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.
As part of the process of introducing Orddu and the Witches of Annwn into my daily practice as spiritual ancestors I am beginning to produce some devotional art for them as well as writing them poems and telling their stories. Here I am trying to capture Orddu’s characteristics as a ‘very black witch’ and ‘hag’ who battles against Arthur as presented in the original tale without inclining towards more traditional caricatures. I aimed to create the sense of harsh formidable and dark figure who was esteemed as a warrior woman and prophet. As you can probably tell I have no formal training as an artist just a history of doodling characters from writings of my own and others from a very young age.
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.
It’s harvest time. I’ve been gathering in the apples from our back garden. I’ve also started to take some time out to reflect on what I have harvested on a spiritual and creative level whilst, although living with my parents, spending most of my time in solitude since leaving my ecology job in August last year.
I’ve been through a lot of changes. It was a big blow realising that the limitations of my autism rendered me incapable of coping with the demands of working in either conservation or ecology due to my inability to manage projects and people, multi-task, or work flexible shifts or do night work.
Yet my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, gifted me with two tasks that gave me purpose and hope. The first, writing a series of books titled The King of Annwn Cycle imagining His unknown story from His birth until the end of the world. The second building the Monastery of Annwn of which He is also the patron.
For the first few months I threw myself into those tasks with utter joy and was completely absorbed in the awen working on my first book In the Deep. I took initial vows as a nun of Annwn on the new moon in October and being part of a group of monastic devotees devoted to the Annuvian Gods and Goddesses has been an ongoing source of inspiration and support.
II. Losing Hope
Yet over the winter I had a few things that derailed me. Blocks with the book after realising that due to it being a personal vision of Gwyn’s story with only subtle links to the existing myths it is unlikely to reach as wide an audience as my work that explicitly related Brythonic content to our environmental crisis.
Minor health problems. Tests around raised liver function that never came to anything. Rosacea. Runner’s knee. Then in spring, just as my knee issues were easing and the weather was getting better I went and pulled my sciatic nerve in my glute and had to reduce my running and strength training.
At this point I was also struggling with breathwork meditation. Gwyn began encouraging me to learn to focus on my breath prior to covid and has told me holding spaces of calm free of chattering thoughts is one of the most important things we can do for the world on an energetic level.
Failing to master my internal chatter alone I tried looking to Buddhism and considered going to meditation classes at a Preston’s Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Centre. To prepare I read one of the books by the Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Riposte who founded the Kadampa tradition. It led me to the realisation the path of freeing oneself from the suffering of earthly existence isn’t for me and left me feeling profoundly unspiritual so I did not go.
On top of my feelings of despair about being called to write a series of books that would never sell, dread of my savings running out and having to return to menial work, and my nerve pain, this led to me feeling ‘there is no hope left.’
The very moment this thought popped into my mind, when I was open and vulnerable, on my way home from a local walk, my nerve bothering me, I met a person who somehow knew my name and that I ran an online monastery and invited him to join and he caused trouble and had to be thrown out.
This was a big lesson on my failure to address the negative thought patterns that had got a hold on me. I’ve long been quite good at serving my Gods but terrible at taking care of my mental health and spiritual development.
I’ve served as a vessel for Their inspiration without taking care of the vessel.
III. Taking Care of the Vessel
My recovery from what I now believe to be ‘power loss’ began with a ‘power retrieval’ journey with the Way of the Buzzard Mystery School.
Therein I was given a set of ‘wolf’s teeth’ and told that I must be ‘fiercer’. This went against my preconceptions of what being a nun meant as I was striving to be humbler. Yet I took my teeth and the advice. When I reported this to Gwyn, not long before his death and departure on May Day, He told me by the time He returns at the end of August He wanted me to own them.
Shortly afterwards, on the suggestion of my personal trainer, I started practicing yoga to help with my sciatic nerve problems and with flexibility. I had never considered it before due to issues around its appropriation by westerners.
However I decided to give it a go and immediately found a Youtube channel called Breathe and Flow led by a pair of practitioners who make clear from the start the poses are just part of a wider spiritual practice and philosophy and who make the effort to incorporate breathwork and meditation into their classes.
