The Changeling

Once upon a time
in the heart of the British countryside
there lived a fair maiden
who try as she might could not fit into the world around her.
Wherever she would turn
a great darkness would follow
then one night
she had a strange dream
and was told the answers to all her problems
Lay within the land around her….
She was told the truth was in the soil.

– Arcadia

A girl walks into the woods alone.

Is she running, and what from – or to? Or walking with purpose? What calls her? And what does she find there – how far does she travel – can she ever come back – and does she want to? When we talk about the Changeling, we enter the land of fairy stories, and specifically that image of a solitary girl walking curiously and courageously down a woodland path, into the darkness.

My thinking about the Changeling began with a throwaway joke about “Disney princesses as shamanic death-and-rebirth” stories – that suddenly struck me as deathly serious. What did Sleeping Beauty see in her dream? What did Snow White come back knowing about death? And beyond that, elements of the Persephone myth, and the joys of Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the many stories of young women who went through the looking glass (and found something there). In every case there is a girl, a path, something forbidden.

Fairies? Vampires? Does it matter?

In Fencraft, the Lunar gathers all things that are human-like-but-not-human. This allows us to explore the overlap between the Fae and other legends. For example, Tolkien’s curious urge to write marginal stories of his Elves as if they overlapped with fairyland (such as Smith of Wooton Major); or questions we may have about where the werewolf myth fits in to the wild hunt; Christian legends in which the old fairy stories are re-told as tales of demons; and reconcile the role of the barrows, where haunts both myths of the Fae and of the Dead. We see figures like Annwyn and Gwyn ap Nudd described as both psychopomps who lead the dead, and fairy princes who parade with their retinue across the sky. I know at least one tumblr person who experiences Gwyn at the intersection of fairy and vampire myths; I find that vision compelling.

In general, we allow Lunar creatures to flow in and out of these categories as seems best. After all, they are but mortal words for things we do not fully understand. The Changeling is seduced by, or runs away with, something in the forest; and she becomes something of the forest in her turn. Do we need to know what? All that matters is, she’s not in Kansas any more.

A Myth Outline

The Changeling is at once very simple, and immense. At her core, she is a fairy tale princess who runs away with the fairy band. But what she comes to represent includes youth, choice, delight, nature’s abundance, fairy-magic, play, claiming independence and power – and everything that anyone has thought about young women and sex for the last 2000 years.

The Changeling is often understood as the daughter of the widowed Winter King, arriving with him around late-Harvest. The Witch of Winter, who becomes his consort, takes on an “evil stepmother” role towards her over the winter period. Youthful like the spring, she is the hope of the kingdom – and trapped by their hopes also, and the pressure to be fair and gentle and everything a princess ought to be. Isolated and neglected in that increasingly cold winter castle, she devoured her father’s library and listened to the howling of wolves.

In the springtime, a new young King comes to claim the kingdom – overthrowing the hated Winter Witch and supplanting the Old King. To secure his position, he seeks the hand of the Changeling, his May Queen. But the Dancing Girl heard a whispering in the woodland. She was her mother’s child, and tempted into the fairy-paths where she fell fast asleep.

This story is the most contradictory in the legendarium. The Changeling could not help but be taken, was seduced, was kidnapped, or chose to go. Or some combination. Its extremely hard to be sure, as several versions of the tale exist. In some she chose, in others she fled, and in some she was kidnapped. The Changeling, perhaps, is apprenticed to the Fairy Queen – or becomes her; she is, perhaps, wooed by the Horned one in rival to the Hunter and becomes his bride instead. She falls asleep in the poppy flowers will not wake from her curious dream. She goes for a walk in the wood, and loses her way.

All in all, this is a source of mystery and wonder, and much strangeness; but in short, she was not what she had seemed to be – and the princess-maiden was lost in the forest, changed beyond recognition by what she found there. In this phase, she is lost underground – asleep – or seemingly dead – but dreaming and voyaging all the while.

