Going to Tyburn – The Hanged and the Healing

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I didn’t go to Tyburn to ‘go to Tyburn’. (1) I went to London to attend an introductory weekend as a prerequisite to a three year shamanic healing course. But I ended up staying in a hotel in Tyburn as it was relatively cheap. When I visit a place I like to do a bit of historical research before I go and have a map of the land past and present to help me connect with the spirits and this what I found out.

The Tyburn Tree

The dark but now absent centre of this place is the infamous Tyburn tree. It was the King’s Gallows from 1196 to 1783. It has also been known as the Elms, the Deadly Never Green Tyburn Tree and the Triple Tree (because it was a wooden triangle on three legs – a ‘three legged mare’ or ‘three legged stool’). The triangular traffic island where it once stood mirrors its structure.

All manner of criminals were executed there by being hanged, drawn, then quartered. Many of the victims were religious people of the Catholic faith – friars, priors, abbots, monks and hermits, who resisted King Henry VIII’s separation of the Church of England from legal ties to the Catholic Church and papal authority of Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries.

The Carthusian Martyrs, 18 monastics of the Carthusian Order from the London Charterhouse, were executed between 1535 and 1537. As a result of the Lincolnshire Rising, the Pilgrimage of Grace and Bigod’s Rebellion over 250 rebels met their deaths again including large numbers of monastics. Many were northerners, such as the bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland, and people from my home county, Lancashire, joined the rebellions.

This had meaning for me as a polytheistic monastic because these Catholics were standing for the freedom to practice their religion and to continue to lead monastic lives. The anglicisation of the church and dissolution of the monasteries removed much of the mysticism and sanctity from Christianity in England.

Tyburn Convent

In 1901 the Tyburn Convent was established near the site of the Tyburn Tree with a shrine to the Tyburn Martyrs. This order of Benedictine nuns was founded by Mother Marie Adèle Garnier as the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre in Paris in 1898. When the nuns were forced to leave due to restrictions on monasteries in France they made their home in London.

What is unique and beautiful about their tradition is their perpetual adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What this entails is that, at all times, day and night, at least one nun is kneeling before the eucharist worshipping Jesus’s heart.

Mother Marie is ‘honoured and remembered’ for her ‘ardent love of Christ’, ‘her heroic love of God and neighbour, her spirit of prayer, divine contemplation, rich mystical and spiritual doctrine, humility, obedience, patience, simplicity and purity of heart, and above all for her spirit of total self-abandon to the Holy Will of God, which she declared to be her unique good.’ (2)

This is one of her prayers – 

‘O blessed portion! Lot worthy of envy!
My heart is ready, O Lord, my heart is ready!
Here I am, speak, act, inflame me,
unite me to Yourself!

O Mary, O my tender Mother
entrust me to Jesus,
love hidden in the adorable Eucharist.
Henceforth make my life
become a repeating with you:
I look for nothing other than Him…
I know only Him alone…

Jesus, my soul is thirsting for You
so unite it to Your Heart
that no longer may I be able to live without You.’ (3)

When the nuns make their act of consecration they speak a prayer that has been spoken in their communities since Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the 11th of June 1899.

‘Lord Jesus, Redeemer of the human race,
look down upon us humbly prostrate before Your altar.
Yours we are, and Yours we wish to be;
but to be more surely united with You,
behold we freely consecrate ourselves today to Your Most Sacred Heart. 
Many, indeed, have never known You;
many, too, despising your precepts, have rejected You.
Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus,
and draw them to Your Sacred Heart…’ (4)

The Sacred Heart and Healing

I had never come across the perpetual adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus before. It resonated deeply with me because over the past few years my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, has revealed His heart to be the Heart of Annwn, which He inherited from His mother, Anrhuna, the Mother of Annwn.

My personal practice has increasingly involved devotion to the Heart of Annwn. Keeping the heart beat by drumming and chanting. Meditating, journeying on and recording the stories gifted to me about Gwyn’s Sacred Heart.

