Episode 132: Fairies, Gnomes and Altered States of Consciousness with Dr. Neil Rushton

“The Wollaton Gnomes.” Mixed media by Barbara Fisher 2023

Hello my Keelian friends!

We’re back on one of our favorite topics: Fairies, and blending it with another favorite topic of mine: altered states of consciousness.

These two topics also are favorites of this week’s guest, Dr. Neil Rushton. An archaeologist by training, Dr. Rushton has been writing on the topics of fairies and how they relate to our human consciousness on his blog, “Dead But Dreaming” for quite a while now. He has great essays, there: do yourself a favor and go check them out.

His essays have also been collected in a myriad of books edited by some familiar names. In this episode, we talk about his essay in Dr. Simon Young’s book, The Wollaton Gnomes: A Nottingham Fairy Mystery and his essay in Joshua Cutchin’s Fairy Films: Wee Folk on the Big Screen. In both of his essays, he writes eloquently on the link between altered states of consciousness and fairy experiences; in the second essay, he writes about the British film, “Photographing Fairies” which until very recently was nearly impossible for non-British people to see. Made in 1997, it is just as wonderful as Dr. Rushton describes both in our discussion and in his essay—because after our discussion, I discovered that the film is available to rent on Vudu.

Do us both a favor and run out after this episode and watch that movie so you can talk with me about it. It’s great. I loved it so much. It’s SO good.

And then, we talked a little bit about Dr. Rushton’s novel, Dead But Dreaming.

Which you also should run out and read. Because it really is good, and then you know, come talk with me about it. Because. I love talking about books and movies about fairies and how different artists relate fairies to the modern world, and also I like giving people homework. Not really. I just…..this is the kind of stuff I love talking about.

But we also talked about personal experiences with fairies we’ve had and it was just a great conversation.

Dr. Rushton is also a cohost on a podcast/YouTube channel with Kate Rae called “Hare in the Hawthorn” where they talk about all sorts of fairy goodness and paranormal investigation—you know, the stuff we like.

(I am recording with Neil and Kate soon—and it will be on video, so y’all will get to see me talking about my fairy art and how I create it, and you’ll get to see the art as well. I know, you’ll get to see me, the elusive one who doesn’t do videos!)

Whew. I hope you enjoy this episode—it’s full of wonderful stuff and was so much fun to create.