There are many approaches and techniques in Faery Seership practices that make it a distinctive path to spiritual and magical development. These qualities make themselves clear throughout this book. Some of the techniques are specific to certain Vision Keys or spirit beings engaged as you work with the Tree of Enchantment. These distinctive qualities can be challenging for seekers who are accustomed to the practices of ritual and ceremonial magic inherent in most streams of the Western magical tradition. For example, in Faery Seership, there is no use of invocation or evocation. Instead, it works with a process that draws outward the inner forces that are always present as a part of the living inscape of a place. By inscape, I mean the underworld of a place, or what is often termed as “the power of place,” as well as other states of life like the ancestral forces that are always present in the underworld, although perhaps not connected to the location of the working.
Techniques in Western traditions often employ practices like complex ceremonial patterns, verbal invocations, deity work, aspecting (assuming god or goddess forms), evocations, and the use of magical tools. As practitioners of these traditions enter into Faery Seership work, they are often perplexed at how, or even if, their practices fit with Faery Seership, which uses techniques for traveling, meditation, engagement of inner contact, bridging (mediating inner contact to the surface world), arousal of the wild force, enchantment, and inter-plane partnerships, to name just a few. Faery magic is folk-based in its approach, not temple-based. So its techniques are simple, direct, quick, and organic. Its tools tend to be inexpensive, if they cost anything at all.
Anyone from any tradition can work with these techniques as long they understand that Faery Seership has techniques and paradigms unique to its practice. You cannot merely graft the practices of other systems onto Faery Seership. For instance, you simply cannot invoke or command a Faery being to do anything. To do so is contrary to the cooperative nature of the tradition. However, the disciplines learned through the application of other traditions and subsystems, like the ability to visualize, meditate, and mediate, can prove very useful to students of Faery Seership.
Nearly all of the visionary and magical processes in Faery Seership involve seven primary stages. These stages allow you to open the way into Faery and other realms, access the abilities of the walkers, exchange with multiple levels and varieties of living beings of different types of power and wisdom, and mediate these powers into the surface world. All of the techniques employ the use of the core traditional images used in Faery Seership, which include the following:
The seven stages involve generalized techniques and changes in consciousness used regardless of which of the core images are employed. Note that I did not refer to these images as “symbols,” because they do not symbolize or represent anything. Simply put, they are the actual patterns that exist in the natural and spirit world. The following practical exercises will lead you through the seven-stage process.
The seven-stage process is performed in its entirety, and in the order given, when a major visionary or traveling process is about to be performed. Each stage can be performed by itself and still have some effect, but the potency of the process lies in following the sequence. As you use the process, you will become more accustomed to it and begin to memorize it. Once memorized, the whole process up to stage five takes less than ten minutes to perform. I have provided a detailed description of each stage and its associated techniques, as well as exercises that you can integrate into ongoing practices.
It is important to note that the first stage of the process, anchoring, is used again in the final stage. When the whole process is used in sequence, this technique is only used twice—once at the beginning of the process and once at the end.
As a caveat, although most of the stages are always used in some form in any working in Faery Seership, there are some simple magical practices in Faery Seership that do not involve all of the stages, practices like cleansing or attuning a space, making offerings, hallowing, and praying.
Every journey has a beginning (a point of initiation) and an end (a point of return). For the seeker of the Faery roads, anchoring is the stage in which you establish these two points. Because you are sending your awareness from the primary point of existence for your incarnate life (your surface walker) through the vehicles of your dream or star walkers into other worlds, the surface world is the beginning and return point for all visions and journeys. For this reason, all visionary techniques used to engage and exchange with Faery will always begin with the anchoring stage.
In Exercise 2, you affirm your connection to the surface world and your surface walker as the point of reference for the beginning of the vision and for return of awareness from the journey. This exercise uses the seven directional alignments that are, in fact, the daily extension and reference points that your physical body uses to maintain incarnation in the surface world. The steps in the anchoring exercise are not difficult. They simply affirm the obvious.
To prepare for this exercise, sit comfortably in a chair and allow yourself to release all of the cares of the day. With each breath, release more and more tension that is carried away and changed into healthy, aligned forces of healing. R.J. Stewart instructs seekers in his visionary processes (which greatly influenced the development of this stage) to “sense, see, and feel” the presence of these directions. This stage uses the traditional imagery of the Crossroads and central point.
You can use the four compass directions for this practice—facing east, with the south to your right, the west behind you, and the north to your left—but this is not necessary. When you affirm and contact these seven directions, you place your self at the omnipresent Crossroads of magic, which is that luminal place where inner and outer come together in an interwoven tapestry of life and spirit. These seven directions should be affirmed both at the beginning and at end of all vision work.
The second stage in the process involves techniques specific to Faery Seership to attune, align, and enchant your awareness and threefold life (the three walkers), as well as to attune you to the power of place and soul of the land in the location where the work is taking place. There are three primary techniques used in this stage: the Threefold Flame and Doves of the Heart technique, the Opening of the Faery Well, and the Lighting of the Sacred Flame.