At once I found both a physical practice to help heal my sciatic nerve pain and improve my flexibility and mobility and support with breathwork and meditation.
When I started reading up on the religious and philosophical background of yoga to my amazement I found out the Hindu God who is Lord of Yoga is Shiva and He bears similarities to Gwyn as a destroyer and transformer. They both have associations with bulls and serpents and, to my surprise and delight, Shiva’s serpent, Nandi, has a magical jewel on his forehead. In my personal gnosis Gwyn and the serpents of Annwn have similar jewels.
The images of Shiva and the meditating deity who I believe to be Gwyn on the Gundestrup Cauldron bear a striking resemblance. As I persevered with my meditation practice over the summer, although asleep, Gwyn began visiting me in spirit form, as ‘meditating Gwyn’, in the likeness of this image. As if he had been cut from the cauldron, in shining silver, to help me with my breathing. I finally found the practices I needed to take care of my vessel.
Another source of help and support has been working with a supervisor and therapist, who is also a shamanic practitioner and I was put in touch with by Nicola Smalley who co-runs the Way of the Buzzard Mystery School. This is the first time I have had a human teacher and it has taken a long while for the circumstances to come into play that have made this desirable and possible.
When we were looking into my fears around panicking/freezing/melting down when faced with unexpected difficulties, particulary in social situations, we journeyed together on it and she saw a red dragon on my shoulder breathing fire and was told by Merlin that I must learn to ‘tame the dragon’.
This unsurprisingly led ‘my red dragon’ to rebel which I gave voice to in a poem*. Yet a tarot reading revealed that what Merlin was calling for was the need not so much to tame the red dragon but to balance her energies with those of the white dragon through meditative traditions and taking responsibility.
Of course, in the Welsh myths, it is Merlin who reveals the red and white dragons battling beneath Dinas Emrys where Vortigern wants to build his fortress following their burial by Gwyn’s father, Nudd/Lludd. Amazingly my supervisor knew nothing of my connection with these myths prior to the journey.
I have begun a process of transmuting the anger of the red dragon to strength and the panic of the white dragon to calm in my yoga practice by coupling them with holding postures on either side and with alternating nostril breathing along with trying lion’s breath to release the fiery energy.
V. Unblocking the Flow
Prior to this I had considered alternative options for possible paid work – running courses and workshops or writing a book on Brythonic Polytheism as quite a few people have asked me for reliable material. However, whenever I have attempted to put something together I have met a block.
On the one hand I felt with my background in research into the Brythonic tradition and my experiential relationship with a few of the deities I was in a position from which I could deliver this. Yet I also knew my approach is highly personal and idiosyncratic and critical of the medieval Welsh texts, penned by Christian scribes, in which Gwyn and the spirits of Annwn, the witches, giants and ancient animals are demonised and repressed.
I’m not a person who could deliver the literary background formally, without opinion, without a few of the teeth and claws of the spirits of Annwn getting through.
When I entertained the idea again this year I was told by Gwyn to set it aside and ‘stop thinking about money’. Yet my feeling this might be a future obligation and potential source of income in spite of my blocks continued to persist.
I finally let go of this once and for all following a conversation with my supervisor. She advised that rather than acting from my sense of obligation and presuppositions about what the world wants and needs I should follow my inspiration, the flow of my creativity, asked where my passion really lies.
I said, “in my books”, “in Gwyn,” “in the Annuvian,” “in all He and the Otherworld represent”. She told me this is what I should focus on and write about in spite of my fears about my work not being well received or making money.
For the past year I had increasingly been struggling to create blog content based on what I think my readers want in terms of Brythonic content and poetry. My prayers and songs for Gwyn had all been from the heart but I’d had to drink alcohol to force the poetry out and I hadn’t managed to write much about the other Brythonic Gods and Goddesses in spite of my intent.
As soon as I let go of what I felt my obligations are I had two new poems come through without the aid of alcohol pretty much complete and was inspired to write a couple of pieces on my ‘forbidden pleasure’ – dark fantasy.