Before I set off to London I was instructed by my guides to make a pilgrimage walk to the Tyburn Tree and the Tyburn Convent. I was told I must take ‘purity, grace and the pain of the dead’ in a small obsidian spearhead I was gifted by a fellow nun of Annwn and leave it as an offering.

I did this on the first day in the early evening after I left the course. I was disappointed to find the stone and three young oak trees put there in 2014 to mark the site of the Tyburn tree had been removed. I can only guess this was done because people were hanging about the site or leaving offerings. In spite of the rush of traffic and people I paused and spoke some prayers then made my offering at the foot of the London Plane tree on the island. 

I went to the Tyburn Convent and paused to pay my respects to the Tyburn Martyrs and shared my gratitude for the work of the nuns and gained a sense of release and peace and of our unity in the adoration of the Sacred Heart.

When I got back to my hotel room, although I didn’t have my drum, I played the beat of the Heart of Annwn on my knee, sung one of my chants, again imagining my offering of song as uniting with the devotion of the Tyburn Nuns.

My weekend course, The Shaman’s Pathway, with Simon Buxton of the Sacred Trust, was profoundly moving and deeply healing. Whilst the first day was more introductory on the second day we practiced ecstatic union with our spirits, healing each other, and the culimination was a powerful group healing ceremony in which I was honoured to take the role of drummer.

In the following of my heart, in alignment with Gwyn’s heart, the Heart of Annwn, I feel healing has taken place and I have received confirmation I’m on the right path in pursuing the three year training to become a shamanic healer.

(1) ‘Going to Tyburn’ or ‘taking a ride to Tyburn’ are metaphors for being hanged.
(2) https://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/site.php?menuaccess=161
(3) https://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/site.php?menuaccess=240
(4) https://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/site.php?id=234

    If Your Heart Ceased to Beat

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    the mountains would stop talking to each other,
    the hills would lose their nerve and flee, 
    the rivers would stop rushing down,
    turn their tides to the source,
    vanish back to Annwn,

    and the sea, oh the vast sea!
    The mournful waves would lose their songs,
    the sea-horses their nostrils of foam and proud crests.
    Water would be water no longer and salt would not be salt.
    There would be nothing to quench our thirst or cleanse our wounds.

    With the marching trees we would be rootless vagabonds
    for the snakes beneath our houses and the serpents
    beneath our towerblocks would shake
    the foundations tear them down.

    The animals would run away
    through the caves and cracks in the earth
    and all the fish would disappear into the Lune Deep
    and the birds would fly away on the winds before the sky
    did his thing of crashing down like a fallen bird or a fallen wrestler.

    If Your heart ceased to beat oh Gatherer of Souls,
    would our hearts too not cease to beat?
    Then who would gather us?

    Oh lonely lonely souls! 

    Grateful are we that on the moment
    of Your death Your heart skips but one beat
    then continues to beat in Your sleep and in Your dreams.

    *A poem for Gwyn ap Nudd on Calan Mai when He loses His battle for Creiddylad to Gwythyr and ‘dies’ and retreats to Annwn to sleep for the summer.

    “I Go To Fight”

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    This morning when I made my traditional offering of a sprig of thyme to my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, at dawn before He goes to fight His battle against Gwythyr ap Grendel for Creiddylad (a battle He, as Winter King, is doomed to lose to the Summer King) He appeared to me as a magnificent bull of battle and spoke the words:

    “I go to fight for all those who fight a battle they cannot win.”

    Go well,
    my beloved Lord of Annwn,
    I will be waiting for You at summer’s end.

