and settled in a rural area outside the city where I lived. We eventually met in 1995 but the string of coincidences that led her to me started about four months before her appointment with me.
Marina loved animals and had long wanted to have a dog. She had a strong preference for Terriers and began her search for the perfect pet by joining the Canadian Kennel Club. There she met dozens of breeders and made friends with lots of dog owners who were active in showing their animals. The first co-incidence that would eventually connect us was Marina's introduction to a friend of mine who happened to be a judge of dog shows. Fred was both a breeder and trainer of show dogs and when my husband had to travel overseas we boarded our dog, a West Highland Terrier, with him. Marina met Fred when he was showing his prize Westie for the last time before retiring him and, true to form, Bridie took first place in his set. Marina was drawn to the Westie but she had decided on a different Terrier breed and kept looking.
Marina loved animals and had long wanted to have a dog. She had a strong preference for Terriers and began her search for the perfect pet by joining the Canadian Kennel Club. There she met dozens of breeders and made friends with lots of dog owners who were active in showing their animals. The first co-incidence that would eventually connect us was Marina's introduction to a friend of mine who happened to be a judge of dog shows. Fred was both a breeder and trainer of show dogs and when my husband had to travel overseas we boarded our dog, a West Highland Terrier, with him. Marina met Fred when he was showing his prize Westie for the last time before retiring him and, true to form, Bridie took first place in his set. Marina was drawn to the Westie but she had decided on a different Terrier breed and kept looking.
Synchronicity Points The Way
Months went by whilst Marina continued her search concentrating on Tibetan Terriers as her breed of choice. Then, she visited a local book shop that specialised in books of interest to animal lovers. They had volumes on everything from breeding racehorses to rare breeds of tortoises and even how to care for highly venomous spiders! Searching through the books on Terriers, Marina met a woman whose speciality was training animals for commercials and films. She worked out of Toronto but spent a lot of time in L.A. where she was working with a Tibetan Terrier who was slated to play the Dalai Lama's dog in an upcoming film. Marina had recently visited a city in the American mid-west where she had participated in the Kalachakra Initiation conducted by the Dalai Lama, a concidence which led the two women to form a friendship that eventually brought Marina to me as well!
As it happened, Leila, the dog trainer, had planned to attend a weekend retreat that I was also planning to attend and, as luck would have it, we were assigned to share a room. It was a silent retreat except for an hour each evening but ,when we chatted, Leila and I discovered that we had a friend in common, a vet who looked after her animals and also happened to look after our Westie. In addition, Leila also knew the breeder where we had found our dog.Synchros 2 and 3. The breeder would be offering a new litter for sale within two months around the time of the annual Highland Games. It just happened that the Games were to be held within a mile of the breeder's kennel. Synchro 4. My husband and I usually attended the Games with Scottish friends and their kids who always insisted we bring our well-loved Westie along. Leila had never been to the Gathering of the Clans but she decided to come and to meet my husband and me there. After the games, we would visit the breeder together on the way home. Meanwhile, Leila went on to invite Marina to the games as well with the idea that Marina might yet fall in love with a Westie. Synchro 5 on the chain.
The day of Games dawned hot and muggy, a typical August day and, if I hadn't committed to meeting our Scots friends and Leila there, I might have begged off. As it happened, a thunder storm cooled things off before the Games began and made the entire afternoon far more pleasant than the morning had promised. Leila eventually found us and introduced us to Marina who was immediately charmed by our Westie. To top it off, our friend Fred (another Scot) attended the games that year (Synchro 6) and we all finished up going together to visit the breeder. The breeder was delighted to see us all approaching and the puppies she was offering for sale were even more so. After lots of petting and playing with a few puppies, Marina ended two searches that day: one for the perfect dog (she took home an adorable Westie pup named Archie) and, as a result of our conversation, she decided to come to me for a reading. Synchro 7.
I can't help but wonder at the underlying pattern of connections that let to the final outcome. Could there really be some 'grand plan' at work in our lives? The phenomenon of Synchronicity certainly seems to suggest it. Whatever the case, I can safely say that sometimes our desire to find a particular thing in life leads to finding other things like friendships, pets, and even psychics!