VI. The Dark Magician’s Door
At the time I was considering where my future prospects and obligations lie I dismissed the possibility that I might gain a larger readership for my books, which I would describe as mythic fiction containing elements of heroic and dark fantasy, by engaging more with the world of fantasy and its readers.
I flirted briefly with the idea of starting a new blog for thoughts on fantasy and reviews but decided it would be too time consuming and didn’t like the idea of having two blogs and profiles. I also got put off by the fact a lot of engagement takes place on social media and this is an absolute no-no for me. I took one look at Twitter and felt like I was staring into the pits of Hell.
I also dismissed the idea of posting fantasy content on this blog as I have tried it in the past and it hasn’t been well received. I decided there are enough people in the world talking about fantasy and not enough talking about the Brythonic Gods so I should continue to make that duty my focus.
I then had a seemingly unrelated experience that led to my giving up alcohol for good. I used alcohol to self-medicate my anxiety from my late teens until 2020 when I began giving it for periods and cutting down a lot. The habit of weekends and occasional mid-week drinking had snuck back during my difficulties with my sciatic nerve pain even though my body was rebelling against it – expunging it with night sweats and its stink in my piss and shit.
I really wanted to give it up for another long period but was having no success.
Then I had a dream in which my dark magician guide (who is a character in a fantasy novel who has been with me since I was around thirteen) showed up with a vision of planks leading up and down a wall to different doors, told me he was angry I had ‘closed his door’ and left through it.
The next morning he appeared again in my meditation, vivid as in a dream, in Annwn, beside the Abyss, with the part of myself who is addicted to alcohol, sweating, writhing, stinking of its excesses, wrapped in a white shroud. He told me it was time I gave up alcohol for good and that I must cast her in. Although this completely terrified me I went along with what he said. Afterwards I reported it to Gwyn and solemnly promised Him I would not relapse.
Knowing I would never have the comfort of alcohol again was scary at first but has proved to be a big release with the part of my mind obsessing about whether I’ll drink then feel guilty and like a failure having finally been laid to rest. It has opened a lot more space for communion with my Gods and creativity.
I forgot all about the dark magician’s door until the block allowing me only to write Brythonic content and poetry for my blog was released and I came up with new poems and the fantasy book reviews I had denied myself of writing.
I’d closed his door – the door to fantasy – and now it stands open again.
VII. Returning to Orddu’s Cave
Over this year of solitude I have harvested a good many things. I have produced a finalish draft of my first book, In the Deep, and am well on my way with the drafting of my second book, The King and Queen of Annwn. The building of the Monastery of Annwn is going well with our development of our shared practices, meditation group and first year of online rituals.
I’ve come a long way in discerning the direction of my path as an awenydd and nun of Annwn devoted Gwyn and learning to follow my inspiration.
Another important learning is that whereas in the past I forced myself out into various communities, spiritual, creative and environmental, I am happiest when I am alone or interacting with very small groups of like-minded people.
There is a lot of stigma around solitude identifying it with mental ill health. Yet, for me, and I would warrant a lot of autistic people, it is a source of well being.
This has led me back to the cave of Orddu, the Very Black Witch, an inspired one and warrior woman intimately connected to Gwyn who was slaughtered by Arthur.
I no longer see it as my duty to sing back the traditions in which the King of Annwn and his followers are demonised and killed but to join the inspired ones past and present who are perceiving new visions from the Cauldron of Inspiration, brewing them in their own vessels, birthing them in words. Owning my wolf’s teeth, my black beak and claws, all that Arthur forbids.
In my cave, my room, my monastic cell, I tend my cauldron and my awen sings.
*This is the poem recording my initial rebellion against Merlin’s words.
The Dragon on my Shoulder Breathes Fire
I. She sees the things that are unseen but are – the dragon on my shoulder breathes fire.
Not just any fire but Annwn’s fire, the type that warms the belly, implodes the head, bursts forth as poetry (on a good day) but is otherwise expressed as anger.
Anger that will not be satiated by death or by the spilling of blood.
Where do dragons come from?
II. There are fire eaters and fire breathers and those who swallow stars not to make a living but to avoid our soul’s death.
