An exciting new AI project curated by polytheist philosopher Edward Butler (and others) aiding philosophical and theological inquiry and creativity. Edward has kindly invited me and other Brythonic polytheists to submit content.
What is Brythonic Polytheism?
This is an article for those who are new to this website explaining what Brythonic polytheism is and its significance for me as someone living in present-day Lancashire.
Brythonic polytheism is the worship of one more of the many Gods venerated by the Brythonic peoples who inhabited most of Britain from around 4000 BCE to around 800 CE. During the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the Brythonic culture and language were replaced by English in what is now England, but continued to live on in Wales.
There are various sources of evidence attesting the veneration of the Brythonic Gods. The first is archaeological and includes Romano-British temples, shrines, inscriptions, statues and altars. The second is place names (such as Luguvalium which means ‘Strong in Lugus’). The third is Roman records. Although the Roman writers don’t say anything about the Brythonic Gods they do speak about how the Gallo-Brythonic Deities were worshipped in Gaul. The fourth is medieval Welsh literature and later folklore. Herein we find the myths of the Brythonic Deities rewritten by Christian scribes and traditions of interactions with the spirits of the Brythonic Otherworld (Annwn ‘Very Deep’ or Faery) recorded by folklorists.
During the post-Roman period northern Britain and southern Scotland were known as Yr Hen Ogledd ‘the Old North’. In medieval Welsh literature there are numerous poems documenting the fall of the Old North to the Anglo-Saxons and recording the lore associated with it.
Early on my path to Brythonic polytheism I was called to look to the evidence for the veneration of the Brythonic Gods and spirits in my local area and to construct a practice based around it. I first found out that the Goddess of my local river, the Ribble, is Belisama, as evidenced by Ptolemy’s Geography, which labels the estuary Belisama aest. I discovered that there are altars to Matrona ‘the Mother’ and Maponos ‘the Son’ at Ribchester and to the Mothers at Lund, that Brigantia was worshipped in the Pennines and that two Romano-British statuettes dedicated to Nodens (as Mars-Nodontis) were discovered on Cockersand Moss. I began praying to and making offerings to these Deities and writing poetry for Them. I made contact and established relationships. Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd (the son of Nodens / Nudd) appeared to me at a local fairy site in an intense theophany that led to me devoting myself to Him as my patron God. I also built relationships with the spirits of my house, garden and local valley.
I was initially surpised by Gwyn’s appearance even though the site mentioned is associated with a local fairy funeral legend. I didn’t realise He, the a Brythonic King of Annwn / Faery, was the fairy leader. It made further sense in relation to the statuettes dedicated to His father and to the place name Netholme (Nudd’s islet) near Martin Mere. Then, even more, when I read ‘the Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’ and discovered that Gwyn gathered the souls of several famous northern warriors and Culhwch and Olwen wherein Gwyn appears in two episodes (the Battle for Creiddylad and the Very Black Witch) that take place in the North.
Having a relationship with Gwyn and other Brythonic Gods rooted in the myths and lore of the Lancashire landscape and more widely of the Old North is significant to me for a number of reasons. These relationships are valuable in themselves as a source of companionship, joy, wonder and awe which moves my soul on the deepest of levels. They are also of value because they offer an alternative way of being rooted in connection with the land and local tales in opposition to the monoculture of modern technocratic capitalist society. The inspiration and guidance of these Gods and spirits provides meaning and purpose beyond the norms and rules that have led to our exploitation of the earth and both non-humans and other humans. Simply taking time out to pray, meditate, journey or create art is an act of resistance to productivity and constant screen time, as is walking, gardening and working on the land in communion with the spirits.
In Gwyn’s mythos I found a different seasonal cycle to work with – Calan Mai (Gwyn and Gwythyr’s Battle for Creiddylad), 29th Sept Gwyn’s Feast, Nos Galan Gaeaf (Gwyn’s Hunt) – as an alternative to celebrating the commercial festivals and the Wiccan / Druidic Wheel of the Year.
I’ve been a Brythonic polytheist for over thirteen years. My path has shifted and changed from being a performing poet and conference speaker, to working in conservation, to experimenting with monasticism, to my current shamanic work. Throughout, my constants have been devotion to Gwyn, creativity and having a shamanic practice and these remain my lifelines in a changing catastrophic world.
This Dark Night
Vindos Vindos Vindos
by the Winter Wind
I call to You
Vindos Vindos Vindos
Father of Night
oh hear my cry
Vindos Vindos Vindos
in the darkness
make me one with You
Vindos Vindos Vindos
heal my wounds
on this dark night
Audio HERE
*A chant to Vindos for all those in need of healing over the dark moon and winter solstice period.
Shamanic Energy Healing (including Extraction)
Shamanic energy healing is a form of energy healing in which a practitioner works with their spirit helpers and traditional shamanic tools such as a drum and rattle to heal ailments which have a basis in a client’s energy body.