    The Dragon’s Gate

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    In the medieval Welsh story Lludd ac Llefelys the island of Britain is beset by three plagues. The second is a scream which is ‘heard every May eve… It pierced people’s hearts and terrified them so much that men lost their colour and strength, and women miscarried, and young men and maidens lost their senses, and all animals and the earth and the waters were left barren.’ (1)

    Lludd finds out from Llefelys the plague ‘is a dragon, and a dragon of another foreign people is fighting it and trying to overthrow it, and because of that… your dragon gives out a horrible scream.’ (2) It is likely the ‘foreign people’ are ‘the Coraniaid’, the Romans, who are the cause of the first plague.

    Following the advice of Llefelys, Lludd digs a pit in the centre of Britain and fills it with mead. After the dragons have stopped fighting, firstly as dragons, then in the shapes of ‘monstrous animals’ and finally ‘two little pigs’, they fall into the vat, drink the mead and sleep. Lludd wraps them in ‘a sheet of brocaded silk’, puts them in a stone chest, and buries them at Dinas Emrys. (3)

    The dragons battle again during the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons. At this time Vortigern attempts to build a tower at Dinas Emrys and it will not stand. Merlin tells Vortigern this is because there is a pond beneath the foundations and when the pond is drained two dragons will be found in hollow stones. 

    Whilst Vortigern is sitting on the bank, the two dragons, one red, one white, begin a ‘terrible fight’ casting ‘forth fire with their breath’. The white wins. Merlin says this predicts the defeat of ‘the British nation’ by ‘the Saxons’. (4)

    The scream of the red dragon and the battle between the red and white dragons takes place at times of war and potentially during other periods of upheavel. I believe it is connected with the diasbad uwch Annwfn ‘scream over Annwn’ or ‘cry over the abyss’ which is found in several of the Welsh law texts including The Laws of Hywel Dda. It is uttered by a claimant who is threatened by the loss of their claim to ancestral land. (5) It perhaps has its origins as an invocation of the spirits of Annwn, those who were held back by the King of Annwn, Gwyn ap Nudd, to prevent their destruction of the world. These spirits may well include the dragons who Gwyn’s father, Nudd / Lludd subdued.

    According to the National Library of Wales The Laws of Hywel Dda features an illustration of a two-headed dragon. (6) I couldn’t find this image but did find two of the red dragon, from f.21.r and f.51.r, which are in the public domain. 

    *

    I’m returning to this lore after a journey circle with the Way of the Buzzard wherein we discussed the connection between dragons and voice and journeyed to the underworld to ask a dragon for guidance around personal power.

    I met a black dragon who instructed me to ‘put on my dragon skin’. I shapeshifted into a dragon and we flew over the volcanoes with the smoke cleansing my skin. I was then taken to an iron grate with forms behind it. I was told I ‘must learn to release the prisoners’. The black dragon’s final message was: ‘Those who are denied are needed.’ I’m not sure if they are parts of myself who I have shut away, people, or spirits, or perhaps might be all.

    Other participants reported visions of a dragon’s golden eye and dragon’s heart. This really struck me as it fit with the black dragon who I met, who I suspect to be Gwyn, the King of Annwn, in dragon form, His heart the Heart of Annwn. Several years ago my aunt sent me a birthday card with a golden dragon eye on it and it watches over me here in my monastic cell. 

    My vision of a black dragon fits with the legends of the red and white dragons because white, red and black are the colours of the Otherworld.

    I later received the gnosis that the iron grate is ‘the Dragon’s Gate’. I believe behind it lie the spirits of Annwn who Gwyn keeps shut up until the end of the world because of their furious and nature which can harm or possess us.

    That these spirits, ‘who are denied are needed’, feels like a big revelation although not an entirely unexpected one. The story of Lludd and Llefelys and the scream over Annwn teach us that occassionally these spirits need to be released.

    I’m going to be talking with Gwyn further about safe ways of releasing these spirits with His guidance and how this might relate to my personal power.

