Into the depths of the soul of the world, I plunge my voice of longing.
Devoid of illusion and enraptured by the beauty of the living Eden, I call to the Star within the Stone.
I search for the answers to the sacred questions of longing, written in my nature when I was flung to Earth from the starry heaven.
Oh thou art the Child of Promise who lies dreaming on a blue ocean trapped in a pillar of silent stone!
Oh thou art the Prince of Light and life-giving flame of the People of Peace, may I peer into your face of enduring beauty!
How do I free you from your chamber?
Will I know the key to your door that dwells within my palms?
Will you enflame me with the stars of your eyes and your breath that frees?
I know that I am your vision, but I have forgotten the way.
Oh Dreamer in Land, heal my pain, anoint my eyes, awaken my spirit that I may be one with the healer of the world and walk in blessedness upon the sacred land.
At this point in the journey through the Tree of Enchantment, you have accomplished some important tasks to quicken your consciousness of the threefold life and a reconnection of your individual, collective, planetary, and spiritual heritage. You have activated your conscious contact with your surface walker and the primary forces that influence it by:
You have activated conscious contact with your dream walker and the primary forces that influence it by:
A review of your progress toward aligning your threefold life is important, because ultimately, this is the purpose of journeying the Tree of Enchantment. As you move into the mysteries of the Dreamer in the Land and then the Sacred Stone, the activation of your dream walker begins to extend to the influences of your star walker, which are experienced in the underworld. As this occurs, the influences of the stellar realms on Earth and her children's planetary destiny become more apparent.
As your dream walker seeks to incarnate through the childbirth process, it extends its awareness outward from the underworld (the plane of forces) to the surface world (the plane of effects). Then the elemental forces of the Guardian (through the father) and the threaded patterns of fate and form of the Weaver (through the mother) come together to create the vessel (surface walker) for incarnation. This process brings about a certain type of forgetfulness as the dream walker moves beyond the River of Blood, which aligns it to an ancestral bloodline and to the surface world, where it anchors itself to the elemental world as the surface walker.
Your surface walker is an extension of your dream walker, which is an extension of your star walker. To allow for the free-will dynamic to emerge in a human birth, this memory loss is imperative. Without some level of it, your surface walker cannot use the free-will dynamic. However, an over-application of and dependence on free will and individuated consciousness leads to more loss of soul memory, which, in turn, brings about fear, loneliness, loss of vision, and disintegration on many levels. These consequences tend to be the initial impetus for your search. Yet, as these threads of illusion are loosened and released, the driving force of divine discontent or sacred restlessness replaces them as your motivation. It is this force that comes from the Dreamer.
Therefore, to be initiated back into clear contact with divine discontent, to resolve the forgetfulness, and to activate sacred memory, you must “walk backward.”This means that you must direct your awareness to the inner (under) world and step back into the creation process, not to be re-made, but to remember. In this process, you, as an incarnate seeker, regain memory by engaging and integrating concepts and contacts that stimulate this latent memory and re-activate the channels of consciousness, contact, and power that are already present in you. So birth is incarnation, whereas initiation is integration. These acts are the core of the concept of initiation—to the act of being “born again” into spirit by conscious choice.
The most sacred part of the initiation process is the use of free will, choice, and self-motivation for a purpose beyond mere human, surface-world life. When you use free will, your quest attracts the attention of these spiritual forces. You declare your wish to return to the family of creation. Your ultimate goal in the underworld aspect of your journey through the Tree of Enchantment is to move through this process, contact the core intelligence of the planet (the Dreamer), and awaken your memory of that part of the Dreamer's dream or vision that is yours to fulfill—and then to fulfill it (the Stone). Contact with the Dreamer is powerfully healing, joyous, and anointing.
Oral Faery legend tells us that, at the dawn of creation, a spark of the great Star Father fell from the void of the Utterer into the land and it breathed forth all of life as we know it. This legend speaks of a primordial epoch when the creative nothingness stirred and released the original star forces, also known as the Holy and Formless Fire, which became the source of all creation. These forces were uttered into a pattern of universal law and relationships. A part of this “fall” was a spark from this original flame that became the heart of the planet, its molten core, its sun at the center of creation—the Dreamer. All life on and in the world of Earth partakes of this spark and, thus, we are all cells in the body of the Dreamer. We all receive from this holy being the life-giving warmth that animates our form. That spark is so powerful that, when it is released from the shadows of your forgetfulness to inflame your inner and surface-world life, it initiates you back into the planetary purpose and vision and into the fullness of who you are and who you can be.
