Native American Shamanism

Native American Shamanism


Shamanism is a system for psychic, emotional, and spiritual healing and for exploration, discovery, and knowledge gathering about non-material worlds and states of mind. Anthropologists have identified shamanistic practices in tribal cultures, ancient and modern, throughout the world. Shamanism is a "technique of ecstasy" (Mircea Eliade) in which the spirit of the shaman leaves the body and travels to communicate with spirit helpers and other beings for the purpose of obtaining knowledge, power, or healing. However, the shaman usually retains control over his or her body. In many cultures, a shaman is chosen or called, sometimes by healing him- or herself of a serious illness.

Shamanic journeying is an altered state of consciousness wherein you enter a realm called "non-ordinary reality." By journeying, you can gather knowledge and perform healing in ways that are not accessible in ordinary waking reality.

Shamanic healing is a process whereby a person journeys on behalf of another, and brings back information or instructions that can be used to provide psychic/emotional/spiritual healing to another person.

How does shamanism work?

Some people think that in shamanic journeying, the spirit leaves the body, and in shamanic healing, a person is being healed by spirit helpers. Others think that shamanic journeying allows access to one's own intuition, which may otherwise be drowned out by the prattle of everyday thinking, or by anxiety; and that shamanic healing is a way of engaging a person's subconscious desires for healing. I think that as long as it works (which it does, for many people), it doesn't much matter which way you explain it. Use the way that's most comfortable for you.

The shamanic view of health.

In the system of shamanism that I work with, there are four aspects to psychic/emotional/spiritual health. If there is a problem with any of these aspects fails, shamanic techniques can be used to help restore strength. Note that shamanic healing may not cure physical or psychologicalillness, but it may help one gain psychic energy that will allow one better to handle illness. Shamanic healing therefore is best used in conjunction with other treatments, not as a substitute for them.
1. Connection with a power animal

A power animal protects you physically and provides you with emotional support, wisdom, and vital energy. Some people think a power animal is a spirit being that stays with you because it cares for you and enjoys being able to experience life in a physical body. Others think a power animal is a symbol for one's subconscious wisdom. almost everybody has a power animal; some have several. (Perhaps you had an "invisible animal friend" as a child or have always been fascinated with a particular kind of animal. This animal may be your power animal.) A person may, in the course of life, lose contact with the power animal, thereby losing the animal's protection, wisdom, and energy. If you lose contact with your power animal, you may feel disspirited, you may become sick easily, or you may be accident-prone. The shamanic healing technique of power animal retrieval can restore a person's connection to a power animal. A person can also journey to find his or her own power animal. To maintain a connection with your power animal, take the time to learn about your animal, learn to feel its presence, communicate with it, and honor it by doing things that it enjoys.
2. Retaining one's life essence

Life essence is the energy that keeps you going, keeps you interested in life, in learning, and in challenge. Life essence keeps you healthy and contented and allows you to trust yourself. However, in traumatic situations, whether they be ongoing (such as child abuse) or singular (such as an auto accident), a part of one's life essence can leave. This is normal: it helps one avoid the full emotional effect of the trauma. Usually life essence returns once the danger and shock of the trauma are past. But sometimes a person can't reconnect with zir life essence after such an event: part of the life essence is "lost." A person who has lost part of zir life essence might feel lacking in energy, depressed, ill, untrusting. The person might feel an "energy leak," might become extremely involved in spiritual matters to the detriment of ordinary life, might become obsessed with the trauma, might feel something is missing.

A shamanic healer can find and retrieve one's life essence. This healing technique is called soul retrieval. A person who reconnects with lost life essence often finds that life changes afterward.
3. Free flow of emotional and physical energy

Health requires a free flow of energy that one can use to accomplish one's desires in the world. But one's energy can become blocked in various ways.