Dragon fire has been within us all along.
III. Red is danger and danger is anger with a letter d at the front.
Red and hatred have the same vibe. Red, goch, iron, the red at the earth’s core. My temper will not be tempered – my metalwork got melted down.
I did not master fire.
Instead I released the dragon soaring soaring from the forge wept the day I did not save my Lord from Arthur’s sword.
But it was I who freed the fiery serpents sizzling, hissing, spitting.
IV. Now a large grandfather clock is ticking down to doomsday. The dragons are fighting again and will not be quieted.
Merlin tells me that I must ‘tame the dragon’.
Why, oh prophet, diviner, madman, must I try to tame what cannot be tamed?
Why, oh son of a demon, who prophecies in dragon fire are you speaking this Arthurian language of taming?
All I know is you have demons inside you too, in your heart, in your head, that both of us like to sit beneath the apple trees.
The dragons are within me.
The Island of Prydain.
The dragons are within you too.
The dragon on my shoulder breathes fire and she sees the things that are unseen but are.
I have recently returned to Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence and it has raised a number of thoughts about the need for noise and the stigma around silence in our current society.
I first read this book in 2015 which was timely as had I ended up burnt out on noisy social media and attending noisy protests and learnt from this book that ‘noise’ shares the same roots as ‘noxious’ and ‘nausea’.
Throughout my life I have struggled with noise. I was brought up in a bookish household and always preferred reading to the noise of the radio or television. When I started school I was horrified by the noisiness of the other pupils, always talking, shouting, preferred to play alone or flee to the silence of the library. I will never forget the time I first stayed over at another girl’s house. She had the television in her room on not only all evening but kept it on all night because she couldn’t sleep without it. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. When I was involved with horses I didn’t understand the need for the noise of a radio and was horrified by the people who left radios on for their horses in their stables all night based around their personal need for human noise. It’s only since giving up alcohol I have realised how much it played a role in my being able to tolerate the noise of being with groups of people at events and gatherings.
During my involvement with community groups and people in general I have noticed an awkwardness around silence and the need to fill it with noise. If someone is quiet or silent this is seen as a bad thing. Something is wrong. That person needs to be ‘brought out of themself’ – to be noisier.
This present need for noise is beyond my understanding and Maitland goes some way to explain it but I’d like to share first some of the questions she raises about the nature and definition of the opposite of noise – silence.
Maitland notes that the OED dictionary of silence is the absence of noise and speech but notes also that silence can mean ‘without language’. Until I returned to this I had always thought of reading and writing as silent activities and of a library as a silent place.
This then got me thinking about the spaces where we read. I have experienced social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to be incredibly noisy. Discord too. Old style forums less so. My own room with a book quietist. So it seems here we are dealing with levels of noise grading down to quiet but perhaps not with silence itself if silence is indeed the absence of language.
I found Maitland’s personal conception of silence very interesting. She speaks of it as ‘a separate ontological category’ ‘not a lack of language but an otherness different from language. Not an absence of sound but the presence of something which is not sound.’ Silence is presence. ‘God is silence’.
Maitland is a Christian so her identification of God with silence is based on that tradition. Her words got me thinking about my own relationships with the Gods and how they relate to noise and language and silence. My patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, is renowned for being quite noisy. He hunts the souls of the dead with a noisy pack of hounds and holds noisy revels at His feast. Like many other pre-Christian Gods and, really, all Gods (including the Judaeo-Christian God who is paradoxically silence yet He speaks His Word) Gwyn is known through language – through myth, through stories, through folklore. Yet, for me, He is both the storm of the hunt and the calm in the midst of the storm. He encourages me to spend time in silent meditation, focusing purely on my breath or on the sights and sounds in nature around me.
Maitland goes on to say our ‘desire to break the silence with constant human noise is… an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter’. It is a flight from ‘the Great Chthonic Terror’. We have attempted to defeat silence not by magic but ‘our rules – our own laws not the gods… enshrined in language.’
I agree that much of our need for noise and the stigma around silence is a flight from the divine, from the bigger than us, from what terrifies us. We break the silence because we are afraid of the Deities who might break us.
