Tag: Gwyn ap Nudd

The House of my Heart

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‘Didst thou ever see men of better equipment than those in red and blue?’
~ The Life of St Collen

In the House of my Heart
the red and blue people dance,
in the chambers they are transformed.

In my right atrium a blue woman arrives
with a herd of blue cattle with blue lips, blue tongues,
they are mooing, sad and sorrowful, she speaks their names:
Blue Anxious One, Blue Doldrums, Blue Depression, Hornless Blue.
Other cowherds, horseherds come, boys and girls with hounds
who are yappy or listless and mysterious people
in the best of equipment red and blue
lead them into the next chamber.

In my right ventricle the cattle are fed and bedded down
on straw that looks and feels like water,
the horses are put out to pasture
and the hounds are given a sausage or two.
It’s alright to feel old here, it’s alright to fall asleep.
It’s alright to have long grey hair and knots in your beard
even if you’re a woman because the one who awaits you accepts
the coming of all souls no matter how weary in imperfection
drawn in daze, in trance, to their transformation
by the people equipped in blue and red

to where my lungs transform every sorrow
in the tiny chambers of the alveoli –
in every one there is a king
who has a cauldron
who resides over a feast
where people in red and blue dance
and this place is also the Heart of my Heart.

In my left ventricle they are reborn as tender calves,
as wobbly-legged foals, as newborn pups snuggled together.
They are fed and nurtured by the people in red and blue and fed
on milk with a touch of mead and quickly they grow.

From my left atrium they come stampeding forth –
all the cattle with their cow bells ringing with names like
Red Joy and Red Passion and Red Horned and Red Creative One.
All the horses shaking their red manes swishing their red tails.
All the hounds outrunning their young whippers-in.
The people in blue and red cheer them on.

They are the arrows from the bow
of the Hunter in the Heart of my Heart,
the sound of the blood in my veins rushing
from death to birth to death and back to birth again.

This poem was inspired by Saint Mechtilde’s descriptions of visiting the House of the Heart and by my introduction to journeying into my body with my spiritual mentor, Jayne Johnson, a practice she learnt from Arnold Mindell, author of The Shaman’s Body and Working with the Dreaming Body. These two elements have helped me deepen my understanding of how my heart is now one with the Sacred Heart of Gwyn and He now resides there.

The Cow of Anrhuna

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‘At the head of the line…
the spoil was the cow of An(r)hun(a).’
~ The Battle of the Trees

I am the Cosmic Cow.

I am white and red with seven legs,
eleven udders pouring the whitest milk,
a red crown of twelve stars upon my head.

My cow bells sound through the sea of stars.
My milk is the origin of the Milky Way.

I am ever loving and ever giving.

You cannot capture me because
I always come willingly.

You cannot take my milk
because I am always pleased to give.

Milk me until your fingers are bare bone
and my milk will never run dry,
not until you have used
every bucket in the world
and you have emptied every mine.

I am ever living and ever giving.

I can melt the heart
of the cruelest warlord
with one look from my soft eyes
And halt the wars betwen nations
with the scent of cud between my soft lips.

I am the spoil but I cannot be spoilt –
white, blessed, holy am I.



‘The Battle of the Trees’, in The Book of Taliesin, records a conflict between the Children of Don and Arawn, King of Annwn, and His otherworldly monsters.*

We are told ‘At the head of the line / the spoil was the cow of Anhun’. The cow, as the spoil, is absolutely central to the battle but, unfortunately we find out nothing else about her. All we are told is, ‘It caused us no disaster’. This suggests the cow is a benevolent being but we find out nothing more.

Marged Haycock suggests that Anhun is St Anthony and this buch ‘cow’, ‘buck’, ‘buck-goat’ or ‘roebuck’ might be the satyr he met in the wilderness.

This didn’t feel quite right to me – I couldn’t see the Children of Don fighting over a satyr. For a long while I saw this animal as an Annuvian cow akin to the Brindled Ox, who was stolen in ‘The Spoils of Annwn, but could discern no more.