People who have lost parts of their life essence, who have been ill, who have lost connection with a power animal, or who are regularly exposed to emotionally stressful situations are vulnerable to intrusions or "psychic infections" that block a person's connection with self or drain a person's energy. An intrusion can be thought of either as a foreign energy being that takes up residence in a person's psychic body (a psychic infection), or as a psychic structure (an emotional wall or barrier) that a person built to keep zirself safe from harm, but that now is blocking some of his/her energy expression. A person with an intrusion might feel drained or ill, might have aches and pains, might have nightmares or other fears. A shamanic healer can find and remove intrusions and barriers in a healing ritual called extraction.
4. A sense of purpose

A sense of purpose is necessary to happiness. The person who loves and cares about the world and fellow beings, who wants to make some small part of the universe a better place, has a sense of purpose. A person can find a sense of purpose in life by seeking knowledge and direction through shamanic journeys, divinations, and rituals. One can do this alone, or with a group of people engaged in similar quests. A shamanic healer or counselor can't find another person's purpose, but can help one seek and interpret information.
Native American Cont.



How do I do shamanism?

There are two keys to doing shamanism: Achieving the altered state of consciousness that allows you access to non-ordinary reality. Maintaining a purpose or intention for your journey. Achieving an altered state of consciousness The state of consciousness that allows you to access non-ordinary reality is one in which the waking mind is distracted or tuned out. There are many ways to achieve this: repetitious sound or movement, hypnosis, heat, sensory deprivcation, psychotropic drugs, maintaining a specific posture, lucid dreaming. The method I use most frequently is repetitious sound in the form of a steady drumbeat.

Maintaining an intention Shamanism is really a system of healing or obtaining knowledge, and it seems to work best when used for that purpose. Journeying tends to work best if it's undertaken on behalf of another person. In some cases, however, one can journey on one's own behalf, especially if one has a specific intention in mind. Journeying just for the purpose of "poking around in non-ordinary reality" doesn't seem to work as well for most people. The best way I have found to maintain an intention is to write down or otherwise keep in mind a specific question or purpose as you begin your journey.

How to ask a question in a journey

For many people it's important to word the question precisely. This helps maintain your intention. Use positive language. Keep the question simple. Ask only one question at a time. Some people use a question in the form of an image. Although everyone's journeys are different, in general I have found that a question of the form "what can I do to achieve this goal?" will receive the most specific and useful answer. Asking a question of the form "why does this situation exist?" may provide interesting information, but may not help you resolve a problem. If you don't know what question to ask, you might try journeying with the question "What question should I ask?" or "Show me something I need to know right now."

What are these healing techniques, exactly?

There are many ways to do shamanic healing techniques, so I will provide only the most basic descriptions. I recommend you do your own research and exploration by reading, taking classes, talking to other people who practice shamanism, and journeying to find out more about these techniques.
Power animal retrieval

The shaman journeys with the intention of finding a power animal for the client. The shaman must make sure that what he or she finds is really the client's power animal -- don't go bringing back just any animal! The shaman brings the animal back to ordinary reality and gives it to the client, perhaps by blowing it into the client's body. It is then the client's responsibility to journey to contact the animal and find out how best to work with the animal.
Soul retrieval

The shaman makes sure that the client has a support system in place, because strong emotional reactions can accompany or follow soul retrieval. Often the client is asked to have a friend or two present. The shaman makes sure the client is ready for the soul retrieval and is willing to have his or her life change. Similar to the power animal retrieval, the shaman journeys with the intention of finding the client's lost life essence. The shaman must make sure that the soul parts found are willing to come back to ordinary reality. Sometimes this requires discussion, negotiation, or healing. As with power animal retrieval, the shaman returns with the life essence and gives them to the client. A welcoming ceremony is performed. It is then the client's responsibility to learn how best to work with the retrieved life essence.
Extraction

Often a shaman will work with a support system of several other shamans or drummers when performing an extraction. Some believe that the extracted energies can enter the shaman's body if the shaman is not well protected, and that noise and chanting will drive the energies away. The shaman journeys or passes his/her hands over the client's body to detect intrusions. The intrusions may appear to the shaman as foreign objects or unpleasant creatures, or may be hot or cold spots in the client's body. The shaman, with his/her spirit helpers, removes the intrusions. Often the intrusions are taken (in ordinary or non-ordinary reality) to a nearby body of water to neutralize them. The shaman may then fill the cleansed body with healing energies.

http://www.druidry.org/library/members-articles/shamanism-celtic-world

Elves and Pixies

Elves and  Pixies Personalities

It is with great love and affection I write this next section because over the years the more I have come to know and understand the different groups of fairies, the more I have been able to distinct each group’s different personalities. They do have universal traits, where everything they do evolves around love, magic and healing; they have a profound knowledge of this planet and of everything living on Mother Earth, which they all guard and protect. And they are always willing to share this knowledge with us.

