The Magic of Red & White Dragons, Rivers & Roses
Some stories return like tides — carrying new meaning each time they lap at our shores. I posted about this one many years ago, and now it feels like time to revisit it.
It’s has to do with the red and white dragons of Arthurian lore and how they still stir in the underworld, reminding us that myth is not just memory, but a living current we can enter through dream, ritual, and intention — a current that winds through rivers of blood and tears, and blooms into red and white roses at the gateway to the faery realm.
Guided shamanic journeys opened the door to these magical explorations, in a workshop led by a well-known Celtic magical author where we explored the red and white energies of the Underworld.
The following weekend, I found myself descending once again into those mythic currents on my own.
The Tower and the Dragons
Let’s start with the story of King Vortigern and the young Merlin, in the tale recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Vortigern was building a tower, but each night the earth swallowed his work. His magicians demanded the blood of a fatherless boy to stabilize the foundation. That boy, of course, was Merlin — child of a mortal woman and a spirit/faery father — who offered them another truth rather than losing his life.
Beneath the hill, Merlin said, there was a cavern. Within it, a pool. At the bottom of the pool, two vessels. In those vessels, a red dragon and a white dragon slept.
When the pool was drained, the vessels broke open. The dragons burst forth — not as enemies only, but as lovers, coiling and wrestling in wild union.
On one level, they were said to represent the Saxons and Britons at war. But on a deeper level, they were — and are — the twin currents of creation itself: the molten and the luminous, the pulse of matter and the breath of spirit. They are reflected in the streams of blood and tears (lymph) within our bodies.
Descending Into the Hill
To imagine the hill of Vortigern’s tower is to feel the strata of our own being. As we enter the cavern beneath the hill, we descend into our own underworld.
There, in the subterranean pool, we can sense the red and white dragons stirring — the primal energies that rise from the heart of Earth, through the stones and roots, into our own bodies.
Their dance is the pulse of life itself, reflected even in the spiraling of our DNA — the living double helix, coiling like dragons in an eternal embrace.
When I first opened myself to this energy, I could feel a tingling rising up from my feet, energizing my whole body. It was electric, alive, and healing — like the breath of Earth itself.
It was also humbling. The dragons’ force can balance and vitalize, but without grounding, it could easily overwhelm the human vessel.
I sensed it as deep medicine for blood and bone — a reconnection with what our modern world so easily forgets: the sentience of stone, the sacred vitality of the ground beneath us.
How often do we touch Earth now with our bare hands or feet? How often do we remember to let her currents flow through us?
The Rivers of Blood and Tears
From the dragons, the vision moved to the rivers.
The river of blood flows from the red dragon; the river of tears flows from the white.
In the workshop we journeyed together — through the green veil of the plant world, gathering our faery and animal allies — down into the mineral realm, where the red river of blood wound its way to a cliff.
There, it plunged into a vast ocean of all the tears ever shed. Across that ocean, another river rose, white and shimmering, returning upward toward the light.
It was a descent into stillness — an encounter with sorrow made sacred. The underworld is not only a place of darkness but a cauldron of transformation.
The rivers of blood and tears are the channels through which the world’s pain is received and transmuted. What we cannot heal above ground is offered here, to the Faery realm, where even grief becomes luminous again.
At the edge of that crimson waterfall, I left a spontaneous offering: a single white feather. It drifted down into the river, turned blood red, and vanished. I didn’t know why I did it, but I knew it mattered.
Perhaps meaning is not the point. Sometimes the act itself is the magic.
Roses at the Faery Spring
From those two rivers arise the red and white roses of the faery realm. They twine over a faery spring — a gateway between worlds — guarding it with their thorns.
Here the dragon energies bloom into form, meeting us in the language of petals and scent. Faeries and animals can pass easily through this briar gate, but humans can only enter with humility in the company of our magical allies.
The roses protect as much as they reveal, asking of us not dominance but reciprocity.
It is said that at the heart of this faery spring, all directions and dimensions meet — a crossroads where ancestors, spirits, and shining ones gather.
The price of entry is small but real: a drop of blood from a rose’s thorn, or a tear freely given.
When my own ally, the hummingbird, came to meet me at that threshold, tears spilled from my eyes. They were accepted as my offering.
The Ally Who Whirs Like Light
Hummingbird arrived — so tiny in our world, yet so immense in the Faery realm.
At first I doubted this delicate ally, wishing for something grander. But in the underworld, hummingbird revealed her vast power — a being of light and speed, her wings like the heartbeat of creation.
She pressed against my energy field, asking silently: Will you merge with me?
For a moment I hesitated — joy and fear mixing like the red and white rivers. Then came the answer: yes. A thousand times yes.
The world then filled with the whirring song of wings, and I was no longer separate from the pulse of that radiant being.
Since then, hummingbird has remained with me — teacher, companion, reminder that what seems small is often immense in other realms.
She teaches how joy can pierce sorrow, how beauty can move faster than grief, how the red of the dragon and the red of the rose are one and the same.
Your Invitation to the Living Myth
The adventure continues, of course. The dragons still coil beneath the hill. The rivers still flow. The roses still bloom over the faery spring.
But now, when I touch Mother Earth or feel my own heartbeat, I remember: the myths are alive in us.
And so I invite you — dear friend of Faehallows — to find your way to the red and white dragons.
Sit quietly. Imagine the hill before you, the cavern beneath, the pool below. Descend in vision or dream. Feel the currents rise from Earth into your own body, until blood and tears, red and white, flow together as one river through your heart.
This is not imagination alone. It is remembrance of our essence.
Learn more about Faeries, Myth & Magic at Faehallows School of Magic