In the Monastery of Annwn meditation group we have recently been exploring the medieval Welsh poem ‘The Spoils of Annwn’ from an Annuvian perspective rather than from the views of the ‘victors’ Arthur and Taliesin.
Last week, in the guided visualisation meditation, we journeyed to the first fortress, Caer Siddi ‘the Fairy Fort’, on our magical monastic boat and gained personal visions based on lines from the poem:
Maintained was Gwair’s prison in Caer Siddi throughout Pwyll and Pryderi’s story. No-one went there before he did – into the heavy grey chain guarding the loyal lad. And before the spoils / herds of Annwn he was singing sadly, and until Doom shall our poetic prayer continue.
I found myself standing before Gwyn wearing chains with Gwair in a scene resembling the Devil card from the Rider Waite Tarot. Whilst Gwair was imprisoned in a heavy grey chain I was wearing only toy-like silver handcuffs and felt they were close to breaking and to my being released.
Gwyn said:
‘As long as you sing you will be in chains. In the silence of meditation you will be free.’
Gwyn’s words reminded me of the shift in my path from being a bard in the mead hall to becoming a Nun of Annwn. To moving away from performing poetry to a more monastic and shamanic path.
Another way of looking at it was that the singing is the voice of the incessant thoughts in my head and that only when I’m silent in meditation will their song and the chains be gone.
‘We need to remember that our very breathing is to drink our mother’s milk – the air – made for us by countless microbial brothers and sisters in the sea and soil, and by the plant beings with whom we share the great land surfaces of our mother’s lustrous sphere.’ Stephan Harding
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Respiration (from spirare ‘breath’ and re ‘again’) is participation.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Lungs. Two. Right and left. Each enclosed in a pleural sack in the thoracic cavity of the chest. Primary bronchus, secondary bronchi, tertiary bronchi, terminal bronchiole. In the alveoli, ‘little cavities’, across the blood-air barrier, gas exchange takes place.
Breathe in: oxygen 21%, carbon dioxide 0.04%. Breathe out: oxygen 16%, carbon dioxide 4.4%. 6 carbon glucose, oxidised, forms carbon dioxide. Product: ATP (adenosine triphosphate) ‘the molecular unit of currency of intracellular energy transfer’. The spark of all life.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Respiration (from spirare ‘breath’ and re ‘again’) is participation.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Birds have lungs plus cervical, clavicular, abdominal, and thoracic air sacs. Hollow-boned they are light as balloons, breathing in, breathing out. Then there are the lungless. Through tiny holes in the abdomen called spiracles leading to the trachea, insects fill their air sacs. Earthworms and amphibians breathe in and out through moist skins. Fish breathe water in through gulpy mouth breathe it out through gapey gills.
Plants breathe through their leaves. By daylight they photosynthesise. Stomata breathe carbon dioxide. It mixes with water. The green lions of chlorophyll work their magic by sunlight. Oxygen is released. From glucose the magical hum and buzz of ATP. At night they respire glucose and oxygen back to carbon dioxide and water. 10 times more oxygen produced than used.
Underground fungi breathe the air of the soil through thread-like hyphae that mass as mycelia. They respire aerobically (with oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen), changing glucose to ATP (it’s all about ATP!), ethanol, carbon dioxide, and water. This old, old, metabolic pathway dates back to the days before oxygen ruled our breath and is utilised by microbes. The hidden ones of the deep, single-celled, or living colonies, breathe through their single cell walls in ancient ways – acetogenesis, methanogenesis – to gain the blessed ATP.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Respiration (from spirare ‘breath’ and re ‘again’) is participation.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
And what is this creature that does not breathe (in or out) with no metabolism or need for ATP? This simple strand of genes in a designer jacket called a capsid? Does this thing, neither dead nor living, have a spirit? Like all living things was it breathed into life by the gods?
Or is this death-bringer undead? This assaulter of lungs? Lung-cell-killer and causer of coughs – dead lung cells coughed up as sputum, mucus, the yellow remains of what was ours?
By what dark programme does it turn the body against itself – alveoli ‘little cavities’ where the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen takes place filling with water – no space to make ATP? No lungs – no breath. The pump of ventilators, breathing in, breathing out, our new iron lungs…
Did it crawl from the cauldron of inspiration like the speechless dead or is it something entirely other?
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Respiration (from spirare ‘breath’ and re ‘again’) is participation.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
To whom do we pray? To the gods and goddesses of breath and to the spirits of inspiration? To Ceridwen, Gwyn ap Nudd, Morgana and her sisters, who gave us breath, and take it away?
“Breath always leads to me,” says Gwyn. I find this reassuring and disconcerting from a death-god. From the one who releases the spirits of Annwn from the cauldron and holds them back.
So we breathe together with the lunged and lungless creatures with skin, fur, feathers, shells, scales, leaves, hyphae, the single-celled, the uncelled who ride our breath, until we return to the gods. To the winds that carry the voices of all ancestors over our 4.543 billion year old earth.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Respiration (from spirare ‘breath’ and re ‘again’) is participation.
Inspire. Expire. Anadlu i mewn. Anadlu i allan. Breathe in. Breathe out.
*I adapted this meditation from an earlier version ‘The Ways We Breathe‘ previously published on Gods & Radicals following guidance from my deities to focus on my breath and being struck by the realisation that a distinguishing feature of coronavirus and other viruses is that they do not breathe.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 