Faehallows Magical Blog

The Magic of Red & White Dragons, Rivers & Roses December 6, 2009

Red & White Dragons

As if the Iron Pentacle didn’t stir up enough stuff to process, I jumped right into the red and white dragon energies of the Underworld the next weekend in a powerful workshop led by R. J. Stewart. Working with myths is a sure way to get us in touch with very deep and magical realities! Whether the stories are based on “real” events in the material world or events purely of the inner realms, they have been passed down from one generation to another because they connect us with truths that resonate deep in our collective psyche. In short, the myths work magic inside us. This is certainly true of Merlin’s tale of the red and white dragons.

As background we must refer to the story of King Vortigern and Merlin as recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It starts with Vortigern’s tower.

“He assembled stonemasons from different parts of the country and ordered them to build a tower for him. The masons gathered and began to lay the foundations of their tower. However much they built one day the earth swallowed up the next, in such a way that they had no idea where their work had vanished to.”

Monmouth’s work is easy to find, so I won’t take space here to repeat the whole story. The key point is that Vortigern was told by his magicians that they had to pour the blood of a boy without a father on the foundations of his tower to prevent it from falling each time they tried to build it. Merlin was that boy who, according to the story, had a human mother and a spirit or faery father. Rather than be sacrificed for the tower, Merlin offered to tell King Vortigern the real reason the tower kept falling. Beneath the hill on which they were trying to build the tower, he said there was a cavern. In the cavern was a pool, and at the bottom of the pool were two vessels containing a red and a white dragon.

King Vortigern dug into the hill and drained the pool to discover the two vessels which then broke open to release the dragons. Immediately the dragons began to twist together in a fight, or in love making according to some sources. On one level the dragons represent the invading Saxons and the native British at the time of King Vortigern, but of course they also have a much deeper mythical meaning. They are in fact the root energy of physical manifestation, the yin and yang energies that infuse all of what we call reality.

When we visualize the hill of Vortigern’s tower before us and imagine entering the underworld cavern and then descending into the pool, we can contact these red and white dragon energies. These are the primal energies of creation rooted in the core of Earth. They are reflected in the streams of blood and tears (lymph) within our bodies. The twining of the dragons is also reflected in the double helix form of our DNA, which the dragons represent on a cosmic level.

This work can have profound life-changing implications. The first thing I noticed when connecting with the dragon energy was that it felt very enlivening. I could feel a tingling rising up from my feet to energize my whole body. It felt like a healing and balancing energy, yet if one was not well grounded the energy could possibly overload the circuits, so to speak.

It is hard to describe the vitalizing and uplifting force of these dragons that I had invited into my consciousness, but I suspect that it is very healing, particularly to blood and bone. In fact, my intuition is that it could be a valuable aid in cases of osteoporosis, which seems to be caused on an energetic level by disconnection from earth and stone energies. This enlivening Earth force is almost totally absent from modern consciousness in the industrialized world. How often do most of us actually touch the Earth with our bare feet or hands? How often do we consciously allow the positive and negative energies of our Earth Star to flow within us?

White Spring at Glastonbury

And then we moved on to the rivers of blood and tears of the Underworld. The river of blood flows from the red dragon and the river of tears flows from the white dragon. We visualized entering the underworld through the plant realm of nature while gathering our faery and animal allies around us. Then traveled down into the mineral realm of stone where we followed the dark red river of blood to a cliff where it fell off into an ocean of tears. On the other side of this ocean a white river rose up to the top of another cliff. The energies of this place were quite different from those of the dragons. There was a heavy downward pull and a sense of deep sorrow and pain that was being transformed by the underworld energies. It is said that all the blood and tears that are spilled in the human world flow down into the faery realm to be transmuted and healed in these two rivers. This journey felt like another kind of healing, though with more of an eerie sense of stillness, as if all the sorrow and pain of life was flowing through it and I could only watch.

Red Spring at Glastonbury

I left a spontaneous gift of a small white feather that fell over the cliff to be stained red with blood. My mind still hasn’t figured out the significance of that, but I think that is a good thing. Confounding the mind can lead to much deeper learning and healing. We returned through the mineral and plant worlds, back to our “normal” awareness, but inside me I still carry the echo of that deep, deep ocean of tears with the river of blood flowing into it. Interesting, isn’t it, that our blood has its own pumping system of heart and lungs, but our lymph remains still like an ocean unless we exercise our bodies to move it. (Even more interesting to make that observation in a workshop where we pretty much sat still the whole time!) The white river only moves with action!

Red & White Roses that Guard the Faery Spring

From the red river grows the red rose, while the white rose grows from the white river. These roses grow over a faery spring, the gateway to the Underworld, guarding it from intruders. This is where the energy of the red and white dragons becomes manifest in the outer world of plants. Animals and faeries can pass easily through the briar thorns, but most humans cannot. That is why we need faery and animal allies for our underworld journeys. They know the secret ways and they can transmute the energies that might be harmful to us. This alliance, however is not only to serve us. We must be just as much in their service.

This faery spring comes up from the Underworld at the center of the crossroads where all directions and all dimensions come together. It is here that we can meet the ancestors, faery and animal allies, angels, and all manner of other beings. The price of entrance is a drop of our blood from the prick of a rose thorn. My own personal experience was that my tears were also accepted as an entrance fee and they were easily made available when my animal ally powerfully merged with my consciousness.

Upon entering this realm, I found a rich and diverse world shimmering with beautiful star light. Such beauty is hard to resist, but of course we had to return. Return we did, I with a new sense of wholeness and balance, and a much deeper connection with my animal ally, the exquisite little hummingbird.

Hummingbird - Animal Ally

In the faery realm, small is big. I really experienced this at the faery spring. I first met hummingbird awhile back when I was looking for my animal ally. I was expecting something big and powerful, and one that I had worked with before… a horse or wolf at least. But it was hummingbird who came. Tiny and fragile. I have to admit, it bothered me a little. What, I wondered, could a tiny little hummingbird do? Still, it was the animal who answered my quest for an ally, so I accepted it with gratitude. I often felt it beside me in my inner adventures, and even sometimes in the outer world. After awhile I couldn’t imagine wanting a different animal ally. (But see the human foolishness of wondering what the ally can do for ME? When I should have been wondering what we could do together?)

Anyway, this hummingbird that seems so tiny and fragile in our world, was a mighty force in the faery realm. It was actually bigger than me! When it came to meet me this time I felt it push against my energy field, but it did not force itself on me. It was more like an invitation. Do you want to merge with my consciousness? Do you really want to enter fully into this alliance? At first I resisted a little. It felt so huge and overpowering. That is when the tears came to my eyes. Tears of joy and tears of fear. And I knew that this was my one chance to say yes or no. This was the moment I had to decide. Am I going forward or stagnating?

Yes, I said… of course. Yes to hummingbird with all his huge, magical, powerful energy. A thousand times yes. And I was suddenly filled with the whirring, wonderful essence of hummingbird who is now a third part of my life journey. Sweet little hummingbird, my teacher, my companion, my ally. Thank you so very much! Hmmm… interesting, after all this, that he is so drawn to the color red… the red of the rose, and of blood, and of the dragon.

My faery ally is not yet so well integrated, but I see now what potential there is in such alliances. The adventure continues…

Merlin: The Prophetic Vision and the Mystic Life available from my Amazon Store

More Books by R. J. Stewart and others