In the autumn, the Hunter finds/wakes/rescues/kidnaps Erte from where she is, but she has changed. She is dark eyed and cobwebbed and strange. She brings a harvest of mushrooms, of fleshy fruit, and from her lover the Horned One, a harvest of meat. None are what is expected from a virginal bride; and she is witch-weird, knowing, unable to be ruled. She takes lovers when she chooses, and will not be mastered; she pursues her own pleasure and power. The Hunter has married a Fairy Queen, as the Sun King and the Winter King did before him, but – and here the story ends for now, for my understanding of the Young King, the Lightbringer, the Hunter and the Horned One are still incomplete. At one stage, her final aspect was the Outcast witch living on the fringes of the forest, rejected by society but alone with her secrets. I’m unsure as to whether that aspect exists in the current version of the pantheon.

But this is enough for you to be getting on with, that core myth of a May Queen clad in white and spring flowers saying no, and fleeing to the forest, where she returns red with autumn’s majesty and master of her will.

Relationship to Other Spirits

The further down the “family tree” of the pantheon one travels, the more rich my storytelling seems to become – perhaps, because the Changeling is so naturally fairy-tale rather than ancient-mythic.

The Changeling leaves behind a mother and a father. She fits into the cycle with the Winter King as her father, gentle but unready and neglectful, and the Winter Queen as her “evil stepmother” – cruel, controlling and jealous. Her mother, who is dead and beautiful as all mothers of fairy tale princesses always are, may yet emerge into the myth – but she is usually taken to be a fairy in her own right, and so the Changeling has from the start something a little other about her.

She also leaves behind a lover. Now, this part of the cycle is where my insight currently stops, but it’s some kind of Young King/Young Hunter/solar+solar-stellar+landish figure, someone who emerges in the sunlight of the spring and wants her to be his May Queen. This part of the cycle is opaque to me, beyond my sense that he is there. Possibly because all my knowledge of him is through her. His primary relationships are with the Lightbringer and with the Horned One, and his primary role is not as her consort. This figure might return as the one who pulls her back to the human world, and discovers her changed.

Something tempts her into the forest. And various times, this is the Fairy Queen, at others the Fairy King (with the understanding that our word “fairy” tends to blossom into all sorts of visions) – the latter perhaps a kind of Pan or Fairy Horned God figure, as well as a fellow with wings; or perhaps more explicitly vampiric or werewolfy than is to be expected. The relationship might be apprentice-tutor, seducer-seduced, or a romantic pair. Narratively, this relationship is often seen as negative (something that takes the May Queen away from her human duties and the Solar world), but spiritually, this pair is generally seen as beneficial - the figure in the woods prompts her transformation, as she prompts ours

However, once she is in her autumn form. We observe a great rivalry between the Horned One and the Fairy Queen – they are not a natural pair – just as the Hunter and Erte are at odds. They are tempting to pair together, but we find they are more at enmity. They could be interpreted as an extremely dysfunctional off-and-on-again, love-and-hate dynamic, where their sameness and affinity is the very thing that drives them apart. Neither will accept the domination of the other. A Hades/Persephone of two mighty powers that are not mirrors of one another or part of a whole, but somehow disjointed from one another.

Innocence and Experience

As a queer person, sacred sexuality has always been one of the most alienating parts of Pagan culture – and I’ve never wholly got on with the many attempts at reclaiming and adaptation that other queer people have explored. For this reason, a key motivator when considering Fencraft was “the fun of Wicca – folky, witchy, religious – but without the overarching gendered/sexual imagery”.

The Changeling is the one spirit in our system where sexuality is implied or to the fore. After all, it is the way of our culture that one cannot describe a young girl as a “maiden” without making that role an inherently sexualised one. Many of the Changeling myths have been re-read as stories of sexual awakening/discovery, both in an affirming feminist way, and in a somewhat more objectifying fashion. And so she is the figure through which we explore these contradictory, potent forces.

To say yes, one must also have the right to say no. There is one Changeling myth in which her escape is one of sexual freedom and self-exploration. She runs away from the castle or the garden in which she is kept, and the rigid strictures of chastity and good-behaviour it represents, to escape to the forest – and it sumptous world of sensual pleasures. There is another in which her escape is one of refusal and defiance: like all fairy tale princesses, she is engaged to a man she does not love – perhaps trapped in an expectation of heterosexual reproductive sexuality. The forest frees her – to be solitary, to put love of art and the natural world above romance, to refuse the life she was born into.