Legend also says that spiritual forces or beings fell with this spark. They became what we know as the Faery. This falling-star image is captured in some of the Irish Gaelic Faery teachings that refer to the Dreamer as the “Proud Angel” or “Lucifer,” a name that originally had nothing to do with evil or adversarial forces, but with the Sun and beautiful light. Therefore, the Dreamer is the god of the Faery races and the illuminator of humanity. The Dreamer is indeed the Light of the World.
Another version of the legend of the fall teaches that a star fell from the heavens into the circular rhythm of infinity's cauldron (the circular nature of time), where it was woven into the center of the Earth and held in a circular tower of stone to be rescued and released. In this tower, the spark, called the Child of Promise or the Child of Light, lays brooding, reflecting, or dreaming on a bed of blue flame upheld by the Stone of Destiny. The blue flame image suggests that this flame is always cooling, but is never completely cooled until all of its living flames extended throughout the world are also cooled and extinguished. This living spark of creation still burns at the heart of our planet and gives forth light to all life. The child opens one eye from time to time, marking major planetary change and the completion of a dream or age. The Age of Aquarius, or the “New Age” as it is often called, represents the opening of one eye. When both eyes open, it is the end of life as we know it, because our dream will have been fulfilled. Oral lore suggests that the Dreamer will then sleep again and dream a whole new world, a whole new planet, and a whole new truth to be revealed.
In Faery Seership, this spark is a great living being known as the Dreamer in the Land. The traditional image of the Dreamer is of an androgynous child who lies sleeping on a bed of flame at the center of the planet, dreaming the world into existence. All living things embody an aspect of its destiny, its vision. The Dreamer is the holy child of the great Virgin Mother (the Utterer), who is the Black Virgin of space itself. The mysteries of the Dreamer are profoundly sacred because they are about vision, spiritual innocence, and purity of spiritual purpose for the good of all beings. Attended by the People of Peace (the traditional Faery races), the Dreamer holds the purpose for your life and all of life as we know it.
There are two concepts in Faery Seership that originated in Wales and embody much of the mysteries of the sacred child:
The source of your hiraeth is the spark of the Dreamer that lies within you. This spark drives you forward in a quest for visionary fulfillment. Once you consciously make contact with this spark, it becomes like a lamp that illuminates the way through the often dark moments of your surface-world life. The hiraeth is also the sense you have when you are in the presence of something that is right and true—a feeling of “coming home” that acts as a direction-finding mechanism that lets you know your feet are on the right path.
The source of the bro is the original vision held by the Dreamer and the sense of oneness with the universal being that is attained when you are in contact with the bro. It is the bro you seek and the hiraeth that keeps you moving toward it, if you listen to the instinctive and intuitive guidance of the bro. When you are not moving in the right direction, the Dreamer within you creates problems to awaken you and make you re-evaluate your actions. As with all children, the Dreamer is not beyond acting out and causing a scene.
There is a saying in my line of traditional witchcraft and Faery Seership that instructs the seeker: “Seek ye the Star within the Stone.” This is a simple way of saying that all true seekers should look for the spiritual essence at the core of their surface-world life and at the core of themselves, and then free it to inflame their lives with visionary purpose. The star is the Dreamer. The Dreamer's vision, though planetary in appearance, is universal in origin, which means that the vision that guides your fate and destiny originates in the stars and serves a universal destiny.
The original vision for our planet and her surface-world and underworld life is one of perfection and paradise, not of stagnation and atrophy. That paradise lies within the dream of the Dreamer, who dreams forth this vision into and through all planetary life. When any aspect of planetary creation aligns with the fulfillment of this vision, the original vision releases its healing powers into the surface world. In Faery Seership, this Eden-like, paradisiacal vision is called the “sacred land.” The boundaries between the surface world and the sacred land are held in place by humanity, while the roads between them are held in place by the trees.
