In the previous post I looked at abyss mysticism in the writing of medieval monastics. Here I shall discuss how it relates to the visions of the Abyss that formed the core of my attempted novel, In the Deep, and to my own experiences.
The Christian abyss mystics of the medieval period perceived the soul and God to be dual abysses. Through a process of annihilation, led by love, the abyss of the soul was dissolved in the abyss of God. Van Ruusbroec conceived this slightly differently suggesting the Abyss was a ‘God beyond God’.
The process of annihilation was one that involved suffering. Penitence, purgation, purification, to varying degrees in different authors but the result was ultimately joyous union with God as the ‘divine’ or ‘blessed’ abyss.
The big difference between my own experiences and visions and those of these Christian mystics is theological as I am a polytheist and not a monotheist and find it difficult to identify the Abyss with the Christian God.
The Abyss has a presence in my life as something powerful, as something divine, as a deity, but not as a God I can name. Thus Van Ruusbroec’s conception of it as a ‘God beyond God’ resonates deeply with me as does the positing by the Gnostics of a God of the Deep preceding the creator God whose prior existence is suggested in Genesis 1.2 ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ The terms ‘deep’ and ‘abyss’ stem from the Hebrew tehom and are often used interchangeably.
In the cosmology that has been revealed to me by the Brythonic Godsthe Abyss is part of Annwn, ‘Very Deep’, its deepest part, its bottomless depth. It is a place to where the souls of the dead return and from it are reborn.
The way I envisage it bears remarkable similarities to the vision of Hadewijch of Antwerp – ‘an unfathomable depth’, ‘a very deep whirlpool, wide and exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included, crowded together and compressed’.
It is associated with deep wisdom that can only be won as a result of sacrifice. In the stories I was shown Nodens / Nudd agreed to give up His sword arm. He hung over the Abyss in the coils of the Dragon Mother, Anrhuna, the Goddess of the Deep, and received the knowledge, ‘There is no up or down or before or after – everything meets here in you the Dragon Mother.’
Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd hung over the Abyss on a yew wounded in raven form and gave every last drop of his blood in exchange for a vision ‘to set the world to rights’. His knowledge was brought out of Him by a series of riddles and He saw Himself as a black dragon before plummeting dead into the Abyss.
At the beginning of the next book in death He was united with ‘the source’:
Vindos fell,
and as he fell he left behind
his shell of bones and black feathers
and his soul flew free on wider wings
on the winds of the Abyss.
He had won
their favour
through his offering
of every last drop of his blood.
By his wounding, by his questioning,
agony had become ecstasy.
The bottomless
abyss
was no longer bottomless.
He had mastered its paradoxes and knew
where darkness turns to light
and death to life.
Down was
now up
and he was one
with the source, the spring
from which the ocean of the stars
sprung when the universe
was born.’
These scenes bear similarities with Marguerite Porete’s words about the soul, in annihilation, finding ‘there is neither beginning, middle nor end, but only an abyssal abyss without bottom’ before acheiving ecstatic union with God.
It seems my Gods, Nodens / Nudd and His son, Vindos / Gwyn are presenting to me a tradition of sacrifice to the Abyss in return for its wisdom. By leading the way they are showing what might be expected of Their devotees.
My first experience of the Abyss took place as the result of an unconscious process of self-annihilation – dissolution of the self through the combination of practicing Husserl’s epoche (putting all one’s presuppositions about the nature of reality aside) with drugs and alchohol and all night dancing.
There was a yearning within me, I might now say deep for deep, abyss for abyss, but I didn’t know what it was and when I got to the Abyss it terrified me. I wasn’t ready for abyssal wisdom. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t understand its choices, to live as I was or to die physically, or to take a third door.
I see in my own impulses and those of the abyss mystics, love and annihilation, the interplay of eros the ‘life drive’ and thanatos the ‘death drive’ which together lead to the Abyss and to union with the divine if one is prepared to surrender to make some sacrifice of themselves.
I’ve never been good at giving or sacrifice always wanting things my own way.
Ten years ago, Gwyn, my patron God, a King of Annwn, asked me for a sacrifice in exchange for the wisdom of Annwn – to give up my desire to be a professional author. I did so… but not in full… I secretly entertained a hope if I gave it up for a period I might be let off and be able to have my cake and eat it.
My experience of writing In the Deep, spending a year and a half on a novel that has turned out unpublishable and daring to think it might sell more widely than my previous publications has shown this is not the case.
It’s taken me ten years to realise I must give up my biggest dream in full for good.
