Editing Fairy (section)

=== Fairies as demons ===
A recorded Christian belief of the 17th century cast all fairies as demons.<ref>Lewis (1994) p. 137.</ref> This perspective grew more popular with the rise of [[Puritanism]] among the [[Reformed Church]] of England (See: [[Anglicanism]]).<ref>Briggs (1976) "Origins of fairies" p. 320.</ref> The [[hobgoblin]], once a friendly household spirit, became classed as a wicked goblin.<ref>Briggs (1976) p. 223.</ref> Dealing with fairies was considered a form of witchcraft and punished as such.<ref name="Briggs409-12">Briggs (1976) "Traffic with fairies" and "Trooping fairies" pp. 409–12.</ref> In [[William Shakespeare's]] ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'', [[Oberon]], king of the faeries, states that neither he nor his court fears the church bells, which the author and Christian apologist [[C. S. Lewis]] cast as a politic disassociation from faeries<ref>Lewis (1994) p. 138.</ref> although Lewis makes it clear that he himself does not consider fairies to be demons in his chapter on the topic ("The Longaevi" or "long-livers") from ''The Discarded Image''. In an era of intellectual and religious upheaval, some Victorian reappraisals of mythology cast deities in general as metaphors for natural events,<ref>Silver (1999) p. 44.</ref> which was later refuted by other authors (See: ''[[The Triumph of the Moon]]'', by [[Ronald Hutton]]). This contentious thought environment contributed to the modern meaning of 'fairies'.