The notion that we have not only a physical body but an energy body and that they are both expressions of energy is common across indigenous and Eastern cultures. It was lost in the West due to the hegemony of our rational scientific worldview yet is now coming to be accepted in modern science. Einstein states E=mc² – energy and matter are basically the same thing.
There are many models of the energy body which share a common core. Firstly, energy runs in channels through the energy body (in India these are referred to as nadis and in China as meridians). Secondly, there a number of energy centres within the body with the main ones located along the spine. From the Indian yogic system is derived the modern seven chakra ‘wheel’ model you may be familiar with (root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow, crown). As it is the best known this is the one most practitioners use. Thirdly, the body is surrounded and interpenetrated by an energetic field known as the aura.
A shamanic energy healing session typically begins with a scan of the client’s energy field and chakras to assess the overall flow and to locate any problems. Blocked or congealed energies are moved and / or transformed. Energetic imbalances are corrected. This might be done by the use of the hands or bodily movements (on an energetic level not touching the client), with a drum or rattle, the voice, or with a natural object such as a feather.
In some cases an extraction is required. Extraction involves removing intrusions. An intrusion is negative energy that does not belong to a client and intrudes into their energy field, often when they are feeling low. Intrusions can appear as objects such as arrows or stones or can take the form of beings, most commonly as insects or serpents. They are extracted from the energy field into an object such as a stone, crystal or feather then returned to the elements in some way (for example I put my crystals in salt water to neutralise the negative energy and hang my feathers on a tree). Because the extraction leaves a gap it is usually necessary to bring positive energy in. This can be resonant energy from the client’s energy field or might be brought from elsewhere by the practitioner or the spirit helpers. It might take the form of light, a colour, or an object such as a crystal.
The practitioner may also be guided to work with one or more of the chakras. Each chakra relates to a different system within the body. For example, the heart chakra to the circulatory system and the sacral to the reproductive system. The chakras can reveal what is happening in the related system.
I’ve found that it’s possible to journey, with or without the client, into a chakra in order to gain a vision of the ailment within the body or to trace its origin in history or ancestry or on a symbolic level within one of the Otherworlds. Healing work can be done within a chakra. Cleansing and energising the chakra once the work has been done also has a positive effect. The session might be finished with healing drumming or a rattle cleansing.
The energy system can be shaken up by the process and symptoms can get a little worse before they get better, but this only something to worry about if the aggravation is excessive or lasts for more than a few days.
*
In preparation for energy work with clients I spent a good couple of years beforehand getting to know and working with my own energy body. This was through yogic techniques such as meditation and breathwork focusing on the pancha kosha ‘five envelopes’ energy body and seven chakra model. I chose the yogic system because my personal spiritual path, Brythonic polytheism, shares its roots with yoga with both being Indo-European traditions. On advice of my mentor I also did journeywork with my chakras, exploring the inner landscapes and how they relate to my physical body and building a map of personal associations including their guardian spirit animals.
I offered the sessions in person, online, and, for the first time, provided a distance healing option. This consisted of an online interview followed by a remote healing session with an audio recording and an email summary.
I worked with eight clients in total. Most clients came to me with more than one problem. The most common were musculoskeletal. I also dealt with digestive ailments, eye and throat problems, womens’ issues and cancer.
I’ve learnt a good deal from these shamanic energy healing sessions. Each client and each ailment has led to a deeper knowledge of physical anatomy and how it is linked to the energy body and to energetic disturbances.
On several occasions I was prompted to mime the work I was doing on an energetic level on the physical level without touching the client (ie. stirring, swaying, massaging) and this felt very natural and intuitive. Having done some physical work and put in physical effort made me feel as if I’d worked more towards the effect and brought about more of an energetic shift.
Another point of learning was that I was guided to merge not only with my own spirit helpers but those of clients. This was most often with power animals but on a couple of occasions it was with angels (with whom I wouldn’t usually work in my day-to-day practice). This gave me a strong sense of their power and energy and how it might augment a healing. On a couple of occasions I had the opportunity to work with others who have relationships with Gwyn ap Nudd (my patron God) and working with His guidance and channelling His energy was a powerful experience for both myself and the clients.
I had the opportunity to work with one client who was far more clairsentient than clairvoyant (which is my main channel). I really had to listen to my body and in combination with what the client was feeling in order to build a rapport and tune in to what spirit was saying to both of us. It helped me develop my own clairsentience and ability to work with someone through this channel.
In most instances, I found that an ailment could be healed by pure energy work but, in others, that it was necessary to address the root cause, which in a couple of cases was power loss or soul loss, necessitating power or soul retrieval. In another couple of cases ailments were ancestral and communications with ancestors and addressing ancestral patterns and trauma was needed. My existing training stood me in good stead for bringing in other techniques.
