Thom says:
“The purpose of the Faery Arts is to allow a person to change their level of awareness away from middle-earth and put it in touch with Elfhame. This is the secret behind the concept of being “oot and aboot”…because when a person’s “soul” leaves the body, to travel between the worlds, this event is a purely metaphorical description of the person’s mind-state changing. Everything that happens to you is in your mind. The more you practice the Faery Arts, the more lucid and real it will seem to you, and soon, your experiences will be so strong, they will take on their own “reality”.
At the most basic level, the Faery-Arts involve simple imaginal techniques which induce a subtle trance, in which “passage between the worlds” becomes possible.
The first technique is to meditate calmly upon the image of a deep stone-lined well in a shadowy grove of hazels, hawthorns and yews. Contemplate the dark well from whose depths a gentle greenish glow emanates, and then descend deep into it in your vision until you sink beneath it’s waters, deep down into the Great Below. After a time and with regular work, this will catalyse altered mind-states and visions as your psyche attunes to the Faerie Land.
The other method of entering Elfhame is to visualize a great barrow mound, or Faery-Hill, whose turf slope looms before you in the mist and twilight. There is a stone gateway and a great wooden door in the hillside and you approach the door. Knocking thrice upon it you open the door and enter into a stone passageway, into the heart of the hill. The passageway turns to the right and descends spirally in worn, shallow steps. Following the stone steps you descend ever more deeply into the great below until you begin to enter the perceptual mind state of the Faery-World.
There are certain times and places where this becomes very easy. At dawn or at dusk, or at the heart of midnight, one can always make passage easier. On any of the ancient Hallowed Nights, this is also the case. And at any location of power…Faery Hills, crossed-roads, hedges, stiles, river and stream banks, wells, springs, caves, Raths, standing stones, at the Foot of Oak trees, Elder trees, or Ash trees, and the like. These places make the passage easier.”