Beside the source of the brook in Greencroft Valley stand two black poplars. There aren’t any known British myths about black poplars but, in Greek myth, they are associated with Hades (the Underworld) and death.
In Homer’s Odyssey, poplars, described in different translations as ‘tall’ and ‘dusky’, so likely black, with willow, form Persephone’s Grove. Springs, throughout world myth, are seen as entrances to the Underworld.
In another story from ancient Greece, Phaethon, son of the sun God, Helios, drives his father’s chariot too close to the sun. His blazing end brings deep grief to his sisters, who are transformed into black poplar trees. The amber sap is said to be their tears. Thus its associations with death and sorrow.
In more recent folklore the red male catkins are referred to as ‘Devil’s Fingers.’
This leads me to believe that there might have once been parallel British myths about black poplar, connecting it with springs at the entrance to Annwn and with the groves of Annwn’s Queen. Perhaps there was once a story in which the red male catkins were the bloody fingers of Annwn’s King?
I will admit that I’m not sure if these trees are true black poplars (Populus nigra) or hybrids because black poplars are rare. Plus, I’m not referring to the true source of Fish House Brook but to the outflow pipe that the culverted brook emerges from. The original source would have lain further south, somewhere on Penwortham Moss, which has been drained and replaced by housing. The brook is culverted under the gardens on the other side of my street, Bank Parade, also giving its name to Burnside Way. I feel this relates to my founding of the Sanctuary of Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd, a King of Annwn, very near to the ‘black poplars’ at the ‘source’.
In a shamanic journey I visited the poplars for advice on descending to the ancestors in preparation for some ancestral healing work. I was shown the left tree represented my mother line and the right my father line. I slid down the roots of the left into a cavern where a group of spirits were drinking from cups from the same source. I was told that on the new and full moons I must consecrate a cup of water and make an offering:
“To the Gods, spirits and ancestors – we all drink from the same source.”
I felt this related to keeping the source clean – something I have been trying to do as a volunteer in Greencroft Valley with the Friends group I set up (now part of Guardians of Nature).
‘Gwyn ap Nudd, helper of hosts, Armies fall before the hooves of your horse As swiftly as cut reeds to the ground.’ ~ ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’
So far it’s been a grim month. Grey skies. Heavy rain. Storms.
The scythe of the Reaper has been swinging, chopping, cutting. The cut reeds have been falling swiftly. The huge round hooves of His horse, of the horses of Annwn have been trampling them into the rain-soaked ground.
Sister Patience, chop, cut, gone. The Monastery of Annwn, chop, cut, gone. My dream of living the rest of my life as a nun of Annwn, chop, cut, gone.
It’s happened so suddenly. Yesterday I spent a moment, like waking in the morning after a night I’d self-harmed, in shock, thinking what have I done?
Yet this was not the work of my blade but the Reaper’s blade…
Gwyn was there to reassure me, His hand on my shoulder (slightly bony) letting me know that it was for the best, that dying reeds have got to fall.
I could see the monastery was dying but Sister Patience felt alive to me.
“Sometimes you don’t know you’re dying until it’s too late.”
I trust His wisdom in taking a part of me – a sacrifice to save the whole.
What now? I stare down at crushed reeds in the muddy churned-up ground, attempting to scry a message from the mess of my life – the mash of criss-crossed stalks and the rain-filled half moons of the hoofprints spilling into pools.
There’s always been an obvious road that I’ve never managed to take. Write that much-needed book on Brythonic polytheism or Brythonic shamanism. Write some how-tos on how to meet the Brythonic Gods. It’s always been blocked. That dark hooded figure with His scythe in the way.
“That is not your work,” he slides a whetstone along the curved blade. “I want you to write the words that cut to the truth, that hurt, that have edge.”
I see I’ll always be an edge person. Not salesy enough to sell. Not humble or practial enough to crawl away from the blogosphere and get a proper job. Suburban in the sense of lower down rather than rows of identical houses with cut lawns (although I live in one). Far too English to be properly Brythonic.
I’ll never be able to say, “Look at my bright shiny life you can have this too!”
Yet, in giving voice to uncomfortable edges, to exploring the messier, lesser-spoken side of relationship with Gods and spirits I feel I have a place as a writer and guide.
