The King of Annwn is now complete. It was gifted to Gwyn and my patrons yesterday. It will not be officially published but is available as a PDF HERE. Donations can be made by emailing sisterpatience22@gmail.com. Below is the introduction.

Fragments of a Lost Mythos

I wrote this book for love of a God. He was known in ancient Britain as Vindos ‘White’ and is still known in Wales and beyond as Gwyn ap Nudd ‘White son of Mist.’

I met Gwyn at a nadir in my life at the head of a fairy funeral procession on Fairy Lane in my hometown of Penwortham in Lancashire. My rational mind refused to believe it. What would a wild Welsh God want with a suburban English poet? Yet, I knew deep within that I knew Him and had always known Him from time’s beginning. I dedicated myself to Gwyn as my patron God and began to serve Him as His awenydd ‘person inspired’ by bringing His stories and veneration back to the world.

In medieval Welsh mythology Gwyn is the King of Annwn, ‘Very Deep,’ the Otherworld, later known as Faery. Two of my books, The Broken Cauldron and Gatherer of Souls, recover and reimagine His stories from existing sources and reweave them back into the landscape of northern Britain from where they have been lost.

This book is different because I have been called to go beyond the existing texts, from the known to the unknown, under Gwyn’s guidance through meditation and journeywork to seek visions of the stories of His birth, His boyhood and how He built His kingdom. I’ve also drawn on Irish, Norse and other Indo-European sources.

What lies herein is an emerging myth, both new and ancient, telling the cycle of the birth and death of Vindos. I don’t believe it’s the only one – He told me there are as many stories of His birth as there as facets on the jewel in His forehead – but it is the one He has inspired me to tell.

In the later sections you will note I have drawn on the Four Branches of The Mabinogion, reading between the lines, finding the King of Annwn in different guises, to reconstruct the later episodes in the story of Vindos. For this I am indebted to Will Parker’s reading of the Four Branches as a plot by which the forces of Annwn are ‘drawn out’ ‘confronted’ and ‘neutralised’ by the Children of Don.

Whereas some of the stories are set in their traditional places I have chosen to locate others within my home county of Lancashire weaving the mythos of Vindos and His family into the landscape where I met and venerate Them. 

I decided to use the ancient British names for the Gods rather than their medieval Welsh names to create a more archaic feel. Thus Vindos rather than Gwyn, Nodens rather than Nudd, Uidianos rather than Gwydion, reconstructing with a little poetic licence where I have no scholarship to follow, for instance Kraideti rather than Creiddylad.

I started writing this book in 2019 and it took many forms before I decided on the current format of  fragmentary episodes and poems which follows the form of the medieval Welsh sources such as The Mabinogion, The Black Book of Carmarthen and How Culhwch won Olwen.

I share it here, not as an ur-text, as the one truth about Gwyn’s origins, but as one facet of the jewel of His mysteries. I hope it will help and inspire its readers to come to know and love Gwyn and to seek visions of His tales.

~

With the completion of this book I have made the decision to stop blogging and to close my Patreon in order to focus more deeply on my monastic calling and find paid work. For the past couple of years the Gods and spirits have telling me to slow down, calm down and get off the computer and the right time has finally arrived.

Having an online presence has provided the benefit of a platform to share research and devotional material for my Gods but has had significant costs to my mental health in terms of the time and energy used for little financial compensation. It’s addictive and distracting and has formed a substitute for life in the real world and I need to find out who I am without an online persona.

This blog will remain as a static website as an archive of my writing and as a place to offer donation-based soul guidance sessions and shamanic healings (once my training is complete).