© Delia O' Riordan 2014
www.psychic-delia.com
Japan were observed using small shells or pebbles to open oyster, clam, and mussel shells to get at the food inside. So the use of tools is not what set "man" apart from the animals. Ah, then, said the scientists and theologians, it must be language and specifically the ability to vocalize meaningful sounds. Wrong, again. Dolphins and parrots have learned to "speak" our language and African Grey Parrots in particular have demonstrated exceptional abilities to go beyond using individual words to using abstract concepts such as the concept of none or zero! Humans only began using zero routinely in the 16th century but the most famous African Grey, Alex, trained by Dr. Irene Pepperberg (above left), spontaneously started to use the concept of "none" appropriately and even humorously in response to experimental questions designed to measure his understanding of quantity (more/less, larger number/smaller number). For that past half century the distinction between human capacities and those of animals have been found to be largely based on untested - and therefore unscientific - assumptions. Testing those assumptions had led to the conclusion that animals are conscious, have the capacity to make choices, and understand us much better than we do them! Does it follow then that if animals are conscious beings, their consciousness might survive physical death as it appears that human consciousness does?
does survive physical death. Our pets who precede us in death often appear as we leave our bodies or they show up after we arrive at the point where we encounter our "spirit guide". According to the experiences of thousands of people who have been regressed to the 'life between lives' by Dr. Newton and his successors, animals enjoy an afterlife separate from but accessible to that enjoyed by humans. They and we have "visiting privileges" as it were and they can be brought from their "heaven" to be with us for short periods after our arrival in the afterlife. For me, this answers the age-old question of whether animals have "souls". If humans are thought to possess souls by virtue of being conscious and animals share in a form of consciousness, then obviously animals have souls.
I sometimes recommend Psychic Readings using Runes for clients who have just one question they want answered. The use of runes for this purpose is unclear from the historical record but when we consider that most runic forms going back to the Ur culture began as systems of counting, we can see how the concept of number evolved in practical terms. I think numbers have always had spiritual meaning because the concept of number is both symbolic and "real". Number is firstly a concept, an abstraction, an idea that the human mind can play with. When we see or hear "seven" we are presented with two methods of understanding it: seven things (cows, apples, clouds) but also the abstract notion of "7" as itself with no connection to things or qualities of things, such as size, weight, depth, etc. It is the abstract quality of numbers that gives them their mystical dimension. As counting systems evolved into alphabetic systems, there seemed to be a natural congruence between letters and numbers that established the basis of Numerology as a system of divination. So although we cannot pinpoint the exact period in which Runes were first used for divination, the basic connection between Numerology and Runes is obvious.
Well, here I am back in SynchroniCity again. What has that to do with Tonto and The Hobbit? Read on! Yesterday, for no good reason that I can think of, the 1950s TV series, The Lone Ranger, popped into my head. But it wasn't Clayton Moore in the title role that I was thinking of; it was Tonto played by Canadian actor Jay Silverheels, a Mohawk of the Six Nations from the Brantford, Ontario region. I confess to having had a massive crush on Jay Silverheels when I was a kid! And maybe even after that. I loved his voice. No, truly. I fall in love with voices and the voice of Tonto is one I still remember from before the "pc" era when it became obligatory to use the term Tonto (no longer a name) disparagingly. However, I never saw Tonto as playing "second banana" to the Lone Ranger. Quite the contrary. Tonto was far more interesting to me and I always longed for the stories to be more about him than the LR. So, anyway, I was fondly remembering and lamenting the loss of Jay Silverheels yesterday hoping that he has long since been in the arms of The Great Spirit. Then today, as is the way with human consciousness, I was thinking along entirely different lines when a note from a friend reminded me that it is Mabon, the Autumn Equinox in the northern hemisphere. And voila! I had the topic for my blog today.