A place of cut and trampled reeds, muddy waters, dark hooves, forever shadowed by the Reaper’s hooded form and His skeletal touch.
Photograph from when I was cutting reeds during a fen cut (albeit with a brushcutter rather than a scythe) when I worked for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust on the Wigan Flashes.
I write when I fall. It’s a defence mechanism. Like putting out a hand to catch myself.
I write because writing has saved me and I believe my writing might help others.
But putting out a hand doesn’t always work when one is falling into the Abyss…
*
I cried out to the philosophers, “Philosophers save me!”
When I was 21 and in the second year of my philosophy degree I sat on the edge of the Abyss at the nadir of a quasi-initiatory period during which I’d been foolishly been mixing phenomenology (1) with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, some unknown part of me striving, reaching for… what?
My ‘friends’ had deserted me because I’d ‘gone west’ and I was sitting on the boot of a car, at the end of the world, staring into the Abyss, feeling I couldn’t go on living but not really, truly, wanting to die either. I couldn’t choose.
I was presented with three gateways but didn’t have the courage to take any.
I moved into the front seat of the car and, as dawn arrived, pinking the front windows of my friend’s house, with it came three alienesque beings who I now understand in the Brythonic tradition to be ellyllon ‘elves’. They took me into the heavens in what I saw at the time as an alien aduction experience and performed an intricate operation on my brain with silver instruments.
After that I decided to give up drugs entirely and apply myself to my studies. Not easy. There were after effects. Anxiety. Panic attacks. I ended up on medication but also got subscribed what I really needed – exercise. These things helped me to get my head straight enough to write myself out of the Abyss.
My philosophy studies gave me the tools I needed. I saw my inability to choose life or death as akin to Kant’s antimonies (2) which stem from the use of reason to comprehend sensible phenomena beyond its application. I wrote my dissertation on the concept of the sublime in Burke, Kant, and Lyotard, focusing on how experiences of the sublime depose the rational mind (3).
This helped me to understand the breakdown of my rational faculties but not the visions I encountered as the flip side. It was only when I was studying for my MA in European Philosophy and writing my dissertation on Nietzche’s The Birth of Tragedy I found the clues. Dionysian ecstasy gives way to Apollonian visions. But I wasn’t seeing Dionysus or satyrs. I realised, like Greece, Britain, must have its Gods and spirits, finally met my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, a King of Annwn, realised my visions had been of His realm.
Nietzsche, a philosopher, who also stared into the Abyss (4), saved me.
*
The medieval Welsh term Annwn stems from an ‘very’ and dwfn ‘deep’. I believe it shares similarities with the Hebrew term tehom which means ‘deep’ and was translated as abyssos, ‘abyss’, ‘bottomless depth’, in the Septugaint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible in 285–247 BCE.
The Mesopotamian Goddess of the primordial waters, Tiamat, has been linked to tehom. Several years ago myself and other awenyddion found a Goddess named Anrhuna who takes dragon form and is the mother of Gwyn. She plays a similar role as the personification of Annwn. In my visions She, Gwyn, and Nodens/Nudd are associated with the Abyss and its mysteries.
Gwyn was the God who taught me how to fall. He’s fallen too. And I’ve fallen with Him. I’ve crawled out of the Abyss with Him, claw by claw, word by word.
That damned book. It came first when I was falling during the first covid pandemic. I’d given up my supermarket job to volunteer my way into paid work in conservation and my volunteering had been cancelled leaving me with no paid or voluntary role. Utterly unpublishable but writing it got me through.
It came again when I realised I couldn’t cope in a career in the environmental sector. For the last year and a half I’ve worked on it full time, realised it is no good.
That crutch has gone but I’m still putting my hand out – writing whilst falling.
*
I’m back in another antinomy – I love writing but can’t make a living from it.
When I first met Gwyn He asked me to promise to give up my ambition to be a professional author in return for journeying with Him to Annwn. I did it for a while. I took various jobs, cleaning, packing, supermarket, wrote as service for my Gods.
But, sneakily, oh so sneakily, in the back of my mind, I never got rid of the treacherous hope that promise would only be temporary. If I worked hard well enough the veto might come off, I might be able to have my cake and eat it.
I published three books. Sold more copies than I hoped for such niche work. Even got professionally published. Not enough to make a living of course but enough to convince me I might be able to write something that did better.