This fits with the process of self annihilation found in the medieval mystics. Only by giving up our desires, surrendering our will, can we walk the path of the Gods and with them find a deeper unison with the God beyond the Gods.
I believe this also relates to the need to give up my identity as Lorna Smithers, published author, performing poet, public speaker, to become Sister Patience.
In the Deep was not written purely for self gain. First and foremost it was written for love** of Gwyn, as an origin story for Him, as an offering. I believe it is because of that the awen flowed and I retain these visions as His gift.
That He, ‘White, Blessed’, has led me to the blessed Abyss, the God beyond the Gods, who may or may not be the formlessness of the Mother of the Deep before She took form.
To the third door – to die to his present life, to be annihilated, hopefully like Vindos / Gwyn to be reborn.
He was
the first microbe
and every single tiny thing.
He was an ammonite and a starfish,
He was a silver salmon,
every fish.
He swam
amongst bright creatures
as an eel, as a seasnake, as a snake,
as a horned serpent, as a bull, as a wolf.
Playful as a new-born pup
Vindos
chased his tail
and the trails of starships
and traversed every wormhole
before he emerged from the sea of stars
and climbed out of the cauldron,
naked, dripping, triumphant,
and very much living
to stand beside Old Mother Universe.
*I also wrote the sequel, The Spirits of Annwn, in draft form as a long poem, when possessed by the awen last year.
**Unlike annihilation love is a difficult thing for me to talk about as someone who, after a number of botched relationships, only discovered they were asexual and aromantic late in life. Unlike a number of Gwyn devotees with an intense devotional relationship with Him I am not a God spouse. Much inside me rebels against using the language of marriage found in Christianity such as ‘bride of Christ’ and even ‘love’ with its sexual and romantic connotations in reference to our relationship. I wish there was a word for purely devotional love.
In part five I will be writing about how these insights relate to the Brythonic tradition.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 
On words for devotional love the distinction in Ancient Greece between ‘eros’ and ‘agape’, or in Latin between ‘amor’ and ‘caritas’ led to some theological debate in the middle ages. ‘Eros’ was, as you note, used as a metaphor for the Church as ‘the Bride of Christ’ and is also contained in the imagery of the O.T. Song of Solomon. But ‘Eros’ as sexual love was distinguished from ‘agape’ as love of something that is valued for it’s own sake, and so a signifier of the love of and for God. The debate centred around whether human love (agape/caritas) for another human is the same as love of or for God or whether one is, rather, a simile for the other. cf, this from the author of the 13th cent. ‘Sustenace of the Soul’ :
“affectionate love (annwylserch garyat)… is loving God more than anything [but also] loving your neighbour as much as yourself.”
“every other kind of love which is fixed upon another creature, and not upon God, is foolish love (ynvytserch), …… and centred on nothingness and with nothingness it is lost…… for sin and nothingness are the same thing.”
Thanks for sharing. I’d only come across agape in relation to loving one’s neighbour so will look into that.
Im Bythios an Aeon my other name is The Deep my aspect is Deep meaning the void
This is very interesting, I don’t really understand much of how you made these connections, I had an encounter with the abyss myself about 30 years ago now, it changed my life entirely, but I don’t really know how or why I got there (other than massive amounts of magic mushrooms) or how I got out (other than a lot of talking and thinking) I suppose before I was an angry young man, and after I became more learned, I took study much more seriously after that’s for sure!
Interesting to hear you also had an encounter with the abyss and psychedelics were involved – both magic mushrooms and LSD. Danica Swanson also writes about her experiences of the Abyss having come from taking mushrooms. I’m guessing the mushrooms have a similar effect breaking down our cognitive faculties (like other substances) to certain meditative practices? It was mushrooms/LSD that got me there at first but I’ve had visions of the Abyss without their help since.
I think current research says that the active ingredient psilocybin causes brains to go bonkers! LOL Or more specially, neurons and connections to be activated across the board as it were, so I would interpret that to mean that one accesses a form of lateral thinking – or more likely experiences to come at once, I thought of it as being ancestral, archaic, going way back – almost potentially to when we were all plants, or single cells or ghosts, or whatever 🙂
Just chiming in here to concur – I had an initiatory experience last year made possible by some very potent mushrooms, and while at the time I don’t think I would have described it as an encounter with the Abyss per se, I resonate with a lot of what you’re talking about in these posts and ultimately I think it led me to a similar gnosis. I have been thinking along these lines ever since (in fact, some of that informed Mycogenous).
