The Gods and Fairy Tales

Id say if you dream something and think its significant that its worth exploring. Afterall the only difference between an augury and the normal day to day stuff is we notice something and think its significant.

That said tho, I dont think folklore and myth are linked any more meaningfully than sharing the same literary motifs when they are from the same culture. Its what youd expect to see.

For example the real link between Celtic Deities and Fairies in Ireland is because they are a literary evolution of a concept. Take the wise woman and the cailleach for example. They are linked by both being shapers of the ritual landscape and being omni present in the landscape. They are immanent in the landscape like a tutelary deity is. The wise woman isnt the cailleach and neither are tutelary deities, the days when they had a social function in tribal ireland is long gone but that motif common to them all means they are a literary evolution of an idea.

It is true that the book of invasions says men defeated gods and they went underground but thats a medieval piece of propaganda that says there were gods but then jesus died and that magical act banished them. It reflects the world where christianity was expanding into areas where polytheism was still common. The key to spotting things like that is concepts are not stated literally and transmitted directly like that in myth and folklore. Concepts are imparted in stories that take place within a framework of traditional belief, where colours, plants and animals have a consistant cultural meaning and it all reflects a ritual reality as opposed to a literal day to day reality. The way people see the world, the magic in it and how people explain the forces of nature, social pressures and stresses, and give meaning to the triumphs and tragedies of life.

@ Aclockworkireland - you make some a good point about the way our view of deities is coloured by social pressures and frameworks of belief. Our own included. Similarly to the Romantic period I feel the reason more people are beginning to reconnect with nature and the gods is because our materialist culture fails to provide us with the sense of connection and meaning we find when exploring a spritual path.

"So, that in turn got me wondering: are fairy tale figures reflections or remnants of the Gods? Or do they have an existence of their own? Or something else?"

Though I currently give devotions to the Canaanite Iluma, folklore in my ethnic heritage has been one of the few keys to understanding the pre-Christian spirituality of my parents' culture. For me, an American-born Filipino from immigrant Filipino parents, the pre-Christian gods and goddesses seem to survive by their fingernails through fairy tales. Any questions I had about cultural history was "We were heathens, then the Spanish/Christianity/America saved us". The gods were demoted from gods to diwatas, or more jarringly referred to as fairies and elves in their stories. (When they started writing some of the old stories down, there was this blend of the old and the new, For instance, the supreme god in the Tagalog language is Bathala, but also known as Diyos, meanwhile Jesus is not mentioned at all.)

Still, I am glad even the folktales survived in the Philippines. Growing up in Catholicism in America, seeing the symbols of Christianity are overwhelmingly European, it often made me think that my non-European family had no history of its own. However, in the last decade, interest in recovering and preserving the remaining tribal cultures and beliefs is growing. And Philippine television has found great entertainment in mining its mythology for interesting characters and stories, raising awareness of the gods and goddesses to a new generation. Not exactly the best way to revive the gods, but at least they aren't wholesale demonized like before.

How WELL fairy tales preserve the person of the gods is up for question!

Hello again! I saw your post in the Intro thread before this one. It's very nice to meet you. Kumusta ka!(I don't speak Tagalog with any fluency, alas. Though I am trying to teach myself the language, and Ilocano.) And you definitely have a more direct heritage link to the Iluma!

I didn't know 'diwata' came from Sanskrit 'devata', though it seems so obvious now. The diwata I'm most familiar with is Maria Makiling. I'm very hopeful to learn more about the Philippine deities. Even just 10 years ago there were hardly any sources to learn about it (here in the US at least). In that time, I've found only 2-3 links of Filipino-Americans(?) who seem to have built up a devotional cultus(?) to Them. Since you mention the Visayas, is your family from there? I know that mine come from around Manila and Tarlac.

Ahh, would you happen to have links to those stories?? I'd love to read all of them. I've collected story anthologies from the National Bookstore, but I don't know if they're the original stories of the gods or rewritten using the gods as characters.

Again, very happy to meet you!