On star circled tor You stand lawless vigil. Tower swallows cloud in Your endless waiting. Years I have run the edges of Your world Yet quietly my destruction You disdain. Call to the stars shining out the full moon, One blast of Your horn draws my soul back home. In Your sublunar shrine springs from Annwn Pour a cauldron of infinite wisdom. Daughters of Avalon dance at its ridge. Their shadows twist to the roaring song. I see You, White Keeper of Time and Mist, Watching patiently beyond mortal bonds. The moment rings clear as Your guidance sure: Let the words be spoke and the path be walked.
Hail Gwyn ap Nudd, King of Spirits! (January 26th 2013)
I wrote this sonnet ten years ago following my initial dedication to my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, at the White Spring beneath Glastonbury Tor. It was a magical and transformative moment and has changed and shaped my life.
My service to him as his awenydd ‘person inspired’ has gifted me with meaning and purpose beyond the rules and norms of this world. I’ve written three books for Him and the other Gods and Goddesses of ancient Britain and the spirits of the land along with countless poems, stories, and articles.
My relationship with Him continues to lead ever deeper into Annwn and into His mysteries. To getting to know myself better and more wonderfully to know Him. Most recently it has led to me becoming a nun of Annwn.
To mark the occasion my friend Aurora J Stone* made me some prayer beads. They are the colours of Annwn – howlite (white), carnelian (red) and onyx (black) and feature animals and symbols I associate with Gwyn. A hound, a horse, an owl, a raven, a spiral and a star. Aurora lives near Wells and very kindly laid them out on Glastonbury Tor to pick up some of its energy and sent some leaves and twigs from the tor when she posted the package. Receiving them around this time felt symbolic of the completion of a ten year journey.
Last night I journeyed with Gwyn to see what lies ahead. I can’t disclose what He showed me yet but His main message was that I must go ‘beyond the expected’.
This spoke to my fears about my series of books focusing on Gwyn’s story from origins to end being less accessible to my existing audience because they go beyond known Brythonic lore into personal gnosis and the realms of fiction. His words reassured me that this is exactly what I need to do. It also seemed meaningful that I recalled it was on my initial dedication day He appeared to me as a black dragon and that deciphering how Gwyn ‘White’ takes this form is one of the mysteries behind me writing these books.
I cannot guess what the next ten years might hold but ‘beyond the expected’ sounds like an exciting prospect.
*You can find Aurora’s writing online at ‘Grey Bear in the Middle’ HERE.
‘Hail is cold grain and showers of sleet and sickness of serpents.’ – Hagalaz (rune)
I. I come to You my mind a wasteland, the poles, the solstices of my world out of kilter and something awakening beneath the ice
to ask the somewhat selfish question – “What ails me, my Lord?”
It echoes down through the centuries reminding You of Your father’s wound and the wound You suffer every year battling against Your rival,
the wound to my navel after my dedication to You, the pit of snakes in my belly button,
the heroes flung into it, sucked dry.
II. “What ails me, my Lord?”
I’m back at high school again with serpents twining around my chair legs,
staring down into the depths of the ink well I never used.
I’m chewing my pen, ink is dripping from the side of my mouth, from my finger tips and I’m raising my hand to ask for more paper, bleeding words,
rising to the challenge of the exam,
exulting in the quiet of the other pupils, this scratching of pens the one thing I can succeed in.
III. “What ails me, my Lord?”
I think of the serpents who twist around my arms and sit deep in my belly and I wish I could tie around my ankles to hang like You over the Abyss to gain the wisdom that explains this…
the way by lack of courage or confidence I am always climbing the first three rungs on my ladder and then falling back down into my pit of snakes.
IV. “What ails me, my Lord?”
I’m back at the surgery again and the nurse is wondering if I’m dead, tapping my veins, trying to awaken them to life.
I’m explaining the junctions and showing which ones work.
Where blue flows to red and is tested then incinerated by the fiery serpents.
V. “What ails me, my Lord?”
My beast looks too much like an ink spodge test,
then I see my father splattered on the settee like a murder victim from a third rate horror movie doing nothing as always.
I cannot find his wound or his serpents.
Instead I sink into mine and awaken them again, the wounds made by all the surgeons, all the psychiatrists
by all the snakes fighting back, by all the horror movies and I hear
Your laughter, Your divine laughter, in my veins like poetry, not the canned laughter of the television he sits in front of.
