My Qu-heroes

What is this process of Gay Iconic veneration? 

Looking back on the iconography of my earlier life, (Kenneth Williams, Quentin Crisp, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, Freddy Mercury, Will Young), I see how, with each figure, I managed to create an image-construct. Its value, for me, being that of knowing there was a story of a real person, like my own queer struggling self, who was capable of transcending adversity (or if not, was at least enduring its suffering in a truly fabulous way!) These Gay Icons gave me the courage to come out of my closet. They were individuals who dared to express their forbidden amazingness and desires shamelessly.

More recently however, I’ve had little spells of hero worship for gay men who are remembered for their role as visionaries, political activists and fighters for queer social justice. Here are my top 3…

Walt Whitman: 19th Century American poet who dared to openly publish poems about “the manly love of comrades” at a time when celebrating a reality which included sex would have him branded as an obscene writer throughout his lifetime. His poetry strongly influenced…

Edward Carpenter: Early 20th Century British writer and socialist poet who became a hero to the first generation of Labour politicians. At a time of Victorian homophobia (his contemporary Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for 2 years with hard labour for the crime of “gross indecency with sodomy”) he managed to live in an openly gay relationship and publish books allowing folk to discuss the possibility that sexual orientation was natural and biologically determined rather than being something to be morally condemned or criminalised. His books were read by…

Harry Hay: (1912-2002) American communist who was able to see the link between queer and black oppression and had the vision and courage to establish the first, pre-Stonewall gay rights movement called the Mattachine Society. Doing this meant risking his life, his job and his liberty. 

The Society became a victim of its own success, got a sudden influx of conservative members who saw Hay’s communism, at a time of McCarthy’s witch-hunt trials, as a liability, ousted him and established itself as an assimilationist lobby. 

Undaunted Hay then went on to argue for a different kind of liberation. For queers to ‘cast off the ugly frog-skin of hetero-conformity’ and for them to discover their queer purpose through the realisation of their true faerie nature in community at Faerie Gatherings.

I suppose I’ve been following Harry’s lead in this respect for the past 10 years or so. For me he’s not so much an Icon or Hero-to-worship. In fact the more I’ve learned about his egocentricity, intellectual bullying, and temper tantrums, the less I feel I would have liked him as a person!

He’s more of a flawed fore-father-figure…a guiding queer ancestor…a giant who stood on giant’s shoulders. 

His own shoulders now invite us all to step up and see the amazing view!

Hope Along the Wind: A Film About the Sussex Man who Started Two Queer Revolutions in the USA!

Gay Socrates talks to Harry Hay's friend and carer Joey Cain about Hay, the man, and the movie made about his life, coming to the Brighton Fringe next month.

Harry Hay (1912-2002) was born in Worthing. As an adult he became a gay activist in the US and founded the first Gay Liberation movement (The Mattachine Society) in 1950. He then went on to co-found the Radical Faeries.

'Hope Along the Wind...' is a lovely movie which sets this unlikely story in its historic context and captures rare interview footage of this iconic character in his later years.

Joey Cain knew Harry in person and was one of the devoted band of 'Loving Companions' who tended to the care of Harry and his partner in their closing years. For the 100th anniversary of Harry’s birth in 2012, he curated a major exhibition about his life and times in San Francisco and co-organized a conference about Harry in New York City.

Joey is flying from his home in San Francisco to present a screening of this movie as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival next month. 

GS: Who was Harry Hay to you?

JC: Harry was a dear friend, political comrade and gay visionary the likes of which we probably won’t see again. Without his tenacity, deep thinking and integrity, the LGBT revolution, at least as far as the USA goes, would have been a much longer time coming. He traversed many worlds, as Gay people often do.

A Communist activist and great music lover who was a trained baritone, he read long and deep in history and anthropology to find the hidden history of our People.

GS: Why are you bringing Harry Hay's story to the Brighton Fringe?

JC: Harry was born in Worthing, his birth house still stands, and we thought it would be a lovely idea to “bring Harry back” to this part of England, where he started out. This whole area is so rich in Queer history what with Edward Carpenter being born in Brighton, Oscar Wilde writing “The Importance of being Ernest” practically around the corner from where Harry was born. And that’s just scratching the surface.

GS: Why do you think conceiving of the Radical Faeries was important to Harry?

