I Am Pagan - Notes From A Solitary Eclectic Neo-Pagan Witch

I'm a Pixie

I am 5 foot nought with a pug nose. My eyes are hazel tending to green, and are almond shaped. I don't have to tell anyone I'm a pixie — they tend to tell me. One day I walked into a bar and had two girls start screaming, "It's a pixie, it's a pixie!" while pointing at me. Don't know what they were drinking and if it gave them clear sight or just a case of the giggles, but that's only one of the many times someone has taken one look at me and called me a pixie, or elf.

But I do have a theory, based on my own research and things fey folk have told me. In a way, I do think I am a pixie — or some sort of fey anyway.

Before France was France, it was Gaul. And when it was Gaul it was invaded by various Germanic races — big, husky blond people who were surprised to find a race of tiny, dark skinned, dark haired people who lived in the forests already in residence. Like many indigenous tribes, they tended to 'fight' those much larger warriors with tricks, traps, and what we now call guerilla warfare. Hiding in trees shooting arrows or darts. Like many indigenous people, they had an ability to hide in their forest that intruders regarded as magical. Not surprising that as more and more of the invaders occupied the area stories about the elves, fairies, fey folk and other probably less complementary names and tales became common among them.

As far as I have found there is no such evidence, but it isn't hard to imagine these little people had a nature based, dare I say, magical, religion. It also seems that they were a matriarchy, as are many so-called primitive peoples.

As with every invasion in the world, the men came first and once they had conquered they wanted to settle and to settle you need a wife. If only little brown girls are available... it's an old and common tale, isn't it? Toss in the fairy tales about the "woods wife" while you are at it. The woman from the woods who remains always wild and eventually runs off leaving a child behind with her brokenhearted husband. And then there's the changeling tales — babies switched at birth or in the crib for babies that are really elves or fairies. Not to point any fingers, but a wife with a bit of craft and a baby that was  brown instead of fair and blond, might make up such a tale to mollify her husband. And then there's the hedge witch. The crooked little brown woman living alone in a hut deep in the forest dispensing wisdom and potions and healing.

And so the people married and the old tales became fairy tales accepted as products of the imagination. Now and then a tiny little brown baby was born and maybe treated with some suspicion — and maybe taught a few things by their ancestors who recognized them.

My great grandmother was French. And tiny. And greatly feared by the family as a witch. Never heard of or saw her husband. One of her daughters (my grandmother) married a Native American man. Again, don't know his name, never saw him or heard of him or even why he was out of the picture but my great-grandmother wound up raising my mother and her siblings. My Mother has married - at last count - four times, and honestly I have to say she sees men as a means to an end. As an infant I was for a time raised by my great grandmother (the witch) and then I was the only one of several children that my mother actually raised. I don't even know who my father was.

Odds bits and bobs of my upbringing now strike me as quite witchy compared to a more normal upbringing. The women, and one man, of my blood relations have prophetic dreams and other psychic abilities, although in a mild way and it isn't discussed much. I know witchy things that I've always known but I can't tell you when or how I learned them. My great-grandmother, I suspect, taught me a great deal before she allowed my mother to take me back.

I believe I am related in a direct, matriarchal line to those little brown forest dwellers in Gaul and have been the lucky recipient of their wisdom. Not by specific training, mind you, but more of a attitude towards nature and magic that was carried forward through the generations, largely by one particular woman — my great grandmother. You know, the witch. Who raised in turn, her daughters, her granddaughters, and for a time her great-granddaughter.

Fey folk, as I have discussed earlier, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, abilities, and desires. They have told me that some of them can and have had children with humans and have for hundreds of generations. Many human beings have some trace of fey blood, and like any genetic trait, in some it is stronger than in others. If you truly feel you are fey, you probably are. A little bit.

The fey have told me they find those of us with a bit of fey attractive and fascinating. They are drawn to us to watch us, or even watch over us and help us. After all, we are sort of 'theirs'. Like Native Americans, they are fairly accepting of strangers into their tribe be it by blood, marriage, or adoption.

So when people tell me I'm a pixie (for some reason, that seems the most common fey folk name applied to me) I smile and say, 'yes, I know'.