Maitland’s ‘otherness’ and ‘Great Chthonic Terror’ I am tempted to identify with the Annuvian, the ‘Very Deep’, the unknown and unspeakable domain of the 80% of the universe that is dark matter and the unused 90% of our brains.
Maitland notes that silence has long played a strong role and initiatory function within various spiritual and religious traditions particularly for monastics. She speaks of her three year period in silent seclusion at Weardale as ‘a novitiate’ and of herself as a ‘silence novice’.
As a nun of Annwn I have been led to cut down on noise and spend more time in quiet engagement with language reading and writing or in silence. Contrary to the stigma this has been massively beneficial to my mental health.
There is the bard in the mead hall. The one who sings at the feast in Caer Vedwit, the Mead Feast Fort, in Gwyn’s hall, in a heavy blue-grey chain.
I sung there once, where the harp of Teirtu plays on its own. Where the ghost of Maponos walked. Where the fair folk and the dead dance and mix and eat the meat of leaves whilst the king watches from his throne of bones.
I drank enough mead to feast the dead for centuries and took the songs of our king to the halls of towns and cities, to libraries, pubs, shopping centres.
I sang in chains, tried to strangle myself with them, then cast them off.
I walked this path for a while but this path was not for me.
~
There is the path of the madman, the wild woman, the path of the followers of Myrddin Wyllt. Those who are afflicted by trauma and by the claws of Annwn torn out of themselves, split open, as if by a spear, their bird spirits flying out.
Hawk spirits, golden eagle spirits, goldcrest spirits, passerines in strange migrations. All heading to their forests of Celyddon. To pines and raided gold mines. To the damps of the Celtic rainforests where it rains five days a week. To the remnants of woodlands in the suburbs along the trickle of suburban streams.
I was the wren in the bush singing of how I tore myself open for our God and how my heart was my sacrifice on mid-winter’s day still beating beneath the yew.
A part of me is still there, singing for Him, loud yet hidden. No-one hears.
I walked this path for a while but this path was not for me.
~
There is the path of the cave woman, the inspired one, the witch. Orddu ‘Very Black’, Orwen ‘Very White’, all their ancestors around the cauldron.
Black skin, white hair, white skin, black hair, wolf furs, corvid feathers, black beaks.
Those who sing with crows and wash the skulls of their ancestors in holy springs. Cast the wolf bones. Lie beneath wolf furs waiting for visions of the Deep.
Those who drink the awen, scry in the cauldron like our God, sing of past and future things. Swallow stars. Universes. Things too big to speak. Die in His arms.
I swallowed the star of the King of Annwn and it is within me still and I am still in my cave after all these centuries with a murder of crow women inside me.
The nun in her cell who still flies, still runs, divines with black feathers.
I walked this path for a while and have decided it is for me.
I wrote this poem as a step along my journey in discerning what it means to be an inspired one and nun of Annwn devoted to Gwyn ap Nudd in relation to the Brythonic tradition and my solitary life in suburban Penwortham.
The Torch of Brighid is a book by Erin Aurelia who has tended the sacred flame of the Celtic Goddess Brighid for over twenty years. The book provides historical information about Brighid based on existing sources and introduces a transformational flametending practice that is rooted in tradition and inspired by mythic connections and by Brighid herself. The author makes it clear at the beginning that she is not reconstructing a past Pagan practice.
Working with traditional material Erin has produced a series of meditations forming a transformational journey based upon Brighid’s roles as smith, healer and poet (and dreamer*), the ogam, the three cauldrons and the celebration of Imbolc.
She begins by providing Brighid’s historical background followed by guidance for setting up an altar to Brighid and beginning a flame tending practice through making a Brighid-flame candle ‘to light and tend Brighid’s fire’.
As further preparatory work there are meditations in the form of visits to the Inner Temple, the Well of Wisdom and opening to Brighid’s energy through the Mantle of Brighid. These felt like a firm foundation for a flametending practice.
