Episode 12. Meet The Elementals with Nancy Mellon

In this episode of The Fairy Podcast, host Winslow Vail is joined by Nancy Mellon, a pioneer of healing and therapeutic storytelling and a Waldorf educator with over 35 years of experience, for a wise and playful conversation about fairies, elves, gnomes, and the many kinds of elemental beings who share our world. Nancy shares how she didn't grow up believing in fairies, and how that changed one moonlit night at Emerson College in England, when a roll of tape seemed to roll itself across the floor. Nancy also highlights the well-known writers who knew the elemental world firsthand, how to recognize a "part fairy" person hiding in plain sight, and what it means to feel a little bit in between, human and something more.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why fairy tales don't always have fairies in them, and what a fairy really is
• How Tolkien and Shakespeare wrote from real knowledge of the elemental realms
• Dora van Gelder's The Real World of Fairies and the many kinds of elementals she saw
• Nancy's own late-in-life awakening to the elemental world in England
• A true story of playful, mischievous fairies at Emerson College
• How some people carry elemental traits in their bodies, gestures, and sensitivity
• Simple practices for children (and grown-ups) to build true connection with nature spirits
• Why loving and observing nature more closely opens the door to the fairies

This episode is for curious kids, sensitive souls, and anyone who wants to keep their eyes and heart open to the magic living just beyond what we can see.

Take a breath, open your fairy senses, and let the elementals connect with you.

About Nancy Mellon

 Nancy Mellon has pioneered healing and therapeutic storytelling as a counselor and Waldorf educator worldwide for over 35 years. Her work continues to inspire creative courage and dynamic awareness of the relationship between language, imagination, and well-being.

Nancy has a lifetime of experience supporting individuals, families, and communities around the world, applying a broad array of healing modalities. She currently lives in Upstate New York.

Nancy received a BA from Wellesley College, an MA in English and American Literature from Hunter College of CUNY, and an MA in Counseling and Expressive Therapies from Lesley University. She is also a licensed high school teacher.

Nancy's Website: https://www.healingstory.com/

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Fairy Mail: https://www.winslowvail.com/fairy-mail/Fairy-School-Mail/

Music Credits: "Canon in D" by Johann Pachelbel performed and recorded by Winslow Vail. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome

Welcome To Fairy School

SPEAKER_00 0:01

to the Fairy Podcast with Winslow. My name is Winslow Vale, and I'm the founder of Fairy School. I'm here to create a safe space for you to explore your imagination, your heart magic, and the mysteries of the fairy world. This is a perfect time for you to connect with the fairies, to ask questions, share your dreams, and discover fairy practices and stories that can help you build more self-love, healthy happiness, and inner calm. The fairies are so glad you are here. As we begin, we invite you to take a deep breath into your belly, to relax your body, and to feel the curiosity flowing in your heart. Now, slip into your magical fairy clothes, feel your wings gently unfold, and awaken your fairy senses as you learn, imagine, and grow at fairy school. Hello,

Meeting Nancy And Defining Fairies

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Nancy. It is such a treat to have you on the fairy podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

You can be sure it's a treat for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

And you are, well, you're very special to my family, to my mom in particular, and my dad, and to many people around the world because you have been a Waldorf educator for many decades. You're a counselor, a therapeutic storyteller, among so many other things, a writer. I'm excited. We're excited to talk to you about elementals and fairies.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Well, what is a fairy after all? And there's quite a lot of amazing confusion about what a fairy is. In fact, many of the stories, which are called fairy tales, don't have fairies in them. I'm always defending the fairies because I know they're very real. And I've been, you know, to different parts of the world where they're more alive than they might be where you children live. But I hope that the land and the air, all the sounds around you, and that which is alive and growing is dear to you because when we love what is around us, then maybe it might be safe enough for all those invisible ones to live and help the earth to become uh alive. And all of that is going on. But of course, it doesn't show itself much of it. You know, someone who knows a great deal about that is Tolkien, who wrote a wonderful book, uh, which includes

Tolkien And The Hidden Realms

SPEAKER_01 3:06

very, very sensitive. Well, he wrote more than one book, of course, but you know, his great book that most of you children probably know uh about. But one day I hope you'll read the very book itself, because the Lord of the Rings. Because in that book, there you will read about very real fear and their realm and how they do live in the night and the day world. And how many other kinds of invisible ones are out there too. And for the most part, they have their own life, and so and they don't particularly need to show themselves to our human eyes, particularly when our human eyes are not very kind. I have a friend, she calls her her place there Rivendale. Well, what do you think of that, Winslow? Wow. Yeah, her very home that she loves and takes care of. And she's such she has eyes. She has eyes for so much more than most of us see.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Wow, and it that's so special because it she calls it Rivendill, and it keeps her mind and heart and imagination open to all that lives around her, the fairies, the other beings.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

And because she she she loves the all these elementals, and there are so many different kinds. And they're big ones and they're teeny tiny ones, some a little more solid, and some very, very ethereal. You can see right through them. And some of them actually very large.

