The Fairy Tale Lab
In the midst of multiple, interwoven crises, we find ourselves at a threshold. A fork in our future appears briefly: between continued destruction, or survival. To choose survival, we must choose a world of systems, discourses and possibilities for mutual healing within the more-than-human.
We may not yet know what this emerging world will look like. But what we do have is a tool common to every culture on the planet, that has helped since time immemorial in navigating the unknown, often dangerous, worlds between worlds. That is the fairy tale.
As the climate crisis, indeed the polycrisis, unfolds a tale of epic, planetary and unfathomable proportions, we believe the fairy tale can help.
The Fairy Tale Lab holds that other worlds do already exist, but are smothered by globalized capitalism and its upholding ontology. Decolonization is the most critical process in releasing this stranglehold so that multiple worlds can fluorish. But how do inheritors of these strangleholds find their way out, to be able to see what else is possible?And how can communication and understanding occur between worlds?
This is where we harness fairy tale, to loosen ourselves into the magic and mystery needed to find our way to reconnect beyond ourselves.Fairy tale becomes a tool for reclaiming, healing and holding other worlds. Our crises call for re-enchantment.
Working definition of a fairy: A fairy occurs only in relationship. Only in space between space. Fairies - and their counterparts found around the world, "hidden beings" ranging from Hawaiian menehune to Icelandic huldufólk to Maori patupaiarehe - are mystical mediators between human and more-than-human worlds. They defy "objectivity" and thus are deemed "unreal" within the naturalist ontology that has characterized Western society since the Cartesian split of mind from matter, and ensuing industrial revolution and extractivist market economy. A re-enchantment that releases us and fairies from materialist, capitalist paradigms can help us connect beyond this world, to find new ones.
FOUR PILLARS
NATURE-BASED
MYSTICISM
Engaging mystical experience that roots and re-connects within more-than-human worlds, upholding an ethic of interbeing
RELATIONALITY
Exploring what can only exist within relationship,
and acting accordingly
RESEARCH
Drawing together academic, Indigenous and spiritual thought with liminal, magical, land-based and cross-cultural framings
DISPATCHES
Opening windows into other worlds, widening perspectives with co-creation and exchange
sadie rittman
CREATOR
Sadie is an award-winning writer and researcher focused on ecological re-enchantment, hidden worlds, and meaning-making in metacrisis. She started researching hidden worlds as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College, with a grant to study beliefs in elves. Since then, she has travelled in more than 50 countries, co-creating art and research with cultural and spiritual practitioners, seers, healers, shamans, scholars, activists and artists. She has an MA in sociocultural anthropology from the University of British Columbia.
Sadie was born in New York, grew up in Singapore, and has lived in seven countries on four continents. She partially attributes this -- forever toggling between different worlds, hoping that each can co-exist within one body -- to her concern with hidden worlds.