You already worked with the threefold flame in Exercise 1. This exercise, while similar, serves as the foundation of the whole visionary process. Please note the subtle differences in the exercise as it is laid here. In your future work with these visionary processes, work with those subtle differences when determining which vision to use.
This exercise is very powerful and healing. It balances the walkers and attunes you to the threefold life. It cannot be overdone and should be repeated daily, if possible, regardless of whether you intend to do any magical or visionary work afterward. The Doves of the Heart aspect is empowered prayer that reaches out to the world and bears forth this balance as a healing. Over time, you may be aware of where the doves take this power. You may also direct it to a specific piece of land, person, or thing that needs healing. Because this power has its own intelligence, it is often best to leave it to go where it may, unconditionally and without contrived control.
Now that you have attuned your consciousness to the three walkers and affirmed your healing place within the threefold life of the world, you must approach and attune to the power and spirit of the place where you are working, as it is the entry point for any working.
The Opening of the Faery Well technique is most effective if performed outside on the land, though it can be performed inside if there are no other options. A large pot of soil can be brought in and used for this (please, no potting soil). However, this is not necessary for it to be effective. This technique parts the physical substance of the surface world (in this case, land) and reveals the sacred and powerful spirit that is always present in the natural world. It also opens contact between you and the soul of the land, and brings you together in a working harmony. The Opening of the Faery Well technique uses the traditional imagery of the Sacred Well.
This exercise should be performed before doing any Faery work on unfamiliar land. In the beginning of your work, it should be performed two to three times weekly for a month to attune to the power of the land where you live or do spiritual work. In fact, it is so attuning that you simply cannot overuse this technique.
The two techniques described above attune you to your self and the inner spirit of the land. The Lighting of the Sacred Flame technique tunes the outer or surface world of the working area to the inner forces and the threefold life of the planet using the traditional image of the threefold flame. To perform this technique, you will need a white pillar candle, preferably glass-enclosed, matches or a lighter, and a taper.
Note: This technique can also be used with a hearth-fire in a fireplace or a balefire, such as an outdoor campfire or enclosed fire. This completes the second stage of the visionary process.
Now that you have anchored yourself and established the surface world as a point of reference, and aligned your walkers to a central line of consciousness and attuned your surface walker to the living soul of the land, you are ready to embark on the third stage—opening the pathways between the surface world and the primal forces of the underworld. To do this, you must enchant the space and all within it, which raises all things to a more subtle energetic level. This process is called Opening the Way, because it opens out what is always present just under the illusionary veneer of form.
Opening the Way involves the use of visionary techniques (for traveling and contact) or hallowing (for raising the mill out of the land or down from the stars) to “thin” a space. Thinning means that you loosen the grip of your outer senses, which tend to crystallize and hold a tight reign on form, and allow the powers of enchantment and otherworldliness to flow into the area of the working. This thinning process prepares the space for engagement between you and otherworldly stages of life and the beings that dwell there. It also calls forth the use of your more subtle senses—intuition, imagination, and visualization.
The two primary techniques used to open the way for otherworldly contact are called Opening the Hidden Paths and Raising the Green Mist of Eternal Spring. They can be used separately, but I advise using them together to enhance the outcomes of the working. The Opening the Hidden Paths technique uses the traditional image of the Crossroads with you, the seeker, as the tree at the center of the four great rivers of life.
This technique aligns the working space to the Cossroads powers and the genius loci as the threshold-keeper for that place. It also tunes the surface walker into the flowing powers of the inner world, which increases and enhances all subsequent work. However, it only works with the local threshold being and thus, by itself, can only open up one layer of the powers of enchantment.
Now that the genius loci has shared with you and opened the power of place, you are ready for the Guardian to open the deeper planetary powers to you. This power is called forth by raising the Green Mist of Eternal Spring, which is a traditional image unto itself.
A word of caution. Although these techniques appear simple, they should not be underestimated. They draw from very old practices and are very potent, as you will experience. For example, Raising the Green Mist employs imagery that heralds a haunting from the otherworld as countless reports and folktales inform us.
Rapture is a folk term used to describe the light trance or luminal state that is the foundation of the Faery Seer's work. This stage of the process is very simple, as you are already in a light rapture from the previous stages. It is characterized by a feeling of slight dizziness, warmth, and a sense of lightheadedness. The rapture allows you to activate the subjective senses of your surface walker so you can relax from its transporting mode of operations into its anchoring and storing modes.
After performing the first three stages, the easiest way to deepen the rapture state described above is to rock forward and backward slowly, as if you were sitting in a rocking chair. Continue this light and comforting rocking, moving from your waist in a simple motion for a minute or so until you feel relaxed and loosened. Note that, just as the Green Mist and the Opening the Way techniques thin a space, the rapture technique thins the senses' grip on the surface world. In the Southern Appalachian conjure practices of my cultural tradition, this technique is called “quaking” and it always heralds a “speaking of the spirit tongue” or “conjure of the spirit.” Once you feel relaxed and in a light trance, you are ready for the next stage of the process, which is the actual visionary, or traveling, work.
