Many people's paths involve working with spirits, either the spirits of nature, spiritual beings, spirits of the dead or other spirits. Many of us also have a cultural lean to our practice that flavors the words we use and the beings we call upon. I consider my path Norse-fusion witchcraft, so while I do absolutely use words and ideas from other areas of the world, my default is Norse.
So I work with landwights and housewights and am slowly expanding my vocabulary and practice to include other spiritual beings. And some of the time I think about this as my way of of naming local spirits, but other times I wonder if we don't bring spirits with us when we travel...or call them to us if we work with spirits that are not native to where we currently live.
Many types of spirits, especially those that are considered fey, are localized. Their stories grew in a particular area, and even though cultures across the globe might have 'trickster spirits' or 'house spirits', the particular type of spirit has distinctions, it is different.
To me, this is an extension of how I view deities. I don't think that Freyja and Cupid are 'the same' just because they are both love deities. It's a bit less clear with spirits, because most of the time we aren't talking about a single named spirit, but rather a classification of beings. But just like I wouldn't consider "Irish men" and "Australian men" to be the same...they are both still men, so they kind of are.
This brings to my mind the question of whether or not, when I call out to the 'wights of my land', am I using a foreign name to address local spirits or am I actually calling foreign spirits to come and live with me and inhabit the land I am on?
My personal thought is a bit of both. First, I think that spirits view physical space differently than we do. I don't think they travel in the same ways...with the same limitations. So if I call on a spirit from across the globe, it can come to me regardless of the distance between us.
But I also think that some spirits are tied to very specific environments. Think about the idea of a dryad, a tree spirit. A very common believe about dryads is that they are tied to their tree. Now there is some debate on whether this is a specific tree, a tree in a specific forest, or a specific type of tree (ash trees or oak trees for example), but that they are not able to stay away from their tree/s for long. So, if I were somewhere with no trees at all, and I were to call on a dryad, it either may not come or may not be able to stay long. I think that there are many spirits that have these kind of ties to land features or particular areas of land...or even specific items (and buildings can be an anchor for them).
I also think that some spirits become attached to people, whether it is an individual, a family, a bloodline or a culture. I think ancestor spirits are most likely to have this kind of attachment. And I think that some of these types of spirits travel with us when we move. Especially when a big chunk of people move, the spirits that they work with as a culture will be drawn to move with them.
Modern life gives us really interesting questions to examine, when it comes to spirits. In America, for example, many people hold a strong cultural connection to other countries, the country of their genetic origins. They may have immigrated over generations ago, but they still consider themselves German or Chinese or Nigerian. And I think that the spirits of their people are drawn to where there are large groups of that ethnicity, or places that have become cultural hotspots. There are more Chinese spirits in Chinatown than there would be in Little Italy.
This got me thinking about feelings of homesickness. Whether you are away from home or if you feel that 'home' is somewhere other than where you live, sometimes you feel these really intense feelings of missing home. In a way, it reminds me of when you are talking to someone who is far away....you are feeling that connection which is reminding you of what you don't have right now. And it makes me wonder if some of our feelings of homesickness is intensified when the spirits of home visit us and remind us of that place that we are missing.
This can also be experienced by an intense connection to a place we've never been. We might have started developing a relationship with spirits that are connected to that place, and so now we have that connection, and are feeling it. We may not even be aware of the nature of the spirits we are connecting with, but they have ties to the place, so now we do to.
I don't feel like spirits become invasive in the same way that foreign plants and animals do. If you bring a plant or animal into a new environment, sometimes they become pests because there are no natural competitors or predators for them. While I do feel like there can be competition between spirits, especially if, for example, there is only one real lake in the area, and there are already local spirits there, if a foreign lake spirit were to come to the area, there might be some friction. But most of the time, I think that immigrant spirits maintain their homeland roots, and act as sort of visitors, so you may find it easier to connect with them at the local lake, but they still call their native lake home.
Home spirits I think are very unique. Many times old homes have spirits themselves, but I tend to think of house spirits as spirits that inhibit a house with you rather than the spirit of the physical house itself. I think we can bring our house spirits with us when we move, or we can invite new spirits into a house (and banish a pesky old house spirit, especially if the previous tenants were not so pleasant and attracted a troublesome house spirit). Out of all the spirits I have known, house spirits seem the most malleable, they adjust to the people living in their house, especially if you reach out to them.
We associate so many spirits with physical features, it can be hard for us to break free from the idea that spirits are locked into one area. I think that it is well worth exploring the ways in which spirits immigrate and travel, and the ways in which we can work with spirits who have strong ties to places far away from our physical location. There is a lot to be gained by working with the spirits that inhabit the spaces around you, but I don't think that working with local spirits prevents you from also developing relationships with spirits who originate from further away. As humans have migrated and spread out over the globe, spirits have followed us.
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