Thorn Tree Door

The Thorn Tree Door

The "Two Trees" Rite for Entering the Spirit World

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I was taught this rite from two sources: one was a gentleman that I worked with in 1994, who demonstrated this to me in person, an experience that really drove home how effective this rite is when done properly. The second source was from an unidentified spiritual being that walked me through it in a dream, only a short time ago, in response to a change that occurred in my own life.

This rite is for creating a “door” and actually physically entering the ‘Otherworld’. So many methods for otherworldly visits or contacts involve “inner journeying” through meditation or visualization; this is the only technique I have ever come across for actually, physically journeying or moving through the environment of the physical world, and ending up in an “Otherworld” condition.

I should be fair and say that this rite is for creating a broadly defined internal state, a state that you physically walk to transition into or “enter”, and thereby make yourself mentally and spiritually open to the presence and contacts of unseen presences or beings.

Unlike “internal” visualizations, this rite keeps you up, awake, and moving, running, or walking the whole time, and in a very different condition than you are used to. The character of the entire “other” reality has a chance to manifest itself. It is a moving experience if done fully to the letter.

There is a touch of danger involved in this process, I admit- though not the “soul stealing” kind of danger that the less experienced and more immature occultists often whine about. The danger in this working stems from a kind of disorientation or confusion that can occur, and the fear or mistakes that it can cause. This rite can only be done outdoors, and it requires the presence of two trees, in close proximity to each other. Traditionally, they should be thorn trees. But I first saw this technique done with oaks, and it was quite powerful.

You will need a good, quiet, isolated or disturbancefree place; a forest or an abandoned field is best. This technique works within cities too, (like on huge campuses or empty parks with lots of hedges and trees) but not nearly as well as in rural locations. Besides, this rite has to be done at night, and city parks at night are not really safe.

The Two Trees will act as your door, but only after you have done the rite. The use of Two Trees as a “doorway” point is apparently very old, in the British tradition. I have come across mention of it in places like as far apart as the poetry of Yeats, relevant mythology, and the writings of the Matthews, who mention a visionary form of this the technique as being “very old”.

You will need a bowl and a cup, some water and some bread, and two candles that can be shielded, like put inside of clear cups or candle-holders, to be protected from wind. You will also need a goose feather. If you happen to be a person who has identified with your fetch-beast, and that beast happens to be a bird, a feather from the bird of your fetch-form can be used in the place of a goose feather.

This rite can only be done at night. If that night happens to be on of the hidden festival nights, or a holy night, or the night of a full moon, all the better. If the night happens to be very misty or foggy, that is even stronger. If it is all three, this rite would operate at a purely mythical level of strength, to the cunning person who applied themselves to it with true dedication and desire.

Failing all the above times, any night can be used. But you will discover the effectiveness of this rite increasing and decreasing at times. What matters most is that you find a place with two trees that are FAR from where you will be disturbed, and that it is nighttime. You begin by sitting in front of your two trees, and blessing the water and the bread (in the cup and bowl) and consuming them partly in a modified Red Meal rite. This rite should be simple and powerful. Light one of the candles and use it in the Red Mealyou don’t have to make the spell of the road or the blessing of the water, or make the four water roads. You just have to sit before your Trees, and light the candle, bless the bread and water (with the blessings given below) and eat and drink one half of both.

This candle that you use has to be lit with firm intention to part the ways between the two worlds with its heat and light, but there is more to it. The flame of the candle has to be thought of as a beacon of types, to act as a guide for those who are unseen and those who are traveling the unseen ways, but you have to look at the flame as though it were some sort of “meeting point” where both worlds meet, and the means by which they penetrate each other. In some way, the tiny flame is a door, as well, an otherworldly presence whose very existence causes “locations” to meld and overlap and inter-relate somehow.

In short, you are lighting this flame with the intention of going “through” the door in the air or through the trees, and into the Otherworld.

Thorn Door Red Meal blessings

Use these following invocations to light the candle and to bless the bread and water.

1.
“Come forth, fire, seen and unseen
Source of flame and fire, illuminate the dark world:
Reveal the way beyond.
Burn here: Be the light that marks the way”

2.
“Elfin Queen Under the ground
Behold, a vessel of water
May it be a water that divides the quick from the dead
Bless it with your hand, And I shall drink,
And bring me to that distant land.”

3.
“Giver of Light, deliverer of man
Who walks the roads east and west
Who goes below, and rises above
Who makes the crossroads open
See the ancient covenant,
Body as bread, and bread as body
Bless it with your hand.”

You must now take what is left of the Water and pour it, slowly, from the right tree, to the left, making a boundary line. As you pour it, make a short invocation to the Pale People merged with the land, or the Dead, followed by an invocation to Queen Hel or the Queen of Elfhame.