Ten years after my initial dedication to Gwyn I asked Him by divination about whether that promise still holds and got 1. The Wanderer and thought I was free of it. It’s notable here I asked through the tarot rather than asking Him directly. Consciously I did this because I feared my discernment might be off. Maybe unconsciously, I feared, knew, he’d say, ‘No’. I read the card wrong. In the traditional tarot The Wanderer is the The Fool. I was fooling myself. As I write these words I hear the laughter of my God and realise what a fool I was.
At one point I hoped In the Deep might not only sell to my small Polytheist and Pagan audience but might also appeal to fantasy readers, taking the stories of Gwyn and the other Brythonic Gods into the mainstream.
Hubris. It didn’t work. An individual can’t write myth. And I’m not that good a writer.
A difficult lesson learnt. My ambition to be a professional writer given up for good, vomited up, committed to the Abyss, I’m falling again, writing whilst falling.
I’m remembering my vision of the three gates. I can’t make a living as a writer. I don’t want to die either. I’m asking what lies beyond the third gate.
In the next part I will be writing about the ‘Abyss Mystics’ who, unlike me did not try to cling on, to write themselves out of the Abyss, were not afraid of falling.
(1) In particular using Husserl’s epoche (setting aside all assumptions of existence) as an experiential practice. (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant’s_antinomies (3) In ‘Scapeland’ Lyotard writes of the ‘The Thing’ as sublime – ‘the mind draws itself up when it draws a landscape, but that landscape has already drawn its forces up against the mind, and that in drawing them up, it has broken and deposed the mind (as one deposes a sovereign), made it vomit itself up towards the nothingness of being-there.’ (4) In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche wrote, ‘Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.’
The Abyss was its spiralling core and its beginning and its end.
The Beginning
It began with a boy falling, falling, falling into the Abyss.
The boy dreamt of the birth of his Dragon Mother from the infinite waters of the Deep with nine heads and nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine coils and her giving birth to an infinitude of dragons, serpents, monster-serpents and monsters.
*
The boy dreamt of the birth of the stars – each the eye of a fiery giant. He watched them mating, spawning bright gods, who built their fortresses in the skies. The King of the Gods ordering the constellations with a turning sword. This god cast out, plummeting like a comet with an icy tail, down to the Deep.
*
The boy dreamt of the god hanging in his mother’s coils over the Abyss to gain its wisdom. ‘There is no up or down or before or after – everything meets here in you the Dragon Mother.’ He watched them mate and knew he was conceived.
*
The boy dreamt of the Children of the Don descending from the stars to slaughter the Dragons of the Deep. Lugus, their leader, cut off the arm of his father, Nodens and slaughtered his Dragon Mother, Anrhuna. Lugus then tore the boy, Vindos, and his sister, Kraideti, from the womb. He stole Kraideti ‘the Girl who will Bring Life’ to the stars and threw Vindos ‘the Boy who will bring Death’ into the Abyss.
*
The boy awoke and crawled from the Abyss to eat his Dragon Mother’s heart in a rite that made him King of Annwn (he later gained his name – Vindos / Gwyn ‘White, Blessed, Holy’).
The End
Vindos killed Lugus as vengeance for slaying his Dragon Mother. Lugus took flight in the form of an eagle and perched wounded in an oak tree for nine nights with a sow beneath feasting on the rotten flesh and maggots from his wound.
Uidianos sang Lugus down from the oak with three englyns and restored him to life.
Lugus returned the blow, shattering the Stone of Vindos, to pierce his enemy’s side. Vindos took the form of a raven and flew to Annwn where he hung wounded on a yew tree upside down over the Abyss and answered its riddles.
Night One:
“Tell me the hour the King and Queen of Annwn were born.”
“Not easy – we were not born but ripped from the womb on the hour of the death of dragons.”
*
Night Two:
“Tell me in your eternal battle who killed who?
“Not easy, summer and winter are mirrors – when one kills the other kills too.”
*
Night Three:
“Tell Me how many trees are in the forests of Annwn?”
“Not easy, for they are without number but ask me again and I will name them.”
*
Night Four:
“Tell me how many doors there are to Annwn.”
“Not easy, for they are without number but ask me again and I will open them.”
*
Night Five:
“Tell me where divide darkness and light, day and night?”