Shakespeare And Elementals In Disguise

SPEAKER_01 4:57

William Shakespeare was one who was acquainted with fairies. Wow. And he he was able he was able to uh see them somehow in ways that others didn't. And he knew that they were some very large fairies. And the fairies came into the plays that he looked at a night's dream is one of those. But you find them his sense of the elementals in many of his plays. Because whoever Shakespeare was, such as a mysterious person, but he was one. And that they could disguise themselves even as human beings sometimes. They had some special work to do. And then they would go back into the world of invisibility to carry out in the tempest. Because he was made of the air, and he was made of the brightness of of the movement of the wind, and he was made of all that, and he didn't have a thick covering skin like we human beings do, and he didn't feel heavy at all. So if he wanted to go all the way around the world in a flash, he could just do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

When you say elementals, do you think of the fairies and the elves and other beings or mainly fairy sort of beings?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

There are well, there are many different kinds of fairies. But there's the grass fairies. Many, they have many different kinds of jobs and they shape themselves accordingly. Because there are some who actually can see them. One of those, and you could read her book.

A Field Guide To Elemental Types

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Her name is Dora Van Galder. Dora Van Galder, and she has a book which is called The Real World of Fairies. You can look it up because she was one who really she grew up way out in the east. She grew up in Java and also in India. And here she was allowed to play freely, like Winslow did when she was a little girl. Her eyes were just able to see. So was so were the eyes of her grandmother and her grandmother before her. And they were open. She could see the real ones. So she wrote about them. And she described them as best she could. She was extraordinary. And uh and she she mentions uh maybe about 15 different kinds of elementals. More than elves and gnomes and silfs and salamanders and uh more than water babies and um and gnomes and now as far as the gnomes are concerned, I want your children uh and your parents to know about gnomes because they're uh one of the the people that I've discovered.

Nancy’s Late Awakening To Fairies

SPEAKER_01 8:23

I didn't used to believe in any of this. I didn't grow up thinking about fairies ever. I didn't know anything about them until I was in my mid-30s. I was already almost an old lady when I went to England.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

That's amazing, Nancy. So you were in your 30s traveling in England?

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Uh I I didn't grow up in I grew up with a bunch of brothers, you know, they were we played lots of games, but we but imagined we and it just that wasn't it wasn't even a word I ever heard as far as I so I I didn't have any any sense of such things at all until uh until I happened into this other world where people's imaginations are very alive. At a place that I went to called Emerson College, that sometimes there were ill elementals who were living in the garden there. And much to my astonishment, one day I had a little game with one of them.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

You have to tell us.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Well, this is how it went.

The Rolling Tape And Playful Beings

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I was thinking after being in England for quite a long time that I'd better go back to America to live. Otherwise I might turn into an English woman or an Irish woman or something, or a Scotswoman. And and uh so I had had all my things packed. I was packing them up and I was uh right there at the college. It was really quiet, the moon was full. And I had a roll of tape like this, and I was using it to close the boxes so that I would be able to ship them home. So I put down the roll, and then I looked down, and where I had put where I'd put this roll of tea, it was way over on the other side of the room. So I went and I picked it up and I said, How did you get over here? And I put it down at my feet again, and then for some reason I I got distracted again. Next thing I knew, I saw it rolling slowly across the floor. It went back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

No way. They were playing with it.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

They were playing with me too. They were playing because as it turned out, I didn't leave after all. So they can be very, very friendly and playful. So one day a friend told me about a book called The Princess and the Goblin, is about a group of elementals that got really perturbed, seriously perturbed with human behavior. So they were upset? They were upset. Now, uh I mean, from my experience, they can be extremely benevolent and playful, uh, but um you do learn, and of course, if you go to Ireland, other places, you know that fears are really working to try to protect their turf.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

And their n their nature, their area.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Their area.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Right, and they love and they love nature and mother earth. And do you feel, Nancy, for children who do love the elementals and earth and nature, is there something children can do to help the elementals?