These invocations have to be stated slowly, clearly, with all awareness. They “liven” the door.

You then light the second candle from the first one, and place one candle near the left end of the line of water you made, and the other near the right end of it, thus illuminating your doorway.

You then take the other half of the bread that you didn’t eat, and either put it in your pocket or carry it with you. You must now walk away from the lit doorway you just made, and walk a good long distance. You have to walk, with the door behind you, far enough away that you can’t see it anymore. The trick here is to walk in a great big counterclockwise circle, which will of course end up BACK at the door. As you find yourself approaching the lit doorway again you should be holding your feather in your right hand and the bread in your left. You have to keep your mind on the FACT That when you cross through that door you just made, over that water, that you are going, literally, into the Otherworld.

As you get near the door, before you step across, you hurl the bread through ahead of you. That must be done before you step across. Then, you go on through. Now, from this point, you must not put down the feather. You have passed through into the Otherworld. From the point of your passage through the two trees door, to the time that you return to our world, you must be TOTALLY aware of anything and everything that happens to you- full sensory awareness. What you see or hear or encounter, is no longer just an average, everyday encounter- it is an otherworldly encounter.

If you find something on the ground, something unusual, you may or may not take it back with you. But no matter what you do, you must always realize that it was something that you brought back from another world.

As you wander through the world on the other side of the door, you should do it in a large CLOCKWISE pattern. In much the same way you made a huge counterclockwise walk to get to the door, as you wander through the environment on the other side of the door, you should do so in a huge semi-clockwise manner, before reaching the door, and leaving. You can take all the time you need, but you have to return before the candles go out. Some people don’t like to go too far from the candle light, preferring to keep them in sight, even if at a distance. They are the guiding light back home.

You are in a special mental and physical condition, when you are on the other side of the door- you have opened yourself to the Otherworld, and symbolically and actually (on the mental and spiritual level) entered it.

Animals or even people that you meet may not be what they seem. The man who showed me this rite in 94 used it as an initiatory rite, as well as a means of divination. If a person is fortunate enough, this rite can be used to find fetch-beasts, but only if done in a very remote area. I personally don’t suggest this rite for discovering the identity of the fetch-beast, however, I do suggest that this rite can be done in conjunction with other rites to find it.

Everything that you experience on the “other side” of these doors is significant. If otherworldly beings wanted to manifest to you, they could do so easier, in many ways, while you were on the ‘far side’ of the trees. Rites that are done on the “other side” are likewise more powerful, as you will discover if you try them.

If the doorway marking candles should be out when you return, that is not a good sign. What you must do in this situation is pick up the bread that you cast through the doorway when you entered, and carry it with you across the threshold again. That will suffice. If the candles are still lit when you arrive to return into our world, all is well. Just leave the bread where it is on the Otherworld side, and walk on through, and collect the candles and leave. The rite is over.

If the candles are out, and the bread is gone too, that is a VERY bad sign- you must simply exit the Otherworld through the door, and come back and repeat the rite the VERY next night- and instead of wandering around in the ‘Otherworld’ the next time you do it, just make a quick clockwise circle and pass back out. Until you have done this, you are considered to be “still there”, and in at least a bit of danger.

If you ever drop the feather while in the “Otherworld”, that is not a good sign. You must do the rite again the next night, in the same manner as if you had returned to find the candles out and the bread gone.

Since moving through this “door” puts you in closer, (some would say direct) contact with the Otherworld reality, the most moving use of this rite I have ever seen was a necromantic one- a dear friend had died recently, (only a week before) and a person I knew did this rite, entered the Otherworld-condition, and sat out there, opening themselves in meditation to the dead one, to contact them. It wasn’t long before they experienced the presence of this departed person. This rite is an excellent gateway rite to putting yourself closer to them.

I will be the first to say- in all the years I have practiced the Craft, few experiences have been as uncanny as the ones I have had using this rite, at night, in some very lonely places. These sort of rites are useful for putting yourself in the proper states for contact across the strange spaces that keep us so perceptually separate from extra-sensory reality. I think that this rite can be used to great effect, on certain times, at powerful locations, like gravemounds and the like: the stories of “doors” opening on certain nights are not just mere folkloric superstition. Naturally, a person needs to be careful and protected when doing such things.

Notes:

1. You can use only one “door marking” candle if you want- the one you used in the Housle or Red Meal. Place it right in the center of the door. I suggest that you use two.

2. If you don’t want to carry the feather all the time, you can affix it to the end of a cord that you loop around your neck. That way, even if it comes out of your hand, it will still not fall to the ground, just hang there around your neck.

Site last updated: November 2, 2005