Mother Mary’s well at Matareya Garden, Cairo

This is a story about my trip to Egypt in April 2025. I left Sydney on 11th of
April and I have joined Judy Satori’s group in the Hyatt Hotel in Cairo.
There were 33 participants from all over the world. Because Judy is from
New Zealand, there were six people from New Zealand, but also there
were people from England, from Ireland, from United States, from
Germany, from Netherlands. And there were, I think, two from Japan and
four from Malaysia as well. So it was a quite interesting mix. I was sharing
the room with the Irish girl named Sheila.
The first important thing that happened to me was still in Cairo when we
went to Matareya Garden, which means The Garden of Mary.
This is the place where the Holy Family stayed when they were fleeing into
Egypt, around the sycamore tree and the well. And this tree that was
originally growing there bent and they hid underneath it. The soldiers of
Herod passed them without noticing The Holy Family under the tree. And
this tree kept growing in the same spot and was continuously visited by
followers of Jesus for many, many years.
But sometime in the 16th century the tree started dying. It was just too old
to keep going. So it happened that some Christian monks took the cuttings
of this dying tree and replanted them in a garden of their monastery.
Then a year or two later, once they took root, they have planted them back
in the same spot. So a new tree grew in the same place. And the well
stayed active there also.
Now this sacred place is located in a not very interesting part of Cairo. But
it is well walled in and guarded. And in the entry there, as in the entry to
every temple, you have to go through the scanner. Anything that you are
carrying has to go through the security scanner as well.
Then we walked around there, we had a little group meditation. Judy told
us to sit quietly for just 20 minutes, scatter around the garden and see what
we can get.

So I just sat, not far from the tree on a bench. The tree is in the enclosure,
so you can’t touch it, but it’s quite big and gnarled. I was just looking at the
tree and trying to meditate. I thought, how am I going to connect with the
tree? I always thought about people who talk to the trees that they’re plain
crazy.
But suddenly the tree started giving me the information. And it told me that
when the new tree was planted from the cuttings taken by monks, although
the part above the ground was already dead and decaying, the root system
underground was still alive. And the root system of the old tree got
connected with the roots of those new plantings.
So therefore, this is still the same tree, the original root system from the
times of the visit of The Holy family still stays alive. I thought that was very
interesting information. I was very happy with that. After the meditation
Sheila told me that when she was sitting quietly around the well meditating,
a caretaker of this place was watching her and after she finished he gave
her three seeds of this tree. She gave me one and I brought it back home.

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