Erin bases the twenty day flametending journey on the ogam and the life cycle of a tree (relating to St Brighid’s sanctuary Cill Dara ‘The Church of the Oak). The first five days focus on growth, the next five on fruiting, the next five on ripening, the last five on seeding. Meditations are given for each of the days guiding the devotee through the transformational processes.
The ritual year is based around the four Celtic festivals Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain which are identified with four ogam characters and mapped onto the Celtic cross with the fifth in the middle.
A new rite Erin introduces that particularly resonated with me was holding an ‘advent’ for Brighid’s return to the land at Imbolc based upon Her four faces.
Although I am not a Brighid devotee or a flametender myself so haven’t been called to participate in the practices outlined in the book I can see that they would provide an excellent grounding for both newcomers and practicing Polytheists to meet Brighid and begin flametending as a devotional practice.
I admired the way Erin has reimagined this series of rites from traditional material. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Brighid and flametending and to all Polytheists seeking inspiration on how to create new rituals from existing sources with the guidance of their Gods and Goddesses.
The Torch of Brighid is available from Moon Books HERE.
*This is based on gnosis surrounding Brighid as the serpent who sleeps in winter and comes out of the mound in Scottish folklore.
I’ve enjoyed running on-and-off since my early twenties as a form of exercise that has been really beneficial to my physical and mental health. I haven’t been able to run very long distances due to problems with anterior knee pain ‘runners knee’ and with my sciatic nerve. My furthest is 15 miles. Since starting strength training I’ve been running around 30 miles a week relatively injury free.* Last year I beat my goal of running a sub 2 hour half marathon with the time of 1 hour 54s.
Before I took monastic vows as a nun of Annwn one of the things I was concerned about was whether I would still be allowed to run and continue with my strength training. When I looked into rules about exercise in monastic traditions I found they differed widely. For example in Thailand the Buddhist monks are not allowed to ‘do weight lifting’ or ‘jog’ as it is ‘not proper’ (resulting in obesity)**. Contrastingly another Buddhist order, ‘the Marathon Monks of Mt Hiei’ in Japan, have to run distances between 18.6 miles a day for 100 days to 52 miles for 100 days over a seven year period.***
It is also notable that many monastic orders incorporate martial arts such as the Chinese Shaolin Monastery, the Hindu Naga Sadhus, and the monks of the Knights Templar during the Crusades.
The moment I thought about this question in relation to my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, who is a warrior and a huntsman, I knew I didn’t really need to ask as He has encouraged me to run and do Taekwondo (before my local club closed) and more recently to take up strength training. I often feel closer to Him when I am running through the woods than when doing more formal devotions.
When I formulated the nine vows for the Monastery of Annwn I received the gnosis that one of them must be ‘to take care of our health’ and that could include exercise for those able to do it.
Over the past couple of years, when I am ‘in the zone’, I have found myself filled with energy that I can gift back to the Gods and the land in ad hoc prayers of thanksgiving as I have been running.
As a couple of examples this is one for my river Goddess, Belisama, as I run beside the Ribble –
‘My beautiful river, my beautiful river, my beautiful river – joy – my beautiful river, my beautiful river, beautiful river.’
This is a fragment of a praise poem that I tend to change in accordance with where I’m running –
‘I praise the land, the trees, I praise the sound of running feet, I praise the skies, I praise the clouds, I praise the sound of feet so loud…’
When I’ve had bad days and am in no mood for words I’ve offered my perseverance and effort to my Gods.
More recently I have begun using running as a form of prayer to bring myself closer to Gwyn reciting this ‘mantra’:
‘My breath with Your breath, my heart with Your heart, my feet on Your path, You and I as one.’
I am embracing running as a physical, mental, and spiritual practice that brings me into unity with my God.
Nodens is an ancient British God of water and healing dreams. This is evidenced from His temple at Lydney where He is pictured on a mural crown driving a chariot pulled by water-horses and flanked by spirits of the wind and sea. The layout suggests that pilgrims took a ritual bath in the bath house, made offerings in His temple, then retired to a dormitory to enter a sacred sleep. On waking their dreams were interpreted by an ‘interpretus’.