VI. “By asking the question you have opened the door.
Although all our blood and poetic truths cannot save the world or heal our ailments
by this opening your serpents might return to health and an answer might come through.”
*This poem is addressed to my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd.
I wrote this poem last year. It is based on drawing the Hagalaz rune at one of the Way of the Buzzard journey circles over four years ago. I had a powerful experience that led me to investigating ‘the sickness of serpents’ not only in the Norse but the Brythonic traditions. It lies behind my series of books in which I explore the relationship between Vindos/Gwyn and the serpents of Annwn. The poem references gnosis received whilst writing these stories.
There is also an allusion to a series of blood tests I had last year relating to slightly raised liver function levels. Two ended up as four as on one occasion they did the wrong test and on another my blood coagulated in transit. It made me start wondering ‘does something want my blood?’
At the time I was writing about the conflicts in Annwn between the red and white serpents. As an answer, when I was sitting in the waiting room, on the white board a young girl had drawn a tower block with a huge winged serpent towering over it, which she was colouring it in red. I found out, after testing, blood gets incinerated and received the answer ‘the fiery serpents’.
One of the results of the blood tests was that I have low iron levels. I have felt a lot better since eating more red meat particulary liver (sympathetic magic?) and believe this was behind me feeling tired and low most afternoons.
The final check relating to my raised liver functions is an ultrasound this Thursday so I will finally find out ‘what ails me’ (physically at least). If I do have minor liver damage it likely relates to having used alcohol to self-medicate the anxiety that comes from my autism since my late teens. I only started addressing this after making my lifelong dedication to Gwyn in 2019.
Day Eleven of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd
I come this eleventh day to consider Your cauldron and how it will not boil a coward’s food.
“Why, then,” I ask, “do You allow me to eat from it when so many times I have failed to live up to the demands of the world, to match up to its worthy warriors and bards?”
You tell me that I “lack not courage but confidence” and remind me that everything I believe in I have done –
I have stood and recited poems for You before a world that once derided You as a devil and now derides only those who dare speak openly about their religion in public.
I have climbed mountains, run half marathons, forded a river in leaking waders. Ascended Glastonbury Tor in torrential rain in the dead of night to gift to You the first book I ever published.
I have stood before Your cauldron made my dedication to You.
I have fled the world, but I have not fled from You, my God.
I pray that You, Your cauldron, will grant me the courage to face my fears.
Day Nine of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd
On this ninth day I consider Your doors.
How they are without number yet You can name every one of them.
How I searched for Your doors but could not find them until I stopped looking
and You opened a door and galloped through.
Since then I have known all manner of doors in many places – seen and unseen, in caves, springs, trees, walls, holes in the sky, hell holes, gates guarded by fierce hounds
yet I have found the best of doors is always an open heart.
Day Seven of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd
On this seventh day I consider Your horse – Carngrwn from battle throng and wonder why You introduce him before You introduce Yourself when You gather the soul of Gwyddno Garanhir.
Is he so much a part of You, of Your identity and of Your destiny, leading You away by the bridle to battles in both Thisworld and the Otherworld You must speak his name first? Your horse before Yourself Your role as Gatherer of Souls?
This horse You ride must be relentless carrying You to battles everywhere at once. Many his round-hooves cutting reeds, churning mud, many his fetlocked legs, many his proud heads, many his foaming mouths chomping the bit.
You must be many too gathering souls from here, there, everywhere, no rest, no relent. Your horse, Your destiny, Your love and Your lament forever living on whilst the Warriors of Britain lie dead…
The first half of 2022, for me, was characterised by a disappointing departure from a career in the environmental sector. This was because I couldn’t meet the demands of higher than trainee level jobs due to a lack of people and project management skills and struggles with irregular routine, travel, night work, multi tasking and working under high pressure due to my autism.
This left me burnt out and not so much depressed but facing a depressing reality. In spite of being academically intelligent I will always be restricted to menial day jobs. When I first got my autism diagnosis I was told it would mean I could ask for ‘reasonable adjustments’ in the workplace. However, this did not mean I would be able to stay in jobs where I did not meet all the criteria.
Our primroses, after the Arctic Blast, looking like how I felt when I was burnt out.
On the upside, my career failures led me back to my spiritual vocation as an awenydd dedicated to Gwyn ap Nudd and what I am really here to do. To where my true passion and abilities lie in my creativity as a writer and poet and journeyer of the deeper realities of thisworld and the otherworld of Annwn.