JC: Harry always said that the Radical Fairies was the realization of the dream he had when he started The Mattachine Society in 1950. The essence lies in the 3 questions he posed to be answered by both groups: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? For Harry, the Fairies were about answering those questions and acting on the answers.

'Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay' is showing at the Fabrica Gallery, Tuesday May 8 7.30pm 

Tickets: https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/harry-hay-founder-of-the-radical-faeries-124999/

Radical Faeries: Why Are We Here?

There are times in the history of our humanity when, suddenly, unexpectedly, and dramatically, human consciousness shifts. When this happens, historians are usually curious about how these changes came about. Who did what to whom, and when?

The development of an LGBTQI+ liberation movement is one such event. We all know there was a time, back in the dark ages, when queerness didn’t even seem to have a consciousness of itself. And then there was a time when queers were vilified and persecuted- even killed and eugenicised. And then came the time when one queer said ‘No!”

There is a scientifically recognised phenomenon known as ‘morphic resonance’ (discovered by biologist Professor Rupert Sheldrake) whereby, a puzzle or dilemma solved by one living creature is immediately more likely, and more rapidly, to be solved by another, regardless of geographical proximity. Maybe it is by this little understood process that historic shifts of consciousness occur. However, in terms of queer liberation, there must have been that moment when, not only did one particular queer say “No! This is not acceptable” but then went on to say “And this is how we’ll go about changing it...”

It is quite possible that the name of that queer was Harry Hay. He was one of the founders of the first gay liberation movement organisations in the U.S.- the Mattachine Society. The story of how that small group brought hope and then ultimately tangible human rights equality to a growing number of nations across the world is told in a short, gripping movie biopic ‘Hope Along the Wind’ coming to the Brighton Fringe Festival in May.

Interestingly, Harry Hay’s involvement at the inception of the LGBTQI+ liberation movement was not the end of the story. After the movement’s historic successful legal challenge of a cottaging charge, the movement was flooded with ‘assimilationists’ (who believed ‘we’re just like straights apart from our sexualities’). He stepped away from the movement believing steadfastly that having sexualities was one of the few things that queers did have in common with the mainstream. He believed that queerness gave us a unique window through which we are able to view society and that we then favourably influence society through our own individual cultural engagements.

He threw himself into research constantly asking his famous three questions:  “Who are we?’ , ‘Where do we come from?’ and ‘Why are we here?’

Following his discovery of a resonance with the Native American identity of Berdache or ‘Two Spirit’, he began to see queers as a tribe of magical spiritual creatures with a unique role to play in the development of human consciousness. 

As Faeries, we locate our own unique purpose by celebrating our wild and mysterious natures together in community......

‘Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay’ is showing at the Fabrica Gallery, 40 Duke Street, BN11AG 

TUESDAY May8 at 7.30pm. Tickets £8 & £6: 

https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/harry-hay-founder-of-the-radical-faeries-124999/

Come along and say hello to the Brighton Faeries!

Are you a closeted spiritual being?

Another Brighton Pride...So you’ve done the parade, seen the show at the park, hung out in the village, got a bit wasted. You’re out and proud! You’ve challenged the subtle (and not-so-subtle) sexuality/gender policing and shaming that you’ve been exposed to all your life. And it feels good.....

Now what? Maybe there’s even more to you than your queer identity?

Harry Hay (gay man, intellectual, activist and one of the founders of the Faeries) would often ask three questions at the start of a talk or a conference: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here?

Pride marches, parades and festivals have helped us to acknowledge ourselves and to recognize and celebrate our contribution to diversity. So we’re starting to know who we are. Yet we’ve some way to go in understanding where we came from and what our purpose may be.

Hay spent time researching the role of the queer in Native American and primitive cultures. He found that these societies valued and prized their queer children as Two Spirit beings. Queer kids were encouraged to develop their shamanic nature and were cultivated to take on and hold crucial positions in the spiritual and cultural life of the tribe.

Hay believed that Two Spirits seeking each other “ghosted the twilight regions” and that the process of seeking one another and categorizing their relationships led to an intellectual breakthrough. They had the gift of seeing their own socially productive relationships as roles or constructs and so were more easily able to to see the real person behind the role play. They thus considered one another and indeed the world with a radical subjectivity, seeing through the show and establishing relationships on deeper spiritual levels.

Sadly, for most of us, our two-spirit-ness has been a mark of shame and has resulted in us being hounded out of our own religious communities. Forced to choose between our sexuality and spirituality we have had no spiritual home where our queerness could be seen as central and essential to our esoteric nature. 

