Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, Scotland, left one of the most fascinating and reasonable accounts of the unseen world in 1691. His work was much later discovered and published by novelist Sir Walter Scott. Kirk’s record describes in his account the fairies „they call Sleagh Maith or „The Good people“ as paradoxical beings inhabiting both the air and underground caves and he combines the banal with the surreal: On one hand it is said that „they live in houses underground that are large and fair, lit with lamps and fires but without fuel to sustain them. They may abduct mortal women to nurse their children. Their clothing and speech is that of the country they live in (from Highland Folklore)“. On the other hand their pure nature and physics is completely alien to anything we know: „THERE Bodies of congealled Air are ƒome tymes caried aloft, other whiles grovell in different Schapes, and enter into any Cranie or Clift of the Earth where Air enters, to their ordinary Dwellings; the Earth being full of Cavities and Cells, and there being no Place nor Creature but is ƒuppoƒed to have other Animals (greater or leƒƒer) living in or upon it as Inhabitants; and no ƒuch thing as a pure Wilderneƒs in the whole Univerƒe (From Robert Kirk’s manuscript).“
This sounds pretty much like modern accounts of extra-terrestrial visitors or like „the separate evolution to that of humanity“. The similarities between medieval accounts about demons and fairies and modern „close encounters“ have been mentioned a lot of times and Jacques Vallees emphasized this continuity in his accounts as “Passport to Magonia”. But what’s so interesting about Kirk’s account is the complex nature of these beings and the fact that they seem completely alien to us and exhibit very familiar behaviour at the same time. „Bodies of congealled air“ – this is a not like any life-form on earth but something close to the discoveries of modern scientists on a subatomic level. The „human aspect“ of these entities doesn’t make really any sense. Maybe this is staged for us, since if we could see what these elemental spirits are we would loose our wits. Indeed there are many accounts about encounters with the „Sleagh Maith“ where people lost their sense or – again like in modern Ufo-Folklore „lost time and orientation“. It’s not surprising that Robert Kirk’s dead became a mystery. It is said, „he was taken“.
It seems like we have companions here on earth, we don’t know much about and who seem like tricksters, shape-changers and maybe some form of mediators between our world and the unknown. They must be here for a very long time, maybe much longer before man appeared on the face of earth and they are very close to us, a secret commonwealth playing a role in our destiny and we don’t know very much about them and their plans.
In my opinion they are part of the gateway to the otherworld, sometimes they might act as guardians, sometimes they are gatekeepers. And we do not know what they really are and should be aware about their reality-shifting abilities. Maybe somebody is creating realities for us, like the engineers of modern virtual-realities and from time to time at certain places we are allowed to get a glimpse about what’s really going on.
