Alandria's Tree

I recently had an appointment with a mentor of mine, and though the conversation itself I will keep close to my own heart for the moment, something happened immediately following this meeting that is well worth recounting.

There was much to ponder and integrate after such a fruitful, dynamic talk, and thus I felt myself drawn to the trees, the best folk I know of  for bearing silent witness and holding sacred space. I found my way to a little wood overlooking Puget Sound -- A wood who's existence I wasn't even aware of until a friend mentioned it in passing not long before.  So here I was exploring the trails of this magickal, little wood, searching for a place to sit and ponder.  

For a brief time I perched in the low branches of a tree that had beckoned to me, where, nestled in her fork, I dozed against her trunk. This was not the spot, however. It was right alongside the main trail, and I'd already gotten strange looks from a man who passed close by, yet who refused to meet my eyes. 

Off I set deeper into the woods, further off the main trail, feeling as though there were something calling me. Joking to myself about my "Holy Quest" as I navigated the narrow dirt path over logs and under branches, I stopped cold as I crested a short rise in the trail. I believe my mouth hung open as my heart almost burst from my chest. "No!" I thought. "It can't be!" Yet my racing heart told me it was true. Before me stood a tree, that, though my physical eyes had never fallen upon it, I knew very well.  This was the tree of Alandria!

Who is Alandria? Let me fill you in...

A couple years ago I took a workshop with Tom Cowan, one of the leading teachers and experts in Celtic Shamanism, on Faery Doctoring.  The workshop revolutionized the way I looked at the world and added a whole new dimension to my shamanic understanding.  It was like the Cosmos was already perfect and complete, when suddenly someone cries out, "But wait! There's more!" and opens a door you didn't realize was there, revealing an entirely new world next door to the old world that you thought you knew. It was literally like discovering Narnia.

As the name suggests, it is working with the Fae to perform healings, which as it turns out, are very similar to Soul Retrievals. Parts of a person's consciousness may leave to avoid trauma, a process called 'Soul Loss' in Shamanism and 'Dissociation' in modern Psychology, and during Soul Retrieval, the Shaman finds these errant 'soul parts' and returns them to the person, giving them a better sense of wholeness.

The Fae, who live in the Middle World alongside us and whose job it is to balance the energies between their unseen world and our seen world, will sometimes step in during such cases of Soul Loss and bring the disconnected soul part of a person into their realm where, rather than remaining at the same age that it was when it detached, the faeries nurture the part to grow at the same rate of expression it would have, had it remained with the person.  The Fae treasure such things as creativity and joyfullness, so by nurturing these properties in the soul parts they gather, they help maintain the balance of energies, and benefit both their realm and ours.

From this you can see how the volumes of stories about abductions by faeries, changeling babies, and other tales have grown up through the ages.  But as humanity has evolved, so too have the Fae, and especially in current times with so many people even just beginning to ponder the possibility of the existence of faeries, their world and ours grow ever closer, as does the relationship between us, meaning that, in general, such measures as abductions are no longer necessary. And the Fae are willing to return to us those soul parts when the time is appropriate, and when we can adequately receive them back.  However, in order to maintain the energetic balance between the realms, there must be an exchange.  When they return your soul part you must give something in return.  "Aha!" You cry, "There's the catch! "  You can relax.  They aren't after your first born.  What they want from us is Strength, Beauty, Creativity.  Usually the exchange they ask for is that the person seeking healing, as well as the Faery Doctor facilitating the healing, sing something every day for a week, or draw, or paint, or something similar -- Things that not only give them more creative energy to work with, but that improves us and raises our own vibrations as well.  It's a win-win situation.

So, because the Faery realms are not our home, at least at the moment, just like we require spirit guides for navigating the spirit worlds, we require advocates and helpers for the faerie worlds as well.  Enter Alandria.  In the aforementioned workshop we needed to make contact with our personal liaison to the land of the Fae, and as I was to discover, Alandria is mine.

Above is a drawing I did of Alandria as an exchange for a Faery Doctoring session when she requested that I make a drawing of what she looks like to me.

My other Faery guide, Eocharin, who appears as a two foot tall version of an extinct Irish Elk, is the one who led me to the tree, in a shamanic journey, that is the portal to the land of the Fae where Alandria lives.  My signal to her that I am there is to jump up and down on the ground three times.  Then Alandria appears, sometimes through the gap at the bottom of the tree that grows big enough to step through, or by simply unzipping the bark.  

Though I was told from the beginning that I would find this tree in the 'real' world, I had forgotten about it, and had no longer been scouring the woods looking for it.  So you can just imagine my shock and elation when there before me rose, in solid form, Alandria's tree.

I jumped up and down three times to let Alandria know I'd found her, then I sat, leaning against the trunk for quite a long time in a contemplative, meditative state (perhaps dozing off a time or two), taking in and processing the day's occurrences and the earlier conversation, with rare Seattle thunder rumbling overhead, adding an extra accent to the importance of my quest's completion.

And I sighed a sigh of gratitude for this increasingly amazing, unfolding path of mine.