Spirit + art + music + healing

Xöetza: An Online Spirit Culture Magazine

by Liv Mokai Wheeler

Fourth edition: Infused with a dance of magic!

Fourth edition: Infused with a dance of magic!

contents:

To Make the World Young Again: An Interview with Liv wheeler, Christy ChudosniK, And the Kontomblé

Babbling Pools and the Light of the Moon: LIv wheeler interviews Sylvie ZAcrep

To Make the World Young Again: An Interview with Liv Wheeler, Christy Chudosnik, And the Kontomblé

To connect with Christy, you can reach out to her here.

Babbling Pools and the Light of the Moon: LIv wheeler interviews Sylvie ZAcrep

In the interview below, Liv Wheeler connects with Sylvie Zacrep about her journey with the Fey and Gaelic, and the sacred stream of the wee folk. May it too be supportive to your journey.

Liv: Do you remember how old you were when you first connected with the Fey in this lifetime/what was that experience like?

Sylvie: Well… firstly, I just want to start by expressing my gratitude to you and Kontomblé. Thank you for so many things seen and unseen, heard and unheard, perhaps felt and unfelt... I am deeply honored, humbled, and touched to be asked to be a part of Xöetza and to be walking with yall in this life in the ways that I do. Truly, words do not suffice, and I bow my head to each of you. It is also unto you, Liv Mokai, and Kontomblé that I am actively, consciously cultivating relations and in a remembering with the Fey and the Tuatha Dé Danann. Tapadh leibhse! (Empathic, formal thank you in Scottish Gaelic!). 

Nevertheless, with regards to how old I was when I first connected with the Fey in this lifetime… to be honest, I don’t remember a time when they weren’t woven into the fabric of my reality or rhetoric in some way. I largely owe that to the spirit of and spirits with my Aunt Debbie, my mom’s sister. Some of my earliest memories as a child, I must have been maybe three or four, are of leaving wee ‘mud pies’ for them by trees. I remember, I would feel the winds respond. Sometimes we would sing about them, sing to them. She would talk to me about her mother, and whenever she sends cards there is always ‘pixie dust’ (glitter) in them. Around this time, I also remember a beautiful cherry blossom tree outside of our house. We once grew strawberries in a wee planter in the shape of a tall, winged being under the tree. I think it may have been a terra cotta angel, but to me she was Fey. I would make her wee houses made from leaves and flowers. Similarly, around this time, I was also absolutely obsessed with drawing tall faeries! Or, what I called faeries anyway. They were tall, technicolored, sorta non-gendered, and they didn’t have wings. They were not what one in perhaps a modern mind-set would call Fey, but to me they were.

In a funny way and in a way she maybe didn’t fully know, I believe that my aunt was helping me to hold onto remembrance and trust in the Fey like a tether in a wildly confusing world and childhood. I feel she was, perhaps unknowingly, also sharing ancestral medicine with me because my maternal grandmother was also said to have been connected to the Fey along with all the women in her line who, I now know, go back to old Ireland. Many of these women were institutionalized for this connection or this throughline of remembrance... all the way to my generation. In retrospect, this feels like quite a courageous and magickal act of grace on my aunt’s part.

But before I digress too much further, the feeling or experience that colors these memories is peace, a sort of light pink-ish orange light, and the feeling of not being alone despite my physical world experience being one that left me feeling deeply alone and odd/weird. But really this feeling is more like breathing, I feel. Like there was no doubt or question or thought in the mix. To feel them was as natural as breathing. But it wasn’t conscious, per say, it just was. It was just life, I suppose. To believe in them was to breathe. To sing to them, to leave wee bits and bobs for them, to hear them in the wind… this all was, to me at that time, yet to breathe.

Liv: Thank you so much, Sylvie! The Kontomblé and I are deeply touched and honored. It has been truly incredible to spiritually weave together with you in this lifetime. Thank you for your immense devotion to the honoring of the Wee Folk, to the Otherworld, and to the Sacred.

I love hearing about you and your aunt's tending to the subtle and potent realm of the Fey together. I've always admired your dedication to the tending of the Otherworld with such care, and your strength of commitment. You're a strong, steady spiritual practitioner, I do believe. It has been really awesome to see the fruits of your commitment to the Scottish Gaelic language appearing abundantly in the physical dimension. Do you notice the Fey or the Tuatha Dé Danann responding to you differently when you communicate to them in Gaelic?

Sylvie: Oh wow, thank you so very much. This means more to me than I can say and really touches my heart. I am truly humbled. Thank you so very much to you and Kontomblé.

