Mither voices through the mizzle, through the mist, mist-numb mutters. He fails to muster them at first with His voice. Hoofbeats louder, huge round hoofbeats of His Horse.
“COME!”
Mistlings mither through the mizzle, seep, sink, sit, slither in the godless grey drizzle of forgetting until the voice of a God loud as the cracking of glass beneath the hooves of His horse calls.
“COME! COME!”
Awake the mistlings remembering, their misting reassembling into a mither of forms. They look like something viewed through cracked glass. They teeter, totter, diused limbs pale, severed, crunch of footfalls.
“COME! COME! COME!”
Oh the baying of the hounds rounding, bounding, barks, bristling hackles, woofs reign! He rounds them up, gentle guidance, touch of red nose, hand on arm, “Don’t dither,” “remember, remember, remember.”
“COME! COME! COME TO MY FORT!”
Oh these feet know the path, the way when the mind does not, misty heel, misty toe. One foot before another soul-forms remembering forest, foray up river, up hill, up mountain, to the in-the-air turning fort.
“COME! COME! COME TO MY HALL!”
Misted ones mix and dance no longer mizzle-like but blue and red as blood and water, the only drizzle sweat upon their brows before they sit and partake in the feast of holy leaf-meat and ever-flowing mead.
“COME! COME! COME TO MY CAULDRON!”
This drink is not one of forgetting – they know themselves now and the pain as He sings their soul-names voice resounding like the sound of shattered glass is outweighed by beauty.
“COME! COME! COME TO BE REBORN!”
The waters in the cauldron are blue as the infinite seas of the Deep and filled with blood and there are stars shining and each beholds a star and reaches out and becomes like glass.
A poem and artwork that came to me as I was revisiting the traditional lore in recent articles based on my experiences of witnessing Gwyn guiding the passage and rebirth of souls.
That’s why they also call you Taxus baccata – toxic berry carrier.
Your taxines (taxine A and B, paclitaxel, isotaxine, taxicatine, taxols A and B) jam channels of myocardial cells, bring about cardiac arrest.
Cardiotoxic tree the Eburones drank your poison extracted ex arboribus taxeis – you stopped their hearts.
Beneath your boughts I hear the echoes of their heartbeats still beating slowly, so slowly like the greater beat of the Heart of Annwn.
Like so many poisons you are my cure.
*Ebura is the Proto-Celtic name for yew. The English ‘yew’ and Welsh ‘Ywen’ derive from the Proto-Germanic *iwo. The Eburones were a Gaulish-Germanic tribe in north-east Gaul.
‘I will not eat the leaves of the trees.’ – The Life of St Collen
Saints do not know how to eat leaves.
How to boil them in Your cauldron to make the sweetest meats, the finest of poetry.
This is the art of the awenydd, of the nun of Annwn.
She knows where to gather them, this first fall of green-browns, ash, poplar, willow, before the yellow-golds of lime, the reds, oranges, crimsons of maples to come.
She knows how to stew them with apple and cinnamon,
how to cook for You the most delicious feast.
A poem for Gwyn’s Feast which this year falls on the full moon and is a powerful time to be offering food and mead and poetry to the Blessed One.
This year I feasted Gwyn last night with the Monastery of Annwn. This proved fitting as when I went out before dawn this morning to pour the mead I left on His altar overnight at His apple tree in our garden I saw the full moon.
I am a mystery with one end in Thisworld and one end in the Otherworld.
My tails lead down the long dark tunnels from light to darkness and for the lucky ones back out to the light of day again.
What is my origin? Was I born at midnight? From what union?
From what spell?
Oh what has the cauldron got to sing of my birth to those who see me as the guardian of the Gates of Hell?
This image of Dormach, the favourite hound of Gwyn ap Nudd, is based on an sketch of him drawn by a monk in The Black Book of Carmarthen in ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’. Here he is described as ‘sleek and fair’ and as having a red nose. This description is similar to the Hounds of Annwn in the First Branch of The Mabinogion who are ‘gleaming shining white’ with ‘red ears’.
It is unknown why Dormach is depicted with serpent’s tails. It is likely due to his Annuvian nature. Nudd/Nodens, the father of Gwyn, is associated with a battle between red and white dragons and there is a mural of sea serpents in his temple.
In my novel-in-progress, In the Deep, I reimagine how Dormach came to be ‘the Hound with the Serpent Tails’. This story and other exclusive excerpts are available to my patrons on Patreon HERE.
This is a sketch of Orwen ‘Very White’. We know nothing about her from Welsh mythology aside from her being the mother of Orddu ‘Very Black’, a witch who lived in a cave in Pennant Gofid ‘the Valley of Grief’ in the north, and was killed by Arthur. The image and poem below are based on my personal gnosis.
Mine is the wisdom of the owl who takes flight at dusk, crepuscular, like the crescent of the moon beginning to wax.
In the interstices between new and full, dark and light, by the half-light you might meet me.
Although they call me ‘Very White’ you don’t want to see me fully exposed by the white-pitched revealing light of the full moon.
By the full moon’s light I once caught a snowy white hare and took her to be sacrificed in the Castle of Night but somewhere up there in the heavens she escaped me and I found in her stead within my owl feather cloak a piece of dead star and it has since then lit the orb on top of my staff with dead starlight.
They say now that I might be seen at dusk or dawn on the wing or as a light on the marsh too white to behold by the black of night or daylight.
King of Faery, Lord of Annwn, Dragon Ruler of the Not-World.
And yet You are.
You are a paradox.
You are a fortress filled with riddles.
You are an underworld riddled with serpents.
You speak in serpent tongues.
~
The day I saw Your face
You struck me dumb.
You stole my tongue.
From thereon I have known it will turn to stone if it ceases to sing for You.
~
The day I saw Your face
It made all the suffering of my past lives meaningful.
I run through them shouting “We will meet a God”
so loudly some hear me and some believe me.
~
I have seen so many of Your faces I could fill an ocean (none possible).
Today I pour the mead for Your unknown face.
~
At the end of August I celebrated the eleventh anniversary of my first meeting with my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, by reciting this poem to Him where I met Him on Fairy Lane in Penwortham at the leaning yew and making Him an offering of the last of the apples from our apple trees and a serving of mead. I sensed His presence and the approval of the land in the enchantment of the dappled light on the branches of the yew.
and life is filled with lumps and bumps and knots and cracks.
There will always be problems. You will learn to solve them.
There will always be pain. You will learn to heal.
That is the secret of our art – of the inspired one and the witch.
II. There is a cauldron in the cave and a vision in the cauldron,
the lining of the womb of Old Mother of Universe
and this is the Web of Fate. You are the needle travelling
in and out of the weft of time to re-weave the tapestry.
III. You are not perfect distant daughter of mine
and life is filled with perils worse than the monsters of Annwn.
One-eyed giants, eyeless, blind. You will learn not only to face
but to help these things that should not have been made –
to help them return to the dark of the Old Mother’s womb.
IV. A universe is in the cauldron and the cauldron is in you
kindled by the breath of ninefold wise women,
by wisdom of the ancestors. In it our visions boil and brew.
Be a strong vessel distant child so this old world can be born anew.
These words were received from Ogddu on a spirit journey to the Cave of the Ancestors this morning. I believe Ogddu to be the mother of Orwen and grandmother of Orddu. Her name derives from ogof ddu ‘black cave’ and one of her epithets is ‘the Voice of the Dark Cave’. Receiving this poem from her confirmed that my choice to walk Orddu’s path and to begin working more deeply with this lineage of Inspired Ones of the North (who I perceive to be spiritual ancestors rather than blood ancestors) is the right one.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 