An important point to note is that the shamanic energy healing was quite often a supplement to existing treatment from doctors and physiotherapists. It was encouraging that my findings and healings resonated with advice from the traditional medical professions and that they sat well side by side.
I found that whether I did sessions in person, online, or remotely did not affect the efficacy of the healing or the emotional intensity. I wondered whether the remote healings would feel more distant, but as soon as I with the client in spirit, it felt no different to being with a client in person.
Over the course of the sessions I have grown in confidence and feel that I now have the ability to work with my guides on any problem a client presents with recourse to my mentor and / or the medical professions where needed. I’m looking forward to exploring shamanic energy healing further in the future.
I am now offering shamanic energy healing at a student rate of £30 a session contact lornasmithers81@gmail.com
Folklore and Myth – Stories of the Gods? by Greg Hill
Fellow Brythonic polytheist Greg Hill has recently put together an important booklet presenting ‘A consideration of the argument that Medieval Welsh tales contain elements of Brythonic mythology and a critique of the argument that because they share motifs with folktales they cannot count as stories of the gods.’
Herein he critiques ‘the refusal to accept that there could be any continuity of coherent narrative tradition from the Pagan Iron Age to the Christian Middle Ages’ in the works of Ronald Hutton.
This is a really important piece of scholarship arguing that through ‘folklore motifs… stories of the gods were carried through the generations to be made into written tales in the Middle Ages’ and experienced in place and time through ‘experience of the numinous’.
Please read the article HERE and share.
The Heart of Annwn
A poetry collection charting the story of a personal alchemy and learning how to love based around my sacred marriage to my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, as Sister Patience of the Heart of Annwn.
Published posthumously as a way of saying a final goodbye to Sister Patience at summer’s end HERE.
Oh Gatherer
Oh Gatherer of Souls
the autumn leaves begin to fall.
All the trees look behind them
as they hear Your call.
Oh Gwythyr ap Greidol
Your summer is done.
Oh lords of the world
your time is come.
Audio HERE.
The Edge of the Dark
A memoir in the form of a novella based around my childhood, teens, and twenties. It records a confrontation with the darkness within the land, our culture and in my own psyche and a failed initiation into adulthood and shamanism. Finally, how my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, saved me from myself.
Free digital copy HERE. If you enjoy it please share the link to this post.
Prayer to Vindos for Clear Sight
Vindos God of Clear Light
grant to me Your Clear Sight.
Free me from the fog of self-deception
and remind me of my deathless nature.
Audio HERE.
~
This prayer, which can also be sung as a chant, is based on the famous Hindu Mahamrityunjaya ‘Great Death-Conquering’ Mantra HERE – a prayer to Shiva for liberation from our attachments to ignorance and untruth and a reminder of our immortality. When I was studying yoga with the Mandala Ashram I sung it for 20 minutes every week. I have started singing this prayer / chant to Vindos for 20 minutes each morning for clearer vision as I face a difficult period after giving up being Sister Patience.
Black poplars who do you grieve?
We have not the myth of a son
of the sun who got burnt
by the sun and fell.
When Maponos
stole the horses of Bel
and rode skywards to the horror
of His mother He did not come to grief.
Although Maponos burned He was not burnt.
He returned instead alive and ablaze,
replenished, youth renewed,
as the Sun-Child.
So, why, black poplars, do You grieve?
Do You grieve because Your brother lives?
Do You grieve because You are jealous?
Do You grieve because You got no grief?
Or is there a story of another brother?
A forgotten son of Matrona,
daughter of the King of Annwn,
who mounted a black horse and rode
after the black sun when it set and sunk
to the depths of the Underworld?
Did He drown in a black lake?
Was He eaten by a black dragon?
Or does He still wander lost in sorrow
through a labyrinth unillumined
by the rays of the black sun?
Poor brothers, did You search
for Him and almost lose yourselves?
Did You get trapped in a dark prison
and scrape Your bloody fingers
against the walls and weep?
If so, how did You get here?
Did You ride with the black sun
or with the King of Annwn on the back
of His black horse who carries lost souls?
Did He plant You here, He and His Queen,
with labyrinthine roots winding down?
Did He seal Your tears deep within?
Did He kiss Your fingers like His Bride’s,
tuck them into a yellow bud
to emerge again
only in the spring to reach
not for the black sun but the love of a mate?
Did He bring You here to tell me when
I grieve my fingers are not talons
to scrape the walls
and my tears are not sap
to entrap the insects who get in their way?
Did He bring You here so I could learn
from Your clawing, Your crying,
my clawing, my weeping,
to turn my grief inward in winter
and then, in spring, to reach out in love?
*This poem is addressed to the two black poplars who stand at the source of Fish House Brook, near to the Sanctuary of Vindos, in my hometown of Penwortham. The photograph is of one of the fallen catkins, taken in spring 2022, not quite emerged.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 