Tag: Abyss Mysticism

Contemplating the Abyss Part Five – Saints in the Void?

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In this final part of the series I will be looking at how abyss mysticism and the visions of the Abyss shown to me by my Gods relate to the Brythonic tradition.

The Welsh term for ‘abyss’ is affwys ‘depths, bottomless pit, precipice’ (1).

In the Welsh Bible (2) the term tehom is translated as dyfnder ‘deep’ rather than afwyss ‘abyss’. In Genesis 1.2 ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’ – ‘Yr oedd y ddaear yn afluniaidd a gwag, ac yr oedd tywyllwch ar wyneb y dyfnder, ac ysbryd Duw yn ymsymud ar wyneb y dyfroedd.’ And in Psalm 42.7 ‘deep calls to deep’ – ‘geilw dyfnder ar ddyfender’.

The first recorded usage of affwys is in the 13th century in The Book of Aneirin. ‘Disgennwys en affwys dra phenn’ ‘descend into a deep abyss’ (3). This seems significant as Aneirin was one of the Cynfeirdd, a ‘prince of bards’, along with Talhaearn and Taliesin. It is also of interest in relation to Aneirin speaking of undergoing an underground initiation in this poem (4). 

From thereon its use continues particularly in relation to Uffern ‘Hell’. ‘Yno y cloir ac rhoir rhwys yn Uffern a’i ffwrn affwys’ ‘there he will be locked up and cast into Hell and its abyssal oven.’ ‘Yn Uffern erwin aphwys’ ‘in Hell a harsh abyss.’

In The Book of Taliesin the term dwfyn is used to mean ‘depth’, ‘profound’ and ‘abyss or depths of Hell’ in the lines ‘dogyn dwyfn diwerin’ ‘the evil lot of the abyss.’ We also find the term diuant ‘space, void, annihilation, death’ as in ‘gogwn… pan ergyr diuant’ ‘I know why annihilation comes all of a sudden’ and ‘bet sant yn diuant ‘how many saints are in the void?’

Another term is agendor ‘abyss, gulf, depth’. Its earliest recorded use is in 1604. In a poem by Hugh Jones, written in 1759, we find the lines ‘Yna traflynca Annwfn / Y dorf i’r agendor dwfn’ ‘Then pass through Annwfn / the crowd to the deep abyss.’ These are suggestive of a group of people (the dead?) passing through Annwn to the Abyss and resonate with my experiences.

The notion of saints being in the void in the Taliesin poetry is also a fascinating one as we usually assume that saints ascend to Heaven. 

Could this line instead refer to monastics who practice abyss mysticism? Who go to annihilation in the void? Monks of Annwn outside the Christian orders?

Because they wrote nothing down we know precious little about the religious practices of the pre-Christian Brythonic peoples and nothing at all about their inner experiences, relationships with their Gods, what went on in their souls.

There is no evidence for beliefs about Anrhuna, Nodens / Nudd and Vindos / Gwyn being deities who act as custodians of the mysteries of the Abyss or monastics who practiced abyss mysticism but it can’t be ruled out. Whether this tradition is old or new I have been called to it as a nun of Annwn by my Gods.

(1) https://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html
(2) https://www.bible.com/versions/394-bcnd-beibl-cymraeg-newydd-diwygiedig-2004
(3) https://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html I couldn’t find a full copy of The Book of Aneirin in modern Welsh let alone a translation into English to check the context. 
(4) ‘I do not laugh the laugh
under the feet of creepy crawlies.
My knees stretched out in an earthen cell,
an iron chain
around my knees.’
Cited in Lawrence Eson, Merlin’s last cry: ritual burial and rebirth of the poet in Celtic and Norse tradition, January 2007, Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie 55 (1)

Contemplating the Abyss Part Four – The God Beyond the Gods

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In the previous post I looked at abyss mysticism in the writing of medieval monastics. Here I shall discuss how it relates to the visions of the Abyss that formed the core of my attempted novel, In the Deep, and to my own experiences.