“Not easy, for there are no divisions – each follows each in an endless procession.”
*
Night Six:
“Tell me where the restless wind comes from and where he rests.”
“Not easy, for no-one but he knows the location of the Lands of the First and Last Breaths.”
*
Night Seven:
“Tell me how many stars are in the Heavens.”
“Not easy, for they will not be counted until all souls are in the cauldron.”
*
Night Eight:
“Tell me the fate of your last drop of blood.”
“Not easy, for I cannot divide it from the ocean of blood that will drown the world.”
*
Night Nine:
“Tell Me the hour the King and Queen of Annwn will die.”
“Not easy – we cannot live without each other and thus will die together when all souls are gathered.”
*
Vindos then fell into the Abyss.
These scenes had a basis in my personal encounters with the Abyss. I will be talking about those in part two, then in part three and four presenting my recent discovery of ‘Abyss Mysticism’ in the writing on medieval monastics and how this has helped me make a little sense of the abyssal visions behind this book.
In my attempted novel, In the Deep, I tried to imagine a story for the origins of Vindos / Gwyn, His kingdom in Annwn, and for the creation of the world. This was based on a combination of my readings of Brythonic and other Celtic and Indo-European and world myths and my personal gnosis.
I worked for a year and a half on a story that had meaning for me and I felt Gwyn wanted me to write as the awen kept on flowing. Yet it didn’t speak to many humans and, in retrospect, although coherent, contained a lot of flaws.
Looking back, I feel it was a process I needed to go through. I genuinely believe I saw faces of Gwyn, such as the Boy in the Serpent Skins, that were meaningful for me and needed to journey with Him and write those tales.
Yet there were elements of the story I could never quite make work. My personal gnosis led me to perceive parallels between Tiamat in the Enuma Elish and a ‘found’ Goddess I know as Anrhuna who takes the form of a nine-headed dragon and is Gwyn’s mother and the Mother of Annwn.
In the Deep was written as an inversion of Enuma Elish ‘When on High’ reimagining what might have been a wider Indo-European origin myth centring on the slaying of a dragon from the side of the Deep rather than the victors.
It opens with a battle between the Dragons of the Deep (Annwn) and the Children of Don wherein Lugus / Lleu slays Anrhuna, the Dragon Mother. By cutting off Her nine heads He releases the dragon children of the nine elements*. He then cuts open Her womb and tears out Kraideti / Creiddylad (the Girl who will Bring Life) and Vindos / Gwyn (the Boy who will Bring Death). Lugus takes Kraideti to the stars and flings Vindos into the Abyss. Uidianos / Gwydion steals the magical jewels from Anrhuna’s foreheads and with them commands the dragon children to create the world.
Although I’ve been able to picture the dragon slaying scene quite vividly I’ve never quite managed to see or write the creation of the world. I’ve ‘seen’ Uidianos and a circle of enchanters with their wands conjuring with the elements to form a world but can’t seem to connect it with the dragons.
The role of Gwydion as demiurge I derived from His creation of Taliesin in ‘The Battle of the Trees’ from ‘nine forms of consistency’ – ‘fruit’, ‘fruits’, ‘God’s fruit in the beginning’, ‘primroses’, ‘flowers’, ‘the blossoms of trees and shrubs’, ‘earth’ / ‘sod’, ‘nettle blossoms’, and ‘the ninth wave’s water’.
In ‘The Song of the Great World’ Taliesin is created by God from ‘seven consistencies’ – ‘fire and earth, / and water and air, / and mist and flowers, / and the fruitful wind’. Like the the microcosmic Adam** his creation may be seen to mirror the creation of the world by God in this poem. It seems possible Gwydion was earlier seen as creating Taliesin and the world.
In ‘A British Myth of Origins’ John Carey suggests the Fourth Branch of The Mabinogion might contain an origin myth with Math’s kingdom whilst He has His feet in the lap of a virgin, Goewin, representing a timeless paradisal state. Gwydion’s scheming with Gilfaethwy to bring about her rape represent a fall. Gwydion and Gilfaethwy’s transformation by Math into a deer and a pig and a wolf, and their bearing of offspring, may explain the origin of animals.