Elves

The two groups of Elves that are around me are the Elves of Light and the Pixies (and a group that I call ‘the Hidden Elves’ but I will not further go into this group because they prefer to be just that, hidden from humans). The Elves of Light and Pixies are experts in earth medicine as well as masters of energy healing. Although this healing energy is usually directed to nature, they do have the ability to heal human ailments.

Even though they are of two different societies they never go anywhere without one another. When my husband and I travel up north every fall, the elves always come with us. They love adventures, not only with us but also to meet other fairy societies at different locations. Even when we go to the grocery store or craft stores, they join us (perhaps to check out what they can steal?).

The high-light of adventures is when my husband and I go to Canada to see my mentor. She has lots of fairies around her also, and when the two groups of fairies get together they always arrange big parties. They want us to stay up all night with them and they always tug my mattress to wake me up to come join them. Another high-light is when we drum for them. They get energy from the drums and it is almost like they become one with the energy from the drum. The little ones love singing, dancing and music so it is natural they would enjoy the drumming.

They also love to blame one another for any mischief they have been up to, but it is always with playfulness and affection when they point fingers. I can hear them giggle while pointing fingers at each other.

One of the other things they like to do is fairy fires (I have not quite figured out yet which fairy group is responsible for this). A fairy fire is when they turn the colors of the fire that we have going into pure magic: The flames are no longer orange-yellow; instead the flames turn into an amazing variety of colors such as blue, green, pink and purple. They also rearrange items around our house; they make the house phone ring three times and then hang up and then ring again three times, hang up, and then a last three-time ring. This is just some of their caring traits and how it is expressed.

The elves adore when we ask them questions about their dimension and whether the stories that we have read in books are true or not. And they love when I read out loud from books about fairies, like a story time, especially when we are at the sacred area and having a fire going.

The flower-, tree- and garden fairies fit in here too. They are elves as well, and I cannot tell you how much they mean to me and how much they have taught me about gardening and herbal medicine. Granted, every fairy group is very knowledgeable about earth medicine but the garden fairies are the true experts (alongside with Trolls and Gnomes). I think it is self-explanatory what function the flower fairies and tree fairies have. The garden fairies function is to oversee the work of the flower- and tree fairies.

They all work hard from spring up until they are sure that everything growing are sleeping in the winter, then they return to their dimension only to come back when there is a freak warm-up in the winter to convince the plants to go back to sleep. It sure is a tough job they have but they love what they do.

Make no mistake about it. These fairies can be very mischievous as well. I have this aversion to yellow flowers and they know it. So how do they handle that? They have made sure that there are yellow flowers growing in my different gardens – and I did not plant any of these myself. (I have to admit that where they plant these yellow flowers often look very good and create nice contrasts to the blue, red, white and purple flowers that I prefer to grow.) Each year when this happens, I take this with a big laugh and I understand their message: Love and appreciate everything around you.

Another example of the magic they possess is the Hibiscus we have in our back yard that is on its 5th year and through their magic grows to about 6 1/2 -7 feet tall by July every year. Our dog even managed to pull it out of the ground last winter with roots and all, and after lying on the frozen ground for who knows how long, we replanted it and in the spring it came back healthy and alive. (But I do not think this is because of my green thumbs.)

When a plant dies it is the flower-, tree- and garden elves that take care of the spirit of the plant. They are the Nature’s Angels. This is very humbling to see on a grand scale when a tornado has done a touch down and uprooted trees. Yes, trees have spirits too and it is the tree fairies job to make sure to find a new home for the tree spirit once a tree has died.

