I was quite excited to find faeries (to use the archaic spelling) in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not only because I love faeries but because, being Wiccan, they are something I believe in – as weird as that is to admit nowadays. However, during Shakespeare’s time I’m sure, faeries were a serious thing to many people. People desperately tried not to offend them. Today still, in Norway, people ask the faeries’ permission before building roads and houses. They can be devilishly mischievous if offended.

Midsummer, or Litha as we Wiccans call it, is a very important holiday. Although it is the height of the summer, and the Wiccan Lord/the Sun is at his greatest strength, it is also a time to remember that the dark part of the year is coming. The days slowly begin to grow shorter as winter approaches. It is also an important time for people who believe in faeries because it is said to be one of their greatest holidays. The veil between the human world and the faerie kingdom is at its thinnest, just like during Halloween, or Samhain as Wiccans call it. This is pretty apparent in Shakespeare’s Midsummer. For example, when Titania and Oberon meet, they explain their feud and what has happened in the human world because of it:

2.1.104-120* – Titania: “The human mortals want their winter here. No night is now with hymn or carol blessed. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger, washes all the air, that rheumatic diseases do abound. And thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, and on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries, and the mazed world by their increase now knows not which is which. And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension; we are their parents and original.”

The last sentence of Titania’s rant reminds me of another pagan holiday: that of Beltane. Beltane occurs on May 1^st. The mythology (story) of Beltane is that the Wiccan God (the Sun) is his most fertile and he unites with the Goddess (the Earth) in a sacred marriage. From their union, summer blossoms and grows stronger until Midsummer when the Earth’s fertility is at its height. Because Oberon and Titania are fighting, the Earth’s seasons are being negatively affected. Whatever the divine couple does seems to affect the Earth in some way. There is a famous spiritual axiom that pertains to this: “as above, so below. As within, so without.” It is from the Kybalion, a book about Hermetic philosophy. The same axiom is mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer: “thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” It basically means that whatever happens in the spirit world, happens in or affects the material world; and that whatever happens inside a person, happens outside in society. Because Oberon and Titania’s relationship is currently in turmoil, so is the Earth’s seasons and temperatures. Faeries are often thought to be nature spirits, it makes a lot of sense.

Dissension is not only between Oberon and Titania but between almost all the male/female pairs in the play so far: Hermia and Demetrius, Helena and Demetrius, Hippolyta and Theseus, Egeus and Hermia. As it is in the faerie world, so it is in the human world.

*Because I do not yet have the textbook, I am using a pdf of the play so I apologize if the numbering is different from your version.