ApplesMeadWhite flowersPerfumeA love letterLetting go what must be forgotten
Invocation Approach
Tone
Luminous and brief
Address
FandPearl of BeautyLady of the Síd
Relationship
The love that belongs to another world and cannot be brought home
Warning
The story ends with a cloak of forgetting do not ask her to make it stay
Resonance
Those in an impossible love those who must forget
Symbols
Sea birdSilver branchCloakThe island
Mythology Summary
Fand is a woman of the síd, daughter of Áed Abrat and wife of Manannán mac Lir, who appears to Cú Chulainn as a sea-bird and calls him to the Otherworld in Serglige Con Culainn, 'The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn'. He goes to her and stays a month; when Emer comes with weapons, Fand agrees to go back to Manannán, who shakes his cloak of forgetfulness between her and Cú Chulainn so that neither remembers. It is one of the few Irish stories in which the Otherworld woman is given her own voice and her own grief.
Modern Practice
Fand is called in impossible love and in the work of forgetting what cannot be kept. Her practice is the clean ending: the letter written and not sent, the cloak shaken out, the honest goodbye.