Carey also suggests the story of Taliesin shapeshifting into various animals after stealing the awen from the cauldron of Ceridwen and the animal transformations of figures such as Mongan in the Irish myths function ‘as a device to connect the present with its origins, whether the beginnings of history or the transtemporal eternity of the Otherworld.’
It’s my personal intuition that Ceridwen may be a creator Goddess. That Her crochan ‘cauldron’ or ‘womb’ could be the vessel from which the universe was born. This is another strand that I attempted to weave into my book.
If we look back beyond medieval Welsh mythology to the Roman sources we find no evidence whatsoever of a creation myth. Instead Strabo reports that the Gallic peoples (who according to Caesar derived their beliefs from the Britons) believe ‘men’s souls and the universe are imperishable’. Several authors speak of the belief that the soul is immortal. According to Caesar it ‘does not die but crosses over after death from one place to another’ showing existence in an ‘otherworld’ (potentially Annwn). Diodorus Siclus claims the Gauls ‘subscribe to the doctrine of Pythagoras that the human spirit is immortal and will enter a new body after a fixed number of years’. The key doctrine of Pythagoras is metempychosis and we find this throughout the Taliesin material wherein he speaks of his transformations.
It seems possible we don’t have a Brythonic creation myth as the universe was viewed as ‘imperishable’ and the eternal soul as shifting through different shapes, potentially crossing from this world to Annwn and back again.
One of the things that has stood out to me whilst returning to the Taliesin material is that rather than telling of creation as given he instead poses riddles. ‘How is the sun put into position? / Where does the roofing of the Earth come from?’ ‘Where do the day and the night come from?’ He mocks Christian scribes for not knowing ‘how the darkness and light divide, / (nor) the wind’s course’.
Taliesin seems to be claiming to know yet he leaves the answers a mystery. Could it be that our Brythonic ancestors treated these issues as mysteries rather than having clear cut myths and stories and explanations?
If so could my failure to create a myth that works be based on the fact there have never been any direct answers and these things should be left mysterious?
If so it seems this book idea has played itself out for what it is but can go no further. I fulfilled my promise to Gwyn to write Him an origin story (something He didn’t ask for but that I did as an act of devotion to Him). It just didn’t turn out to be a novel sellable to humans. Which is ok.
Where to go from here I’m not sure. I still want to write, I still need to write, in service to my Gods and to give voice to the awen from Annwn and within. To provide content for my patrons who continue to support me. But it might be that now I’ve become a nun of Annwn, Sister Patience, what I write will change.
It seems possible I will be taking a more meditative approach with a focus on mystery, which feels fitting for a nun dedicated to a God of the Deep.
*Stone, earth, water, ice, mist, wind, air, fire, magma. **In her notes to ‘The Battle of the Trees’ Marged Haycock adds some references to medieval Christian texts where Adam is said to be created from ‘eight consistencies’ – ‘land, sea, earth, clouds of the firmament, wind, stones, the Holy Spirit and the light of the world’ or ‘earth (flesh), fire (red, hot blood), wind (breath), cloud (instability of mind), grace (understanding and thought) blossoms (variety of his eyes), dew (sweat), salt (tears).’
Hoof falls. The hunt rides. Trampling the falling leaves.
It’s a time of letting go. Of dissolution. Of the banishing of illusions. Of the seeing of the hidden truths that have been haunting the shadow edges of vision.
It hits me like a blow to the chest. Like I’ve been knocked down by a charging horse although I should have seen it coming long ago. Read it from what people have been telling me and moreover from their silence.
My devotional book for Gwyn isn’t meant to be a fantasy style novel. I’ve been reading too much fantasy. I got out of touch. Carried away by the old ambition to be a fantasy writer I long ago promised to give up.
Understandable perhaps. When I failed to succeed in a career in the environmental sector and realised by autisism places me in a position in which I’m too neurodivergent to cope in above base level jobs but not disabled enough to claim benefits it left me in a very dark and desolate place.
I turned to dark fantasy as the stories of dark and broken characters battling alone in dystopian worlds resonated with me and made me feel less alone.
I think a lot of this, along with my own feelings of despair, got reflected back into the story I was inspired to write for Gwyn. Getting torn from the womb at birth when His Dragon Mother was slaughtered during the Battle of the Dragons. Being flung into the Abyss. Crawling out. With the guidance of the ghost of His Dragon Mother building His kingdom from the bones of dead dragons and the light of dead stars. Mastering the art of turning sorrow into joy.