    (1) Davies, S. (transl.), The Mabinogion, (Oxford University Press, 2007), p112
    (2) Ibid. p113
    (3) Ibid. p113 – 4
    (4) Thompson, A. (transl.) Monmouth, G. History of the Kings of Britain, (In Parentheses Publications, 1999),p110 – 133
    (5) https://awenydd.weebly.com/the-scream-over-annwfn.html
    (6) https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/laws-of-hywel-dda

      Review – Radical Embodiment with Jayne Johnson and Alex Walker

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      Over the past four months I have been attending a monthly course on radical embodiment with Jayne Johnson and Alex Walker. The focus has been on aliveness and increasing our awareness and understanding of our nervous system as we move in and out of contact with others using voice, play, dance and touch. The workshops took place at West Gilling Village Hall in North Yorkshire.

      On the first week we focused on the nervous system. We were introduced to polyvagal theory through the work of Laura Geiger and Deb Dana. At this point I was aware of the differences between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system but not of the central role of the vagus nerve (our gut-brain axis). 

      We learnt there are two pathways on the vagus nerve called ventral and dorsal. These regulate how we engage with our surroundings and other people. Two of the systems associated with these pathways are ventral vagal flight / fight and dorsal vagal freeze / shutdown and they are our oldest ways of being dating back to the our reptilian ancestors. The most recent system to evolve is the mammalian ventral vagal social engagement system. When we are in this state we feel safe and are open to social contact, learning, playing and bonding. We explored these systems through contact and dance with music choreographed to lead us into each.

      This knowledge and work has been incredibly helpful for me as it illuminated how most of the time when I am around other people I am in fight / flight because I was bullied when I was younger and as an autistic person struggle to read facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. Learning of freeze / shutdown helped me understand my autistic shutdowns. Because Jayne and Alex established such a safe space and the other participants were so open and authentic I was able to relax into social engagement and explore connecting with others.

      On the second week we covered the satisfaction cycle, which was established when we infants, and governs how we ‘yield, push, reach, take hold, and pull’. One of the exercises was bringing six objects through which we explored this in pairs. We were invited to consider how these processes continue to govern our adult lives.

      I had quite a big revelation. It is one of my habits to reach for something I want and, if I can’t have it, put it aside and take something I don’t want instead for a while, then go back to the thing I really want. This has happened over and over again with my calling to bring the myths and worship of the ancient British Gods into the world. Now I can see the habit for what it is I can avoid repeating it.

      Thresholds and edge figures, covered on the third week, was my favourite topic. Herein we looked at the internal authority figures who act as gatekeepers between the safety and comfort of our known world and the risks of the unknown. We met and engaged with our edges and edge figures through various exercises such as using a scarf as an edge and negotiating with a partner in the role of an edge figure. 

      One of my biggest insights came later from journeying to my edge figures and a one-to-one session on my insights with Alex. Rather than treating edge figures as adversaries we need to understand their perspectives, acknowledge how they have helped us, treat them with kindness and get them on board. This has helped me deal with my trio of Victorian school teachers, Mrs Planner, Mrs Figure It Out and Mrs Certainty, who have helped me to be incredibly organised and good at planning but sometimes get in the way of me doing deeper spiritual work.

      The fourth week was integration wherein we brought everything together. One of our challenges was supporting each other in connection in a gigantic blue band. During the last dance I found myself feeling massively grateful to Jayne and Alex and the other participants for everything we have experienced together but also wanting more. Longing to dance with others monastic devotees in a monastery in devotion to Gwyn. I put this out into the word as a prayer and the following morning received guidance on the first step which will be leading ‘Journeys to the Deep’.

      This has been the first course I have attended since covid and my withdrawal from the Pagan community in favour of my polytheistic monastic path. It has given me the inspiration and faith in other people to take further steps out into the world by training as a shamanic healer and hopefully to recommence leading workshops locally.

      Jayne and Alex hope to offer this course again in 2025 in the Hebden Bridge area and to run an Advanced Radical Embodiment retreat in mid June 2025.

      The Oracle of Old Craft Crow

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      I am the one who knows
      of the craft that strung bones together
      before there were sinews

      and animated matter before the first breath.
      Before the primordial darkness 
      there was a crow. 

