The Secret Lives of Elves & Faeries

by The Rev. Robert Kirk

Hardcover. 128 pages

$16.95

This book takes readers along on the journeys of the Reverend Robert Kirk, a seventeenth-century vicar of the parish of Aberfoyle, Scotland, into the heart of the faery world. Through his firsthand account, we visit faery hills and faery courts and experience the history, traditions and lives of these magical beings. Kirk wrote a book about his knowledge of these faeries called The Secret Commonwealth of Elves and Faeries, published in 1891.

The present book reimagines Kirk's writings by supposing that he really did visit the faery realms where he met the Faery King and Queen, and is guided on a number of exciting journeys by a faery named Kee. The Secret Lives of Elves and Faeries is an engaging account of a man who was able to step through a magic doorway into the realm of Faery - and even more remarkably - was lost from real life to the land of faery.

Readers who love Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings will delight in this authentic, exciting history of the faery world and the faeries' magical powers. Beautifully illustrated!

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies

by The Rev. Robert Kirk

Hardcover. 95 pages

$16.95

Late in the seventeenth century, Robert Kirk, an Episcopalian minister in the Scottish Highlands, set out to collect his parishioners’ many striking stories about elves, fairies, fauns, doppelgangers, wraiths, and other beings of, in Kirk’s words, “a middle nature betwixt man and angel.” For Kirk these stories constituted strong evidence for the reality of a supernatural world, existing parallel to ours, which, he passionately believed demanded exploration as much as the New World across the seas. Kirk defended these views in The Secret Commonwealth, an essay that was left in manuscript when he died in 1692. It is a rare and fascinating work, an extraordinary amalgam of science, religion, and folklore, suffused with the spirit of active curiosity and bemused wonder that fills Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the works of Sir Thomas Browne. The Secret Commonwealth is not only a remarkable document in the history of ideas but a study
of enchantment that enchants in its own right.

First published in 1815 by Sir Walter Scott, then re-edited in 1893 by Andrew Lang, with a dedication to Robert Louis Stevenson, The Secret Commonwealth has long been difficult to obtain—available, if at all, only in scholarly editions. This new edition modernizes the spelling and punctuation of Kirk’s little book and features a wide-ranging and illuminating introduction by the critic and historian Marina Warner, who brings out the originality of Kirk’s contribution and reflects on the ongoing life of fairies in the modern mind.

The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries

by W.Y. Evans-Wentz
with an introduction by Carl McColman

Trade Paperback. 523 pages

$16.99

A new edition of the classic study of traditional Celtic spirituality--a book that unites ancient Paganism, medieval myths, and traditional fairy beliefs into a powerful celebration of Celtic wisdom.

W.Y. Evans-Wentz was best known as the translator of 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead,' but in the world of Celtic spirituality, he made his mark through THE FAIRY-FAITH IN CELTIC COUNTRIES. This magnificent book collects stories, interviews, and legends from all sic of the regions where Celtic ways have persisted into the modern world: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwell, Brittany, and the Isle of Man, It examines how fairy spirituality survived, even in the face of hostility from modern science and religion. It celebrates how beliefs that only a century ago were dismissed as quaint and superstitious were in fact powerful principles of ancient cultures that remained an essential feature of the Celtic world for generation after generation.

This edition of THE FAIRY-FAITH IN CELTIC COUNTRIES includes an insightful new introduction by metaphysical author Carl McColman, emphasizing how this classic work remains important and vital to practitioners of Celtic and magical spirituality, nearly a century after it was written.