Dark Moon Divination

10/09/2026

Samhain, Fairies, and the Dead.

The period of Samhain is a time when our consciousness seems much more attuned to the Otherworld.
For some, this means the return of the ancestors and the dead, whereas for others, Samhain is a time when the decidedly non-human beings of the Otherworld are more active.
Although scholars tend to argue about this separation, (and which may be the real "reason for the season"), I tend to find the parallels much more interesting, personally.


A good example of this is a local ancient site which is reputedly a place where many people have seen both a fairy-girl, and a ghost.
As the ghost in question is also that of a young girl I am inclined to think that people are reporting the same type of encounter but from different perspectives, depending on their beliefs, and, maybe, expectations.
In Irish folklore this crossover between fairies and the dead has a very long tradition.
In fact, in all of European fairy-lore, as far as I can tell, this is a subject which is very difficult to separate.
The work of anthropologists such as Carlo Ginzburg and academics such as Professor Claude Lecouteux, to name but two, demonstrate that within the minds of those who encounter these supernatural beings it is often a matter of cultural lenses as to whether the account is recorded as folklore, fairy-lore or a ghost story.
Really, as Ginzburg's book, The Night Battles, shows us, it is very often a combination of all three.

The most famous example is that of The Wild Hunt where both fairies and the dead parade through the countryside on certain nights as well as being accompanied by witches who are transported to the parade in their dreams.
In this account from the Irish folklore archives we have an example of a woman who is taken by the fairies after she has died following a transgression.
https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5215809/5214400/5233675

However, a contrasting example is this account in which a woman is taken to the fairy Otherworld in her physical form and returned days later.
https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4758474/4747124

In Ireland, we have countless tales of a person being taken by the good folk both before and after they have died on the mortal plane.
From stories of brides seen after they have been buried, to accounts of maidens who disappear into a fairy fort, it seems that a physical body can be taken to the fairy Otherworld as easily as a persons soul.
At least, that's how it is usually framed.
But what about the beings described as fairies or ghosts?
How can they interact with both human beings and the dead at the same time?

The term fairy is roughly 800 years old in all of its various spellings and associations. For some, this means that using the term fairy to describe an older supernatural-being is inaccurate, but based on what fairies themselves have said about their own concept of, and place within, time, our descriptions of them mean very little in the grand scheme of things.
(Unless they are insulting and disrespectful descriptions, of course! It's a whole other ball game in those circumstances!)

Fairies not only seem to belong to a different flow of time, they also seem to bring this power or effect to wherever they appear and whoever they appear to.
And this may give us an interesting answer to the fairy-girl or ghost I mentioned at the start of this piece.
We often hear of someone losing their way when they visit a place associated with fairies. Whether this is being pixie-led at a stone circle or stepping on a 'stray sod' in a field known to be frequented by themselves, it is as much a stepping out of time as it is a loss of one's sense of direction.
In almost every case of being pixie-led the person who becomes lost not only describes not knowing how to get back but also complete changes in the surrounding landscape itself.
In many cases vast forests appear where there were none a moment earlier and there are even reports of huge mountain ranges being sighted where none could possibly exist.

Irish tales of the Banshee often contain odd details such as the Banshee referring to generations of a family who have not been born yet, as if she is seeing events in the future. Fairies themselves have a habit of foretelling, cursing and prophesy as if they are outside of the everyday bounds of time.
We can even notice this in fairy tales such as the Sleeping Beauty.

The Irish wise-woman Biddy Early was said to be able to tell the future by reading the patterns within a bottle she was given by the fairies.
The words of the fairy in the texts, The Knight of Staufenberg, as well as the Lay of Lanval describe how she can move outside the bounds of time, “Where I wish to be, I am.” and “Where I want to be, there I am too.” she tells us.
There is something powerful and ominous, almost, in the words of this being.

It seems difficult, then, to call these encounters as being that of either fairies or ghosts. If we are merely seeing an image of something outside of our own experience of time then perhaps the fairy is in fact a human being captured in the fairy realm but unable to see us in return as they are existing in another time entirely.
Or, if the fairies are able to capture the dead, and are, perhaps on some occasions, the dead themselves, then how do we distinguish at all?
A further tangent here is the tradition of burying unbaptised babies at sites associated with fairies. This is a complicated and sensitive subject and I have written about it in more detail here: https://www.facebook.com/CircleStoriesDavidHalpin/posts/920713701610640?__tn__=K-R

As those who have delved deeply into this subject will testify to, there are no simple answers here. My own view is that to make our way forward we have to grapple with all of these philosophical concepts.
While folklore is a wonderful resource, it is not going to provide answers unless we also acknowledge that fairy sightings continue today.
The world-view of our ancestors was different to our own and their understanding of the beings we call fairies was shaped by the prevailing cultural paradigms and influences.
By overcoming our prejudices with respect to the term fairy we can examine ancient tales and accounts as well as contemporary examples without having to fit the experiences into one category or another.

