This past weekend, we went out to Rivendell, Rialian’s Family land, to do some ritual work and look for staffs. We froze our arses, but found some cool staffs – one of them is leaning against the house in such a way that the end of it (which is a part of the root system) looks like a squirrel perched up on the window sill! Our cat Sithreal saw it and was convinced it was some sort of animal and started reaching up for it!
The purpose of the work was to open up the place to faerie to ensure that the land was worked with rather than against, and to ensure that not too much damage would take place and the construction taking place there currently would heal over quickly. We had intended to build a faerie well out of stones near the construction site. That’s not exactly what happened!
We got pulled farther upstream and followed the creek until we came to what looked like the remains of an ice house from the 1800s – three remaining walls of a squarish stone structure, about 5 feet square. It was on the other side of the creek from us – felt very spirit-active. On our side of the creek we looked down and noticed a rectangular rock about 2 feet x 10 inches. On the rock were inscribed (with a sharp object) three lines that looked like this:
/|\
The lines were a bit more than a surface score, about as deep as this apostrophe (‘), and there were rock dust and small chips to the side of the lines.
Upon further investigation we saw another rock about 3 feet in front of it with this shape inscribed on it (sort of – there were no breaks in the lines, it was like a squarish letter “C” rotated so the open part faced down toward the rock with the three lines.
__ / | / \ | \ | ___ | | | | | | / \____|
Then we looked more and in between the two rocks was a group of rocks laid out in sort of a well-shape or starburst formation (this is very rough — it actually looked like just a lot of rocks that seemed to be radiating out from a center)
0000 000000 0000000 0000000 000000 000000 00000000000 0000000000000 000000
Then we noticed that on the other side of the rectangular rock with three marks, there was a perfect triangular pointed rock pointing toward the rectangular rock.
Around this time we decided that this was not about building a faerie well – since we’d found it already built. The whole setup sort of looked like this:
__ / | / \ | \ | ___ | | | | | | / \____| 0000 000000 0000000 0000000 000000 000000 00000000000 0000000000000 000000 ____________________ | | | /|\ | |__________________| /\ / \ /____\
The entire formation was pointing at a very gradual diagonal toward the center of the ice house across the creek. We did the well-opening ritual on this formation, just clearing a few leaves aside before starting – didn’t move a single rock. We used the rectangular rock for the altar and placed upon it a ceramic burner of specially prepared incense, and placed the cauldron with alcohol and rock salt in the center of the starburst. Rialian then spun in the seven directions, connecting not with the specific directions themselves, but with the feel of the interaction between the directions inherent in the land and the spot we were standing in. We then lit the cauldron, connecting the energies of it and the land together, the heat of the purified energy dancing with the threads of the wood around us. We let it burn whilst our backsides approached superconductivity due to low temperatures. The opening of the well seemed to go well, as the activity increased afterwards.
The three marks were done recently (the upended “C” had been there for a while, looked like a lichen formation almost, and the rocks may have been there since the 1800s.) But the three marks were done recently and with a very sharp object. Rialian didn’t think physical beings had made the marks. I got a very strong hit of his recently departed brother. Then my analytical mind kicked in and I began wondering just how Rialian’s brother Eyovah would have made those marks, being as he ditched his toolset. One idea did occur to me – that he was able to influence those who did have physical bodies to make the marks (for example, influence a herd of clacking crickets to dance the macarena on the rock). Rialian said that he didn’t think that Eyovah really liked the Macarena, so I discarded that idea. Then it hit me – the marks looked like dragon claws! Eyovah was always very fond of dragons (he was one), identified with them and collected replicas of them during his lifetime.
Around this time the fire in the cauldron burned itself out, and we took our staffs and shivered our way back to the car.