Poised at the threshold of shadows and substance, I peer into the ancient presence of a map forgotten and hidden in my flesh, hidden in a thorn-covered well.
A golden lock and a silver key in exchange for the cup of eternity is all that I may offer, but they are the most sacred tolls on the hidden road.
The fivefold rose blossoms of red and white, of tears and blood, prick the hands that pry.
May I drink the shadows from this holy well, whose waters rise from deep within me and who reveals a hidden light encased in stone?
Dare I peer into the ancient depths, into the eyes of a dreamer as old as time?
I can only offer a heart of innocence and the seeker's feet to tread this ancient stone stairway that leads downward, inward into the soul of the world.
I pray for the redemption and wisdom from that sacred well of enchantment that I may remember and tread once again upon the sacred land, spun by threads of fate and a golden cord of vision.
This first step, most profound, is my first step from the sleep of a thousand lives!
All of the material and work in the preceding chapters dealt with the Faery visionary and magical processes, as well as the Ancestor and the Guardian keys. That material focused on re-attuning you and your surface walker to your ancestral blood and to the collective ecological tapestry we think of in nature as intelligent contacts and unique spiritual states of being. Note that I said “re-attune,” because humanity is an aspect of nature, even though it has created a self-imposed, illusionary division between itself and the larger collective, thereby leaving it out of tune with its place within a larger planetary family and purpose. The re-attunement process moves your human-centered awareness out of a self- and societal-imposed state of isolation and loneliness, out of exploitation and arrogance, into a place of oneness within yourself, your family, our species, and all of life as embodied in nature and its mystical laws. This attunement process is absolutely imperative if you want to move deeper into underworld contact with the forces of destiny, planetary vision, chthonic power, and redemption. It is a vital step in the “knowing” process, because it requires that you claim your place within human ancestry (past and present) and within the life of the planet, and then to see both as part of one unfolding planetary vision. This part of the process begins to answer the sacred questions addressed in the first chapter of this book.
This two-step process of seeking the wisdom within your bloodlines and then seeking the wisdom at the source of that bloodline within the whole of nature is powerfully transformative and healing. It is also one of the most neglected aspects of the quest for spiritual truth and healing. Few spiritual approaches, especially those of orthodox systems, stress the need to link to ancestral wisdom and power as a constant and living force. They do not encourage their adherents to seek oneness with nature as an overarching powerful and inclusive intelligence as a prerequisite to making direct contact with their purpose for being and an experience of the living presence of God, Goddess, Spirit, or All That Is. The inherent philosophy in this approach is that the world of form was your gateway into this surface world and it is your gateway into the realms of spirit. This approach forces you to hallow matter, make sacred your body, honor the power and wisdom of nature, and engage the ever-present potency of ancestral spirits. The process of linking the golden lock and silver key brings about an integrative alchemy that unlocks deep, ancient, and dormant components of your consciousness that are stored in your brain, body, bones, blood, and breath. These are the stones that form the container for the sacred waters of the Well of Enchantment.
The Well of Enchantment (hereafter called the Well) is not a Vision Key per se. It is the first of three major threshold points you encounter as you move into contact with the powers of the Tree of Enchantment. The three thresholds are the Well of Enchantment, the Stone, and the Holy and Formless Fire. The Well embodies an opening of inner sight and the changes in consciousness that occur when you attune to the forces of the Ancestor. It then brings that inner power and heritage to the Guardian to be unlocked and united with a greater pool of life and balance. The Well marks a major shift in your consciousness as your awareness is directed deeper into the underworld powers and the primal plan they contain. This threshold is that potent place that dwells at the intersection of light and shadow, free will, and the world soul (nature). It is called the Well of Enchantment because it opens out the primal visionary forces of the underworld and the magic therein.
The traditional image of the Well is an ancient, weathered, circular, and stone-rimmed basin filled with azure-blue waters that rise from the deepest levels of the underworld. At the center of the Well, the eye of the Dreamer in the Land peers up from unfathomable depths. The Dreamer is the core planetary consciousness that dwells as the midnight sun that burns at the center of the planet and dreams the surface world into being. Everything, including humanity, is an element of that dream. The Dreamer is the fifth Vision Key on the Tree and will be dealt with in a later chapter.