The folklorist Andrew Lang tells us that when a person enters a stone circle time becomes meaningless. He writes that when an encounter with the other crowd occurs, "A person gains a gift of vision to see past and future events and the viewless forms of air."
Our ancestors took responsibility for the interactions which occurred at these ancient sites and ethereal connection points.
They guarded the words and rituals for a reason as the transformative power at these places was not to be taken lightly.
Perhaps, by following their example, the ongoing sighting of the fairy-girl/ ghost can be examined from a less restrictive context and open up a path closed off by current attitudes.

(C.) David Halpin.
Art credit: Borderlands by Valun. Acrylic on paper.

08/27/2026

In 2011, archaeologists digging at Hippos-Sussita, a hilltop city overlooking the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, pulled something unexpected out of the earth.

A bronze mask. Heavy, nearly 11 pounds. The face of Pan.

The Greek god of the wild, of flocks and shepherds, of music played on reed pipes at the edge of the forest. Goat beard, curling horns, pointed ears. The cast was precise, the detail extraordinary.

Hippos-Sussita was a Decapolis city, one of ten largely Greek-speaking urban centers that Rome governed on the eastern edge of its empire. By the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, the city had temples, a forum, colonnaded streets. It sat high on a ridge, surrounded by Roman-era architecture that still yields surprises when the soil is turned.

But the mask did not come from inside the city.

It was found outside the walls.

That detail mattered to the excavators. Pan was not a civic deity. He was a god of thresholds, of wild places, of the spaces between the settled and the untamed. His shrines tended to appear at roadsides, near springs, in grottos. A mask of this quality placed outside a city's walls fit a recognizable pattern: a roadside altar, a small shrine, somewhere travelers stopped to make an offering before passing through the gate.

The craftsmanship tells its own story. A mask cast to this weight and finish was not cheap. Someone commissioned it deliberately. Someone wanted Pan to watch that road.

What they believed, or feared, or hoped for, we can only guess.

Archaeologists dated the mask to the 1st or 2nd century CE, a period when Hippos-Sussita was fully integrated into the Roman provincial world while still maintaining the Greek cultural identity that had shaped it since the Hellenistic period. Greek gods and Roman administration coexisted in these cities without much apparent friction.

The mask now stands as one of the most striking bronze finds from the site. It is not a monument or an inscription. It is a face.

The face of a deity that ancient people believed haunted the wild places just beyond the city limits.

They were not wrong to leave something there.

07/29/2026

what a terribly silly thing to do

07/12/2026

06/08/2026

Baba Yaga: Part 1 Ancient Goddess or Witch?

Baba Yaga’s house in the woods has been appearing to me constantly for some time now, so I listened, painted, and got the message. Baba Yaga is often depicted as an evil and terrifying witch, who cooked children, she was the archetype for the witch in Hansel and Gretal. But others say she was a primordial Goddess, an earth Goddess, her reputation was demonised by Christianity. And as for her house…..what is her story about? a house on chicken legs which spins around? She fills the house, her nose touching the ceiling when she lies down? On the surface it all looks rather odd but stay with me.

Baba Yaga is guardian of the boundary between life and death, she often appears when childhood ends and adulthood begins – it is a journey to discover your own power. Her energy stands alongside the Cailleach, The Morrigan, Hekate, and Kali, because they embody the transformative, boundary crossing, feminine power. Baba Yaga gives people what they need, even when it is not what they want.

There are different theories about her house, one being that it was derived from Slavic funerary structures, small wooden housed that were raised above the ground on tree stumps which from a distance, resemble clawed bird legs. This makes sense when you think she was too big for the house, and her nose touched the roof. It was at the edge of the forest, a boundary between the worlds. The house rotates, symbolising the passage between the realms – in order to stop it or enter it, you need to say, “turn your back to the forest, and your front to me”.

