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Greetings! I am a humble creator of creative creations. I have ideas, and I like to turn those ideas into visual art, music, or just words. Then I share those ideas.
I hope you like them.
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What is 'sluagh sidhe?'
The ancient Celts who first arrived on the island that would one day be known as Ireland found a number of hollow hills. Today, we know that these are burial mounds, artificial hills built by some previous peoples who had lived on the island. A narrow tunnel led down to a cluster of three small chambers in the centre of the hill. The ashes of their dead would be left in these chambers until the winter solstice.
But the Celts didn't know that. They called these hollow hills 'sidhe' (the word is pronounced like the English word 'she'), and they made stories to explain what the sidhe were, and where they came from. In these stories, the gods of the ancient Irish Celts had crafted the sidhe as portals into their otherworld, beneath the island. The beings who lived in this otherworld were known as 'daoine sidhe' (pronounced THEE-na SHE), the people of the hollow hills.
Over time, the myths of the daoine sidhe morphed into the faerie mythos, stories of elves and gobins and leprechauns and merfolk and many other magical, mystical beings besides. Soon, the term sidhe was used to refer to any faerie creature, such as the leannan sidhe, the faerie lover, and the bean sidhe, the faerie woman. Among these tales were the stories of the sluagh sidhe, the restless dead, the spirits who were neither welcome in heaven, hell, nor even in the faerie otherworld.
They were said to fly across the land at night, coming always from the west, haranguing people and destroying property wherever they went. They were known to enter the windows of the recently dead, in order to steal away the soul of the deceased before it could safely pass to its rightful resting place. Sometimes they would kidnap the people they encountered, the souls of any such victims would be doomed to join their throng as they flew endlessly across the land...
Why would you name your site after these frightening creatures?
I am fond of Celtic tales of the fae. They evince a balance of whimsy with absolute seriousness. They were capricious; often, an encounter with the fae would be dangerous or even deadly. However, finding the right fae at the right time could result in incredible fortune. They represent to me a force of unbridled creativity and, for lack of a better word, a carefree nature.
At the same time, I am drawn to somewhat morbid aesthetics. From darkwave music to gothic literature, from dystopian fiction to gritty tales of anti-heroes, I sometimes find joy in expressing myself in macabre manners (as well as enjoying other people's eerie works of creativity).
What better way to represent these two seemingly opposed viewpoints than with the creatures that embody both?
Do come in...
I hope you enjoy what you see, hear, and read.