Harry Hay was a communist. Back in the 1970s he wrote that the West was “in an anarcho-capitalistic social and ethical stagnation” and he believed that “the Homophile” (us queers), as descendants of the Two Spirit, had the responsibility of finding the way out.

Forty years on and the ethical and social stagnation is beginning to stink! 

Are you ready to re-kindle your spiritual flame? Do you want to join forces through the development of lore, myth and ritual to inspire contemporary action? Then get yourselves along to the Queer Spirit Festival (queerspirit.net) 17-21 August in Wiltshire (BA13 4AQ).

Here you’ll find ceremony and ritual, earth spirituality, a sacred sexuality temple, spirit mysteries, yoga, meditation, dance workshops, music and cabaret, nature walks, heart circles.

Four days of camping in the sunshine (or rolling around in the mud!). Meeting new friends and nurturing ourselves. Let’s find each other and have some fun!

Cocks, Cunts and Guts Warfare!

Are we in a battle with the prevailing culture? Who’s hearts and minds do we need to win?

I’ve just finished reading ‘Truth or Dare- Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery’ by the Eco-Feminist Witch Starhawk.

She would maintain that there is a prevailing oppressive culture governed by an outmoded drive to maintain a constant readiness for war. A need to pay homage to a King as: Judge, Censor, Conqueror, Master of Servants, Orderer of the Universe.... “Each aspect carries with it an obsession with its own issues and a view of the self and the world. Each brandishes its own weapons and threats and makes its own particular offer, which presumably we cannot refuse. Each deludes us in its own way and each contains some positive value we must reclaim.”

From this perspective we are seen as subjects to serve the ruling, warring powers who have power-over us. However, our birthright as LGBTQ folk has afforded us a perspective which is able to see this for the nonsense it is. Our own personal drive to become the beings we truly are has enabled us to overcome adverse judgements, has empowered us to speak out when told to shut up. We rock the boat when warned that invaders are afoot. We are prepared to get above our station and we just don’t care when we’re told we just ‘aint natural. We are more comfortable away from structures of Power-over and embrace models respecting our own unique intrinsic power.

Power-over is threatened by Power-with and will oppress, restrict, suffocate, subdue, poison, weaken, threaten, intimidate any attempts to undermine it!

So how do we win out against a war hungry, subjugating culture hell bent on stripping its members of their immanent value? The answer, according to Starhawk, is not to go hearts-and-minds-pleading for it to give a little of its power back. The answer is to team together to reclaim our own personal power as natural creatures of this earth. To invoke the reality of the magick of focussed intention. This is guerrilla warfare with Cunts, Cocks and Guts!

Radial Faerie founding father, Harry Hay famously challenged the early gay civil rights pioneers who were clamoring for assimilation to ‘shed the ugly frog-skin of hetero-conformity’. They were busy pleading for the right to be free from persecution on the basis that they were just like everyone else apart from their sexuality. Ask yourself do you really want to join the queue to join this crazy mixed up society? The fact of our sexuality may be one of the few things we have in common with all those governed by this power-over system.

I don’t need to persuade anyone that I deserve my intrinsic power to be honored. I simply reclaim that power rooted in my own Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Faerie-Spirit. In my determination to be that which (Witch) I am to become. 

Come on- let’s make some magick!

Faerie Sex Magick

What is Faerie Sex Magick (FSM)?

FSM is a group process evolved by Faeries to help male bodied queers to reconnect their sexual selves with their deeper sense of emotional intimacy.

What does it involve?

It involves getting together with a small group of men and, over the course of a week, developing the confidence to open your deeper self to them as they open to you. It involves sharing from the heart and recognising that it is not only safe but also worthy of love to reveal your vulnerabilities and to witness others exposing theirs.

That sounds scary!

It all happens in a venue which is protected from the distractions of the noisy world most of us occupy. The whole process is facilitated by Faeries who have been involved with its growth since it was first conceived by Harry Hay- one of the originators of the Faeries as a development of queer consciousness.

The foundation of the sharing is the Faerie Heart Circle derived from the Native American Indian tradition of sharing circles. Heart Circle involves passing a talisman or ‘talking stick’ around the circle. When you have the talisman it’s your turn to share, when you pass on the talisman it’s your turn to listen!

So what’s magickal about it?

