faeries on fridays #17
What do Mary Poppins, Yoda, Q from James Bond, Merlin and sleeping beauties good and bad fairies have in common?
They are all Fairy Godmothers.
Archetype, mentor, magical wish granting factory, a person of frustration and joy.
Are they real?
Yes.
Do I have one? Yes, probably several as they come in different forms, but best of all you can be one too.
The dictionary defines a fairy godmother as: “A generous benefactor…..a female character in some fairy stories who has magical powers and can bring unexpected good fortune to the hero and heroine.”
Basically what I decided from my research and the whispers of the faeries is that every story has at least one character that can be classified as the fairy godmother/godfather. They are the character often seen shining light, dropping clues, cleaning up messes, imparting knowledge, inspiring, doing nice things randomly. Or in the shadow side doing things wrong to lead the character right or leading through a mentor-ship that turns out to be dark or sinister in nature, which leads the character to a choice.
Here are some of the ways a fairy godmother-godfather might pop up in your world.
Sometimes your fairy godmother is invisible. Leaving the meter fed, dropping clues for you to find on your walk. Basically this fairy godmother is never really known by you, she just leaves things in your path and hopes you are awake enough to find them. Random acts of kindness, sidewalk chalk artist, amazing graffiti artist are all examples of invisible fairies leaving things in your path.
Then there is the kind of fairy godmother whom most of us desire most to meet. She is the one who swoops in and saves us in a pinch, she provides the pumpkin coach and the ball gown, she bestows gifts to you upon you at your birth as in sleeping beauty or Ella enchanted (these often turn out to be strange gifts that we don't understand until their true purpose is reveleed later in the story)Fairy godfathers like to give gifts like King Arthur's sword Excalibur, or all of James Bonds toys Q makes. The point is although we might know the person or persons who swoop in to grant us a moment gifts or experiences their gift is temporary and we must not get too hung up on it. For although the event shifted us forever the power was temporary and we must figure out how to live in our current life with that new information/gift. That is the true gift of the gift-elevating us to the next plain. However we must integrate their gift into real life, in order to fully understand and use it, or as in the case of the ball gown and pumpkin coach at midnight we must be prepared to give up the life we glimpsed for those hours in order for it to find us as our true selves.
The third type of fairy godmother is the mentor or teacher. The person who drops hints of insight, who teaches you a skill, who provides a road map and acts as companion. This aspect of fairy godmother is often overlooked. Mary Poppins, Mr Magorium, Willy Wonka, Gandalf, your favorite teacher. These people come into our lives to teach us something specific-to help us claim some internals power and to get us to the next level of our lives/consciousness. We don't recognize their gifts usually until much later and then look back with wonder and awe at how far we came in such a short time. These are the overlooked fairy godmothers that we all love and cherish, we just don't often look at the fact that the lessons they are teaching us go far beyond discipline and facts
.All of us has within us the power to step into any of those roles at any time. Walking by a meter we can drop in a quarter, we can slip a tiny post-it note in with our bill for the waitress, we can gift each other objects or knowledge that has helped us, we can throw a ball or a mad hatter tea party, or donate to a dream.
We are all capable of unselfish acts designed to help another person thrive, expecting nothing in return. But what might be even more important is we are all deserving of another giving us those gifts to help us shine a little brighter.