Humans and trees are the two surface-world beings that have the inherent ability to mediate or mitigate the forces of the three worlds. Humanity has free will and the trees do not. Therefore, humanity has the unfortunate ability to delay the uniting of the surface world (the Earth of Stone) with the sacred land (the Earth of Light). However, humanity also has the ability to mediate and unify the two Earths, and it is our destiny to do so. When your awareness reaches contact with the Dreamer's attending spirits and the breath of the Dreamer, vision awakens in you and you become a mediator for the vision and the healing of the world, for the Dreamer is the great healer of the heart and spirit of the world.
There are many names for the Dreamer in Faery Seership and each one informs us about the nature of this holy child. One of the lesser-known names is the Sleeper in the Web, which tells us about the relationship between the Dreamer, the Weaver, and the threads of illusion.
As you clear the webs of illusion and pass through the initiatory looms or turning wheels of the Weaver, you find the light of spiritual essence that burns at the center. This is the Dreaming Child of Promise and it is the pearl of great price, guarded by a spider. The spider embodies the aspect of you that can travel up and down the Tree of Enchantment, but it can also weave webs of illusion and fiercely protect its treasure at the center of the web. In this case, the treasure is the Dreamer within. As you clear the webs of illusion, there is a poisonous aspect of your inner nature that may rise and attempt to stop your quest by poisoning your thinking. The usual poisons of this spider are:
This spider is not attempting to harm you, because it is your own creation, brought forth to protect what is considered familiar and safe. This, however, is not the true purpose of this valuable and sacred spiritual force. As the part of you known as the spider begins to feel the presence of the attributes of the golden key and Hidden Heart of Blue Flame, it becomes an embodiment of the Weaver's gift to you. It attracts the forces needed to open the way to the Dreamer and re-weave the web that fully unites the threefold life. There is no greater healing.
Another teaching in Faery Seership that sheds light on the implications of contact with the Dreamer is the Hidden Heart of Blue Flame. This connects to the folk teaching that instructs us to enter the Faery realms with the “unstained heart of a child.” The underworld acts as a mirror, reflecting back and magnifying our intent. As one of my elders taught: “Thy heart becomes thy way's mirror, and within thyself the laws you will feel.”
This hidden heart lies at the core of us all. It is undaunted and untainted by the world of mankind and holds the original purity of our core spiritual essence. The application of the golden key begins to unlock the forces of the hidden heart so that you can regain your presence as a child of creation, beloved by the Great Mother and the Great Father of creation. The hidden heart can also be fierce and forceful in its drive to burn away what would restrict it. It is never self-serving and selfishly destructive in its intent. You should cultivate the attributes of your hidden heart, for this frees the heart of the Dreamer to beat within your being. The attributes of the hidden heart are:
One of the most important aspects of the Dreamer is that it is also known in Faery practices as the Fountain of Flame. The Fountain of Flame is described as a great fountain of living light that is the source of life-force for all growing things of our planet. Visions of the fountain describe the Faery, elemental, and other nature spirits as moving into and out of the fountain, filling themselves with its light and carrying that light to the plants and animals of the surface world.
This Fountain of Flame is, in fact, an underworld manifestation of the Holy and Formless Fire. The Holy Fire is also described as a waterfall of light, because it pours outward and downward to the underworld and surface world. The Dreamer receives the Holy Fire into itself and then rises upward from the bed of the Dreamer to feed and sustain the entire living world, including humanity. For this reason, contact with the Faery beings and the Dreamer inspirits and vivifies all that they touch. This means that this contact reawakens your connection with purpose, vision, and the Earth of Light, and opens up the channels to receive more of the sacred flame of life from the core of creation (the Dreamer). This increases your access to the life-force.
The Dreamer's attending beings are the traditional Lordly Ones of the Hollow Hill, the Faery people. They are known by countless names—the Good People, the Hidden Host, the Side Winders (in Southern Appalachian tradition), the People of Peace, the Elder Race, the Gentry, the Fair Folk, and many others. These ancient beings are the oldest race on or in the planet. They were the first tribe of the sacred land and they live in constant communion with the primal plan and the Dreamer. They were born at the creation of the universe and came to Earth's orbital life when the Dreamer fell from the stars into the circular orbit (the tower) of what is now called a planet, where they dwell in what Professor John Rhys calls the under-country.