      Don’t believe me? 
      Ask the Old Mother –
      she didn’t believe her eyes

      but there I was and from me she learnt
      the art of stirring her cauldron birthing the stars.
      Still don’t believe me? Know this –

      I can bring back the bones of forgotten monsters,
      reassemble them to look like angels,
      retrieve the words of lost books,

      repair your dying world.
      Still don’t believe me? Cah! 
      Fill your mouth with my feathers,

      spit them out and read my oracle.
      Then you’ll see how in the darkness between worlds,
      in the depths of all the pollution your kind have siphoned off,

      at the end of all ends flies a crow and I am love.
      Still don’t believe me? Cah! Cah!
      You’re not the first.

      The Oracle of Chanting Crow

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      I chanted songs before the enchanter
      chanted this world into being from fire, air, earth, water,
      wind, mist, dew, from fruits, from an unknown frightful thing. 

      I know the chants that make corpses rot and bring
      the dead to life from the cold earth’s bones.
      I know the sleeping songs of stones. 

      My chants of transformation
      rival the formulae of mathematicians.
      I sing not numbers, sine, cosine, dark equations

      but still I can launch an aeroplane or nuclear bomb.
      I can bring warplanes down from the skies
      and I can call a seedling to grow.

      I make a mockery of all who claim
      to conquer the divinities of mountaintops
      and gyres with what you call my neanderthal tongue.

      I am no songbird and I am certainly no homo sapiens.
      I know nothing of your guilt and depression,
      only the chants of Chanting Crow.

      The Oracle of Counting Crow

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      I was the first to learn to count –
      un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith.
      Saith brain, seven crows…

      We were not born from a mother or father
      but crawled from the corpse of a dead crow –
      maggots, then flies, then black, black flapping things.

      We taught you not to count on fingerbones 
      with the touch of our wings brushing
      the divides between the worlds.

      We taught you to count in threes,
      sixes, sevens, nines, sacred numbers.
      We did not teach you the numbers of the Gods.

      When you asked why we take the eyes of the dead
      and put them in the empty eye sockets of seers
      we told you our eyes are without count.

      We place them in the palms of the hands 
      of the blind so maggots can be born from them,
      flies, crows, to carry visions of the past, present, end.

      Of when the skies fall in a sheen of crow feathers,
      black, black, black, just a glimpse of indigo.
      They tell you they are without number.

      The Oracle of Courting Crow

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      Let your words rush like a river, 
      like rocks tumbling, water flowing, 
      flooding down, water runs, crows fly!

      Flying up above I see my reflection 
      in the water, court it, court my shadow 
      but cannot pull it from the surface 

      or peel it screaming from the rocks.
      Water runs, crows fly, shadows glide.
      There are too many holes in the sky.

      Courting Crow will never be whole.
      I’m so in love with my reflection, shadow
      dark in the water, always half astride.

      Courting Crow will never fix the sky.
      I’ll never be whole until my flight is one with
      rocks and water, river crashing down,

      until my bones are back up above,
      the rocks tumbling up to fill the holes,
      the rivers flowing backwards to source. 

      The Oracle of Crafty Crow

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      I perched on the eyelids 
      of the first eyes of the universe
      to open then I ate them all – crafty!

      That is why they call me Crafty Crow
      and that is why my eyes are black.
      As a punishment or reward?

      Only Crafty Crow knows.
      I am the one who knows how
      to bend fates like a twig in water. 

      I perch on the shoulder of Morgana.
      I change the directions of twigs
      and leave a trail of feathers

      leading to a witch’s hut.
      I know wordcraft, spellcraft, 
      the ingredients for the best potions,

      why the awen always becomes poison,
      why you should never ever eat
      the corpse of a dead crow.

      Crows are the world’s livers.
      We feast on the world’s darkness
      growing bigger and darker until we fill all.