I have decided to go back to my original blog and forum name, Ole Brumm (it means "Winnie the Pooh" in Norsk) because it is the name most posters remember me by and because in a way, it is as hommage to my two sweet and beautiful skogkatts Fig and Olaf. Also, I am a tad rotund these days so it's kinda fitting. And hey, I think "Ole Brumm" is still a fey name! ;-)

Courtesy of Walt Disney

I am so excited about my next trip to England in early July. My friend Jackie and I will be going to Glastonbury for a merkabah meditation workshop pretty close to the Tor. We will of course be looking out for faeries!

If anyone is going to be in the area, say from 2 to 5 July, please let me know.

Orbs aside, Ireland is so beautiful. I particularly love the northwest corner, the soft sloping hills and glades with hedges of golden gorse. Here is an example, with a lone hawthorn tree, a faerie tree.

Then there is the Grianan of Aileach (Irish, Grianan Ailigh), an Iron Age royal stone fortress and sun temple built by the Druids in 1700 BC.

Another orb, another faerie face! I cannot believe this! I did a closeup of another one of the orb photos I took in Donegal, this time, of one that I was sure I wouldn't see anything in it because I took the photo from inside the cottage looking out the window where the window glass pane would distort the orb image. There is another little face in it! There could be more but there is one face that is clear to me. It is the large blue orb outside the window.

I've tried to submit my photos to a couple of Web sites on orbs, hoping someone will tell me something and verify their veracity somehow. Anyway, I am thinking that before I am labelled certifiably crazy - and then again, I don't really care, because I know what I saw - I just want to know why I am being shown all of this. According to the local folk, faeries choose whom they want to show themselves to.

I have just come back from Donegal in the northwest corner of Ireland where I spent a long weekend getting initiated into shamanism. So, the whole subject of the fae was sort of an "aside" but my first experience turned out to be a real defining moment for me as I have photographic evidence and actually experienced communicating with them.

First, let me say that previously, I didn't give the faerie lore much credence before my experience. I relegated the lore to just that: ancient lore and children's bedtime stories. Well, the owner of the 400-year-old barn and cottage where my friend and I lodged has a lot of stories about feeling energy near a magic well and spring on the property and in the woods attached to the back of the cottage. She also showed me many photos of orbs that she and her daughters took and already, I thought it was a big deal.

It was still quite chilly in the northern part of Ireland and when we were there, it mostly rained, though the beauty and magic of the place was enough for me to not mind the inclement weather. I immediately fell in love with the ancient beauty of the place and the soft golden light and I felt as though I had found my spiritual home.

The first night, I woke up at around 3:30 in the early morning, feeling that someone or something was moving my head. I freaked out a bit and thought of my sister, with whom I am very close and she is also sensitive like me. In my lethargic state, I said over and over again "No! No!" and finally got very annoyed and cried out angrily "Just stop it!". My friend Jackie who was in the same room, woke up and asked me if I was alright, to which I replied "I just don't want to be touched when I am asleep, okay?" in a defiant tone that was meant for whatever was playing games with me. I could not see it or them but I had a distinct feeling - more like seeing with my third eye - that my yelling had startled the prankster/s and and that there was a wee man, elf or pixie on the wooden beam above my bed. I was freaked but drifted off to sleep in a few minutes.

I woke up at dawn, about 6 a.m. The sun's mauve light was edging over the horizon and there was a cacophony of birdsong in the garden just outside the cottage. Jackie did not go back to sleep after I had woken her up earlier, and she had spent almost 3 hours meditating on her blockages and preparing for our shamanic course later that day. Then I looked up and saw a flickering little ball of light...with little wings! Little dragonfly-type wings! I blinked several times and it was still there and exclaimed "Oh my God!" and cried for Jackie to come over to have a look. Jackie could see it, too and we both saw it moved from one beam to another. It then disappeared.

Speaking to our host about it later, I stupidly asked if there were fireflies in Ireland, to which she said no, of course not. Nor could it have been any reflection from the rising sun as it was still pretty dim in the cottage. During intervals or breaks from the workshop when I wanted to have a lie-down in the cottage, I would ask out loud to see them again and in a few minutes, I would see an effect in the room which was akin to a fluttering of dragonfly or butterfly wings, very soft, without the flickering light, but one could unmistakably see them, loads of them on the ceiling above me! It was as if the veil between our world and theirs was made thin and one could have a glimpse into another dimension if one asked for it. I was no longer a non-believer.

On our last night in Ireland, we were having a girly chat with the host. She and my friend were unaware that I wanted to see the faeries one last time and I secretly wished it to myself as opposed to saying it out loud as before. Minutes later, I suddenly had this urge to photograph orbs. I grabbed my simple digital camera and shot from the window. Already, I could see orbs in the viewfinder as the flash went off and I rushed out of the cottage and just started clicking away in the dark. I could already see two or three orbs in the viewfinder.

Once back in Switzerland, I zoomed in on the orb photos and found that in one of them taken in the pitch black outside our cottage that last evening, there was an unmistakable fairy inside the orb; in the other, a blue orb, there was a mischievous little pixie face! I have added them here, including the closeups. I don't have Photoshop so apart from zooming in on the orb photos and taking a photoshot of the enlarged photos, they have not been enhanced. I hope that you can see them (please go to my Photo Gallery). I find them mesmerizing and long to go back.

I have been working on my spirituality and in raising my energetic vibrations for a few years now, and much more over the last 11 months, but I have never experienced anything like this. For me, it is a testament to the fact that I am on the right path, that all of the spiritual work I am doing is not for naught, and that I am now a firm believer in the faerie folk!