Will o' the Wisp

Chapter I - What is Will o' the wisp?

Will o' the wisp is one of the numerous names given to the unexplainable lights met in marshes, at night. They were believed to mislead travellers from the well-known path into the marshes, where they usually left them. The tradition is very common in the British Isles, where the Will o' the wisp has different names from one region to another.

As any other phenomenon that cannot be explained, Will o' the wisp is surrounded by many different legends. In numerous folk tales, it is believed to be a negative spirit, belonging either to the dead, or to some extraterrestrial intelligence. Thus, it is mostly seen as a mischievous spirit that can bring travellers into dangerous situations.

However, there are also voices that speak about Will o' the wisp as some guardians of a well-hidden treasure. In this case, it did not mislead travellers, but took them to the place where valuable things were buried. The treasure was hidden either in the ground or in water and could only be discovered in the presence of fire. It might also require magical tricks, but one thing is sure: Will o' the wisps are absolutely necessary. The explanation for this belief is simple: when someone hid the treasures, they set some lights to know the exact place, so that they could return anytime they wished and take the things back. The guardians had another assignment, too: they had to use the fire in order to keep the precious metals clean.

Apart from being malevolent spirits, Will o' the wisps are, in some places, associated to the souls of dead people that could enter neither the Heaven nor the Hell. They were doomed to wander on earth forever and because of their envy of the mortals, they led them astray. In connection with this interpretation there is also another one which says that they are the souls of unbaptized or stillborn children that move from Heaven to Hell, without being able to enter either of them. Modern occultists found some connections between the Will o' the wisp and the salamander, a type of spirit wholly independent from humans, unlike the ghosts, which are said to have been humans at first. They fit the description of some kind of fairies that were human or not.

They are also interpreted as omens, bad omens in general. For instance, people believed they lit the path for a coming funeral, from the house of the deceased to the graveyard. When they appeared in graveyards, one thought that they were corpse lights. They also foresaw tragedies that might occur.

The way they misled travellers was easy: one would think it was the light of a house or camp and tried to reach it, but the closer they got, the farther the light was. Then, suddenly, the light extinguished and let the unfortunate person in deep dark, far from any human. Some stories say that if one met this kind of spirit, their fate depended on how they treated it. As a result, it could either guide them to get out of the wood, or get them lost.

Other times, they would fly around one's head as a swarm of flies, dizzying them and getting them lost. To get rid of them, people should stick a knife in the trunk of a tree and bend the blade. The little light would then be attracted by iron, would try to pass between it and the trunk and would get stuck there.

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10. http://www.rod.beavon.clara.net/huestis.htm

11. http://www.rod.beavon.clara.net/walter.htm

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13. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/wfl/wfl02.htm

14. http://www.stavacademy.co.uk/mimir/willowisp.htm

15. http://www.superseventies.com/russellleon3.html

16. http://www.wisp.house.cx/

17. http://www.xprojectmagazine.com/archives/paranormal/halloween.html

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