Divine timing was at play today while I was working on the heart area of a client receiving Integrated Energy Therapy (IET). There was a message in the vision received for them and for me.
After a recent visit to the grave of poet W.B. Yeats in Sligo, I discovered that less than two weeks away – on 13th June – it would be Yeats Day (13th June was his birthday) and, since I wrote a poem a few years ago inspired by Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” after I visited Glencar Waterfall in Co. Leitrim (the same place that inspired Yeats’ poem), I planned to do a post about it and now see that divine timing meant the post had to be written today – after my client’s visit – rather than in advance in a scheduled post.
Yeats’ deep interest in Irish folklore and mysticism is evident in much of his work. He regarded these topics as important culturally. He had expanded his consciousness to be aware of the seen and of the unseen. He enables others to gain a glimpse into the Other World – that of the fairies or sidhe dwelling in hills, cairns and fairy rings – through his poetic descriptions.
Since I heard the words of Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” in 1988, in the song of the same name by Irish band The Waterboys, I have been smitten with it. But I had a fascination with fairies long before then. I recall as a young child my mum taking me to Muswell Hill Bookshop where I discovered the Flower Fairy series of books by Mary Cicely Barker. Enthralled, these poems and the artwork further ignited my quest among flowerbeds, hedgerows and woods to see a tiny, human-like, winged being, but some things are felt rather than seen.
Yeats wrote “The Stolen Child” at age 21 – a young man with an old soul – and it was published later in 1889. It mentions herons, which have become very significant to me, and it mentions Glencar. Little did I know back in 1988 that I would live in Ireland and stop off at Glencar Waterfall en route to Sligo. Another sight to behold on this journey is the magnificent Ben Bulben with its plateau carved patiently by frosty glacial fingers. Yeats said that in the side of Ben Bulben is a white square in the limestone that is said to be the door to fairyland. There is mystery in those mountains.
Since training as a shamanic practitioner and counsellor, assisting clients with soul retrieval (where part of the person’s soul or psyche splits away from them at a time of trauma – often at a young age – and is held in a safe place/realm until the person is ready to retrieve it and reunite with it to make them whole again), I now understand this poem “The Stolen Child” to be about soul retrieval.
The stolen child is the innocent and undamaged part of the psyche that has split away and escaped from a world “more full of weeping than you can understand” and gone to a safe place, in this case, “to the water and the wild with a faery, hand in hand” to be held in the healing energy of nature, watched over by the elementals/fairies in the Other World. No one escapes suffering while on Earth. As my shamanic teacher says: ‘Suffering is the growing pains of the soul.’
When we say that someone is “away with the fairies” it implies they are a bit crazy, but this really means that a part of their psyche/soul has fragmented and is guarded safely in a magical realm of nature where no harm can befall that innocent, untouched part of them. When the person reaches a stage in their life when they can face and deal with the trauma, that detached aspect of themselves can be reintegrated through the powerful shamanic practice of soul retrieval.
During the IET healing session today, as I worked on the heart area, I saw visions from the 2001 movie “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”. I kept seeing the A.I. boy David and the blue fairy he was searching for to grant him a wish. I haven’t seen that movie for years. I remember how it pulled at my heartstrings. If David had a substantial piece of his mother’s DNA, she could have been brought back to life for a long time, but, tragically, he only has a small piece – a single hair from her head kept by Teddy (David’s A.I “shamanic power animal”) – so the most he can have is one day with her. When my dad died, the only possession I took from his home was his black, plastic hair comb; it’s hardly a family heirloom. Grief can manifest in multiple ways. The crown of the head is regarded as the part of us closest to God. The comb contained his DNA. Perhaps it was because this idea from the movie was in my subconscious. I did daydream that if we had the technology from the movie, I could bring my dad back to spend more time with him, like David did with his mother. I lived overseas in New Zealand for the last three years of my father’s life, so I missed out on time with him. My eldest son had just turned two years old when I emigrated. My dad adored him and, from my dad’s perspective, I stole away my child “to the water and the wild” of New Zealand, etching a scar of grief upon his heart. When my dad was dying of cancer and becoming more immobile, he said as long as he could get from his bedroom to the lounge to sit in front of the photo of his grandsons I had taken just a few weeks before – unwittingly, right at the time he was given his diagnosis of four to six months to live – he would be happy. Sometimes, it’s the simplest things that bring connection, joy and purpose.
We take time for granted. We can harbour resentments against people, believing there will always be time to rectify the situation, but you never know what amount of time you or anybody else has. That’s why it’s best to fill your time and relationships with love, joy, civility and peace, so you have no regrets, no “what ifs”, no “should have” or “could have” thoughts eating away at you. IET is great at healing those negative emotions too.
Why was this movie playing out during the IET session? I discovered this day – Yeats Day – the talking computer in the AI movie called Dr Know quotes a verse from “The Stolen Child” when David is asking how he can find the blue fairy to make his wish come true. The movie reflects the poem. It is a tale of a child seeking an enchanting mother figure in the faery to save him as he searches for a safe and magical world to exist in to end the trauma of the reality of uncaring adult humans in a harsh world full of danger and pain. The AI boy wants to become a real boy. He wants to regain the deepest love he has experienced; that of his mother. But to do that, he would have to acquire a soul. As humans, we are adrift in the sea of consciousness – like the blue fairy waiting to be found by David in the depths of the sea – trying to reconnect with our true essence, love, which is to be found in the soul that resides where the heart is.
Incarnating on the Earth plane in human form, we are all traumatised by our separation from Source/God. Life is driven by the quest to find love, but underneath the desire for familial or romantic love, it is – in truth – the soul’s desire for reunification with that all-encompassing, ineffable divine love, the memory of which is lodged in the depths of our soul. When each person returns to Source, they will experience the ultimate soul retrieval, becoming whole and complete in eternity.
Here’s the poem I wrote in 2021, inspired by Yeats and Glencar Waterfall:
Stay a While
By Esther Robinson
‘Come stay a while,
To find your smile,’
the frolicking fairies sang.
‘It was stolen away,
On a heartbroken day,
To the land of sorrow,
Where you must never follow.
‘Shadows dwell there,
You best not chase.
For the light is the path,
You must embrace.
‘Come rest a while,
Lay down your weary head,
Flowers and ferns beguile,
A soft and scented bed.
‘Dream sweetly in sojourn,
Till your smile doth return.
Then dance upon the rainbow,
And set your spirit free.
For you are in this world
But not of it,
For you belong to the Sidhe.”
© Esther Robinson 2021
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