The Changeling claiming her sexuality, and the Changeling refusing all sexual and romantic futures, is the same picture: one of autonomy and defiance in the face of society.

Many variants of the Changeling myth have her tempted away from home by somebody. We can read these as a temptation, a seduction, even a kidnapping – an overpowering that she eventually escapes, to claim her independence. Or we can read them as a willing and a wanting, a conscious choice to take a forbidden lover. Many Changeling tales carry overtones of sexual violence, either from her fairy partner or from the human prince, making her a symbol of survival and adaptation. Then there are the myths that show her crowned as a Queen in her own right – often a Queen of fairyland, not a consort to a King – and her journey is one from princess-political-pawn, to mastery and power.

I hope this is a more welcoming myth of sexuality. It is not central to Fencraft – it can be wholly ignored – and to my mind, at least, it is a fuller celebration: regardless of our sexuality, we will find over and over again the need to reject what is demanded of us and embrace what is unashamedly yours and joyous.

I want to stress also that the Changeling is not all of sacred sexuality; it’s a particularly inward-looking model. When we look at ancient sacred sexuality, it’s often about fertility at its core. There’s perhaps a touch of that, in the symbolism of the fruits and fires; but the Changeling is defined by her irresponsibility, by her running away from the dutiful cycles and roles of the Sun to carve her own path.

Erte, the Fairy Queen

As a lunar thing, Erta is described by mirroring and transformation. In this case, she is tempted away from home by the Fairy Queen – and afterwards, Erta becomes (and from that point, always has been) the Fairy Queen. Indeed, in her title Changeling, and the unknown mystery of her mother, there is a suggestion there has always been something wrong about Erda, something feral and dissonant. Not a nice girl at all.

Fencraft’s standard understanding is that there is not one fairy King and Queen; instead, these are fairly common terms of respect that the fae take on after reaching a certain importance and following take on. So Erta’s title should not be seen as superseding other Fairy Princes you may have met; she is emphatically not every manifestation of “Fairy Queen” you will meet in lore.

Erte is a black moon – she falls in the spring and rises in winter, a kind of sacred and shamanic topsy-turviness. We have a ritual sequence for her across the year that celebrates her becoming. However, as a lunar thing Erda is not really linked to the year or a cycle the same way Solar spirits are. So, while we have a ritual image of Erte the Maid at May Day, Erte the Maid isn’t exactly an aspect or echo. One should expect to meet Erte the Queen throughout the year, as that is who she is now.

Fairies are at every festival (they like to party, and are most active at any times of power), so she has subtly changing manifestations at each. A possibly Christian explanation for why this is, is that fairies do not know the light, and are unaware of the sun – and therefore are not diminished or empowered by its cycles. Still, there are moments in the year especially dedicated to her.

There is a parallel myth of Erte as witch. After all, witches are also good little girls who meet a dark stranger in the woods, and run away to dance with him. Erte doesn’t cast spells, as such; she is the emboidment of using your emotions to power magic, not a mortal with skills but one who has become part of the magic. We generally don’t describe her as a witch, because that can be a little misleading; but that shouldn’t prevent you from thinking of her as one, to the extent that she fits the image. We can draw a line across the map linking both moons together, and that is her witchiness: the intertiwing between Diana's silver moon and the Changeling's swamp and soil.

As a model for the initiate

The Changeling is so important because, more than any other spirit, she expresses the spirit of Fencraft. There’s something perpetually childlike about her – even in her mature/autumnal form, she is moved by beauty, pleasure, curiosity and joy – somehow keeping her heart young and wilful. We are called to do as she does: to walk out into the forest, to dream of fairyland, and go dance with what calls us.

She also appears ritually, alongside her consort, as our guardian and guide as we step onto those paths – a way-opener to those kinds of forces.

In a Solar cycle, she is celebrated in a rather shallow and perfunctory way as a May queen of the spring flowers and the fruit harvest in autumn, a pantheon in which she is very much a secondary figure.

But she is of central reverence to any path related to fairycraft, the wild, and certain kinds of woodsy witchcraft, the ruler of the Solar-Stellar path that mediates between mortals and the mythic wild.