The first order of business was to find an arresting visual for my post and I discovered a beautiful version of the Wheel of the Year kept in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle. Somehow that graphic led me to an article about the Mabon celebration in Thornborough and as I scrolled down the page a magnificent image unfolded before my eyes. It was a poster for the movie version of The Hobbit based on the book by J R R Tolkien first published 75 years ago. My introduction to the book was as a student-teacher when I was expected to 'teach' the book to a group of rambunctious and disaffected grade 9 students, more than a few of whom were repeating the grade! Much to my relief, most of the students got interested in the characters, especially Gandalf the Wizard, so I didn't have to resort to either bribes or threats to get them to read it! And now, decades later, the long awaited film version of The Hobbit was about to be released.
"Lone Ranger' Crew Member Drowns!What? I was looking for more information on The Hobbit movie but somehow landed on this story. My first thought was that someone who worked on the original TV series had drowned. I clicked on the story link and discovered that there was a film version of The Lone Ranger in production and due for release in the New Year. Now, the presence of Jay "Tonto" Silverheels in my mind yesterday made sense. Well, sort of. I don't know how Tonto happened to come into my mind the day before a crew member on the set of the new Lone Ranger film died. Nor do I know why the Thornborough Mabon site featured the poster ad for The Hobbit movie. This seems to be an example of a Synchronicity, the acausal connection of two or more events that strike us as related. So, how are the two events connected? And why did they happen at all? Let's look at the chain of events:If I hadn't begun to look for a suitable graphic for an article on Mabon I wouldn't have stumbled upon the page about the Mabon celebration at Thornborough and if I hadn't scrolled down that page I wouldn't have seen the poster ad for The Hobbit movie. If I hadn't clicked on the link for the movie I wouldn't have seen the item about the death on the Lone Ranger film set. And I would not have known that the 'new' Tonto was going to be played by guess who? Johnny Depp. Given his height, age and general colouring he's a good candidate for the part. No doubt the "pc" purists, however, will object to that casting and I must admit I, too, would like to see an actor like Adam Beach, an Anishinaabe First Nations Manitoban, in the role of Tonto but it appears that he had committed to several other projects during the same period that the Lone Ranger would be in production. I hope that Johnny Depp's fame around the world will bring a whole new generation to the saga of Tonto and his uh…sidekick...some guy called The Lone Ranger. Maybe I wasn't supposed to write about Mabon today...
As a professional psychic I take pride in my psychic readings. As a pet owner, however, I have to admit that my abilities may be outdone by the animals we share this planet with, Psychic Animals. Have you ever had the feeling that your pet dog or cat – or even bird – knows what you’re thinking? Observant pet owners know their animals well and can predict how they will react to certain stimuli but when animals react to our thoughts rather than our cues, our relationship to them is of a different order. And when they react to our thoughts at a distance and with no way to identify us through their physical senses, we have entered the realm of the psychic animal. The question is how do they do it? Are they able to "hear" our thoughts - "Hmmm. Tugger needs a bath…"? Or do they "see" our thoughts - "Uh-oh. Tub! Bath! Run!"? Or do they "read" subtle changes in our auras that they have learned to connect with certain events, like feeding time or baths or "walkies"? As long as they can see us, we can "get" that they are picking up something from our demeanor but many animals "know" what their owners are thinking or even just "intending" when the owner is many miles distant from the pet. In these cases there is no physical signal to "read" yet the animal "knows" that its owner is on the way home. Ok, so where's the proof?
phenomena pervade human life. However, there are a few scientists who are willing to brave the disapproval of colleagues in order to investigate neglected areas of human experience and reveal their findings. Biochemist and biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is that kind of scientist: endlessly curious, unafraid of criticism, rigourously conscientious in designing experiments that are subjected to intense analysis and statistical evaluation, and modest in reporting all of the results, not just the ones that validate his hypotheses. Because he forsook laboratory research for research in ‘the real world’, he is considered a maverick, even a ‘heretic’ by professional ‘de-bunkers’ who claim to represent ‘real science’. De-bunkers will be the focus of a later article so for now we are going to concentrate on Dr. Sheldrake’s (Cambridge and Harvard in case you’re wondering about his credentials) 20 years of research on human/animal telepathy.