Writing this story was deeply meaningful for me and a gift from Gwyn. Quite a lot of the other material I wrote in an effort to combine it with a creation myth featuring the Children of Don and to wed the story of Gwyn, Gwythyr and Creiddylad with some of the material in the Four Branches of The Mabinogion never really worked.
Also, the process of writing a novel, long hours at my laptop, hasn’t been good for me. It makes my eyes go squiffy. I grind my teeth. I twitch.
I still intend to create a devotional book for Gwyn. I promised Him. I owe it to my patrons. But it isn’t going to be a fantasy style novel. I’m not sure what it is going to be yet but what He and my spirits and my body and soul are guiding me towards are creating it not on the laptop but to allowing it to come through in journeys, meditations, hand writing and drawing. To going back to more traditional forms of creativity that were practiced by awenyddion and monastics and moving away from the screen.
This has come at a time when I’ve also realised I’m living too much of my life online. I deeply value and appreciate the support of my patrons and my online community at the Monastery of Annwn and membership of the Way of the Buzzard Mystery School which are real lifelines. But I’ve come to realise they’re not a substitute for physical community and a physical role in the world.
What this might look like for me in terms of something that fits with my vocation and with the limits of my autism and social anxiety I don’t know yet.
But this dissolution feels timely as Gwyn’s hunt tramples the fallen leaves, rides down the old, the decayed, the dying, makes way for something new.
A late autumn. Nos Galan Gaeaf passing. The leaves at last coming down in the fullness of their vivid vibrancy – the yellows of lime and maple and the bronzes of beech whilst the acers on the park shine their reds and oranges.
The trees are letting go. Surrendering. Preparing for sleep. Dying a kind of death.
I’m feeling well. As a result of my practices my physical and mental health is improving. Following an injury I’m running half marathons at my best pace yet.*
Yet, still, after being triggered by a reader’s comments on my book I’m turning the old cogs and being chewed up by an old destructive thought pattern. ‘If my readers don’t like my writing I will lose my audience, I won’t make any money, I will have to return to proper paid work and forfeit my time for spirituality and creativity, meaning my mental health will deteriorate, leaving me with the choice between a living death and death.’
For a few days I considered totally rewriting my book to fit better with what I thought those in my audience who are Celtic Polytheists and Druids might want or expect by removing some of the darker and more gory scenes that are based on my personal gnosis about the story of Gwyn/Vindos and His interactions with the serpents of Annwn but this led to total paralysis. I realised it wasn’t what He wanted and ultimately the book is for Him.
I then perceived I’d slipped back into the false belief I could make a living as a professional author, which I promised Gwyn I would give up over ten years ago, had thought I’d given it up, but was unconsciously still clinging onto it.
In a journey with the Way of the Buzzard Mystery School** I performed a rite of letting it go with puffin – viscerally vomiting it up as a huge and toxic fish.***
This done I’m still turning those darned cogs. ‘I can’t make a living from my writing so when my savings run out I will be faced with the choice between living death and death.’
Then, entirely expectedly, a voice from within, a voice from my healthy body, from my life force, from my spirit, ‘I WANT TO LIVE.’
This was utterly astonishing because, in my existing memory, I cannot remember once thinking ‘I want to live.’ Since I started primary school most of my life has been a battle against ‘wanting to die’ so this signals a vast change.
I believe this comes from having arrived at a monastic lifestyle that suits me centred around devotional creativity in service to my Gods. This incorporates practices that nourish my well being and relationship with Them such as meditation, journeywork, yoga, running, strength training and good nutrition (giving up alcohol has been a big factor) along with cleaning, gardening and litter picking as service to my home and local greenspace. It has also been a great help having the support of my spiritual mentor, Jayne Johnson.
I think my letting go ritual at this time of leaf fall also played a big role.
Much of my fear lies around having to give much of this up to earn a living when my savings run out. I haven’t found a solution yet but it seems a huge step forward to have my inner impulses on board, not to want to die but to live. To be recognising my negative thought patterns and stopping fighting myself.
Those cogs fixed in my mind by the capitalist system I smash, I trample, I cast down amongst the fallen leaves to rust, to rot, to die, so I can live.
