“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind….”

— W. B. Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire

Our world is diverse beyond the obvious differences among humans, such as race, socioeconomic status, religion, language, and culture. There is also diversity in the unseen worlds. Several years ago, the spirits told me that we see less than 1 percent of our surroundings, and quantum physics posits that our perception of energy is even smaller and that we are aware of less than 0.001 percent of our surroundings. In other words, we are blind to most of the context in which we live. There are dimensions and realities that we share on Earth that are as developed and comprehensive as our own natural world, and there are diverse “other” beings that live among us.

One of these mysterious worlds is the faery realm — the hidden folk, or people of the Sidhe (pronounced shee). In the early 1990s, I saw a documentary on Iceland’s reverence for the faery realm. The documentary included interviews with the president of Iceland, teachers, road workers, city planners, and country folk. The Icelandic culture is steeped in beliefs in faeries and respect for sharing the land with this mostly invisible culture.