Julia Garnet is sixty years old, emotionally repressed, sexually inexperienced and has spent her life in almost sacrificial frugality. She is also the amazed heir to her former - even more frugal - housemate's legacy. Harriet seems to have had a secret: a genius for investment! Who knew? Certainly not Julia Garnet who did not believe in Destiny.
with Destiny. Where would you go if you suddenly had money to travel? France? Egypt? Bora Bora? Miss Garnet chose that most decadent and sensuous of Europe's cities, La Serenissima, Venice. The mere mention of Venice evokes many images in the popular imagination: elaborate Carnivale Masks; extravagant chandeliers and gold leaf interiors; illicit assignations in gondolas; magnificent meals and expensive wines; Murano glass and hand-made shoes. Venice has all of this. And churches. Lots and lots of churches. Miss Garnet was CoE, of course, and like so many of her ilk, suspicious of anything "Romish". Her life was marked by as utter an absence of the voluptuous in terms of spiritual life as it was in terms of daily life. Despite the suspicion and antipathy toward Catholic display, millions of Calvinists seem to feel almost envious of the astounding outpouring of genius and talent that even fairly modest Old World Catholic and Orthodox churches contain. But none amongst them can rival Venice for sheer sensuous indulgence. Despite the ravages of damp and salt, Venice is home to a vast artistic inheritance - one that was about to rock Julia Garnet's world.
light that so intrigued artists from da Vinci to Correggio and beyond. From her tiny perch above the teeming canals, Julia Garnet will dive into a life she could not have imagined. Friends had been few and somewhat cold-blooded in England but from her first day in Venice Julia seemed to attract an amazing number of interesting and talented people and for possibly the first time in her life, she fell in love. Not once but twice. And one of the objects her love was - of all things - an Angel. An Archangel to be more precise. A beautiful androgynous Archangel whose presence seemed to follow her around the floating city. His name was Raphael.
In a previous Psychic Readings post ( 
front of me seemed to be watching my physical reactions closely whilst the one (or two) behind me seemed merely annoyed in an animal sort of way that I was attempting to stop them, like a dog that growls if you get too close to its chew toy. The noises I heard defy description and in some ways it was the noise that most terrified me because it threatened to make it impossible ever to think again. I had the distinct feeling that if I could not free myself from that noise, I could - literally - LOSE my mind, a prospect I find far more terrifying than losing something physical. What is weird about that is that I don't believe that the "mind" lives in the brain. Rather, the other way about. We dwell within consciousness so logically it is not possible to LOSE one's mind. However, in my state of extreme fear, my emotional self acted as though the brain and the mind were one. I wonder now if that was the "point" of the whole experience - assuming it was being orchestrated by some sentient being which is certainly how it felt!
trying to "invade me" whilst remaining unable to control my body and I resisted with every bit of my being and mentally fought to get free. It seemed to be a battle for my Will - something that I admit has never been very strong in me. Although I would always fight on behalf of others, I found it nearly impossible to stand up for myself when it really mattered. Now that I think about it, I believe I have been 'tested' with regard to my Will from time to time but never to the extent that my survival seemed to be on the line! I guess it would take the threat of the loss of my intellect to get me to fully assert my Will. Threatening what I value most in life - the ability to think, to grow in understanding, to learn as much as possible - was perhaps the only fool-proof way to get me to assert my Will. But that begs the question of who - or what - would orchestrate such a thing? And why? Then again, if the whole episode was a sort of "psycho-drama" thrown up by my unconscious mind, it has some "serious 'splainin' to do" as Ricky used to say to Lucy!