*Last year’s PB was 1:54:55 and since recovering from my sciatic nerve injury I have bested it by nearly six minutes with 1:49:02 – well above average for a 42-year-old female. **The Way of the Buzzard Mystery School website can be found HERE. ***The images from my journey book recording my journey with puffin.
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.
In the first two of his essays, ‘Four Questions Concerning the Internet’ (1) Paul Kingsnorth identifies the force behind the Machine (technology/the internet) as Ahriman, an evil and destructive spirit in the Zoroastrian religion (2).
He argues that ‘the sacred and the digital not only don’t mix, but are fatal to each other. That they are in metaphysical opposition.’ ‘The digital revolution represents a spiritual crisis’ and ‘a spiritual response is needed.’ As an aid to living through ‘the age of Ahriman’ he suggests the practice of ‘technological askesis.’ He notes that the Greek word ‘askesis’ has been translated as ‘self-discipline’ and ‘self denial’ and that asceticism forms the ‘foundation stone of all spiritual practices’. Its literal translation is ‘exercise’. ‘Asceticism, then, is a series of spiritual exercises designed to train the body, the mind and the soul.’
As a nun of Annwn in the making I can relate to much of what Kingsnorth is saying. As an animist and polytheist I perceive technology and the internet to be a living being with a will of its own although I’m not sure it can be reduced to one supposedly evil spirit. I tend to see it as the co-creation of many humans and many Gods, some more benevolent, some more malevolent. Unfortunately as the hunting ground of many malicious humans and non-human entities including the one I identified as the King of Distractions last week.
I personally do not agree with the statement that ‘the sacred and the digital don’t mix’ are ‘fatal to each other’ ‘in metaphysical opposition.’ I think their relationship is more complex and ambiguous. The internet can certainly steer us away from the sacred if we’re mindlessly scrolling or using it merely for entertainment. Yet it can help us deepen our relationship with the sacred if used mindfully to view content and engage in dialogue that is thoughtful and meaningful.
Without the internet I would not have managed to reach the small but much appreciated audience I have today through my blogging and my books. The Monastery of Annwn would not exist as a virtual space of sanctuary where members feel safe to converse on the deeper aspects of spiritual practice and we wouldn’t be able to hold on-line meditations and events.
Although I didn’t have a name for it ‘technological askesis’ is something I have been practicing for a while. Firstly by leaving social media. More recently by blocking off my time on week days from when I get up at 4am until around 3pm to focus on my spiritual practice and writing and only when I have done my deeper work answering emails and using the internet.
This has helped me to be more focused and less scattered. It hasn’t been easy – not being able to check my emails has been like an itch I can’t scratch and I’ll admit I’ve given in to checking them again at around 6pm ‘just in case there’s anything I need to deal with so I can relax for the evening.’ It’s possible next week I will set them back to 6pm so I only need to check them once and I might even try a day without checking them at all (!).
As I write this I see that going to such lengths and the amount of restraint I am having to use shows that I am under the sway of forces difficult to control within and without. I have an addiction to checking my emails and my blog and much of it comes from anxiety so might be labelled ‘email/blog anxiety’. I get anxious about ‘missing something’ or having one or more email or blog comment that is long or difficult to answer and getting overwhelmed. My checking is for reassurance – making sure ‘there are none there.’
Of course this is a bit silly as I have placed strict limitations on what I subscribe to and my communications and correspondences are usually from friends and thus friendly and encouraging and usually quite positive.
I think when tackling the internet the best way forward is being mindful of how we are relating to it in terms both of our inner impulses and the forces without. Of how we are using it and how it is using us. Of the complex net of relationships it has brought us into, friendly and unfriendly, human and non-human.
Ahriman’s nature is described by John R. Hinnel: ‘He is the demon of demons, and dwells in an abyss of endless darkness in the north, the traditional home of the demons. Ignorance, harmfulness, and disorder are the characteristics of Ahriman. He can change his outward form and appear as a lizard, a snake, or a youth. His aim is always to destroy the creation of [Ahura Mazda] and to this end he follows behind the creator’s work, seeking to spoil it. As Ahura Mazda creates life, Ahriman creates death; for health, he produces disease; for beauty, ugliness. All man’s ills are due entirely to Ahriman.’ HERE
The Sanctuary of Vindos 