One of Brian Froud‘s hallucinogenic faerie illustrations from the classic 1978 book Faeries.
"Faerie fair and faerie bright;Outside the dramatic inventions of Shakespeare, Drayton, Herrick et al., most accounts of human interaction with the faeries from the Early Modern period are derived from the disparate records of witch trials. These records often chronicle the accused witches' testimony (usually under torture) of consorting with faerie familiars, for the purposes of divination, healing and sometimes flying to Sabbaths. Historians such as Carlo Ginzberg and Emma Wilby have teased out the detail from the trial records to create a convincing argument that they encode genuine evidence of shamanic practice amongst the witches, who were frequently able to interact with the faeries in a disassociated altered state of consciousness. The records supply us with the largest body of documentary evidence for the ontology of the faeries between the 16th and 18th centuries. But there is one unusual case that comes down to us from different sources, and yet contains many of the motifs usually contained in the witch trials. This is the story of Anne Jefferies from St Teath, close to the north coast of Cornwall.
Come and be my chosen sprite.
Moon shines bright, waters run clear,
I am here, but where's my faerie dear?"
Attributed to Anne Jefferies in Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England (1865)
Comment: Ed and Lorraine Warren were investigators on this case.