Yes, I got that impression… the arrival of the book feels linked to some of the experiences of dissolution I’ve recently been going through… I’ll likely say more about that in the review…
I can relate to yours (and Vindos and Nodens) experiences with the abyss.
Some Gaulish pagans have similar gnosis and call the source “the well” from which the tree of life grows. It is sometimes also represented as a cauldron that holds the universe.
One time, Cernunnos took me on a journey to the well and the roots of the tree. It was a chasm, a void, and dark yet inklings of great and powerful existence grew from it. Others had similar visions. With Gwyn and Cernunnos having these overlaps in my gnosis, it reminds me of some of the imagery in your writing of Vindos and your own personal experiences.
Thanks for sharing. That’s really interesting. There definitely seems to be some overlap with a tree growing from / over an abyss / well / cauldron relating to the source. And also very interesting other Gaulish pagans share this too suggesting Brythonic and Gaulish cross over.
“I wish there was a word for purely devotional love.”
Amen! I am in a very similar boat and also find it frustrating that so much of the language surrounding devotional relationships is modeled on conventionally romantic/sexual human relationships. I mean, I get it, and I’m sure that resonates well for many people, but even beyond the issue of being ace/aro, I think there is something inherently different and, well, More about the union with the divine, far beyond even the most intense unions between people. That kind of language might be a useful shorthand in some cases but I think it also may lead to a false equivalency.
Yes I feel like there needs to be a word to express that sanctity, that sense of far beyond, wonder whether words can reach it… can language stretch that far?…
I tend to think of it as “bakhti” – borrowing from Hinduism, but I’m not well versed enough in that tradition to know if I’m understanding the term entirely properly. But it’s something.
I think I picked that up from Silence Maestas – have you read their book Walking the Heartroad? It’s been awhile since I read it but I know it does at least address some other dynamics besides romantic.
Yes, ‘bhakti’, ‘devotional love for a personal god’ does seem to hit the right note. I practiced Bhakti to Ganesh at a Hindu / Druid gathering once and loved it – felt so right! But I’m not well versed enough in the tradition to understand it either. I wonder if it’s something that once underlay all Indo-European traditions?
Your visions are interesting, What kind of vision about Gwyn and his sacrifice by blood did you have? Is it truly a vision or just a theory?
After reading your post I wonder if Gwyn would have been the one who initiated the creation of the universe, What do you think?
It was definitely a vision of Vindos / Gwyn wounded by the spear of Lugus shifting into the form of a raven then flying wounded through the tunnels to Annwn to the inverted yew hanging over the Abyss where he hung upside down answering the riddles and at the end, as the last drop of his blood fell, falling into the Abyss. Most of the riddles came through to me during a sleepless night and needed only a little tweaking.
I’m not sure about Gwyn initiating the creation of the universe. Although in the book I wrote (somewhat confusingly) as he fell into the Abyss he dreamt of falling from ‘the cauldron of the sky’, the cauldron of Old Mother Universe / Ceridwen, as a drop, a jewel, a star, a newborn boy, into the Deep, then awakening his mother, Anrhuna, the Mother of the Deep into dragon form. All of this happened around the time the universe came to be. So there is something happening there and I’m not sure what.
Additionally ‘the hanging yew’ for me is a very real place in Annwn I’ve visited with Vindos / Gwyn in journeys many times since. I’ve also seen it as a kind of world tree with the yew arils as worlds falling into the mouth of the Abyss which was the inspiration for the image in part one.
I see! The fact that his sacrifice would mean « to set the world to rights » is interesting too, maybe a link to something in the notion of the original sin, or other wrongs about the world, what was your way to see it?
Yeah there’s something about the moment of creation to discover I think, if he awaked his dragon mother, who is related to the abyss and the primordial chaos, maybe this is the spark that created the big bang, knowing he fell throught time (even outside of time, « eternal time ») as a Spirit would even linked to the genesis passage you were talking about, the first spirit or entity present with the dragon mother in the abyss. I already had a vison of gwyn hovering above primordial waters as a spirit. Then came an intense light over the waters.
In the book both Vindos and Lugus had done things that had catastrophic consequences (such as Vindos releasing the fury of the spirits of Annwn during the Battle of the Trees in which Annuvian monsters feature in the lore). Their attacks on each other and of the Heavens on the Deep were a kind of cosmic mirroring bringing about disasters so by hanging upside down Vindos strove to ‘set the world to rights’.
The vision you just shared also touched something in me. I certainly feel Gwyn has a strong connection with beginnings and endings.