“The depth of a heart is an unfathomable thing. It is inconceivable how much love and grief a heart can hold. At the bottom of every heart is a sunken city, a haunted city— what does yours look like? Your Atlantis, your Ys? Do the cathedral bells still ring, or are the lights still on? Do the ghosts go about their days as if nothing is amiss, or do they wail and weep and keen for all that has been lost? Your city may not be a city but a single stone-bricked building, decrepit and crumbling. Your city may not be a city but the skeleton of a shipwreck, covered in barnacles and marine snow.
I take you not to your salvation, but on a journey to the Challenger Deep of your heart. Whatever the shape your Atlantis takes, travel to it and see it for what it is.
We are all spirits, and so are our hearts.”
***
The ritual requires a few simple ingredients: water, vessels to pour and collect water in (one of them preferably being a dark bowl), a hagstone, a skeleton key (or a key of age or significance), and a seashell which calls to you.
Find a place and time where you can be alone, undisturbed. Conjure the spirit of your heart. Offer to it your favorite things from childhood: a taste of your favorite meal, the melodies of a once-beloved song, or anything to coax it out of the cocoon of your rib cages. Tell the spirit that all is safe, that you are ready (and make sure you actually are ready), that you ask it to please become a door, become a portal, become a whirlpool or a river or a lake, something you can walk through or swim through, so that you can reach the shadowy depths of your heart, so that you can reach your sunken city, the place where no sunlight reaches.
For the purpose of the ritual, gather some water. If possible, do so under the darkness of the new moon, or bring a bowl of spring water or rainwater outside where it can be touched by the light of the full moon. Pour this water through a hagstone once, and then once again over a seashell, and once more over a skeleton key.
Say the following words as you pour the water through a hagstone and over the shell and the key:
The Seraph’s head is in the sky and his belly the sea. The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea. The snow-besprinkled wine of earth, the white-and-blue-flower foaming sea. I walked by the sea and there came to me, as a star-beam on the wet sand, a white shell like a sea-bell. Trembling, it lay in my wet hand.
The Bells of Ys rang softly — soft, and sweet, and low — and not a sound was heard in the old gray town as the silvery tones came floating down. O the Mystical Bells, they still ring softly — soft, and sweet, and low — for the sound of their singing shall never die in the hearts that are tuned to their melody, and down in the world’s wild rush and roar that sweeps us along to the Opening Door.
The bells sweep us along to the Opening Door.
The bells sweep us along to the Opening Door!
The water can then be collected and placed in a dark bowl to be used for scrying. Scry the bowl of water and ask to see the doorway which leads to your sunken city.
What you do with the ghosts you find in that sun-forsaken place is up to you.
***
For those interested, the texts that inspired the ritual include: ‘Women of the Celts’ by Jean Markale, ‘Gates of Damascus’ by James Elroy Flecker, ‘The Sea-Bell’ or ‘Frodos Dreme’ by J.R.R. Tolkien, and ‘The Bells Of Ys’ by William Arthur Dunkerley. If you wish, you may listen to Claude Debussy’s ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ in the moments leading up to or during the ritual. I have also found the songgr by the band Alcest and others of their songs to be incredible in helping me get into a trance state as well. Those of you who are patrons of Sasha Ravitch may also wish to recite her Invocation of Pollux prior to the ritual too. Finally, I have to give my thanks to Sasha Ravitch and Briar of the Greene Chapel whose work and words have been instrumental in the construction of the ritual.
Upon the Altar 