Continuing this series in Psychic Readings History, an extremely well-documented case of multiple hauntings caught my attention. Have you ever had the experience of lying in bed and becoming aware of a very heavy, immovable weight on your chest? I don't mean a bad case of indigestion or a dream of an elephant crushing you to death. I mean an actual waking experience of someone or something sitting heavily on your chest so that you feel that you will suffocate and die if you can't get it off of you? I have had that experience and that is terrifying! Although records of the phenomenon go back at least 6000 years, stories of the Incubus (male) and Succubus (female) were common in the European Middle Ages as its depiction by artist Henry Fuseli (below, right) attests. Contemporary psychology dismisses such stories as folktales, delusions, or "sleep paralysis". Elaine Mercado would have agreed; that is, until she began to experience the presence of a very angry entity pushing her down into her mattress and nearly suffocating her to death several nights a week. The experience was anything but pleasant and certainly not sexual as Medievalists had imagined the Incubus to be. This attack was menacing, ugly, and traumatic. For years, Elaine's eldest daughter, Karen, was likewise afflicted but there was far more to their experience. Shadow people, "the Mist", balls of light, whispering voices, rasping breathing, extremely odd behaviour in their pets, ear-shattering noises, strange odours, were part of their everyday lives and before long Elaine began to feel like a hostage in her own home.
Even when he himself was subjected to some of the phenomena, he refused to acknowledge the significance of it. As her life became a living nightmare, Elaine desperately sought "natural explanations" for the odd goings-on. She did not invite and did not want these intrusions into her family life but as a full-time mother and housewife she had no credibility with her husband.However, Elaine had harboured a life-long dream to become a Registered Nurse and, partly to escape the house for hours at a time and partly to realize her dream, she enrolled in nursing school. Her husband's business prospered over the years but her marriage continued to deteriorate even as Elaine became valedictorian of her graduating class. Her sense of accomplishment went some way to make up for the belittling that her husband handed out and the opportunity to study psychology seemed to promise an answer to the riddle of what was causing all the phenomena in their home.
everyone in the family including Elaine's disbelieving husband, friends of her children, neighbours and colleagues experience one or more of the frightening manifestations of haunting. When she finally initiated divorce proceedings, Elaine hoped that things in the house would improve and for a time they seemed to ease but invariably the "suffocation dreams" would return and deprive her of sleep four or more nights a week. Likewise, the balls of light and strange shapes moving along the baseboards, the movement of articles, the odd animal behaviours, would all return. When these activities affected both her daughters and their friends, they would all sleep in one room or would spend the night with Elaine's parents. The situation was intolerable but Elaine could do very little about it. Under the terms of her divorce agreement, she got title to the house but only when the divorce was final at least two years after she initiated it. Meanwhile, the house could not be sold. She was stuck. Only her brother, Joe, was sympathetic and believed what was going on in the house was real. He had felt something "heavy" in the house on the day Elaine moved in but had said nothing to her about it, not wanting to spoil her happiness at finally having a home of her own. Eventually, it would be Joe who would fine a possible solution to the problem of the haunting.
"medium" to come to the house to see if an outsider could pick up anything about what or who might be haunting the house. Months later, Joe made good on his promise and Dr. Hans Holzer and a medium with whom he worked agreed to visit Elaine's home to investigate the problem. Hans Holzer was probably the best known researcher into paranormal phenomena in the US at the time (mid-1990's). If anyone could help Elaine to evict her unwanted ghostly tenants it was Holzer. However, he wanted to know very little about the problem so as to approach it with an open mind. He was given only a note of few lines describing the most frightening aspects of the haunting and omitting dozens of others. One test of a true medium is that they don't want to know the details of a case. They want to experience an allegedly "haunted" place for themselves and having prior information just contaminates the process. Holzer and the medium got straight down to work on their arrival at the house. Many hours were to pass before Elaine had her answers.