I have been relating to Nodens as a God of dreams since 2012. I started connecting with Him around the same time I met His son, Vindos/Gwyn ap Nudd*. At this time I found out that Nodens was also worshipped here in Lancashire as evidenced by two Romano-British silver statuettes, dedicated to Him as Mars-Nodontis, found on Cockersand Moss.
I used to suffer from insomnia and started praying to Nodens as a dream God when I was desperate to sleep the night before travelling to the midlands for a Druid Network Conference in the midlands at which I was speaking for the first time on the bardic tradition. I was nervous not only about the talk but staying away from home in the company of so many people.
I prayed to Nodens… and I slept… and when I returned home I made Him an offering of mint tea and thus began my practice of praying to Him every night before I go to sleep and making regular offerings. Since then I have never struggled to getting to sleep although I still sometimes struggle with early waking. Skeptics amongst you might argue this is simply the consequence of having a winddown routine and spending time in darkness in front of a candle but I personally believe that my prayers to Nodens are the driving cause.
Nodens has also helped me to build a dreamwork practice. Several years ago He instructed me to collect a ‘dream stone’ from the Ribble and to place it on His altar then to put my dreams into it as an offering to Him when I wake up. I also journal my dreams for the purposes of remembering them. In the evenings I reflect on my dreams before I pray to Nodens and go to sleep.
Interestingly Nodens has never played an active role in interpreting my dreams, although I have sensed His guidance when making interpretations. I have never used books, but have been encouraged to explore the personal symbology of my dreams and what certain images and themes mean when they arise.
I often dream that I am ‘back at the stables’ – mainly at Oakfield Riding School where I spent a large part of my childhood working on the yard for free rides and where I worked as a riding instructor after giving up my PhD. In my dreams it represents my desire to return to a safe and a familiar place.
Another common theme is visiting shops that are selling a combination of rock/goth clothing and accessories and Pagan paraphenalia. These consistently have multiple levels, like Preston market, or Affleck’s Palace in Manchester, where I used to shop and hang out. I often see people from the past. I find I can’t relate to them and I cannot find what I am looking for. These dreams remind me that although I had friends with a similar taste in music we had nothing in common outside that and I didn’t truly fit in. Also that what I was searching for, some kind of deeper meaning, cannot be bought.
It’s not that often the Gods show up in my dreams but when they do it is deeply meaningful such as when Gwyn showed me how to send my soul into a hazel tree, then a beetle, then something else, in order to escape execution.**
In many of my dreams, frustratingly, I know I am on a mission for Gwyn, but have failed or forgotten what it is, showing my anxieties about failing Him.
I’ve never had an experience with Nodens in my dreams but sense the touch of His (silver) hand when there is humour. For example a couple of months back I mistakenly allowed a troublesome member who made an inciteful post into the Monastery of Annwn and was not sure what to do about it. I then dreamt I was working at the stables and found someone had put a turd in one of the horse’s water buckets and was furious. The dream told me that, in the same way I could not allow a person who puts turds in horse’s water buckets to come to the stables, I could not have someone who posts inciteful posts in the monastery. With the words of other members this convinced me to ban them.
Dreamworking with Nodens has not given me all the answers to my dreams but it has helped me to remember, record, listen to, honour and act upon them. Over the time I have been recording my dreams I have logged an increasing number each year showing my dream recall has been improving.
I believe this practice is important as dreams are the way our Gods and our souls can speak to us with the least interference from our conscious minds. For this reason I don’t try to control my dreams through techniques like lucid dreaming.***
I would be interested to hear about whether anyone else has been inspired to take up a dream work practice with Nodens or works other ways with dreams.
*Nodens is known as Nudd or Lludd in medieval Welsh literature. **I have recorded an account of this dream HERE. ***Another reason I haven’t experimented with this technique is that asking the question ‘am I dreaming?’ in everyday life would be a trigger for returning to doubts about the nature of reality and blurring of boundaries that led to me not knowing what was real and was not and made me fear I was going mad during a mental health crisis in my early twenties.
A good place to start getting into dreamwork is Nimue Brown’s book Pagan Dreaming HERE
The Sanctuary of Vindos 