Quinta da Regaleira - World Heritage 1

Initiation well
It is an underground gallery with a spiral staircase, supported by carved columns, through which you descend to the bottom of the well. The staircase consists of nine levels separated by flights of 15 steps each, invoking references to Dante's Divine Comedy and which can represent the 9 circles of hell, paradise, or purgatory. According to the renowned occultists Albert Pike, René Guénon and Manly Palmer Hall, it is in the work 'The Divine Comedy' that the Rosicrucian Order is exposed for the first time.
At the bottom of the well is inlaid in marble, a compass rose (eight-pointed star: 4 major or cardinal, 4 minor or collateral) over a Templar cross, which is the heraldic emblem of Carvalho Monteiro and, at the same time, indicative of the Rosicrucian Order.