How Kids Help The Elementals

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Definitely. By loving it even more and observing it even more carefully, and sitting with the bees, letting them come close so they're not afraid of you. And instead of stepping on stomping on the ants, no, really watching their lives with fascination and respect.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

So it's like having a curiosity respect for nature, for earth, for everything around you.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

It's like the children are you children listening, you you do love nature and the earth, and you are it's like the children are a bridge between the humans and the magical worlds, the elementals. Do you feel, Nancy, for children who well, one, two questions before we wrap up. And it's so amazing hearing all of your wisdom. For children who do have like they love the fairies or they love the MLs or gnomes or elementals.

Are Some Humans Part Elemental

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Is there a possibility that a part of them is a fairy or is elemental? As you were mentioning in the beginning, it's like Shakespeare and other um authors and writers and people in the world that we know their names, they were magical. They were, they maybe were partly elemental or elemental in disguise. And so what would you say to children with that question?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Well, if you look carefully, you can see some people are still partly elemental. My doctor, uh here where I live, you know, when I first saw him, I thought, oh, here he's very tall, very thin. His ears are still a little bit pointy. He wears shoes that look like fairy shoes, even though they're size 12 or so, because he has big, big feet. Big tall man. And he has is very, very adept with his hands and with his perception. And I said, Oh, when I looked at him, I didn't want to tell him, but I said, This is a man who's still part fairy. He's still part elf or fairy or something. Uh and then it turned out, of course, he comes from Ireland. And so when I f I first visited Ireland, I began to see that in certain people I met, that they were still living very close with with the uh elemental world, and that it was living in their bodies, in their in their hand gestures, in their in the way that they were communicating and with their sensitivity, which sometimes didn't fit in so easily with the human world. So the answer is, oh yes, I think so. But there are many different kinds of elementals that actually live close within human beings, and we kind of, you know, we're sort of betwixt in between.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Well, and and that is such an important point, too, that sometimes when you do do have a strong connection or are a living elemental, you do feel a little bit different. You do feel maybe you feel a little bit alone on the outside of the human world because you are in between.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

In between, and you have some sensitivities which you kind of regretfully notice that other people don't have, that you do have.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

And also, Nancy, is there a way for children or anyone listening to connect with the elementals more to develop a stronger ability to connect with them in whatever way that is?

Practices For True Connection

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Seeing, sensing, feeling.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

I think the first thing is to say to yourself, I want true connection with them. I want to have direct experience if they're real. And so you ask for the truth, and I think that is the true experience for yourself. I think that's a very good first step. And then we open all of our pores, our skin, our hearing, our seeing, our tasting, our all of our senses, and then curiosity. So first of all, yes, I want my own experience to be true. And second, oh, I'm allowed to be as curious as I want to be. I can be curious because maybe there's a curiosity out there that's trying to meet me.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Well, and that curiosity is so beautiful that you talk of that you're talking about because then when you are curious, and children are always curious, there's just you naturally have that openness you're in your heart, you're kind there's a kindness.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

They can feel that way, we know even a little bear or if your heart is is is clean and clear and kind, then they they don't have to be afraid of you. So we have to be very, you know, very sensitive the way they are in order to sense them.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Like so it's so it's like the sign might be that so subtle, so quiet, just so gentle. But maybe your heart, your heart will know. Well, Nancy, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and all your knowledge of, and I'm sure we're just scratching the surface, but your knowledge of the fairies, the elementals, and the worlds in between.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Well, thank you for the delightful privilege of seeing you again in the after all these years and and and communing with you.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Thank you for joining me and the fairies on our fairy podcast. It is an honor to have you with us.

Free Gifts And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Take a moment to notice how much lighter and brighter you feel after connecting with the fairies and the beautiful energy of your own heart. If you want more opportunities to be part of fairy school, the fairies have some special gifts for you. They would love to offer you a free month of fairy letters filled with fairy practices, fairy news, and fairy wonders. The fairies and I would also love to offer you a free 30-minute coaching session where you can connect with your heart magic and inner sparkle even more. And we host a free fairy school class on YouTube live every Monday at 3 p.m. Mountain time. You can find more information at winslowvale.com. We can't wait to share more fairy adventures, stories, and practices with you on our next episode. Thank you for listening. See you next time.