I do feel as if they both respond to me differently when I communicate in the Gaelic, indeed. In short, my experience of communicating with them in the Gaelic would be like more of a direct line or portal. Almost like, if I communicate in English, I am coming to them more as a human. But, if I am communicating in the Gaelic, I am coming to them more as a Fey. I sit at their hearth more as one of them. In that, it seems we can communicate with greater nuance, depth, and I think, poetic accuracy. I tend to get less etheric eye rolls (true story, they are tough teachers lol), and it is like we can just get down to it by way of my re-entering their river current. The spiritually nuanced refinement, intricacy, musical/ceremonial tenor of the Gaelic feels most of them and from them too. It sometimes feels like an almost-native starry tongue. So it can feel a bit like ‘ET phone home’ or like being in ritual.

That said, while the Fey I am perhaps most readily attuned to don’t feel all that different from the Tuatha Dé Danann, I will say that the Tuatha seem to prefer telepathic communication. They also seem to speak in a more ancient dialect of the Gaelic that will perhaps, spirit-willingly, one day come in time. In the meantime, I stumble along with learning/remembering Scottish Gaelic, healing in me the parts of my head and being that forgot, and doing my best to humble myself to their ways and teachings. I also do my best to weave it back into my spiritual practice and our relations. I most love singing to them in the Gaelic!

Actually, today I was watching an interview about Irish traditional music (I think my focus is almost always pulled to tracing the story of the Wee Folk and Fey through what might be called human culture). They spoke about recounts of Irish culture before the famine. Essentially, they were saying that the people lived in song and dance as a way of being, both as individuals and as a people. When you greeted someone, you greeted them by way of a Gaelic song, maybe with a jig. Conversation happened in spontaneous Gaelic song, and rhyme and verse. It is said that they danced and laughed more then. And it was all for/on behalf of everyone, for all of life. Life was song, and song was life. The Gaelic was not separate from song; it was song. And it was the breath of life, a language of spirit, always beating in the heart of the people like eternal, wee wings, never lost, never broken.

I feel like that’s, at least in part, the spirit of the Fey and Leprechaun and Tuatha Dé Danann living on in humanity. It’s profound and magickal, to me. But perhaps to them, the Fey, it’s as it was always meant to be… the way of the Wee, the way of the Sidhe, a medicinal stream of the Three.

Liv: Wow, that's quite beautiful. Thank you so much for what you're sharing! I feel like I've heard/seen the Kontomblé refer to that older Irish culture you speak of, before in a vision they showed me. How magical that looks and feels!

When you shared your new website with me recently, I was quite excited because I felt like you had/have clearly risen to the greatness of your medicine. When the Kontomblé work with people, when they come through me they show me visions of that person living in their medicine, should they choose to show up and effort for it where needed. They give counsel about actions they can take to actualize it in this physical dimension. There was a you they showed me then that was yet to be. When I opened your website I was so excited because I could see the culmination of the many little and great actions that you took to allow the deeper you to emerge. Well done, and once again, it's very beautiful! I know great effort and care has been made to be the soul that you are today. How exciting that you even have a Gaelic song circle as well! How did that feel to brave the waters of showing the deeper you to the world?

Sylvie: Oh, thank you so much! I fall a wee bit speechless here. It makes me tear up. Thank you to you and Kontomblé for being the very teachers my soul has been looking for to evolve, stand pono (in truth/integrity), and sharpen the blade on my journey. I am truly grateful. Thank you for seeing the me that was yet to be, for giving her a wee chance to take root too. 

Actually, what comes to mind/heart here is a message that the Kontomblé shared with me a few years ago. The message was something like, we Kontomblé have been helping our Fey relatives to come out of the shadows for some time. I feel like that encapsulates the feeling of creating and sharing the website that, in truth, I am approaching as a living, twinkling, mist-shrouded Fey Knoll/altar. It was like me myself, I came out of the hidden world in a real way for the first time in quite a few lives. I had a feeling that there were also greater ripples or spiritual energies moving than that of simply me. 

Nevertheless, in all honesty it was terrifying in ways. It felt deeply vulnerable and unfamiliar, especially after constructing a whole way of being prior to my mid twenties that was an effort to create a semblance of safety by taking up very little space, not speaking, and staying as hidden as possible at a soul level. I believe Kontomblé once told me that I made a good effort at mimicking human behavior lol! In a way, creating the website felt like, oh god, here I go publicly declaring to the world that I am a Fey and Wee Folk person!!! Of course, the this life + past life + ancestral trauma, the mind, and the matrix programs designed to keep the wyrd contained came up. But while it felt deeply personal to stand in my truth in such turbulent times on Earth, I was also aware that it simultaneously was not about me at all. To shift focus or perspective in that way brought tremendous support.