We have brownies around us too. They are very shy and soft-spoken. They are wonderful little elves and look after me and help me a lot from spring through fall when I work outdoors in my gardens. Bees and wasps are close allies to the brownies: They make sure I go inside when it is too hot and humid to work outside by telling the honey bees to swarm around me. The bees circles a few times around me and then go away, and if I still stay out they will appear again and do the same procedure until I finally listen to them. (This happens so often but I have never been stung.) They also give me a hand in the shed where I dry my herbs.

I have a very special relationship to bees and wasps, and I take good care of them by having little bowls of sugar-water and other sweet foods at strategic places. The wasps love meat, and I treat them once in a while with pieces of sandwich ham. In my greenhouse there are countless wasp nests and I can go in there and do my work without the wasps paying much attention of me. As with the honey bees, I have never been stung. During the hottest days in the summer I shower the inside of the greenhouse, which the wasps love and come flying in and out of the water showers, like kids playing by the fire hydrant.

My husband cannot stand the bees and wasps because they always seem to target him. But I know that this is not a malice behavior on their part because they provide him with medicine that he needs when they sting: My husband suffers a great deal from arthritis, and when they sting they inject anti-inflammatory medicine which consequently relieves joint pain. Granted I have heard that it is painful to be stung, but my husband simply cannot come to terms with that something good can come from enduring a little pain such as a little bee sting. Come to think of it, part of the problem with his aversion towards the wasps might be the fact that he gets stung 10 to 15 times a year. I remember one time they even chased him into the pool. I keep telling him that he must really need their medicine and that he should thank them. (I can not help but find it humorous when he walks in from the yard bitching about how my damn bees got him again.)

I know people find it hard to believe that one can actually communicate with bees and wasps, but my many experiences have convinced me (in addition I believe that everything has a spirit and thus we can commune with every spirit). I remember a couple of summers ago when my husband came into the house complaining about a very large wasps nest just next to our front door. He grabbed a can of wasp spray and told me that he did not mind if my ‘friends’ lived where he could stay away from them, but when they stopped him from coming into our house then it has gone too far. I had to agree with him but I asked him to give me one day to see if I could solve this problem my way. So I went out and talked to the wasps and told them that if they did not leave by the next day, we had no choice but to kill them. So what happens? The next day my husband was armed to the teeth with his wasp spray and there was not a wasp to be found in the nest. I actually think he might have been a little disappointed at his chance to get back at them for all the stings he gets every summer.

Thunder Spirit Garden

Posted by Cynthia

I have had personal experience with the elves of light and the sparkle pixies I have known them for a very long time, since childhood. Communications is quite clear as they communicate through feelings and emotions. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have and I will tell you the best I can from personal experience, with our tiny beings from the land within

Celtic Faerie Tradition

Celtic Faerie Tradition

Perhaps more than anywhere on Earth, faeries have influenced tradition, spirituality, art, literature, and everyday life in the lands now considered part of the Celtic world, particularly in Ireland. Irish creation myths are populated with faeries called the Tuatha de Danaan (tribe of the goddess Danu), and faeries remain a vital part of daily life in many parts of Ireland even today, though the forces of modernization are rapidly erasing their traces. "Faerie Forts" are still respected by Irish farmers who do not dare disturb these natural habitations of the fae on their lands. And of course we have all heard of Leprechauns!

The faeries of Avalon are woven into Arthurian legends, including the mysterious Lady of the Lake, sometimes equated with Nimue, Morgan le Fay and, according to some sources, the Lady Guenevere. Scottish and Welsh myths, such as the Mabinogion, also feature frequent faerie interactions. British and Scandinavia, faeries are often called elves, as found in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In Ireland faeries are called the Sidhe, and they are still said to live under mounds in the earth such as Newgrange. World renowned writers and poets such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Charlotte Guest,William Sharp, Ella Young, and many others often wrote about faeries, and these tales were not intended for children!