It is unclear whether humanity will eventually live in the paradise of the Faery races, but instruction I have received from my Faery Queen suggests that we will. “You are as we have been,” she informs me. “We are as you shall be.” This may suggest that the more we consciously align our personal wills with the Dreamer's planetary will, the more we become inflamed and transformed by the light of the Dreamer into another state of life. I leave this for you to contemplate.
The whole of the underworld is often referred to as the Faery realm because, ultimately, all spirit beings and all processes of this realm are connected in some way to the Dreamer. They are all involved in revealing and employing the vision of the world so that it may fulfill its destiny and rise back to the stars as the Sacred Stone. The actual Faery realm is deeper in the underworld, beyond the River of Blood and the Weaver's web.
This aspect of the underworld is described in the ballads and folklore as being lit by starlight that is made of luminous light emanated by the Dreamer. Streams of this light are woven by the Weaver into the pattern of life as it passes into and through the energy fields of all life, including human life. Because of these threads, we flow out into the universe and it flows to and through us, binding us to the great primal pattern of perfection. But it is the Fair Folk, as legions of the Dreamer, who can reveal the unbound and true threads of the first begotten Child of Promise, the Dreamer in the Land. The Fair Folk are the transmitters of this ancient power from the underworld and, as such, they are the teachers of magic and the visionary power of the Dreamer. They are considered humanity's spiritual next-of-kin, for they have a natural affinity and symbiotic relationship with us.
Contact with the Faery and the establishment of a relationship called the Faery marriage or a Faery lover is a core component of advanced Faery Seer-ship practices. As I stated in The Faery Teachings:
Perhaps one of the most prevalent, but most misunderstood and trivialized gifts in the Faery practices is the concept of the Faery lover or Faery marriage. Far from being a mere erotic fantasy regarding sexual exchange with a spirit, this concept embodies a very powerful and sacred aspect of Faery Seership and associated spiritual practices. The Faery marriage involves a merging of human and Faery intelligence into a symbiotic relationship that heals the fractured nature of both beings, brings them into direct communion with the unfolding vision of the universe, and fulfills the destiny of humanity to bring its free will into oneness with the will of the planet Earth and, consequentially, the stars. In this way, humanity brings heaven to Earth and returns it back again.10
The achievement of a Faery marriage requires years of work on the Tree of Enchantment and transformation of the self on every level. This process usually takes a minimum of seven to nine years to achieve and is a six-stage process. These stages of the exchange are presented in more detail in The Faery Teachings and I suggest that serious students of Faery Seership read it. Here is a brief description of what you can expect as you go through the stages:
The process of attaining and merging with a Faery being fully aligns you with the visionary and inspiriting powers of the Dreamer while, at the same time, ensouling the Faery contact with your human qualities of free will. This alignment brings inherent balance to decisions and uses of will.
There is a unified, core consciousness to the planet Earth that gives purpose (vision) and life to the planet and its inhabitants. In Faery Seership, this intelligence is called the Dreamer. The Dreamer is the holy child begotten of the Star Father and the Great Utterer. Thus, the immense potential of the galaxy is within the very essence of our planet. The Dreamer is a star from the heavens that lives at the core of the planet, energetically and physically. The intelligence of the Earth, which we call the Dreamer, is the chaste child of the oceanic mother of space. A spark of the Dreamer is within all things on and in the Earth. This spark of star fire contains the visionary purpose for all things. When humanity consciously connects with the Dreamer, purpose and vision are revealed.
Below are some of the truths of the Dreamer:
At this point in your attunement to the Tree of Enchantment, you are ready to encounter a Faery contact.
Another way of encountering the Faery people is described in folk tradition as Betwixt the Two Lights. An example of this is illustrated in Irish Earth Folk by Diarmuid MacManus:
But all the same time, as long as countrymen dig in the fields and bogs in the gentle summer evenings and stroll home “betwixt the two lights,” as they say … so long will they be close to the powers that live and pulsate in nature; and in the country those powers are, above all, the Shee, or, as the English call them, the fairies.11
This means that you should go into natural places while the Moon and Sun (the two lights) are in the sky. The best time for this is dusk and dawn. Professor John Rhys adds to this, saying that “the time they (the Faery) were to be seen in their greatest glee was the night when the moon was full, when they celebrated their nocturnal merry making.”12