When a small group agree to give each other their non-judgemental attention in Heart Circle something quite unexpected happens. The level of emotional intimacy within the group rapidly intensifies in a surprising and almost magickal way.

And where does the sex come into it?

The intention of the Heart Circling is to develop the emotional intimacy in the group so there is enough trust for permissions to be given to each and every member of the group so that loving touch can be given and received. When this stage has been reached the group enters into ‘Ritual Space’

What Happens in ‘Ritual Space’

It is up to the group how erotic and sensual touch will manifest. Once the trust and emotional intimacy has developed there is no shortage of imaginative yet sensitive ideas as to how the group could relate to each other sexually.

Now that’s starting to sound interesting! Can anyone do it?

If you’ve never experienced sharing in Heart Circle before you would be advised to get some practice at this before going on a full FSM workshop. The Brighton Faeries hold Heart Circles every so often (email brightonfaerie@gmail.com to get on the list) and there are monthly Edward Carpenter Community Heart Circles usually held on the second Sunday of the month (email gaysocrates@gmail.com for details)

So what’s your experience of FSM?

I have attended 2 FSM workshops. Because of the depth of sharing on a workshop the group promises that they will respect each other’s confidentiality.

What I can say is that, aside from the pure enjoyment of entering into an emotionally safe yet sexually intimate space with a bunch of lovely men, I am now profoundly changed for the better! Check it out at 

http://www.faeriesexmagick.org

When and how did you identify as a Faerie?

The Faerie known as Presence is writing a thesis on Radical Faeries.

These are the questions asked of us and my answers:

When and how did you identify as a Radical Faerie?

My first Faerie gathering was at Featherstone Castle just 5 years ago. I’d been encouraged to go by a friend I’d made on an Edward Carpenter Community Gay Men’s week. The ECC week had been facilitated by an American Faerie-Sunfire and two Albion Faeries-Shokti Lovestar and Notre Dame des Arbres. The theme of the week was ‘The Dance between Power and Intimacy’. There were workshops on Tantric Sex (based on the Body Electric school), BDSM, cross dressing, heart circles, saunas. In the space of a week I learned to risk vulnerability for the prize of intimacy. My new friend said ‘if you like all of this you’ll love the Faeries’. He was right. For me, as a lifelong secretly self identified freak, Featherstone Castle was a magical home-coming to my very own tribe of misfits and marginals. The love of all things natural, the embrace of chaos, the acceptance of all shapes and sizes, the seam of deep spirituality yet the absence of proselytizing and hierarchy made for a very welcoming an nurturing space. It was my first taste of Faerie Sanctuary where I could begin the process of establishing my divinely intended purpose. Since then I’ve not only been back to Featherstone every year but also to the Folleterre Sanctuary in Eastern France (Rewilding Skillshare 2010, Quiet Gathering 2011, Summer Gathering 2012, Sex Magick 2013, Community Week 2014) I also went to a gathering in Berlin 2010. 

I have always been profoundly affected by each and every gathering I’ve attended, learning about my gender, my sexuality, my undernourished appetites, my woundings, my capacity to self-heal and the previously unseen obstacles to self-love, the love of others and ultimately the love of the universe. 

Describe briefly what the Radical Faeries mean to you.

To me the Radical Faeries are a deeply rooted international network of divinely inspired beings. As a human development its natural intrinsic intent is to nurture the sacred within. The Faeries are  able to do this by generating magical faerie-space, encouraging physical, emotional and spiritual authenticity in those who encounter it directly. Once manifested this authenticity changes the world irrevocably!

What do you understand by the terms ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’? Which do you identify with, if at all, and why?

Back in 2009 I was a successfully assimilated ‘out ‘Gay Man. I was a homeowner in a longterm monogamous same-sex partnership with 2.4 cats! It seemed that, for my generation of assimilationists. the prize we had won for the LGBT community was a range of human rights- rights to civil partnership, rights to be able to foster and adopt, rights to an equal age of consent, rights even to join the army if I’d wanted to. I felt my whole life had been an exercise in demonstrating to the wider society that as a community we deserved these rights. I was no different from them other than simply having a desire for a same-sex lover. 

But this wasn’t true. Once I was fully shoehorned into my assimilated box I was suffocating. I felt ungrateful. I’d lost the power of my outsider status. I had no sense of joy from my begrudgingly accepted life-style. The Church continued to disapprove of my nature which had caused me to throw out my spiritual identity baby with the corrupt bathwater of organized religion.

