Celtic Legends
The Tuatha Dé Danann
The old gods of Ireland — the pantheon of Lebor Gabála Érenn and Cath Maige Tuired — who won Ireland in two…
Section
Author: <span>Sidhe Wolf Editorial</span>
The Sidhe Wolf editorial desk. Folklore is sourced and attributed; named contributors are credited on their own pieces.
Celtic Legends
Fairy forts (ráth and lios): the taboo that re-routed a road
Irish fairy forts (ráth, lios) are early-medieval ringforts held to be homes of the good people — and the taboo against disturbing…
Myth & Folklore
Changelings: the belief, its social history, and its real human harm
The changeling — a fairy left in place of a stolen human — was a folk explanation for illness and disability whose…
Myth & Folklore
Kelpies and the each-uisge: the Scottish Gaelic water-horse
The Scottish Gaelic water-horse comes in two forms: the river-haunting kelpie and the deadlier loch-dwelling each-uisge — a beautiful horse whose sticky…
Myth & Folklore
Selkies: the seal-folk of Orkney, Shetland, Scotland and Ireland
Selkies are the seal-folk of the northern seas — beings who shed their skins to walk as humans, and whose stories of…
Myth & Folklore
The Púca (pooka): the shapeshifting trickster of Irish folklore
The púca is the shapeshifting trickster of Irish tradition — a midnight black horse, a blackberry-spoiler at Samhain, sometimes a household helper…
Myth & Folklore
The Banshee (bean sídhe): the death-messenger and her regional forms
The banshee is the Irish "woman of the fairy mound" whose keen foretells a family death — a messenger, never a killer…
Myth & Folklore
The aos sí (the sidhe): the good folk and the fairy mounds
The aos sí are the Irish "good people" of the fairy mounds — descended in the sagas from the Tuatha De Danann,…
Spirituality & Magic
Crystals as mineralogy: what they are, where they come from, and the ethics of the trade
What crystals are as minerals, how amethyst and quartz form, where they come from, and the labour and environmental ethics of the…
Spirituality & Magic
The Major Arcana as symbolism: a card-by-card guide
The 22 Major Arcana as iconography and history, from Visconti-Sforza to Rider-Waite-Smith, and what each card has traditionally symbolised. Not fortune-telling.