The Christian abyss mystics of the medieval period perceived the soul and God to be dual abysses. Through a process of annihilation, led by love, the abyss of the soul was dissolved in the abyss of God. Van Ruusbroec conceived this slightly differently suggesting the Abyss was a ‘God beyond God’.

The process of annihilation was one that involved suffering. Penitence, purgation, purification, to varying degrees in different authors but the result was ultimately joyous union with God as the ‘divine’ or ‘blessed’ abyss.

The big difference between my own experiences and visions and those of these Christian mystics is theological as I am a polytheist and not a monotheist and find it difficult to identify the Abyss with the Christian God. 

The Abyss has a presence in my life as something powerful, as something divine, as a deity, but not as a God I can name. Thus Van Ruusbroec’s conception of it as a ‘God beyond God’ resonates deeply with me as does the positing by the Gnostics of a God of the Deep preceding the creator God whose prior existence is suggested in Genesis 1.2 ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ The terms ‘deep’ and ‘abyss’ stem from the Hebrew tehom and are often used interchangeably.

In the cosmology that has been revealed to me by the Brythonic Godsthe Abyss is part of Annwn, ‘Very Deep’, its deepest part, its bottomless depth. It is a place to where the souls of the dead return and from it are reborn.

The way I envisage it bears remarkable similarities to the vision of Hadewijch of Antwerp – ‘an unfathomable depth’, ‘a very deep whirlpool, wide and exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included, crowded together and compressed’.

It is associated with deep wisdom that can only be won as a result of sacrifice. In the stories I was shown Nodens / Nudd agreed to give up His sword arm. He hung over the Abyss in the coils of the Dragon Mother, Anrhuna, the Goddess of the Deep, and received the knowledge, ‘There is no up or down or before or after – everything meets here in you the Dragon Mother.’ 

Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd hung over the Abyss on a yew wounded in raven form and gave every last drop of his blood in exchange for a vision ‘to set the world to rights’. His knowledge was brought out of Him by a series of riddles and He saw Himself as a black dragon before plummeting dead into the Abyss.

At the beginning of the next book in death He was united with ‘the source’:

Vindos fell,
and as he fell he left behind
his shell of bones and black feathers 

and his soul flew free on wider wings
on the winds of the Abyss.
He had won

their favour
through his offering 
of every last drop of his blood.

By his wounding, by his questioning,
agony had become ecstasy.
The bottomless

abyss
was no longer bottomless.
He had mastered its paradoxes and knew

where darkness turns to light
and death to life.
Down was

now up
and he was one
with the source, the spring

from which the ocean of the stars
sprung when the universe
was born.’

These scenes bear similarities with Marguerite Porete’s words about the soul, in annihilation, finding ‘there is neither beginning, middle nor end, but only an abyssal abyss without bottom’ before acheiving ecstatic union with God.

It seems my Gods, Nodens / Nudd and His son, Vindos / Gwyn are presenting to me a tradition of sacrifice to the Abyss in return for its wisdom. By leading the way they are showing what might be expected of Their devotees.

My first experience of the Abyss took place as the result of an unconscious process of self-annihilation – dissolution of the self through the combination of practicing Husserl’s epoche (putting all one’s presuppositions about the nature of reality aside) with drugs and alchohol and all night dancing.

There was a yearning within me, I might now say deep for deep, abyss for abyss, but I didn’t know what it was and when I got to the Abyss it terrified me. I wasn’t ready for abyssal wisdom. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t understand its choices, to live as I was or to die physically, or to take a third door. 

I see in my own impulses and those of the abyss mystics, love and annihilation, the interplay of eros the ‘life drive’ and thanatos the ‘death drive’ which together lead to the Abyss and to union with the divine if one is prepared to surrender to make some sacrifice of themselves.

I’ve never been good at giving or sacrifice always wanting things my own way.

