Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The UnderWorld Descent
Descend in guided imagination down an inner stairway into the earth — past a threshold guardian to the light hidden within the land — to meet underworld figures and ancestral powers, and to integrate the chthonic, instinctual material that ascent-toward-light work leaves untouched.
UnderWorld Descent: Set sacred space and still yourself. Find a fixed downward entrance — stairway, cave, root of the Tree, or well — and descend step by step, letting the imagery thicken. Meet the Guardian, state your intent, pass with leave. Come to the light within the earth; rest there. Encounter the underworld/ancestral/faery figures with discernment. Return up the same way, close the entrance. Record and ground. Light found by going down, not up.
What it is
R.J. Stewart’s signature practice runs counter to the familiar magical direction. Where the Golden Dawn “rises on the planes” and the mystics climb ladders toward light, Stewart’s UnderWorld Initiation goes downward and inward — a guided descent into the inner earth to find, paradoxically, a hidden light within the land (the “Earth Light”).
First circulated to students in 1978 and published in 1985, The UnderWorld Initiation sets out the theory of journeying down, “meeting with underworld guardians and guides, and the relationship between the underworld and ancestors,” and ends with a practical “UnderWorld Narrative” — an annotated guided meditation (with a companion recording, Journey to the UnderWorld) “used successfully by thousands of people.” Structurally it is a chthonic counterpart to ascent work: rather than transcending the instinctual and ancestral, you descend deliberately to confront and integrate it — a move closely akin to depth psychology’s “night-sea journey” into the unconscious and shadow.
The Method
A faithful working method drawn from Stewart’s UnderWorld and Earth Light teaching (his stance is “general guidelines rather than exercises performed by rote,” so the structure is steady but the imagery is yours to discover):
- Set sacred space and still yourself. Sit upright, settle the breath, and (in Stewart’s manner) light a candle as a focal flame. Quiet the mind until the inner imagery is clear and receptive. The descent begins from stillness, not from effort.
- Find the entrance. In vivid imagination, locate the way down — a stairway, a cave-mouth, the roots of a great Tree, or a well going into the earth. This fixed entrance is your threshold; you will use the same one each time.
- Descend, step by step. Go down slowly, counting or pacing the steps, letting the imagery thicken — cool air, stone, the fading of surface light. The deliberate, paced descent is what carries attention out of ordinary awareness and into the imaginal depth.
- Meet the Guardian. At the threshold of the deeper realm you encounter a guardian — a keeper of the way. Stewart treats this meeting seriously: greet it, state your intent honestly, and pass only with its leave. The guardian marks the real boundary of the working.
- Come to the Light within the earth. Below, find the hidden light, star, or fire within the land — the central paradox of the tradition (light found by going down, not up). Rest in its presence; this is the heart of the descent.
- Encounter the underworld figures. Meet what arises — ancestral presences, the sleepers within the land, faery contacts, or a figure such as the Dark Goddess. Observe, listen, and receive; engage seriously but with discernment, neither dismissing the figures nor obeying them blindly.
- Return by the same way. Retrace your steps back up the stairway (or root, or well) to the surface, closing the entrance behind you. The deliberate ascent and closure seal the working.
- Record and ground. Write the journey down at once, then return fully to the body — light, movement, food, water. (Sourcing note: a faithful synthesis of Stewart’s descent method — sacred space and stillness, a fixed downward entrance, paced descent, the threshold guardian, the light within the earth, encounter, and return by the same way. The specific scripted “UnderWorld Narrative” is in his book and recording; imagery varies by practitioner.)
Source & Lineage
R.J. Stewart (b. 1949) is a British composer, author, and teacher who built a distinctive body of faery and underworld practice on Scottish and Celtic lore — especially the 17th-century minister Robert Kirk’s account of the “secret commonwealth” of faery — together with Qabalistic and folk sources.
The descent is set out in The UnderWorld Initiation (1985) and the practical faery visualizations in Earth Light (1992), with the Journey to the UnderWorld recording as its companion.
His contribution to the lineage is precisely this descent-based visionary initiation, a chthonic counter-direction to the ascent models of the Western Mystery Tradition.
The Traditions' versions
The structured-descent-into-imaginal-depth pattern appears across traditions, but Stewart’s version is distinctive in going down to find light and in foregrounding the ancestral and land: - Qabalistic pathworking (Gareth Knight) — guided symbolic journeying, but classically an ascent through the Tree’s paths toward light.
- Nightside pathworking (Kenneth Grant) — the “tunnels”/dark-side journeying, another deliberate descent into the shadow current.
- Core shamanic journey (Harner) — the journey to the “Lower World” via a tunnel/opening in the earth.
- Jungian active imagination / confronting the shadow — the descent into unconscious and shadow contents.,
Common refinements
Skipping sacred space and stillness. The descent works from quiet receptivity; diving in tense and distracted yields shallow reverie.
- No fixed entrance, or changing it. The same stairway/cave/well each time is what makes the journey stable and the return reliable.
- Forcing past the Guardian. The guardian is a real boundary of the work — meet it, state your intent, pass with leave; don’t barrel through.
- Treating figures as infallible oracles. Engage underworld and faery contacts seriously but with discernment; they are not to be obeyed uncritically.
- No clean return. Always come back up the same way and close the entrance; never leave the working open or drift out.
- Not recording / not grounding. The journal is where integration happens; grounding (light, food, movement) returns you fully to the body.