In Gaelic there’s a word called soitheach, a vessel, a ship, and an offering. I felt it was ultimately like that. What I do, devote to, and aspire to grow into, it is for/with the Fey, the Wee Folk, the children of the Earth. It is for the spirit of aloha, and for the spirit of the Gaelic. This was but a small contribution, a new (in this life) way that I could put my hands and heart to work for/with the Wee Folk in these times. I feel as if in this emerging time on Earth, it’s important to me to be a part of the anchoring of the vibration and arts of the Wee and Fey Folk, our Good Neighbors. It’s important to me to do what I can to make a place for them in this dimension again. It’s important to me that their contributions don’t get lost in the shift, but rather grow with new/ancient vigor and height. So I lit my wee, little candle and held onto that. Afterwards it was sorta like sitting at their hearth, putting my offering down, and telling them… ‘Tapadh leibhse. Here is my soitheach. I did it in the best, most honourable way that I know. I release it back to you now, please show me the way.’ 

I will say, I was emboldened by having the grace and blessing of having watched you walk your path with Kontomblé these few years. I looked into my heart to find your teachings, to find the Fey and Kontomblé, to find more valour than fear. 

Liv: That is so deeply touching, Sylvie. Thank you! And you know I'm/we're (the Kontomblé and I) looking forward to your books to come! You have a voice that is medicinal to receive and what you share, I believe, is important for those who are ready to listen. I imagine many are going to love going to visit your website and experiencing your medicine!

In closing, I'm curious if there's a message that stands out to you that is of the Wee Folk's stream that wants to be shared now? 

Sylvie: Thank you so very much to you, Liv Mokai, and Kontomblé! And yes, the books to come. They are no small feat, but hey ho… may they be so. Thank you so very much, truly I am deeply touched. I am also so very grateful for the opportunity to have connected with you, and those who read this, in this way. It is an immense honor and quite a tune/rune filled blessing! 

In a way, I wonder if I may have just gotten schooled by the Kontomblé and Fey! I am pretty sure that is what just happened… Somehow it felt like a wee teaching of sorts. 

This is because, me as Sylvie, the message or tenor that came to mind/heart when I read that was the magick and gifts found within living as and with the Good Neighbors- which was another name for the Fey and Wee Folk also known as the Sidhe in Ireland, I do believe. The feeling, to me, is something like something I heard my nana say (who I think must spend considerable time with Kontomblé now). She said malama each other- take care of each other, look out for one another, tend to all of life with aloha. I feel like Kontomblé and you teach this too, and more, you live it. 

That being said, I decided I would put down offerings, do an invocation, and throw runes so I could pick up the thread of a message from the Wee Folk’s stream. But I was coming to them with the heart or intention to hear from a different, perhaps more spirited river current, if you will. I asked the Fey and Wee Folk with me to speak a message through the runes. This was a unique experience; normally I throw runes and share what I see with voice rather than scribing something. But a wee poem seems to have flowed from what I saw in the runes. I am not sure why, but it made me cry... 

I shall leave that below for anyone who feels called to receive it. But again, from my heart/soul, from the beings with me, and I feel my ancestors too, thank you, thank you, thank you. I send my love and a Bardr-sized bucket full of gratitude to you, Liv Mokai, to Kontomblé, and to all of the beautiful souls who may be reading this. I thank you from my very depths! Le gaol, ceòl,/ With love, music, Sylvie 

From the Runes by the light of the Moon: 

Within the stars a hail storm shows, but from this storm brilliance of heart grows, grows, grows. An eternal wheel is the flow, remember, know, what is the reap shall be the sow. The prick may bite, but within it find the starry light of might divine. See/sea a seer, a deer, a tear. This year brings fear, yet the time draws near, is nigh upon us but was always within us, in the stars, and scryed it lived in the cup of eternity. The north star changes, pivots, dances, with it anew the shores before galaxies of ye ol’ merry families and their auric lore. Yet a need-fire crackles at the hearth, and whispers to you tales of mirth, of days to come when the sun shows truly, the waters melt and show you newly, the inherited tools that unexpectedly birth a new eden upon the earth. Tools be tales, and tales be tools, remember the gnosis tongues that speak the tree free. These tongues of heart, of harp, of harbingering spirits who weave with gold and protective merits, ever singing, ringing, dinging, waiting for you by the babbling pools. We wait for you by the babbling pools. A ghràidh, always we’ll wait for you by the babbling pools. 

(A ghràidh is like my dear, or my love. It is a term of close-knit endearment) 

Liv: Thank you so, so much for this incredible beauty that you share.... with a heart of gratitude… 

To connect with Sylvie, or to schedule a divination with her: https://www.nagaothantuatha.com/.

we look forward to sharing our next edition of Xöetza: An Online Spirit Culture Magazine soon. IN THE MEANTIME, WE SEND LOVE TO YOU!