Ten years ago, Gwyn, my patron God, a King of Annwn, asked me for a sacrifice in exchange for the wisdom of Annwn – to give up my desire to be a professional author. I did so… but not in full… I secretly entertained a hope if I gave it up for a period I might be let off and be able to have my cake and eat it.

My experience of writing In the Deep, spending a year and a half on a novel that has turned out unpublishable and daring to think it might sell more widely than my previous publications has shown this is not the case. 

It’s taken me ten years to realise I must give up my biggest dream in full for good.

This fits with the process of self annihilation found in the medieval mystics. Only by giving up our desires, surrendering our will, can we walk the path of the Gods and with them find a deeper unison with the God beyond the Gods.

I believe this also relates to the need to give up my identity as Lorna Smithers, published author, performing poet, public speaker, to become Sister Patience.

In the Deep was not written purely for self gain. First and foremost it was written for love** of Gwyn, as an origin story for Him, as an offering. I believe it is because of that the awen flowed and I retain these visions as His gift.

That He, ‘White, Blessed’, has led me to the blessed Abyss, the God beyond the Gods, who may or may not be the formlessness of the Mother of the Deep before She took form.

To the third door – to die to his present life, to be annihilated, hopefully like Vindos / Gwyn to be reborn.

He was
the first microbe
and every single tiny thing.

He was an ammonite and a starfish,
He was a silver salmon,
every fish.

He swam
amongst bright creatures
as an eel, as a seasnake, as a snake,

as a horned serpent, as a bull, as a wolf.
Playful as a new-born pup
Vindos

chased his tail
and the trails of starships
and traversed every wormhole

before he emerged from the sea of stars
and climbed out of the cauldron,
naked, dripping, triumphant,

and very much living
to stand beside Old Mother Universe.

*I also wrote the sequel, The Spirits of Annwn, in draft form as a long poem, when possessed by the awen last year.
**Unlike annihilation love is a difficult thing for me to talk about as someone who, after a number of botched relationships, only discovered they were asexual and aromantic late in life. Unlike a number of Gwyn devotees with an intense devotional relationship with Him I am not a God spouse. Much inside me rebels against using the language of marriage found in Christianity such as ‘bride of Christ’ and even ‘love’ with its sexual and romantic connotations in reference to our relationship. I wish there was a word for purely devotional love.

In part five I will be writing about how these insights relate to the Brythonic tradition.

Contemplating the Abyss Part Three – Abyss Mysticism

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‘Abyssum abyssum invocat’ ‘Deep calls to Deep’
– Psalm 42:7

In the previous part of this series I wrote about the links I perceived between the Brythonic term for the ‘otherworld’, Annwn, ‘Very Deep’ and the Hebrew tehom ‘deep’ which is translated as abyssum ‘abyss’, ‘bottomless depth’ in Greek. 

My personal experiences with the Abyss and its appearances in the visions that formed the core of my attempted novel In the Deep suggest it holds profound significance for my calling as a nun of Annwn. Yet I’ve rarely come across other Polytheists and Pagans speaking of encounters with the Abyss*.

Therefore I was intrigued to find out not only that ‘abyss language’ occurs in the writings of medieval Christian mystics but that it has been conceived as ‘abyss mysticism’.

Bernard McGinn traces this movement from the twelth to the sixteenth century. ‘In the Psalm phase ‘abssyum abyssum invocat’ medieval mystics found a mantra for their meditations in the startling claim that the unknowable God and the human person could somehow become a single pure Abyss.’

One of the earliest proponents of these ideas was the Flemish Beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp (13th C). In Vision 11 she says:

‘I was in a very depressed frame of mind one Christmas night when I was taken up in the spirit. There I saw a very deep whirlpool, wide and exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included, crowded together and compressed. The darkness illuminated and penetrated everything. The unfathomable depth of the abyss was so high that no-one could reach it… It was the entire ominoptence of the beloved.’ 

And in Song 7:

‘My soul melts away
in the madness of Love;
the Abyss into which she hurls me
is deeper than the sea;
for love’s deep new abyss
renews my wound.’