something of their afterlife experience that directly relates to the client's spiritual search for clarity and deeper meaning in life. One theme that repeats itself in these circumstances is the need for the client to gently withdraw from energy-draining social - and even intimate - entanglements for a time. When you consider how much energy is expended daily on emotions of all kinds, it makes perfect sense that the first step toward finding a more authentic way to Be starts with our emotional lives. So many of our actions are emotion-driven that we don't see that there is always a choice about how we are going to react to life events with something other than a knee-jerk response. Transformation, therefore, is not so much a "spiritual movement" as it is a personal challenge to our unexamined assumptions about what matters and what doesn't. The steps in the Transformation Process have been well-documented down the ages and our present era is no exception yet the process is unique to each of us and we need to keep an open mind as to where we are going and how we are going to get there. Future posts will deal with the most common steps in the process of discovery that leads to Transformation one individual at a time. Just as your DNA is unique, your life journey will be unique when you let it unfold rather than trying to buy a lifestyle that suggests a set of values that don't really satisfy you. When you engage in the highly individual process of creating a more satisfying life, you will find that similar minded individuals will tend to gravitate in your direction and a rich vein of friendship is often the result.
asked in our culture. The generations born since the end of WW2 have been confronting that question with greater urgency than previous generations. In periods of rigid social order, the individual has generally had very little choice in areas of life that we consider to be essential such as the choice of a profession or trade. It was assumed that at least the eldest boy would follow his father's trade; girls were groomed to be wives and mothers. Even for those at the top of the social heap - landowners, nobles, royalty - there were rigid expectations and demands that left little room for improvisation or experimentation. After the revolutions in America and France in the late 18th century however , people began to question their inherited social and economic structures and greater emphasis began to be placed on the individual as the unit of society rather than class or family. More than any single other factor the growth of the "middle classes" made choice possible, at least in theory. Yet, we have no idea how many great artists, composers, writers, and even scientists, were steered away from using their natural gifts in order to fulfill their parents ideas of a "safe", "reliable" or "traditional" profession or trade. Would-be theoretical mathematicians were steered
instead into teaching or accountancy; girls who dreamed by being doctors were persuaded to become nurses; potentially serious playwrights, poets, and literary novelists were sent off to learn journalism, public relations, or advertising even during times of prosperity when choice should have been the norm. Why? Because of the fear of what might happen in years to come. How could one earn a living as a painter in a period of recession or depression? Who would marry girls who had medical or law degrees? Nowadays, we might laugh at such a question but social advances have a way of being reversed during periods of economic stress and political regression such as we are in right now. But despite the outward circumstances, humans must engage in a process of self-discovery in order to claim the self-knowledge that leads to happiness in life. Skipping that process is what gives us generations of unwed mothers with children they can't support, "deadbeat Dads", abusive husbands and fathers who use their physical strength to prevent women and children from exercising their rights to be free to act on their own consciences and knowledge; bosses who are in the wrong jobs and abuse their power to prevent others from becoming the best they can be; and today a ubiquitous "security industry" that is laying the groundwork for the subversion of democratic institutions that had been designed to protect the rights of the individual. More than at any time in the past, we need to ask "Who am I?" and "Who am I meant to be (by virtue of my inborn abilities, talents and interests)?" One of the aspects of my practice as a professional psychic that I most enjoy is working with clients on the twin issues of who they are and what work would give them the greatest satisfaction in life. I have worked with many "misplaced" professionals who were actually "meant to be" lawyers, judges, researchers, writers, dancers, business owners, restaurateurs, architects, even astrologers and one or two who were "closet psychics". I was one of those myself for nearly twenty years in a "left brain profession" which I believe helps me to recognize others in a similar situation.
how they will live their lives, including how they will "make a living". We are at a critical juncture in human history; 99% of the population of the planet is in thrall to the 1% of economic plutocrats, a situation that grows more dangerous by the day as one form of employment after another is declared redundant or economically not viable. Rarely is that true. Most of the "wealth bubble" is made up of air - speculation, "hedge funds", hostile take-overs, etc. without regard to the overall social as well as economic impact that will ensue when the current "bubble" implodes as it did in 2008-2010. If the majority population of the planet is not to be enslaved or eradicated by natural or engineered disaster, we have to discover how to live in accordance with who we are and what we were meant to do to support life on this planet. In the search for answers to these questions, I am in favour of any instrument that furthers human freedom from economic, political, or intellectual tyranny. Self-discovery is the deepest root of freedom in all areas. There are many tools to increase self-awareness including books and courses on identifying your "strengths and weaknesses" in terms of employment. One of the most recent such books is Search Inside Yourself, a creative and sometimes hilarious tool for finding out what would make you much happier at work and in your life. I recommend this one highly.
