I. The Gifts of Gwyn

It’s harvest time. I’ve been gathering in the apples from our back garden. I’ve also started to take some time out to reflect on what I have harvested on a spiritual and creative level whilst, although living with my parents, spending most of my time in solitude since leaving my ecology job in August last year.

I’ve been through a lot of changes. It was a big blow realising that the limitations of my autism rendered me incapable of coping with the demands of working in either conservation or ecology due to my inability to manage projects and people, multi-task, or work flexible shifts or do night work.

Yet my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, gifted me with two tasks that gave me purpose and hope. The first, writing a series of books titled The King of Annwn Cycle imagining His unknown story from His birth until the end of the world. The second building the Monastery of Annwn of which He is also the patron.

For the first few months I threw myself into those tasks with utter joy and was completely absorbed in the awen working on my first book In the Deep. I took initial vows as a nun of Annwn on the new moon in October and being part of a group of monastic devotees devoted to the Annuvian Gods and Goddesses has been an ongoing source of inspiration and support.

II. Losing Hope

Yet over the winter I had a few things that derailed me. Blocks with the book after realising that due to it being a personal vision of Gwyn’s story with only subtle links to the existing myths it is unlikely to reach as wide an audience as my work that explicitly related Brythonic content to our environmental crisis.

Minor health problems. Tests around raised liver function that never came to anything. Rosacea. Runner’s knee. Then in spring, just as my knee issues were easing and the weather was getting better I went and pulled my sciatic nerve in my glute and had to reduce my running and strength training.

At this point I was also struggling with breathwork meditation. Gwyn began encouraging me to learn to focus on my breath prior to covid and has told me holding spaces of calm free of chattering thoughts is one of the most important things we can do for the world on an energetic level.

Failing to master my internal chatter alone I tried looking to Buddhism and considered going to meditation classes at a Preston’s Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Centre. To prepare I read one of the books by the Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Riposte who founded the Kadampa tradition. It led me to the realisation the path of freeing oneself from the suffering of earthly existence isn’t for me and left me feeling profoundly unspiritual so I did not go.

On top of my feelings of despair about being called to write a series of books that would never sell, dread of my savings running out and having to return to menial work, and my nerve pain, this led to me feeling ‘there is no hope left.’ 

The very moment this thought popped into my mind, when I was open and vulnerable, on my way home from a local walk, my nerve bothering me, I met a person who somehow knew my name and that I ran an online monastery and invited him to join and he caused trouble and had to be thrown out. 

This was a big lesson on my failure to address the negative thought patterns that had got a hold on me. I’ve long been quite good at serving my Gods but terrible at taking care of my mental health and spiritual development. 

I’ve served as a vessel for Their inspiration without taking care of the vessel.

III. Taking Care of the Vessel

My recovery from what I now believe to be ‘power loss’ began with a ‘power retrieval’ journey with the Way of the Buzzard Mystery School.

Therein I was given a set of ‘wolf’s teeth’ and told that I must be ‘fiercer’. This went against my preconceptions of what being a nun meant as I was striving to be humbler. Yet I took my teeth and the advice. When I reported this to Gwyn, not long before his death and departure on May Day, He told me by the time He returns at the end of August He wanted me to own them.

Shortly afterwards, on the suggestion of my personal trainer, I started practicing yoga to help with my sciatic nerve problems and with flexibility. I had never considered it before due to issues around its appropriation by westerners.

However I decided to give it a go and immediately found a Youtube channel called Breathe and Flow led by a pair of practitioners who make clear from the start the poses are just part of a wider spiritual practice and philosophy and who make the effort to incorporate breathwork and meditation into their classes. 

At once I found both a physical practice to help heal my sciatic nerve pain and improve my flexibility and mobility and support with breathwork and meditation.

When I started reading up on the religious and philosophical background of yoga to my amazement I found out the Hindu God who is Lord of Yoga is Shiva and He bears similarities to Gwyn as a destroyer and transformer. They both have associations with bulls and serpents and, to my surprise and delight, Shiva’s serpent, Nandi, has a magical jewel on his forehead. In my personal gnosis Gwyn and the serpents of Annwn have similar jewels.