Ireland seems to have more than its fair share of faeries, but the truth may be that the Irish were simply more open and intuitive when interacting with the fae. Many Irish people today are believed to carry the faery bloodlines of their Tuatha de Danaan ancestors.

No matter where you happen to live, there are faeries and nature spirits working to help the trees grow, to push up the flowers in the spring, to break down the rotting leaves into compost (faery gold), to orchestrate weather patterns and the flowing of streams and rivers, to enliven the animals, and to heal the oceans. They are called by many different names in different parts of the world, but they are all part of what we call the faery realm which can be experienced through our inner journeys to the Underworlds.

Faeries are powerful beings who care more for the welfare of nature than for that of individual humans. Yet we can form working friendships with them for our mutual benefit. This sort of co-creation may be the saving grace of humanity. Humanity is now very much out of balance in the Western World, and our technologies threaten the harmony of life on Earth. It is time that people the world over take a lesson from the ancient Irish.



* Leave offerings for the fae - food, drink, pretty things
* Respect natural habitats and leave some places wild
* Honor the living beings active in all aspects of nature
* Ask plants for permission before picking them
* Respect the welfare of animals
* Learn to listen to the voices of nature
* Share live acoustic music and dance
* Believe in magic!

If you are specifically interested in Celtic Faery Magic, 

http://fairysource.com/celticfaerie.html

Morgan Le Fay, the legend

Morgan Le Fay, the legend

Read more about Morgan Le Fay in Arthurian Legend

Morgan Le Fay: popularly known as Arthurian sorceress, benevolent fairy, priestess, dark magician, enchantress, witch, sea goddess, shape-changer, healer, and the sole personage of Avalon the Isle of Apples, not to mention daughter of Ygerna (Igraine) and Gorlois, half-sister to King Arthur, mother of Mordred, lady-in-waiting to Guinevere, wife of Uriens, lover of Sir Accolon, fancier of Sir Lancelot, and 'as fair a lady as any might be'.

Morgan Le Fay was first introduced into Arthurian legend by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Vita Merlini (c. 1150) but her true origin, as with many Arthurian characters, leads back into Celtic mythology and inevitably develops with each new rendition of the tale. Morgan Le Fay's character is interesting enough, but so is her name.
The name 'Morgan Le Fay'

In Celtic terms, Morgan (or Morcant) is a man's name. The feminine version is more correctly Morgain (or Morgue or Morgne). Also Morrigan equates with Morrigu of Irish mythology. According to Celtic tradition the Morrigan (a Triple Goddess of Celtic myth, thought of as the Goddess of Death) flew over battles, shrieking like ravens and claiming dead soldiers' heads as trophies. Or the answer may lie in Uriens - in early Welsh literature Modron (a version of Matrona) was the daughter of Avallach, wife of Urien, and mother of Owein. The Welsh and Arthurian story lines were later merged, forming a link between Modron and King Arthur. Further, there was a sixth-century Cumbrian ruler called Urien Rheged who presided over a loose coalition of kings (according to some accounts there was also an Arthur, son of King Aedan of dal Riada). Urien had a loose ally: Morcant Bulc - a man - who eventually plotted to assassinate him, which could have been Sir Thomas Malory's inspiration for the plot in Le Morte d'Arthur where Morgan Le Fay attempts to kill Arthur and Uriens.

'Le Fay' is an ancient word for a fairy and to this day, apparently, the Breton name for a water-nymph is a 'Morgan'.

The possible roots of the Arthurian character Morgan Le Fay therefore run deep into early British mythology and can be traced across several hundred years up to her final act as one of the three women who transported the fatally wounded King Arthur in a barge to the Isle of Avalon to be healed (outcome unrecorded). A speculative summary, based on Welsh and other Arthurian legend, suggest an identification with Modron and also with the river goddess Matrona, possibly derived from the Irish goddess Morrigan. Given the superstitious Christian attitude to supernatural women in the medieval era, the more she is humanised, the more the name Morgan Le Fay descends into an easy literary metaphor for devious, sometimes evil mischief.

