Preface D ix
Such an approach might provide data as surprising as was accumu-
lated in The Secret Liji fePlants, perhaps even more so. Might not the
mystery of plant growth-from the strange and beautiful specimens of
the Amazon to the common buttercup or daisy-be better explained
by the tender care of invisible nature spirits as described by clairvoyant
theosophists than by the impersonal formulae of mathematics or the
sourceless promptings of gene and DNA?
While Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian clairvoyant, perhaps the greatest
philosopher of the century, developer of anthroposophy from theoso-
phy, was declaring that the elements-from hydrogen all the way up
the scale-could be consciously motivated by intelligence, Besant and
Leadbeater were pursuing their ultimate physical atom into the "astral"
land of fairy. Why not follow in their footsteps?
What had so far cooled my enthusiasm for fairy dowsing were the
bowdlerized tales of the Brothers Grimrn and the saccharine pedantry
of the fairy world of Disney. Surely a truer, more brilliant, more vivie-
ing world of nature spirits must be clamoring to be verified.
Twenty years ago when I first thought of researching that world, Sir
George Trevelyan, British sponsor of that extraordinary educational
device, an ambulant university, the Wrealun Trust, told me at Findhorn
if I wished to know about fairies I must study the occult world of
Rudolf Steiner. It has taken me so long because there are 490 books on
or by Steiner in the Library of Congress.
To Steiner, it is only occult knowledge, virtually what was taught in
the mystery schools of antiquity, that can lead to knowledge of the
world from which our world is derived and can lead to the world of
fairy. Nor is such knowledge obtainable by means of our ordinary fac-
ulties; it is only obtainable clairvoyantly or "outside" the body, by means
"that lie hidden in the soul, like a seed in the earth."The resulting data,
"the single, undivided property of all mankind," does not, says Steiner,
admit of differing interpretations any more than does mathematics.
Then came the world of shamanism and more research. As oc-
cultism and shamanism are twin forks of one primordial wisdom her-
itage, I found the shamanic legacy on nature spirits agreeing almost
completely with that of the occultist. The great German anthropolo-
gist Gerardo Reichel Dolmatoff, expert on South American Indians,