However in the journey from that very first ECC gay mens week with its permission to find a source of spiritual growth in the full cultivation of my sexuality, the meeting with the Faeries with their invitation to discover the divine purpose of my bi-gendered nature and to reject assimilation, and the continued intimate exposure in heart-circle space to the divine feminine (in myself and others) I have traveled away from Gay Man and I am now arrived at Queer Spirit.

What do you think about the rituals in the Radical Faerie community? How do they affect you personally?

1 In my experience, the most profound and transformative ritual in the Radical Faerie Community is the ritual of the Heart Circle. Revealing my heart-felt self to non-judgmental, lovingly accepting Faeries has been both challenging and rewarding. Bearing witness to the revelation of heart-felt truths in a non-judgmental and lovingly accepting way has revealed some surprising shared experiences and also enabled the cultivation of that gift of experiencing the vicarious feel of another Faerie’s moccasins as they go on their own journey. The most potent experience I have had of the powerfully transformative and healing influence of the Heart Circle Ritual was the Folleterre 2013 Sex Magick workshop. 7 days of continuous heart circling with a closed group of Faeries with the intention to create sacred ritual space for the authentic expression of loving touch. I was so impressed by its impact both on myself and others that I’m planning to attend another in October.

2 I also see the ‘Know (or No) Talent Show’ as a wonderful exercise in almost unacknowledged Ritual Space capable of promoting profound personal transformation for those in both ‘performer’ and ‘witness’ roles. As a performer I offer my creative self in total vulnerability. In the role of witness I am able to appreciate, as a practice in unconditional love, the channeled beauty of creation. I’m amazed at the growth I feel from the acknowledgement of my offering. I am enchanted and delighted by the offering of others.

3 The Faerie Gathering itself is an extended ritual space with its opening ritual invoking the magical healing energies which will nurture the cultivation of our authentic selves. And also its closing rituals helping us to acknowledge the power of the transformative energies we have manifested but also their potential limitations to influence beyond the immediate environment of Faerie Space. 

Do you think the Radical Faeries have their own myths? If so, could you provide some examples? If not, why do you think that’s the case? 

At gatherings I have heard stories about Lillith, the Vestal Virgins, Loki. Faerie names sometimes invoke mythical figures. Pan, Fauny, Baccus, Sometimes the story of a Faerie’s name is of mythical proportions.

We have stories about our ancestors.....

Harry Hay as a child persuaded the librarian that she ought to get a fashionable Marcel wave in her hair. He assured her that he would look after the library whilst she was at the hairdresser’s. She returned two hours later to find him engrossed in Edward Carpenter’s ‘The Intermediate Sex: A study of some transitional types of men a and women’. He’d found the key to the locked cabinet of forbidden books. The rest is history.

The Faeries are a relatively new development in the growth of humanity. I believe that by living our authentic selves we are inevitably creating the myths of the future. There will be stories told by our great grandchildren about the impact that the Thesis of Presence had on the world!

Do you see the Radical Faeries fulfilling a role in the greater human community? 

Yes

If so, what do you think it is? 

The unfurling and fluttering of a single Faerie’s wings in Faerie Space is enough to create a revolutionary wind of change for the planet!

The Faerie Iconoclasts Who Dared to Re-Imagine Queer

 

So what’s an Icon?

In a literal sense it is a painted image intended to induce a sense of the divine. Over the centuries Queer folk have suffered at the hands the Great Organised Religions' image-makers. Metaphorically, nothing divine has ever been invoked in the painting of our image. In fact quite the reverse!

However I have a personal gratitude to three great secular saints of The Church of Queer who each, in their own ways, have managed to repaint our tarnished image. They have helped us to dare to be our divine selves against all odds.

The great American writer Walt Whitman (1819- 1892), in the Calamus cycle of poems from his magnum opus ‘Leaves of Grass’, re-imagined the then unspeakable love of men-loving-men as the ‘Love of Comrades’; a love so powerful it would transform a warring world into a calm and peaceful global village.

These poems were largely considered to be obscene by Walt’s compatriots. Internationally, however, they excited a new generation of morally oppressed yet nascently radical queer folk. Among them was the Brighton born Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) who was dramatically transformed after reading them. So much so that he sailed to the US to meet, and then make love with, his heroic iconoclast.