Whilst I was struggling in my ecology job I was led back by Gwyn to a writing project I began in the first lockdown in which I drafted a book called The Dragon’s Tongue, a Brythonic origins myth, drawing on other Indo-European parallels.
I’d given it up partly because the plot was incoherent and partly because a part of me didn’t want to retell our dragon and giant slaying myths, how the culture Gods have come to dominate the Gods of nature and of Annwn, even though my work was exposing the violence and hegemony by writing the otherside.
What good could come of picking at and opening old wounds when, instead, I could be out on the land, healing the earth by re-wetting and growing and planting?
These questions have remained in my mind as I have been recalled to my mythic project which is manifesting as a three part series of novel length called The Forgotten Gods. The first book, which I am currently focusing on, is called In the Deep. It is a dark and violent book. It begins in Annwn with the slaying of the Dragon Mother, Anrhuna, and the tearing of her children, Vindos and Kraideti*, from the womb by Lugus, one of the Children of Don. Kraideti is taken to the stars and Vindos is flung into the Abyss. The book focuses on His crawling out to win the kingship of Annwn, to find His lost sister and to defend His realm against and to take vengeance on his enemies.
There’s a lot of violence, there’s a lot of descent, but there is also transformation and healing for Vindos succeeds in building from the bones of dead dragons the beautiful kingdom of Annwn we know in our myths today and transforming the sorrows of the dead, who He rules over, into joy at His feast.
Kraideti has a role, with Anrhuna’s dragon children, in the creation of the world and bringing of life and discovers Her power as a Goddess of seasonal sovereignty.
Our winter hellebores, flowering ‘late’ this year due to the cold snap, Creiddylad knows best…
I don’t know why I’ve been given these stories to work with only that I have to. Perhaps there is a process of mythic and/or psychic healing taking place or perhaps the Gods have got me writing them for their own undecipherable reasons.
I have learnt to accept that inspiration does not come with an explanation.
Philosophical ponderings aside, on a practical level, I completed my first full draft of In the Deep before my winter solstice deadline at 127,000 words and 317 pages. It is mainly prose, with interspersed poetry, and of novel length. The core plot works. It has found its form. I am now working on the second draft, expanding and developing sub plots, characters and depictions of the worlds.
Another way in which I have been fulfilling my spiritual vocation is ‘building the Monastery of Annwn’ as ‘a virtual space and place of the sanctuary for those who worship and serve the Gods and Goddesses of Annwn’. This task was assigned to me by Gwyn in April and, since then, I have set up a website and opened the monastery to members. We have formulated ‘the Rule of the Heart’ and ‘Our Nine Vows’. Four of us took the vows in October and are living as monastic devotees of Annwn. We have also started running a monthly meditation group focusing on reading Brythonic texts in a lectio divina style. Beginning with ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’ we have had an excellent introductory talk by translator, Greg Hill, and participants have experienced powerful and insightful meditations.
In terms of outdoor work my departure from an environmental career and commitment to monasticism has led me back to taking better care of our garden and of my local greenspace, Greencroft Valley, where I’m hoping to team up with a newly formed group called ‘Guardians of Nature’ based on the Alderfield allotment to further develop the wildflower meadow and run some local history and plant and tree identification and folklore walks.
Hazel catkins in Greencroft Valley – a sign of new life as an old year dies and a new one begins.
In my spiritual practices and writing and work for the monastery I am fulfilled. I am doing what I am really here to do. And I am able to do it because I’m living off savings from my environmental work, live with my parents and receive board and food in exchange for housework and gardening, and receive a very small income from patreon supporters and from book sales.
If you would like to support my writing and receive a quartlery newsletter, exclusive excerpts from In the Deep and other rewards please consider becoming a patron HERE.
*These are ancient British names for Gwyn ap Nudd and Creiddylad. Whilst Vindos is partially attested Kraideti is partly reconstructed, partly made up.
Day Six of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd
On this sixth day I consider winter.
How I wrote a story about You winning the gift of ice from an ice dragon and holding it in the palm of your hand as a snowflake, yet it escaped You and grew to be a monster bringing about an Ice Age.
This year people hung snowflakes in the houses across the road. Days later followed an Arctic Blast
reminding we who imagine winter of its harsh realities.
The snowflake is back in Your hand – innocent, so completely perfect in its symmetry but I will remember how it grew to become a monster.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 