Then, a few months ago, I was sitting looking at the name ‘Anhun’ and saw a couple of spaces between the letters filled in by the name An(r)hun(a). This title means ‘Very Great’ and she is a found Goddess who myself and a number of other awenyddion have come to know as the Mother of Annwn and of its ruler, Gwyn. (It’s my personal belief Gwyn and Arawn are titles of the same God). 

Anrhuna’s association and possible identification with a magical cow ties in with parallels from Irish mythology. Her Irish cognate is Boann or Bó Find, which might derive from the Proto-Celtic *Bou-vindā ‘White Cow’. She is the wife of Necthan (Nuada) who is cognate with Nodens / Nudd ‘Mist’ the father of Vindos / Gwyn ‘White’. *Bou-vindā fits with Her being the mother of Vindos.

Bo Find ‘White Cow’ and Her sisters Bo Rhuad ‘Red Cow’ and Bo Dhu ‘Black Cow’ came from the Western Sea to make barren Ireland green and fertile. 

My personal gnosis around the Cow of Anrhuna presents her as a cosmic cow akin to Auðumbla ‘hornless cow rich in milk’ whose milk fed the primordial giant, Ymir, from whom the world was made in the Norse myths. Also to the sacred cow and bovine appearances of the Divine Mother, Kamadhenu, and the Earth Mother, Prithvi, in the Hindu religion. 

Her loving and giving nature and endless supply of milk also link to later folklore. In the Welsh lore we find Gwartheg y Llyn, ‘Cows of the Lake’ who belong to the lake-dwelling Gwragedd Annwn ‘Wives of the Otherworld’. They are usually white or speckled / brindled and are captured for their milk and, on being mistreated or milked dry, disappear back to their lakes.

In England we find the legend of the Dun Cow who provides plentiful milk until a witch tricks her by milking her with a sieve not a pail and she dies of shock. There are two variants here in Lancashire. In one the dead cow’s rib is displayed at Dun Cow Rib Farm in Longridge. In a happier variant her milk saved the people from the plague and she was buried at Cow Hill in Grimsargh.

I now like to think these stories derive from a deeper myth featuring the Cow of Anrhuna. It also made me smile that the cattle of Annwn, likely the cow’s daughers, are associated with the Wives of Annwn after my marriage to Gwyn.

*Gwydion fashions the trees ‘by means of language and materials of the earth’. Lleu is the battle-leader, ‘Radiant his name, strong his hand, / brilliantly did he direct a host’. Peniarth MS 98B records how the battle was caused by Amaethon stealing a roebuck, a greyhound and a lapwing from Arawn. Arawn’s monsters include a black-forked toad, a beast with a hundred heads and a speckled crested snake.

Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn

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A Prayer of Adoration for Gwyn 

Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your sacrifice
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your death
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your revival
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your breath
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your heartbeat
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your pulse
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your silence
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your lying still
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your dreaming
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your white wolf
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your imaginings
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your wandering soul
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your waiting
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I know You will return
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I sit in silence and listen
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I sit, I wait, I yearn

This prayer of adoration for Gwyn ap Nudd was written to bring more adoring / praising into my prayer practice which veered more towards petition. In the myth I live by after His defeat by Gwythyr on Calan Mai (May Day) Gwyn sleeps in His Castle of Cold Stone until Mis Medi (September – the Reaping Month).

A Dragon Calming Song

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Riots across the North fed by misinformation in the aftermath of the tragic massacre of three little girls. The fiery energy of the Red Dragon perverted into nationalist attacks on asylum seekers and Muslims. The White Dragon, who always carries the label of ‘other’, fighting back.

I sing a song that was sung to calm the red and white dragons during the battles between the Britons and Romans, the Britons and Saxons, by the warrior-women, the prophets, who became known as Witches of Annwn.*

A song, in the Dog Days of Summer, that invokes the aid of our Husband and Winter King, Gwyn ap Nudd, against the fiery energies of His rival Gwythyr ap Greidol, Summer King, ally of Arthur, the first to sow the seeds of British nationalism by uniting the nation under ‘One King, One God, One Law.’

A song that transforms the dragons into monstrous animals, little pigs, two babes in a woman’s arms.

A song that coaxes them back to sleep in deep Annwn.

