Once upon a time, a young woman drank from a well. But this was not just any well. Connla’s well, as it was called, was directly connected to a parallel dimension the ancient Irish called the Otherworld. Whoever drank its waters would also imbibe the vast, transcendent wisdom of this world, and the other.
But there was a cost.
One day, a young girl named Sinann drank from the well. What occurred in her mind, we won’t ever know. But what we do know is that as soon as she touched the iridescent waters to her lips, Sinann ceased to exist. Some say she was drowned as the well overflowed to punish her for transgressing a sacred taboo. But there are others who quietly claim that Sinann became the river goddess known as the Shannon–the longest river in Ireland.
The girl died, but a river was born.
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This simple tale from Ireland could be five thousand years old. Its a story I imagine my own Irish ancestors would have likely known as it trickled down through the oral histories of an animistic, pre-Christian European culture, miraculously washing up on our modern shores in written texts several centuries ago despite nearly a millennium of English colonization.
The story of Connla’s Well is a powerful example of what ancient myths can teach us about altered states of consciousness and psychedelic healing. Every time we work with psychedelics, examine our dreams, practice breath work, and even experience certain forms of psychotherapy, we are approaching the Great Well of the unconscious and entering the Otherworld of the mythic imagination.
Irish linguist and author Manchán Magan says:
To fully appreciate this idea we need to understand that the Otherworld was more than an imaginary realm where ancient gods and heroes dwelt and feasted; it was an elusive and undefinable space that was as much connected to the subconscious or inner psyche of the individual and the group consciousness of the community as it was to magical gods, or the spirit of past ancestors, or the energetic resonances of the natural world. All these things come together in the Otherworld, just as they might in a dream, and place names became just another way to access them, like using sacred trees or rituals or charms.
Highlighting the prevalence of Otherworld awareness infused within the Irish language and landscape, Magan illustrates the connection between the Irish word for a physical place or locality (ceantar) and the word for its opposite, the Otherworld (alltar): “In the Irish mindset, the ceantar is closely shadowed by the alltar. They exist simultaneously, in all places, at all times. Our physical bodies occupy the ceantar but our minds can easily slip into the alltar”.
To the ancient Irish, and perhaps to all animistic peoples, the Otherworld dwelled just behind the surface of our own. One of the most reliable ways of accessing this parallel realm was through the sacred wells and other special places scattered across the landscape.
Wells are inherently introspective spaces, literally reflecting back our own image and beckoning us deeper into our internal world through their subtle invitation to fathom their waters. The Well is an image of deep but contained unconscious work, a boundaried yet immeasurable space that offers a distinct doorway for inner exploration. Across the world, springs and wells are often considered sacred places with healing powers.
I recall sitting by many wells throughout my life—the headwaters of the Sacramento River at the foot of Mount Shasta, the boiling sulfuric pools at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, springs in Zimbabwe emitting an ineffable hum, sacred wells across Ireland—and feeling myself carried away into some vast, mysterious terrain both inside and outside myself that felt deeply familiar, yet decidedly unknown. If it's possible to feel both grief and joy, ease and edginess in the same moment, wells evoke this in me. Wells magnetize myths and people to them because they symbolize the doorway to the unconscious, the Otherworld, and the living earth.
If approached incorrectly, however, the well can be overwhelming and dangerous. In the story, there is a dark, magical mist that encircles Connla’s Well, and represents this potential peril and signals caution to those who would frivolously drink or disturb its waters. As with many sacred wells today across Ireland, there are appropriate ways to approach the Great Well of the unconscious—protocols and rituals that establish an atmosphere of reverence and respect that also serves to protect those who would venture within.
Let’s also be clear about something: drinking from the well can be a disruptive act.
Otherworld wisdom is subversive. It turns our understanding of life on its head. We come away from our encounters with it bringing back new ideas about who we are, what our world is, and how we might change our personal and collective course forever. This sort of wisdom challenges the established order of things. There is immense power here. It is no wonder that in the seventeenth century the colonial British banned the Irish from gathering at their holy wells.
For as a great bard of the Irish tradition, Terence McKenna, famously said, “Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong”.
When we drink from the Well, everything we know can change. Yet knowledge without transformation is just information. The story of Connla’s Well shows us that the wisdom we find at the bottom of the well comes with a price. Sometimes the price is that we change how we live, break familial patterns, or release things we have tightly clung to when something deep within us knows we must let them go. It is not uncommon for people to emerge from psychedelic journeys with a conviction that they must change fundamental aspects of how they live.
This is Otherworld wisdom speaking its cold, clear truth through those who drink from the Well.
The story ends with what some might see as a warning: Sinann drowns because of her transgressive thirst for self-knowledge. Though centuries of Catholic priests would have surely sunk their teeth into this as a cautionary tale, let’s not forget that this is a pagan story, intimately connected to the land, cycles of life and death, and the unique spirit of a people and a place. In the West, modernity has brought us a long way from a realistic understanding of what such a culture might entail. But the myths remain.
Like Ariadne’s golden thread weaving its way through the labyrinth, myths are pathways of deep remembrance, leading us ultimately into a process that instigates individual healing and cultural repair. To see the conclusion of this tale simply as the consequence of overstepping our bounds ignores its deeper meaning.
The story of Sinann and Connla’s Well is a story about transformation. Sinann doesn’t end up with wealth or fame or a kingdom—conspicuously modern, and dare I say masculine views of success and achievement. Rather, she gains a level of interrelatedness and kinship that is hard for our dualistic minds to even fathom. But the story says it clear as day: drink from the Well and discover what it means to be a living being connected to a living earth.
This sense of interconnection and unity is a foundational aspect of psychedelic experiences that could be considered “mystical” in nature. Emerging research shows us that psychedelic healing achieves its full potential of creating significant life transformations when people experience this mystical state of interconnectivity and oneness, which also serves to reframe our understanding of our relationship to ourselves, our communities, our planet, and the wider cosmos.
Ego dissolution is a common term for this sort of experience. Sinann achieves not just a dissolution of her ego, but of her entire being, melting into the animate all that permeates our every breath. She is no longer an “I.” She is water flowing into river, river rushing into ocean, ocean evaporating into cloud, cloud thundering into earth, absorbing into plant, metabolizing into animal, digesting into human, sung into song, and remembered into myth.
Sinann imbibes the wisdom of the Otherworld and finds herself connected to a vastness much greater than herself. The story tells us that when we dip into that mysterious terrain, we expand far beyond simple definitions of ourselves.
Drink one drop from the well, and your whole life can change.
This is an excerpt from my book, Psychedelics & the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair. If you like what you read, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
Also, do you know of some good sources for reading more about Irish myths and pre-colonial practices? It’s tough to sift through the myriad websites dedicated to “Celtic/Pagan traditions” to get to some primary or secondary sources.
“She is water flowing into river, river rushing into ocean, ocean evaporating into cloud, cloud thundering into earth, absorbing into plant, metabolizing into animal, digesting into human, sung into song, and remembered into myth.”
Thank you for this imagery 🙏