I’ve Never Seen an Elf
I have a hard time with landvaettir. As much as I would love to believe in these nature spirits or ghosts, I’ve never seen one. That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, but I’m having a tough time with them. Basically it goes under “I haven’t seen them, so I’m agnostic about them.”
Growing up without Magic
It’s not from lack of trying, either. As a kid, I grew up skeptical and I was always wishing that something was true that I knew wasn’t. Near my home when I was growing up, we had plenty of milkweed, dandelions, and goat’s beard. We called the seeds “fairies” because of the way the floaty seeds looked. I remember a kid telling me that by a particular creek you could see fairies. I went there, hoping to see a supernatural entity, only to be sorely disappointed. When I asked the kid later, she said she meant the seeds.
Drats.
Much of my early life was spent in the woods of New York and Virginia before it all became paved over. (Yes, I’m THAT old.) There were places we went where you could find old ruins of farmhouses that existed before the Civil War and my dad used to find tons of miniballs from what I presume were lost around the Civil War. These places could be magical. But honestly, I never saw any thing that said “magic.”
Everything had a reason. People who believed in magic and ghosts were foolish or uneducated. Everything could be explained scientifically. Kind of dreary, if you ponder it long enough. But science had its own wonder and own magic.
Still No Magic; Still No Elves
Some people claim to be able to speak to the land wights and the Elves. I’ve pretty much given up on that because I’ve never seen or heard one back. I have, however, thanked them for the land, the food they brought us, and the wood we use to heat our home. I read some Asatruar books which told me how to “see” my guardian animal spirit and saw nothing. The trick is to look at your face in the mirror at night for a long time. Granted it’s a trick that plays upon our minds and is called pareidolia.
Pareidolia plays on our mind’s ability to recognize faces in inanimate objects. When looking in the mirror at night, we don’t see everything and so our imagination fills in the gaps. Except if you don’t have an imagination. Which, I probably don’t.
(I’ll have you know I’m a bitch to take at movies, too. There are some science gaffs that really take me out of suspending disbelief.)
I do have Spirit Guardian Animals, though
That being said, I do have spirit guardians. They came to me in dream and meditative visions. One has actually flashed by my car in the same place in the same situation every time until I noticed her. I found out that I have three spirit guardians I can call on, and maybe more. One is a fox, one is a hawk, the third is a white wolf or Husky/Malamute. Both the fox and the hawk I have seen personally. The wolf is in my dreams, or may have been a dog I owned.
So, maybe I do have some magical beings that do show up from time to time. They just don’t screw too much with my sensibilities. Maybe Elves and land wights are too much to ask for. Then again, you never know…