Rising up and out of the Well are the spectral hands of the ancestors and Faery races, which spin out from the web and draw you to remember, re-unite, and redeem. In short, the Well is about memory, sacred memory. The waters of the Well already run through your surface-walker body. These waters hold ancient memory that awaits a quickening. This quickening occurs when the lock and key of the previous Vision Keys come into union.
The sacred blue water of the Well contains the amniotic fluid of the Mother Earth's belly, which gestates the whole world, seen and unseen, and grants it life and a part of the true ancestral heritage and lineage of life. These waters hold the memory of the first plan and thus are the star waters of the void that fill the Earth with life, vitality, and the primal dream that stirred creation into dreaming beyond its bounds. To drink of these fluids is to awaken every fiber in your being to the powerful visions and magical force that dwells in the very substance of the surface world, which is usually anesthetized by a free will intoxicated by its own choices. The waters wash your eyes so that matter and all of the other curtains of life part and reveal a living world of light, wisdom, power, and visions woven together around a central vision. That vision rises from the heart of the Dreamer, is woven into pattern by the Weaver Goddess, and is marshaled into balance by the Guardian.
The opening of this sacred Well requires that you rectify some paradoxes and resolve its fear of nature. It is the key to the forces of the underworld, which, in turn, is the original plan for you, me, all creatures of the Earth, and the planet herself. The realization that you are a part of a larger plan, a greater vision where all of life has its role, is very healing and humbling. It is healing because it re-unites you with life instead of dividing you from it. It humbles you because you realize that you are not the center of the universe—the planet is, and you serve as a part (albeit, an important one) of the planet's destiny. Opening the Well reveals the underlying processes of nature, its inherent wisdom, the original planetary vision, and your purpose within these processes. Within the Well are the timeless waters of memory and the access point to the stars within the planet and within yourself, for in truth they are one and the same.
In the philosophy of Faery Seership, there is no other way to the heart of the universal Creator but through hallowing the underworld. By hallowing, I mean you must travel into the sacred and primal powers of your underworld through the Ancestor, then bring that stream of living consciousness to the larger ocean of life embodied in the Guardian's natural law. This process redeems the blood that flows through you and opens your connection to the deep abiding vision and power of the underworld. There is no way into the underworld except by unifying the human natural elements within you in communion with the larger natural world through the Guardian. The questions for you are: “What blocks my gates?” and “What are the thorns that guard my Well?”
In the traditional vision of the Well, there are wild and thorny red and white rose vines that climb and curl around the Well. Approaching the center of the Well to drink of and bathe in those waters requires you to pass through the thorns and make an offering of their very essence. When you do this in grace and humility, the thorns allow you to pass unscathed. However, if you attempt to steal these waters for exploitative reasons, the thorns become the pain and anguish of your deepest fears. Like your fears, they are razor sharp and thick with many layers. You cannot pass them unless they are cleared or navigated. In Faery Seership, you need only acknowledge the fear and come in humility and a sincere desire to learn from nature, ancestry, and the Faery cousins. Then the thorns soften and the roses release the intoxicating scent that stirs ancient memories of paradise and a love that is profound.
These roses embody blood and tears, menstrual blood and semen, electric and magnetic impulses, male and female, and a host of other polarized forces. They may be thought of as the twin poles that turn the engine of life. In this case, they are the twin poles of the spinning Well of magic that is a surface-world aspect of the spinning wheels of the Weaver. The clearing of the thorns can be a dilemma if you are convinced of human supremacy over the natural and spirit worlds, or if you are filled with fear that grips your soul in paralysis and intoxicates your brain with illusion. These thorns are tied directly to the free-will dynamic that is the blessing and the curse of humanity.
You can look at the human dilemma as “free will gone awry,” or as a gift from nature overused and left in the control of an entire species and all it impacts. The divisionary paradigm of “us” (humanity) versus “them” (nature) that evolved from the fear of isolation and abandonment connected to free will has exacted a hefty price from our species. It has left us in a dangerous ecological position that may well challenge our future physical existence. It has all too often left our emotionally wounded sisters and brothers cleaving to unhealthy destructive behaviors, as if those behaviors were gates back to Eden and to the love and favor of the Creator, a love thought to be lost or conditional at best. This feeling of isolation and abandonment is the mythical soul cage of Faery lore. Its bars are created by fear, isolation, and loss of love. These bars are the same as the thorns of the Faery roses. The lock on this cage is held tightly around our necks by our fear of abandonment, which we treat as a sacred pain to be revered and perpetuated.
