Celtic Rebirth Examined

The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by WY Evans-Wentz (1911)
Section IV – Modern Science and the Fairy-Faith; and Conclusions
Chapter XII : The Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth and Otherworld Scientifically Examined

‘If all things which partook of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing would be alive — what other result could there be?’ — SOCRATES, as reported by Plato.

‘The soul, if immortal, existed before our birth. What is incorruptible must be ungenerable.’ — HUME.

‘If there be no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposing that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased.’ — SHELLEY.

IN the esoteric Fairy-Faith, the terms Fairy and Fairyland attain their broadest meaning. To the Celtic mystic, the universe is divisible into two interpenetrating parts or aspects: the visible in which we are now, and the invisible which is Fairyland or the Otherworld; and a fairy is an intelligent being, either embodied as a member of the human race or else resident in the Otherworld. The latter class includes many distinct hierarchies and lower orders. Some, like the highest of the Tuatha De Danaan, who are the same in character as the gods of the Greeks and Hindoos, are super-human; others are the souls of the dead; while many are subhuman and have never been embodied in gross physical bodies. These last include daemons (incorrectly regarded by Christian and other theologies as being in all cases evil, and called demons); and other like spirits, such as those which Dr. Tylor, in Primitive Culture, has designated nature spirits (leprechauns, ‘pixies, knockers, corrigans, lutins, little folk, elves generally, and their counterparts in all non-Celtic Fairy-Faiths), which are the elementals of mediaeval mystics.

In the preceding chapter chiefly the lower species of fairies were under consideration, but now the higher orders (including human souls embodied and disembodied), in their relation toward one another, are to be considered independently. It becomes necessary, then, to present here a view of life and death not yet scientifically orthodox.