The images of Shiva and the meditating deity who I believe to be Gwyn on the Gundestrup Cauldron bear a striking resemblance. As I persevered with my meditation practice over the summer, although asleep, Gwyn began visiting me in spirit form, as ‘meditating Gwyn’, in the likeness of this image. As if he had been cut from the cauldron, in shining silver, to help me with my breathing. I finally found the practices I needed to take care of my vessel.

Another source of help and support has been working with a supervisor and therapist, who is also a shamanic practitioner and I was put in touch with by Nicola Smalley who co-runs the Way of the Buzzard Mystery School. This is the first time I have had a human teacher and it has taken a long while for the circumstances to come into play that have made this desirable and possible.

When we were looking into my fears around panicking/freezing/melting down when faced with unexpected difficulties, particulary in social situations, we journeyed together on it and she saw a red dragon on my shoulder breathing fire and was told by Merlin that I must learn to ‘tame the dragon’.

This unsurprisingly led ‘my red dragon’ to rebel which I gave voice to in a poem*. Yet a tarot reading revealed that what Merlin was calling for was the need not so much to tame the red dragon but to balance her energies with those of the white dragon through meditative traditions and taking responsibility. 

Of course, in the Welsh myths, it is Merlin who reveals the red and white dragons battling beneath Dinas Emrys where Vortigern wants to build his fortress following their burial by Gwyn’s father, Nudd/Lludd. Amazingly my supervisor knew nothing of my connection with these myths prior to the journey.

I have begun a process of transmuting the anger of the red dragon to strength and the panic of the white dragon to calm in my yoga practice by coupling them with holding postures on either side and with alternating nostril breathing along with trying lion’s breath to release the fiery energy.

V. Unblocking the Flow

Prior to this I had considered alternative options for possible paid work – running courses and workshops or writing a book on Brythonic Polytheism as quite a few people have asked me for reliable material. However, whenever I have attempted to put something together I have met a block.

On the one hand I felt with my background in research into the Brythonic tradition and my experiential relationship with a few of the deities I was in a position from which I could deliver this. Yet I also knew my approach is highly personal and idiosyncratic and critical of the medieval Welsh texts, penned by Christian scribes, in which Gwyn and the spirits of Annwn, the witches, giants and ancient animals are demonised and repressed.

I’m not a person who could deliver the literary background formally, without opinion, without a few of the teeth and claws of the spirits of Annwn getting through.

When I entertained the idea again this year I was told by Gwyn to set it aside and ‘stop thinking about money’. Yet my feeling this might be a future obligation and potential source of income in spite of my blocks continued to persist.

I finally let go of this once and for all following a conversation with my supervisor. She advised that rather than acting from my sense of obligation and presuppositions about what the world wants and needs I should follow my inspiration, the flow of my creativity, asked where my passion really lies.

I said, “in my books”, “in Gwyn,” “in the Annuvian,” “in all He and the Otherworld represent”. She told me this is what I should focus on and write about in spite of my fears about my work not being well received or making money.

For the past year I had increasingly been struggling to create blog content based on what I think my readers want in terms of Brythonic content and poetry. My prayers and songs for Gwyn had all been from the heart but I’d had to drink alcohol to force the poetry out and I hadn’t managed to write much about the other Brythonic Gods and Goddesses in spite of my intent.

As soon as I let go of what I felt my obligations are I had two new poems come through without the aid of alcohol pretty much complete and was inspired to write a couple of pieces on my ‘forbidden pleasure’ – dark fantasy.

VI. The Dark Magician’s Door

At the time I was considering where my future prospects and obligations lie I dismissed the possibility that I might gain a larger readership for my books, which I would describe as mythic fiction containing elements of heroic and dark fantasy, by engaging more with the world of fantasy and its readers.

I flirted briefly with the idea of starting a new blog for thoughts on fantasy and reviews but decided it would be too time consuming and didn’t like the idea of having two blogs and profiles. I also got put off by the fact a lot of engagement takes place on social media and this is an absolute no-no for me. I took one look at Twitter and felt like I was staring into the pits of Hell.

I also dismissed the idea of posting fantasy content on this blog as I have tried it in the past and it hasn’t been well received. I decided there are enough people in the world talking about fantasy and not enough talking about the Brythonic Gods so I should continue to make that duty my focus. 