You attain the key to this lock through the application of free will to unlock the ancient communion with the world soul of nature. When the part—the individuated soul of humanity—communes with the whole, the truth underlying all things is revealed and the Well of Memory, the Well of Enchantment, is opened. This is what the unification of the golden lock and the silver key is ultimately about. This is what the coming together of ancestral human wisdom and the ancient parentage of all things is about. Were this not true, we would have no need to return to the natural places of ocean, mountain, forest, and desert to silence the cacophony of human-life noise that wells up within us, drowning the still and ancient voices. Interestingly, we call these adventures back to nature “vacations” to find ourselves—an interesting use of a word that means “to vacate” or “to leave behind.” Nature offers that, but the Guardian will not be exploited for his key. He can only be approached with the unstained heart of a child.
Your illusion of separateness fades away when the Ancestor and the Guardian come into union within you, for in truth they are both part of a collective and universal life originating from the same source within the stars and beyond, but given life at the birth of our earthly world. These are the two overarching intelligences and powers that link you to the surface world and underworld. When they unite within you and the Well opens, a rush of life, love, and wisdom rises from the hidden places between your heartbeats, between your breaths, and between all of the particles of your being. There is a special place within your brain called the medulla that is ancient, primal, and even reptilian. In folk tradition, this area is also called the Cave of Voices or the Star Chamber and, according to tradition, it holds the most ancient memories of our species and its core functions (spiritually and anatomically). It is the Well of Enchantment that opens and releases its ancient waters into your bloodstream. I leave this for you to discover. What I do know is that when you engage the ancestors and the living spirit of nature, and integrate these forces within, something powerful happens and hidden wisdom is revealed to you. This is the Opening of the Well that reveals the oceanic underworld and the primal patterns that lie within its life-sustaining and vision-fulfilling waters.
In Faery Seership, the forces embodied in the first two Vision Keys are also known as the red blood of ancestral wisdom (the Ancestor) and the green blood of nature and natural law (the Guardian). Red and green are the two sacred colors in Faery Seership and are used a lot in its practices. Understanding the meanings behind these colors provides powerful insights into the mysteries of the first keys and threshold.
Red symbolizes the blood of humanity, individuated soul types, and intelligence. All red-blooded creatures, by tradition, have a certain amount of individuated consciousness. Humanity, however, is the quintessential individuated intelligence in the surface world and thus, in Faery tradition, red represents humanity. Tradition also infers that, because red is the color of Mars and iron, it embodies our aggressive nature as well.
Green represents the blood of nature, collective soul types, and intelligences. The entire green world has collective intelligence, especially plants, which are some of the most ancient life forms in the surface world. Tradition also infers that, because green is the color of Venus and chlorophyll, it embodies the magnetic and more balanced and peaceful forces of the green world. Merging the spiritual and energetic qualities of these two bloods creates grey, the luminal, in-between color that combines light and dark, black and white, day and night. The concept of the merging of the two bloods suggests that, ultimately, they stream from one body, and that body originates in the deeper strata of the underworld as the Dreamer in the Land.
The Opening of the Well represents the most powerful step into the teachings of the Tree. When you unify the powers of “me” in the truest sense (as embodied in the Ancestor) with the powers of “we” in the larger collective sense (as embodied in the Guardian), the power of the oneness of planetary life can emerge in your awareness. This oneness is described in Faery Seership as the Earth's soul. In fact, there is a practice in the tradition in which, during the period between Hallows (October 31) and Yule (December 21), it is believed that the Goddess of Life (the Weaver) retreats from the surface world into the underworld to seek her dream or vision for the next year. During this time, traditional witches and seers seek the world soul (the Weaver) to aid her in finding her vision, to bring it out into the surface world, and to integrate it to ensure bounty and blessings.