Traveling and flying are both old folk terms used to describe the use of visionary techniques, dance, movement, and other means to transfer awareness into the dream or star walkers and to move through the other, non-surface worlds to make contact and exchange with other levels of life and other living creatures of varying levels of power, potency, and wisdom. The folk wisdom of Faery practices and lore has provided us with many visionary images to use as roadmaps into the otherworld where the contact is made. It is not necessary to lay out which one you intend to take. Rather, you can choose from the list of images those that best fit the occasion or just feel right. Many of the images use a visionary passage downward into the land, into ancient stone, or into a sepulcher, which is a house of death (an otherworld interface). This is an important element in visionary process, for it signals your mind to move beyond physical surface substance into a deeper stratum of life-becoming where the gates of life and death are one.
All traveling visualizations are done with the images flowing out of the sacred flame already lit at the center of the room or working area. The images flow out of the flame or the flame changes shape and becomes the image you are using. Sometimes you don't choose the image; the image chooses you. In this case, an image or set of images emerges as soon as you enter a rapture state and focus on the journey at hand. There are a number of re-occurring images in the folklore, as well as in the contemporary practices of my students, as I have listed below. This generalized list is developed in more detail in The Faery Teachings, but here I provide a brief description of imagery that can be used:
Certain images are the hallmark of being present in the Faery realms. These images are indicators that you are, in fact, in the underworld. Here is a generalized, though not complete, list:
Visionary techniques can also be coupled with movement during traveling work. The most commonly used style is the “mill of magic,” which uses hallowing (circular movements around a central point). Hallowing mimics and tunes into the movement of the Earth, Sun, Moon, and stars resident in all things. When you use hallowing, you perform all of the first four stages of the process that lead up to the traveling stage. Then you use any of the traditional visionary images that involve something opening at the center of the working area. Once you have the vision of the opening soundly in your mind and can feel its presence in the room, simply begin moving sun-wise around the central flame, holding inner contact with the visionary opening and using one of the traditional images—a well at the center of the room, or a descending staircase. During the hallowing, feel your dream walker descending into the underworld on the spiral stairs.
Another form of this is used in the Gaelic tradition, where seekers circle a grassy hill nine times counterclockwise, then exclaim “open door, open” three times to open the gates. This is best done during a Full Moon. This technique uses a call from our world to the inner world to open, reveal itself, and permit us entry.
Once you have traveled into the otherworld, beings will present themselves. Initially, it may feel like a “meet and greet.” Over time, consistent contacts will present themselves and become important components of your traveling work. This level of contact usually deepens over time, or other contacts present themselves that become cousins, co-walkers, companions, or deeper levels of contact. This stage is important because it is the primary purpose of the previous five—to make contact with other worlds and other beings and awaken latent forces in the threefold life that quite literally bring you out of spiritual sleep into awakened truth.
Over time, the contacted beings and energetic shifts will gift you with forces that are mediated outward into the surface world, as presented in the final stage of the process.
You can contact different types of beings depending on the level of the Tree of Enchantment you are encountering. In some visions, you may not encounter and contact what may be termed a “being,” but instead encounter “a state of being.” Examples of the beings you may encounter include elementals, Faeries, ancestors, Vision Keys, giants, sleepers, and countless others. Examples of states of being include the River of Blood, the River of Stars, the gates, the Well of Enchantment, the Sacred Stone, the Holy and Formless Fire, the Fountain of Flame, and many others. Both types of encounters produce shifts in you, either energetically (which may be subtle or profound, immediate or latent) or informational (instruction or the transmission of knowledge). Once you and the contact have made your exchange, you return to outer awareness with that information or some other resource for integration.
This final stage involves transferring awareness from your dream walker back to your surface walker and mediating the contacted power to the surface world.
For this exercise, you may simply follow the same images you used in the traveling stage for the return, or use other constructs that present themselves at the end of the vision. For instance, if you climbed down a spiral stairway to enter, you may ascend it to return and you can augment this with the same sun-wise hallowing technique if you used this in the journey into the otherworld. Or if another vision presents itself, such as a haunted wind that lifts you back to the surface world, follow that vision. But you must always use a return vision to signal to the walkers that the travel work is coming to closure.
Once you have returned to the surface world, open your eyes and feel the power of the contact flow out through your eyes and your whole body into the working area, and then out into the world. It is an intelligent power and will know where it needs to flow and fuse itself. This aspect of the work mediates the power between the worlds. Occasionally, you may know before your vision work that the power will be fused onto an object like a charm, talisman, or stone. If this is the case, always have that object available at the working area for the transfer of power at the end of the visionary work.
The return and fusion stage will always follow a logical format:
Now the work is finished. Journal what occurred, especially if instruction was given by the contact. The use of a journal becomes very important, as patterns of exchange will begin to emerge over time. These patterns are very significant in your life and the life of the contacts made.