Sleep babes sleep
daddy’s gone a hunting
he’ll bring us snowy white hares
and ptarmigan; in his wolf furs
we’re so safe and warm.

Sleep babes sleep
daddy’s gone into the cold again
he’ll bring us a white bushy-tailed
snow fox; in his wolf furs
we’re so safe and warm.

Sleep babes sleep
daddy’s gone into the frost again
he’ll bring us the feathers of a snowy
white owl; in his wolf furs
we’re so safe and warm.

Sleep babes sleep
daddy’s gone into the snow again
he’ll bring us the last reindeer
of the North; in his wolf furs
we’re so safe and warm.

*This song was first published in my book Gatherer of Souls in a story called ‘The Purple-Cloaked Empire’ when it is sung by Wind Singer to calm the red and white dragons during the Roman invasions. It has a basis in the medieval Welsh story of Lludd and Llefelys wherein Lludd / Nudd calms the dragons to sleep. I believe the Witches of Annwn, as devotees of Gwyn ap Nudd and His father, had a supporting role.
**A quick note for clarity – whilst I am speaking about British nationalism being rooted in the Roman and Anglo Saxon invasions and the mythos of Arthur I am not drawing parallels between the Romans and Anglo-Saxons as invaders and the asylum seekers and Muslims who come in peace and are a welcome part of our British communities.

Gwythyr’s Ants

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In How Culhwch Won Olwen there is an enigmatic episode wherein Gwythyr ap Greidol is ‘travelling over a mountain’ and hears ‘weeping and woeful wailing’ ‘terrible to hear’. He rushes towards the sound, unsheaths his sword and cuts off an anthill at ground level, thus saving the ants from a fire. In return they bring him the ‘nine hestors of flax seed’ previously sown into tilled red soil that has not grown to be resown in newly ploughed land to make a ‘white veil’ for Olwen at Culhwch’s wedding feast. This is one of the impossible tasks assigned to Culhwch by Ysbaddaden Bencawr, Olwen’s father. The ants complete the task, the lame ant bringing the last seed just in time.

Recently one of my guides suggested I should look deeper into this story. So, I journeyed on it, and this is what came as an origin tale for Gwythyr’s ants.

*

During the time of Arthur Gwythyr ap Greidol joined forces with the warlord against the giants, the witches, the monsters of Annwn, their rival, Gwyn ap Nudd.

At the height of summer he was leading his warriors through the mountains of the north, driving the giants from their mountain fortresses, from their seats in the craggy heights where they liked to look up to their kindred, the stars.

“There,” he pointed to a crag in the distance, even in summer circled by mist. 

“No,” his men shook their heads, “that belongs not to a giant but the Grey King.”

“Take it,” Gwythyr commanded, “build a new fortress on its summit in my name.” Their battle-leader left them for another task of marauding with Arthur.

As they approached a Spectre-in-the-mist appeared and warned them, “If you wish to remain men turn your back on this summit and return to your homes.”

“No way.” “This mountaintop will be ours.” “You’re nothing but a trick of the mist.”

As Gwythyr’s warriors battled against the spectre and his misty minions they noticed not their armour becoming carapaces moulded to their skin, their two legs becoming six, their spears becoming antennae. “We won! We won!”

They build their fortress on the summit thinking they were carrying great boughs when really they were building from twigs, leaves, pine needles.

When Gwythyr returned he found not a new fortress but an ant hill. 

“Accursed ants!” he raised his flaming sword to destroy the useless thing.

“No, no,” shrieked his warriors, “can’t you see it is us – your loyal soldiers?” 

When Gwythyr looked closer at their red-brown armoured bodies and their spear-like antennae he saw they still had the faces and intelligence of men. 

“We won the battle.” “We built our fort.” “Only one man was lamed.”

As Gwythyr cursed the mist rolled in and he heard the laughter of the Grey King.