I then had a seemingly unrelated experience that led to my giving up alcohol for good. I used alcohol to self-medicate my anxiety from my late teens until 2020 when I began giving it for periods and cutting down a lot. The habit of weekends and occasional mid-week drinking had snuck back during my difficulties with my sciatic nerve pain even though my body was rebelling against it – expunging it with night sweats and its stink in my piss and shit.

I really wanted to give it up for another long period but was having no success. 

Then I had a dream in which my dark magician guide (who is a character in a fantasy novel who has been with me since I was around thirteen) showed up with a vision of planks leading up and down a wall to different doors, told me he was angry I had ‘closed his door’ and left through it.

The next morning he appeared again in my meditation, vivid as in a dream, in Annwn, beside the Abyss, with the part of myself who is addicted to alcohol, sweating, writhing, stinking of its excesses, wrapped in a white shroud. He told me it was time I gave up alcohol for good and that I must cast her in. Although this completely terrified me I went along with what he said. Afterwards I reported it to Gwyn and solemnly promised Him I would not relapse.

Knowing I would never have the comfort of alcohol again was scary at first but has proved to be a big release with the part of my mind obsessing about whether I’ll drink then feel guilty and like a failure having finally been laid to rest. It has opened a lot more space for communion with my Gods and creativity.

I forgot all about the dark magician’s door until the block allowing me only to write Brythonic content and poetry for my blog was released and I came up with new poems and the fantasy book reviews I had denied myself of writing. 

I’d closed his door – the door to fantasy – and now it stands open again.

VII. Returning to Orddu’s Cave

Over this year of solitude I have harvested a good many things. I have produced a finalish draft of my first book, In the Deep, and am well on my way with the drafting of my second book, The King and Queen of Annwn. The building of the Monastery of Annwn is going well with our development of our shared practices, meditation group and first year of online rituals.

I’ve come a long way in discerning the direction of my path as an awenydd and nun of Annwn devoted Gwyn and learning to follow my inspiration.

Another important learning is that whereas in the past I forced myself out into various communities, spiritual, creative and environmental, I am happiest when I am alone or interacting with very small groups of like-minded people.

There is a lot of stigma around solitude identifying it with mental ill health. Yet, for me, and I would warrant a lot of autistic people, it is a source of well being.

This has led me back to the cave of Orddu, the Very Black Witch, an inspired one and warrior woman intimately connected to Gwyn who was slaughtered by Arthur.

I no longer see it as my duty to sing back the traditions in which the King of Annwn and his followers are demonised and killed but to join the inspired ones past and present who are perceiving new visions from the Cauldron of Inspiration, brewing them in their own vessels, birthing them in words. Owning my wolf’s teeth, my black beak and claws, all that Arthur forbids.

In my cave, my room, my monastic cell, I tend my cauldron and my awen sings.

*This is the poem recording my initial rebellion against Merlin’s words.

The Dragon on my Shoulder Breathes Fire

I.
She sees the things that are unseen but are –
the dragon on my shoulder breathes fire.

Not just any fire but Annwn’s fire, 
the type that warms the belly,
implodes the head, 
bursts forth as
poetry
(on a good day)
but is otherwise 
expressed as anger.

Anger that will not be satiated 
by death or by the spilling of blood. 

Where do dragons come from?

II.
There are fire eaters and fire breathers
and those who swallow stars
not to make a living
but to avoid our soul’s death.

Dragon fire has been within us all along.

III.
Red is danger 
and danger is anger 
with a letter d at the front.

Red and hatred have the same vibe. 
Red, goch, iron, the red at the earth’s core. 
My temper will not be tempered – my 
metalwork got melted down. 

I did not master fire. 

Instead I released the dragon 
soaring soaring from the forge wept
the day I did not save my Lord from Arthur’s sword.

But it was I who freed the fiery serpents sizzling, hissing, spitting.

IV.
Now a large grandfather clock is ticking down to doomsday. 
The dragons are fighting again and will not be quieted.

Merlin tells me that I must ‘tame the dragon’.

Why, oh prophet, diviner, madman, 
must I try to tame what cannot be tamed?

Why, oh son of a demon, who prophecies in dragon fire
are you speaking this Arthurian language of taming?

All I know is you have demons inside you too,
in your heart, in your head, that both of us
like to sit beneath the apple trees.

The dragons are within me.

The Island of Prydain.

The dragons are within you too.

The dragon on my shoulder breathes fire
and she sees the things that are unseen but are.