respect for her willingness to learn - in public - including learning from her mistakes. I also respect the fact that she seeks out professionals to work with and has created what I think of as her own "human resource network". I detested the hype that crept into the staging of her daily TV shows; it was so obviously producer-driven. However, when I listen to what she actually says I am struck by her humility in seeking answers to the important questions facing the planetary culture of which we are all a part. So, I recommend that readers of this post who harbour doubts about their careers or wonder if there might be a better alternative out there, begin with tools they can gain access to in their environment. My only caution would be to be sceptical of any book or "authority" who claims to have "all the answers". Above all, remember that nothing in nature grows in absolutely straight lines. Nature meanders, spirals, circles back from time to time and constantly changes. That is our reality. Circumstances change and we can't protect ourselves against all of them. However, the best thing we can do for ourselves and those we care about is to make an honest effort to find out who we really are (emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, and physically) and live in harmony with that identity including how we support ourselves and our loved ones. There are no general answers, only individual ones so we cannot compare what is best for us with what is best for others. What would make us happiest might be radically different from the current "norms" but remember we do not know what is "normal" for human beings - we only know what is common. And the common choices might not be right for us.
entertained, children are especially prone to boredom with all of its attendant ills: quarrelsomeness, dangerous pranks, etc. But the last weeks of summer also offer a wonderful opportunity for total engagement. As unpicked berries begin to shrivel and fall from the vines, dry leaves drift to the ground, flowers need to be 'dead- headed', pine cones drop onto forest floors, birds lose feathers and squirrels knock nuts out of trees onto the ground, a whole new world of possibilities opens up: the chance for families to build houses for the fairy guardians of the wild places to rest and refresh themselves in the cold months ahead. The enormous popularity of photo-essay books documenting fairy houses that dot parks and woodlands in the state of Maine has drawn thousands of tourists every summer and spread the idea of building fairy houses as a family acitvity around the globe.
do and that those items must be already on the ground can get children interested in really looking at the natural world around them. This is also a good time to introduce the idea of asking permission of the natural world before picking anything up and carrying it off. Fairies are very respectful of the territories of creatures in the wild and we need to follow their example by seeking permission from the trees, plants, and fallen natural elements before we begin to collect them. The process of collecting these elements can be presented as an expedition. This phase can also include a trip to the library to see if the kids can find any books about fairy houses and how others have made them, or books about the local trees and plants so that the children can learn the names of the species from the types of leaves and nuts or berries they bear and which animals eat those things. If you are fortunate enough to live near a beach, the children can bring a little shovel and buckets to collect some sand, bits of driftwood, sea glass or dried seaweed, shells (if it is permitted to remove them), pebbles, etc. The sand can be used to line the "floor" of the faery house where fairies can take naps when they are tired. Children can be encouraged to thank the spirits of the sea and sand for letting them remove things to use in the fairy house.
the Shoals and Monhegan Island off the coast of the American state of Maine have set aside areas where children are welcome to build fairy houses using only materials they find on the ground. This means no plastic or resin items, nothing that comes from outside of the island site. The result is a veritable colony of fairy dwellings including little fairy theatres, fairy swings, even fairy bath tubs (large sea shells that catch rainwater. The popularity of this venue for families on holiday in the area as well as year-round residents of Maine, is largely down to the success of books by local author Tracy Kane. Fairy Houses Everywhere! is a compendium of the best and most interesting structures created by children and families. The photographs are stunning in their clarity and detail and kids can spend hours just studying the images to find all the treasures hidden in each Fairy House. One thing is certain: there is nothing boring about these amazing fairy dwellings and if fairy etiquette is observed you may even be rewarded by a glimpse of the fairy world just the other side of ours.