Nonetheless the much-maligned Morgan Le Fay never becomes purely evil. Her attractive qualities remain - a healer, she is associated with art and culture, she is sexy, and in the end is worthy of redemption.
Morgan Le Fay pre-Malory

In Monmouth's Vita Merlini, Morgan was the chief among her nine sisters: Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Cliton, Tyronoe, and Thitis, and Morgause. She could change shape at will (and to be young or old, beautiful or ugly, or an animal or other object) and to fly with wings, hence - 'Le Fay', or Faerie. There was no suggestion of a blood relationship between Arthur and Morgan - she was simply his healer. In Chrétien de Troyes' Erec and Enide, Morgan le Fay was a friend of Guingamar, Lord of Avalon and one of the guests at the wedding of Erec and Enide. Chrétien descibes her as a giver of healing ointments but she is more typically portrayed as a wicked enchantress who learned her crafts in a Christian nunnery, powers which were subsequently extended with the help of Merlin. She was referred to later as Arthur's sister (and again as a healer), and in Le Chevalier au Lion her ointments cured Yvain's madness. Neither Geoffrey of Monmouth nor Chrétien de Troyes described her as the wife of Uriens.

In the The Vulgate Cycle (1215 to 1235) Morgan Le Fay is however married to Uriens. She is also Queen Guinevere's lady in waiting and fell in love with the King's nephew, Giomar, but Guinevere put an end to the romance. Morgan responded by betraying the Queen's affair with Lancelot to King Arthur. She had herself become infatuated with Sir Lancelot though he consistently refused her attentions, despite being imprisoned by her several times. The suspect nature of Morgan Le Fay's character appears to have been fuelled by the Cistercian monks who wrote the stories of the Vulgate Cycle, prejudiced by the earlier concept of the Morrighan. They undoubtedly considered the idea of a non-religious female healer to be the mark of blasphemy.

In another well-known work - the anonymous late 14th Century poem 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' (the Green Knight was, like Morgan, a 'shape-shifter') - she was the instigator of the plot which began the story. Here, the Virgin Mary (as the female archetype representing spiritual love, obedience, chastity, and life) is contrasted with Morgan Le Fay's representation of courtly love, disobedience, lust and death.
Morgan Le Fay in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur

In Le Morte d'Arthur Morgan Le Fay is fully established as wife of Uriens, sister of Arthur, but is not, truly, a major character. Her best-known part in the tale is as follows:

When Uther Pendragon married Igraine (Book 1), Morgan was the youngest of her three daughters from her previous marriage to Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, who had been slain by Uther's army just before he raped her at Tintagel Castle (and begat Arthur). Morgan was then sent to a nunnery. According to Malory's timescale, at the time of Uther's death two years later, Morgan would have been between thirteen and sixteen and already married to Uriens. At any rate, when the young King Arthur waged war against the five kings Morgan had a grown son, Uwaine, who was close to knighthood.

King Arthur and Morgan Le Fay first came face to face when he sent for Igraine to verify his parentage. At that stage there are no indications of any feelings either way between Morgan and Arthur, but at the burial of Lot and the eleven kings (Book 2) Merlin told Arthur, "Sir, take care with the scabbard of Excalibur, for ye shall lose no blood while ye have it upon you, no matter how many wounds ye have." Arthur passed the scabbard to Morgan Le Fay for safekeeping, but she loved another knight more than she did her husband (or King Arthur) so she secretly had made a replica of the scabbard and gave the real one to her lover, Sir Accolon of Gaul to protect him.

Following the war with the five kings, Arthur, Uriens, and Accolon went on a hunt (Book 4). Their horses exhausted, they found themselves near nightfall by a great lake where they saw a silk-clad ship approach. Venturing on board, they were greeted by twelve damosels, banqueted, then shown separate chambers. Once in a drug-induced sleep, each was magically transported away, Uriens back to Camelot (where he awoke beside Morgan), Arthur to the prison of the evil Sir Damas (minus his sword and scabbard), and Accolon to a well close to manor of the good Ontzlake, younger brother of Sir Damas.
Morgan Le Fay's wicked plan

Despite being brothers, Sir Damas and Sir Ontzlake had become mortal enemies, the younger offering to resolve their differences in combat but the latter always refusing, preferring to elect another knight to fight for him. But Damas was too hated ever to find such a knight. At this point a damsel came to Arthur with an offer from Damas that he and his fellow-prisoners would be freed if he would take on the fight, to which Arthur agreed. The damsel was of course 'false', having been sent by Morgan Le Fay.