The house is a threshold, a place where the old life ends and a new one begins, a place between worlds. It was the house and not Baba Yaga that has been calling to me, and the timing is spot on for the changes in my life at the moment, about to move house for example. So it feels like an initiation, I painted the door ajar, a welcome invitation, not one of fear, but anticipation. Just as I started painting, two blackbirds appeared walking towards the house – they are threshold birds, so they had to be included in the painting 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

There is a lot more to the story of Baba Yaga, so I will probably do more on her if you are interested, but for now…is the house inviting you?

Let me know if you’d like to explore her symbolism further…..thought I’d do a few posts here with a bit more depth….type Yes in the comments if that’s of interest 🛖🛖SCROLL UP TO NEW POSTS FOR PART TWO, THREE , & FOUR🛖⬆️

05/27/2026

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The Morrígan in Her stillness

If we are not sovereign in Her stillness,
In Her silent moments
Then we miss the subtle lessons
Whistling of wind over feathers over bone
The stirring of the swirling from within
An inhale of life force stepping over liminal bounds
Bringing us back to life
As She tiptoed upside down on the branches
Playful in Her latest lessons
Perception skewed is opportunity revealed
Veil yourself in nets woven with blood and charms
In the place where the world ends and begins
Can you sense the shift in the air
It's time to go.

- Joey Morris 2026

Image by Tatiana Fatinova: https://vero.co/tfatinova

04/16/2026

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03/21/2026

Spring Equinox & The Fairy Hunt.

"And beyond them, almost hidden by the moon shadows, were the Lords of the Ever-Living Ones: the antlered helmets of the Wild Hunt, the moon-silvered spear-points of the Host of Sidhe.
The music swelled until I felt my heart would burst.
And then there was silence-profound, absolute silence, and stillness.
And far off, among the trees, there was a golden glow."

From 'King of Morning, Queen of Day' by Ian McDonald.

On the equinox itself, night and day are balanced: “equinox”, from Latin, meaning “equal night.”
The days will now continue to get longer until the sun is at its strongest point on the summer solstice.
The spring equinox has always been linked with rebirth, unsurprisingly, and features in many world myths of light defeating darkness and life overcoming death.
Many spiritual figures have feast days at this time and, going even further back, many ancient monuments have alignments recording this important moment including Cairn T at Loughcrew.

In Irish folklore this was a time when the good people moved from one Otherworld doorway to another. It is considered a dangerous time to wander near their mounds or stone circles and fairy trees.
This was also a prevalent belief in Scottish folklore and is remarked upon by many writers including Andrew Lang in his 1891 introduction to the Rev. Robert Kirk's seminal work, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies.
Lang writes, "They never were, to his mind, plain palpable folk; they are only visible, in their quarterly flittings, to men of the second sight. That gift of vision includes not only power to see distant or future events, but the viewless forms of air. To shun the flittings, men visit church on the first Sunday of the quarter: then they will be hallowed against elf-shots, "these Arrows that fly in the dark."

So, we can see that fairies were a real and palpable danger to human beings and, indeed, livestock on the quarter days. Elf shot had the power to not only maim or kill but also to transport a person to the realm of fairy in spirit.
This particular affliction also turns up in Wentz's mixed-bag anthropological study, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.
I would highly recommend buying a print copy of this book but as the copyright has now passed it is also available legally free here.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/index.htm

Although a person should be cautious on this day, it is also a magical and liminal time and the ancestors and the dead were believed to walk closer to those who needed them most.
When we look to all of our various native and indigenous wisdom-traditions the one lesson they continually tell us is that there is our human time and there is also the time of the Otherworld, wherever and whatever you believe that to be.
Responding a certain way to an event may seem instinctive and even inevitable based on our concept of human time, but when we overcome these conditional reflexes we become part of the Otherworld time, as does our intention.

Although often associated with Samhain, it is surprising that the tradition of the dumb supper is not practiced widely at this time considering how the spiritual world and physical world are believed to converge.
Another ancient festival which takes place at the spring equinox is the Zoroastrian celebration of Nowruz. This feast is more often associated with the start of the Iranian new year in contemporary times.
In Japan, the Buddhist feast of Higan takes place on the spring equinox and is a day to remember ancestors. The name comes from the idea that the river separating the living and dead could be crossed more easily at this time.

As we can see, this has parallels to our own Irish and European beliefs regarding the dead at this time which perhaps demonstrates the authenticity of the observation.
Best wishes to everyone as the days become longer and we enter a time of more light.

(C.) David Halpin.
Image: Omar Rayyan.

03/19/2026

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