Asian Fairies

A servant looses an object in a pool of water and dives down after it to find his employers deceased daughter spinning at a spinning wheel in a tiny house at the bottom of the lake. In return for his silence she gives him supernatural luck at gambling.

Another man sees a women in a dress with patches of leaves emerge from the woods floating above the ground. A girl is given leaves by a tall red man and she gains the power of foresight.

Some have argued that there are no Asian fairies, that the term fairy and the species of mythology is isolated to the Celtic lands. And while it's true that the word fairy is Celtic, the word is used to describe a much older set of beings. In China these beings are called Shin and in Japan they are called Kami.

To understand Asian Fairies we must understand the meaning of the word fairy. One must also understand that fairies have a much older origin in the Indo-European, Altaic, and Ugric beliefs who lived in Central Eurasia and spread into Asia and Europe. In Asia these people became the Japanese, Koreans, Mongolians,  The Indians, the Kalasha, and more.


As with European Fairies Asian fairies are most often connected with nature, living in the mountains which in many Asian countries were the other world in mythology, the realm of spirits and the dead. Fairies, Kami, Shin, etc often live within trees, rocks, springs of water, rivers, the sky, under the earth, and of course in old houses or with their decedents on earth.



Understanding the nature of Asian Fairies is complex and so I'll be releasing an art gallery to describe them in there various countries.