He was encouraged in his own writing to re-paint the way in which queerness had been smeared. In his book ‘The Intermediate Sex’ he articulated, to a hostile and highly sexually oppressive Victorian society, the argument for a biological determinant for non-heterosexual sexuality. This was a society which criminalised as morally defective any physical expression of same-sex love. In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sentenced by our great British society to two years of hard labour in prison for daring to be himself!

When he was just a child the Worthing born Harry Hay (1912-2002) migrated with his parents to America. In the local library he managed to break his way into a locked cabinet containing a copy of ‘The Intermediate Sex’. Encouraged by the fact that there were at least some highly respected European writers who took a non-moralistic view of the expression of same-sex love, he developed his own ideas (via his involvement with the American communist party and a love affair with the actor who famously came to play the part of Grandpa Walton). In a post-Stonewall era when queers were increasingly clamouring for ‘we’re just the same as you are- but different’ social and legal acceptance, Harry was busy wondering what was the purpose of queers? Do we not have a unique window of perspective for the wider society and a special subject-subject love devoid of the materialistic and social status considerations implicit in most marriage contracts? Was our purpose not to be visionaries, healers and teachers? Did we not need spiritual sanctuary where our unarticulated sense of purpose and our innate sense of awe at the fabulousness of the natural world could be allowed to flourish unencumbered?

As Faeries we dare to be ourselves and we model the audacity of this radically spiritual act for our non-queer brethren.

Let us then give thanks to Saint Walt, Saint Edward and Saint Harry the Great Faerie Iconoclastic Icons!

A South Coast Faerie Hi[Story]

  Children! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

Once upon a time many years ago in America, a little Faerie called Walter was born into a hostile world. It was a time of fools in old style hats and coats who half the time were soppy-stern, and half at one another's throats!

Walter was a nature-loving Faerie and his nature was to love. His world disapproved of his kind of love but to him it was quite natural.

He wrote poems about nature and was brave enough to write about the nature of his kind of love. No one had done this before.

He published his poems and his countrymen thought them crude and disgusting. 

However here in England one little Faerie, called Edward, [who had been born in Brighton then moved to Leeds], read the poems and they sang to his soul. He loved the poems so much he set sail to meet Walter to see and touch him in the flesh! He thought ‘if one Faerie can dare to put into words what it is like to love like a Faerie then so can I!’

Edward was very knowledgeable having studied at a very important university. He wrote a book about Faerie-love. He wanted to help people understand that to love like a Faerie was not something evil or corrupt but a very natural thing indeed. Faerie-lovers needed help to heal their broken wings and their woundedness from years of bullying and fear of imprisonment. 

At that time a very theatrical, flamboyant, Faerie called Oscar-who had also visited Walter- was discovered to have been indiscreetly loving like a Faerie and was sent to hard labour imprisonment which broke his soul.

By some miracle of Faerie-magic Edward was able to publish his book living [openlyish] with a number of Faerie-lovers in Leeds and managed to escape prosecution- just narrowly- by the authorities for what was seen by many at the time as an obscene publication.

A copy of his book found its way to a library back in America where a little Faerie called Harry [who had been born in Worthing] discovered it peeping out at him from a locked glass cabinet. As only a little Faerie could, he persuaded the lady librarian that she could lose her stern look by popping down the hair salon for a Marcel Wave perm whilst he looked after the library. As soon as she left he grabbed the secret key to the locked bookcase of forbidden books. She returned hours later to find little Harry engrossed in the book of Faerie-love. From this day forward Harry knew he was not the only Faerie and he determined to fight against the persecution of Faerie-lovers. He gathered a group of like-minded men. Some thought the best way to fight persecution would be to convince the law-makers that we were just like them only a bit different. Harry said ‘No! Faeries have a purpose! We are special! We need to cultivate our specialness and heal our woundedness in Sanctuary by exposing our vulnerabilities to each other in Heart Circle. In this way our kind of love can transform the world!’

Three years ago a little Faerie called Mushroom-who lives in Brighton- discovered and healed bruised and battered Faerie-wings through Heart Circle at Faerie Sanctuary feeling much gratitude to Harry, Edward Oscar and Walter.

Mushroom really does wish that there had been Faerie Hi[Stories] like this at nursery school. Who knows? 
Perhaps someday there will be!

Walt Whitman              1819-1892

Edward Carpenter        1844-1929

Oscar Wilde                  1854-1900

Harry Hay                     1912-2002

Faerie Mushroom         1960-