Elphame: A Journey Into Elven Light (Magickal Diaries)

During a period of recuperation after a major heart attack, I had a simple vision. I don’t often get these. It was just a picture. Of a newspaper. There was no-one holding it. First one side, then the other was shown to me. It had a yellowy parchment quality and there was only one word on it, yet printed innumerable times: Elphame. The Realms of the Fae have fascinated me more than anything else within the Western Mysteries, though I have never got far when I’ve tried to enter them. As an Ancient Brit I am no longer be able to make fierce and lonesome pilgrimages to Elphame-ish portals such as the Eildon Hills in the Scottish Borders or the Hen Hole in Northumberland, or the The Hill of Uisneach in Ireland, or even into the wonderful folds of the Welsh Marches that aren’t too far from where I live now. Nor do I have the enviable psychism that enables visionaries I know and respect to enter at will the faery realms that so fascinate me. So I decided that I would find my own way into Elphame during my recovery and explain what I was doing without recourse to learned books or on-line discourses from recognised authorities, and perhaps make it possible for anyone to do the same. I would do this by allowing myself to flow with the currents of a puny, rubbish-filled little river in a scruffy, decaying, little town with no obvious underlying mythological strata but which has been kind and loving to me. So follow me as I search daily for trows and faes and other marvellous beings and perhaps realise that this can be done anywhere, in any town in any country, and use these very true yarns to find your own ways into the strange inner realms Elphame...