Marguerite Porete, a French Beguine executed as a heretic in 1310 writes of her experiences of the Abyss in The Mirror of Annihilated Souls. For her love leads through six levels of purificatory practices to a state of self-annihilation in which she becomes ‘nothing’ and ‘finds there is neither beginning, middle nor end, but only an abyssal abyss without bottom.’ Finally the soul, ‘purified, clarified, sees neither God nor herself, but God sees himself in her, for her, without her.’ God sees himself in the mirror of her soul. 

The practice of annhilatio as a path to the Abyss and union with God also appears in the Liber specialis gratiae of Mechtilde of Hackeborn (1242 – 1298). Her friend, Gertrud, at her death bed realises why she cannot pass. She ‘would not be received into heaven until her strength had been utterly consumed and annihilated by divine power… Then putting off all insipidity of human nature, she would be plunged into that abyss of blessedness and deserve to be made one spirit with God.’

Angela of Foligno (1248 – 1309) follows a more penential practice of self-annihilation, following Christ in ‘poverty, suffering and contempt’, leading to the revelation of Christ as ‘Uncreated Love’ and a state of ecstasy referred not as annihilation but inabyssare. Angela speaks of a vision of her spiritual children ‘transformed into God… now glorious, now suffering… abyssated’ ‘into himself.’

The ideas of these radical medieval nuns were taken up by Meister Eckhart and his successors. The Dominican priest John Tauler (1300 – 1361) speaks of Psalm 42:7 in his sermons. In Sermon 21: ‘Here the word the prophet taught in the Psalter becomes true: “Abyssum abyssum invocat, the abyss draws the abyss into itself.” The abyss that is the created (thing) draws the Uncreated Abyss into itself, and the two abysses become a Single One… a pure divine being, so that the spirit is lost in God’s Spirit. It is drowned in the bottomless sea.’ In Sermon 45 he speaks of how annihilation leads into ‘the divine Abyss.’

Dominican friar Henry Suso (1295 – 1366) was the first to pray to God as Abyss. ‘O endless Abyss, come to my aid or I am lost.’ In the Life he speaks of the goal of the soul as ‘the Deep Abyss’. Intriguingly he speaks of a ‘God beyond God’. ‘In this wild mountain region of the where beyond God there is an abyss full of play and feeling for all pure spirits, and the spirit enters into this secret namelessness… it is a deep bottomless abyss for all creatures and is intelligible to God alone.’

In the work of Flemish canon Jan Van Ruusbroec (1233 – 1381) the Abyss performs a healing function. In a poem in Seven Enclosures he addresses God:

‘O mighty jaw
without any mouth,
conduct us into your abyss
and make us know your love,
for though we be wounded mortally
when grasped by love we are sound.’

When reading about these medieval conceptions of the Abyss I was struck by the notion of the soul annhilating itself for love to gain union with God. I found Van Ruusbroec’s idea of the Abyss as a ‘God beyond God’ (or beyond the Gods) fascinating. I was also surprised to see the Abyss, which for me has been terrifying, to be described as ‘divine’ and ‘blessed’, as a place ‘full of play’ and healing. 

In the final two parts I will be speaking about how the experiences of these medieval mystics relate to my own and to the Brythonic tradition.

*An exception is fellow polytheistic monastic Danica Swanson who writes of her encounter with ‘the Void, the Abyss’ in her essay ‘Of Hearth and Shadow’ in Polytheistic Monasticism (2022).

SOURCES

Barbara Newman, ‘Annihilation and Authorship: Three Women Mystics of the 1290s’, Speculum, Volume 91, No 3, (2016)

Bernard McGinn, ‘Lost in the Abyss: The Function of Abyss Language in Medieval Mysticism’, Franciscan Studies, Vol. 72 (2014), pp. 433-452

Grace M. Jantzen, ‘Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity’, Literature and Theology, Vol 17, No. 3,pp. 244-264