The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A-Z for the Entire Magical World - Judika Illes 2005

Fairy Magicians
Fairies

“Fairy magicians” describes Central and southeastern European healers and practitioners. Fairy magicians incorporate the herbal and folkhealing skills of the Irish fairy doctors but also more openly acknowledge engaging in shamanic spiritual possession. In addition to healing, many also practiced other magical arts. In areas where witches were persecuted, the entire practice was conducted secretly: there was perhaps no conception that their traditions could be entirely distinguished from magical practice or witchcraft as the fairy doctors sometimes attempted to claim.

Fairy magicians were generally female spiritual mediators who maintained ritual connections and communication with fairies, including the Keshalyi, Tündér, and Vila among others. (See Nature-spirit Fairies, page 434.)

They were skilled in healing illnesses caused by fairies. In addition, these magicians were sometimes also fortune-tellers, necromancers, and magical practitioners who specialized in protecting against malefic magic and healing its effects.

Fairy magicians are initiated directly by the fairies. Initiates communicate with spirits via dreams and visions. Sometimes communication is via trance, which may be induced by music and/or dance. Dancing all night in the moonlight with fairies is thus a spiritual exercise as well as fun.

In Romania, healers gathered together at night for rituals presided over by Fairy Queen, Doamna Zónelor.

In the Balkans, “fairy societies” heal fairy-derived illnesses. Anthropologists describe these fairy societies of Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia as “possession cults.”

Also in the Balkans, the goddess of the fairies is known as “Saint Helen,” who may be Tündér Ilona in disguise.

Following initiation, members of these “fairy societies” are able to contact the fairies through sacrificial ritual and ecstatic music and dance. Fairies ritually possess society members in similar fashion to the way zar spirits, orisha, and lwa take temporary possession of their initiates. The spirit “mounts” the initiate and communicates through their voice and body. Fairy societies consider this a dangerous practice as it can stimulate illness (in the initiate) as well as healing.

See above Fairy Doctor, Fairy Faith; DICTIONARY: Lwa, Orisha, Zar; MAGICAL ARTS: Ritual Possession.