At the same time a dwarf came to Sir Accolon by the well, sent by Morgan to remind him of his earlier (secret) promise to fight an unspecified knight whenever she chose the moment. Accolon would bring her the knight's head and Morgan Le Fay would become Queen. And now was the moment. The dwarf gave him Excalibur and the scabbard, sent by Morgan, and Accolon made himself ready for combat, on behalf, as it turned out, of Sir Ontzlake against his brother. As Arthur in turn readied himself another damsel came, once again sent by Morgan, and gave him a sword like Excalibur and its scabbard, from which he took reassurance not knowing they were nothing more than poor replicas. The whole monstrous ruse, evidently, had long been planned by Morgan Le Fay so that she could replace Guinevere as Queen.
Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, saves King Arthur

The duel, watched by Nimue, the Lady of the lake, was prolonged and bloody and Sir Accolon, boldened by Excalibur, almost won after Arthur's useless sword snapped off at the handle. Nimue took pity and with the help of her enchantment Arthur was able to deal such a blow to his opponent that the real Excalibur fell to the ground and he leaped to it and took it in his hand. About to kill Accolon, he asked his name and Accolon confessed all, and thus was spared but died from his wounds soon after, prompting Arthur to despatch his remains to his half-sister at Camelot as a warning.

In the meantime Morgan would have slain her husband, confident of Accolon's success with Excalibur and the scabbard, but Uriens was saved at the last moment by the intervention of Uwaine, his son, by whom Morgan would herself have been slain had she not agreed to leave Camelot forever. She rode to the nunnery where Arthur was recovering from his wounds and tried to steal back the real Excalibur and scabbard while he slept, but was only able to take the scabbard because the sword was in his hand. When Arthur awoke he set off with Sir Ontzlake in pursuit of Morgan, but she cast the scabbard into a deep lake. She then used her shape-changing powers to disguise herself and her entourage as standing stones to escape further pursuit.

Morgan Le Fay then retreated to her domains (still Book 4). En route she came across a knight leading another bound knight, Manassen (a cousin of Accolon) to be drowned in a fountain for adultery with his wife. For her lost love, and because Manassen swore his innocence, she released him and let him bind and drown his accuser.

At this point Morgan fades somewhat from the mainstream of the story. She went to occupy her lands in Gore, and then to her Castle of Tauroc. To thwart any reprisal by Arthur she sent a damosel to give him a rich mantle embellished with precious stones (in atonement for her sins). But the mantle was laced with poison - Nimue intervened to save Arthur, who made its bearer put it on, who fell down and burnt to coals. Uwaine was later suspected by Arthur of being instrumental in Morgan's earlier escape from Camelot, and was banished from the court.

The Royal court appears to have thought Morgan Le Fay dead, until King Arthur came across her residence while out hunting one day, and the two were reconciled. In later life she moved to the Isle of Avalon, where she and her allies, the Queen of Northgalis, and the Queen of the Wastelands (and also many damosels, including Nimue) took her dying half-brother to be "healed" after his last battle.

http://www.arthurian-legend.com/more-about/more-about-arthur-8.php

The Origine of Elves

Some light reading my dear friends and followers
A short history on the origin of elves. I would love to hear your thoughts, Thank you

The origin of elves

Here's how these little people have evolved.

Ancient Norse mythology refers to the álfar, also known as huldufólk, or "hidden folk." However, it's risky to translate álfar directly to the English word "elf," said Terry Gunnell, a folklorist at the University of Iceland. Elves are thought of as little people, perhaps wearing stocking caps and cavorting with fairies, but the original conception of álfar was far less whimsical. Some ancient poems place them side by side with the Norse gods, perhaps as another word for the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility, or perhaps as their own godly race. It's likely, Gunnell said, that elves' inventors had no single, unified theory on elvish identity; rather, there were a variety of related folk beliefs regarding this unseen race.

