Worldwide Fairy land
1 Whereas Hodson, self-effacing author of a dozen books, depicts fairy-
1 land with the finesse of a hard-point etcher, Leadbeater, talented oc-
I cultist, popular lecturer, thirty-third-degree Mason, former Anglican
priest, and self-declared bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, paints
a broad colorful canvas with bold and convincing strokes. In contrast to
Hodson's parochial consorting with domestic British spirits, Leadbeater
displays the cosmopolitan panache of a world traveler.
Having observed all sorts of exotic specimens around the globe,
Leadbeater speaks of an immense number of subdivisions of nature
spirits varying in intelligence and disposition just like human beings,
their diverse races inhabiting different countries, the members of one
race tending to keep together. Some he describes as being common in
one country, rare in another, while others are to be found almost any-
where.All have their own colors to mark the difference between tribe
and species, just as birds have different plumage, and, as with birds, the
most brilliantly colored are found in tropical countries.
And whereas humanity occupies but a small part of the surface of
the globe,"entities at a corresponding level on other lines of evolution"
not only crowd the earth, says Leadbeater, "but populate the enormous
plains of the sea and the fields of the air."
With gusto he contrasts the vivacious, rollicking orange-and-purple
or scarlet-and-gold mannikins that dance among the vineyards of Sicily
with the gray-and-green creatures who move more sedately among the
oaks and furze-covered heaths in Brittany or the golden brown "good
people" who haunt the hillsides of Scotland.
Noting that the emerald green variety is most common in England,
he recounts having seen them in the woods of France and Belgium,