The surface world is made out of the element of earth, and the Opening of the Well retrieves the latent consciousness of the soul of the planet as it is recorded and imprinted in our physical bodies. The awaked waters within the Well cause an awakening process in your surface walker. This process causes your body to remember its own inherent wisdom and release those messages into your blood through the neurotransmitters and hormones of your nervous system. This flood of messages causes many of the visions, dreams, insights, and inspirations that come when you work with this area of the Tree of Enchantment. These components of your body carry the electro-transmitters of messages throughout your surface walker, for they are made of both light (electrical impulses) and fluids, and are the messenger of the central analysis center of your body … the brain. Thus, the Opening of the Well is the stirring of your surface walker's sacred memory. In a sense, it is also the reclamation of your body as sacred and the redemption of your blood as holy and wise.
The forces of the Vision Keys are inherent in all life processes in the incarnate, discarnate, and non-carnate worlds. They are imprinted into all life processes, all life forms, and all intelligence types. These forces are imprinted into your consciousness, spirit essence, and physical forms as well. This is never more apparent than when you encounter the awakening of the forces in your surface walker. The awakening of these forces in the Tree of Enchantment work begins with the Opening of the Well.
Although this chapter deals with a planned and deliberate awakening of these forces and your awareness of them, this is not the only way this can happen. It is, however, one of the healthiest. Any time the division between the shadow and light worlds, under and surface worlds, or conscious and unconscious worlds is opened, thinned, parted, or even shattered, these powerful and life-altering forces are aroused. This potential is constant because the Vision Keys are literally imprinted into and alive in your surface-walker soul.
The Gods of Flesh are the imprint of the keys and their attending spirits in your surface walker. These “gods” live in the very substance of your flesh, often operating at a subtle or unconscious level. Sometimes they seem to sleep and dream and show themselves in organic or “time-released” ways that are tied to stages of life like puberty and menstruation. However, they can be aroused in other intentional or accidental ways. When they are, they inflame your being with awareness, life-force, power, and change. This can be very unsettling, especially when it is not controlled and guided by an experienced seer or teacher. We are almost all aware at some level that these forces dwell within us. We all crave to feel and experience them. This is why we seek things like drugs, alcohol, sex, and even massage, to a degree. The presence of these “gods” makes us feel alive and vibrant, no matter how disturbing the effect. It has been my experience that the levels and types of imprints on the surface walker differ from person to person. It seems that all of the Vision Keys are imprinted into the threefold life at differing levels, in differing patterns, and in differing amounts depending on the seeker.
Aside from the guided process of the material detailed in the Tree of Enchantment, there are other ways that the Gods of Flesh can be invoked and aroused. They include, but are not limited, to:
This list may give you some insight into life-altering changes that may have occurred through experiencing or participating in any of these activities.
It is worth considering that these changes occur because the forces of the Vision Keys or Gods of Flesh were awakened and aroused, flooding into your awareness and life experiences. For this reason, I always warn people involved in the more voluntary experiences on this list to be mindful of the forces that they are releasing. If these forces are released in an untimely and undisciplined way, you may need a seer (and a psychiatrist) to re-integrate yourself. This is not to say that very powerful and healing experiences do not occur during these practices, because they do. I have observed, however, that the healing occurs because you were seeking it and the other participant's experience and skills facilitated it.
Your encounters with the first and second keys on the Tree of Enchantment stir ancient inner pathways and latent memory. This awakening brings you to the threshold of the first realizations revealed by the Tree of Enchantment. This threshold is the way to spiritual initiation through the opening of latent levels of awareness that are encoded within physical form. The gate to the temple of these realizations is through the sacred surface walker, which provides the vehicle for the dream walker and star walker to move through the plane of forces integrated into a matrix of elemental experiences, exchanges, interactions, and transformations.
This walker is too often overlooked, or worse, treated as the source of our distractions. In fact, it is the source of your perfection awaiting the realization that comes when human, ancestral free will unifies with the elemental memory of nature. The threshold is the Well of Enchantment that marks the opening out of an ancient wellspring of ancestral (human and other/elemental) memory that reveals “other.” This other is the pre-human existence of humanity within a vast network of energetic essence and unfolding visionary purpose tied to the destiny of the planet and the stars.
There are also some specific truths about the position of the Well in Faery Seership and the Tree of Enchantment that reveals more about its implications:
There are no specific ways of working or encountering the Well of Enchantment, because it is a threshold, not a Vision Key. Crossing into the powers of this threshold marks the interaction of the first Vision Keys encountered and the changes that occur in the seeker.