"They look like us, they live like us — at least in the older materials — and probably, nowadays, if they're living anywhere, they're living between floors in flats [apartments]," Gunnell told LiveScience, referring to the notion of an invisible, parallel world inhabited by álfar— the friendly neighbors who live between the seventh and eighth floors.

Iceland was settled in the 800s by Scandinavians and Celts, brought from Ireland as slaves. Both Scandinavian and Celtic cultures had myths of fairies, elves and nature spirits, which began to meld into the concept of álfar as representatives of the landscape, Gunnell said. Iceland's eerie, volcanic setting probably played into these myths, Gunnell said, especially in the dark of winter, when the Northern Lights are the only thing illuminating the long nights.

"The land is alive, and really, the hidden people are a personification of a very living landscape that you have to show respect for, that you can't really defeat," Gunnell said. "You have to work with it." [Top 10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth]

Elves evolve

Scandinavians and Celts weren't the only Europeans who used unseen, supernatural species as symbols of the wilds surrounding them. Farther south, Germans believed in dwarves and little sprites called kobolds. Scots had house spirits called brownies.

Elves became part of this mythological mix throughout the first millennium A.D., according to Alaric Hall, a lecturer at the University of Leeds who penned an entry on elves for the upcoming "Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters" (Ashgate, 2014). The word "elf" derives from the ancestor language of German, English and today's Scandinavian languages, Hall wrote, and the first written references to them come from church texts starting around A.D. 500.

Medieval Europeans saw elves as dark and dangerous, and linked them to demons. In the Old English "Beowulf," which dates to sometime between A.D. 700 and 1000, elves get a mention as an evil race that descended from Cain, the biblical son of Adam and Eve who murdered his brother:

"Of Cain awoke all that woful breed,

Etins and elves and evil-spirits,

as well as the giants that warred with God."

These religious references reveal the clash and melding of folk beliefs and new religion as Christianity crept into Europe. In different tales at different times, elves alternated between good and bad, Hall wrote. They could deliver babies safely through a difficult labor — or steal away a human baby and replace it with a sickly and deformed changeling. Elves, known as alp in German, could cause nightmares (Alpdrück), perhaps similar to other mythology surrounding the scary experience of sleep paralysis. Nevertheless, elves were probably still considered human-size, rather than diminutive, Hall wrote.

By William Shakespeare's day, elves lost many of their malevolent undertones. Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," written in the 1590s, included an elflike figure, Puck, who acted as a jokester or trickster.

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From myth to Christmas

"Note!" nobody really knows what a Christmas elf looks like until I got this snapshot of them while walking in the woods one day. They had lost their way  and were looking to find their way back to Santa's house  

Much as the modern Thanksgiving menu dates back to the 1800s, so too do modern U.S. Christmas traditions. Elves became linked withSanta Claus in the 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known today as "The Night Before Christmas." That poem refers to Santa Claus as a "jolly old elf."

With the elf-Christmas link established, other writers began to get creative with the idea. In 1857, Harper's Weekly published a poem called "The Wonders of Santa Claus," which tells how Santa "keeps a great many elves at work/ All working with all their might/ To make a million of pretty things/ Cakes, sugar-plums, and toys/ To fill the stockings, hung up you know/ By the little girls and boys."

The idea caught on. In 1922, famed artist Norman Rockwell released a painting of an exhausted Santa surrounded by tiny, industrious elves, trying to get a dollhouse finished in time for Christmas. A 1932 short movie by Disney called "Santa's Workshop" showed bearded, blue-clad elves singing, prepping Santa's sleigh, brushing reindeer teeth and helping Santa with the naughty/nice list. "Molly seems to be OK; she eats her spinach every day," an elf rhymes, before nixing another child's ambitious list because he doesn't wash behind his ears.

By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | December 18, 2013 10:22am ET