Image wood ant (Formica rufra) courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Tiny Gwyn (from Thornsilver Hollysong)

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Thornsilver Hollysong is a fellow monastic devotee of Annwn who makes pocket-sized crocheted Gods from his own hand-dyed yarn. I recently commissioned him to make me a tiny Gwyn based on lines from a poem I wrote when Gwyn and I first met:

His spectral shine shimmers white as moonlight
His hair floats fair about his phantom limbs
His warrior attire is black as night.
The eyes of the hunter of souls are grim
As the howl of his hounds on Annwn’s winds.

Tiny Gwyn has finally arrived and He is perfect. I love the textures of His moonlight white hair and the powerful sway of His black cloak. He has a guardian-like quality and has assumed custodianship of my bookshelf from where He is watching over my room in preparation for the return of big Gwyn. It’s lovely to have some of the energy and craftsmanship of a fellow monastic and Gwyn devotee in my home.

You can view Thorn’s Teeny Tiny Gods and order your own commissions HERE.

The Art of Coming Home

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‘Gwyn ap Nudd who are far in the forests for the love of your mate allow us to come home.’
~ Speculum Christiani

Going away. Coming home. These two processes every spiritworker needs to master. 

I was away for such a long part of my life, never fully in my body. Struggling with disassociation and derealisation stuck somewhere between the worlds.

Then Gwyn ap Nudd came into my life and taught me to journey to Annwn and, perhaps more importantly, how to come home. Since I met Him I have been striving to lead a life that combines the shamanic and ecstatic with being present in the here and now with the myriad beings on the land where I live.

With more difficulty, particularly since becoming a nun of Annwn, I’ve been getting to know myself a lot better – my body, my mind, my habits. 

I thought that I was getting better. That I’d begun to become more aware of my cycles of driving myself too hard often when operating under some delusion such as that I’m going to become a recognised philosopher, poet, author… then realising I’m being unrealistic and burning out and dropping out.

I thought I’d cracked it but somehow similar delusions crept in around what I might be capable of as a nun of Annwn and aspiring shamanic practitioner. After my shamanic initiation and marriage to Gwyn I came back ecstatic with ambitions of running online discussions and shamanic journey circles and hit the ground with a bump when I came upon the same old barrier of lack of interest in the Brythonic tradition and was further derailed by the consequences of my mistake in reviewing a book by Galina Krasskova.

It’s taken me over two months to come back to myself, back to reality, to my limitations as an autistic person and introvert and to realise I would never have been able to hold space for group discussions or run shamanic journey circles due to my difficulties with reading and communicating with large groups and the huge drain upon my energy that these things take.

I’m fine one-to-one or with small groups of people I know and who I don’t need to mask with such as my fellow monastic devotees. But I’m not the warm smiley front-of-house meet-and-greet person who knows intuitively what each person needs and how to put them at ease fit for leading large groups.

Once again I’ve landed with a bump and a crash but as always I’ve had a wonderful God who is now my Husband to hold me through it. I’ve had the support of my mum, the land I live on, and members of the Monastery of Annwn.

I’ve finally come back home into a state of stillness and presence wherein I can stop beating myself up over my mistakes and accept who I am. 

That being a nun is not about striving to be a celebrity (‘Sister Patience TM’) but leading a life of prayer and meditation centred on devotional relationship with the Gods and the land and the ancestors and journeying to Annwn to bring back inspiration and healing for one’s communities.

Accepting I am enough rather than trying to strive beyond.

Not easy. Not glamorous. But this is where and who I am. A suburban nun. At home in Penwortham with a wonderful God who dwells in my heart and countless deities and spirits and plants and creatures all around me. With Gwyn’s help I’m beginning to master the art of coming home.

Dragon of my Heart

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‘Gwyn son of Nudd… God has put the spirit of the demons of Annwfn in him, lest the world be destroyed.’
~ Culhwch and Olwen

I.
Dragon of my Heart black and beautiful
with Your wings filled with ghosts

You take me up high into the sky,
show me how far I am from

the cannon fire, the sparks,
the fuses, the ram of gunpowder,
the sound of cannon balls hitting walls.

From the sieges of the past and of the future.

You grant to me Your perspective.
You tell me I must be calm.

II.
Dragon of my Heart black and beautiful
with Your wings filled with skulls

You take me up high into the sky,
show me how far I am from

the machine-gun fire echoing
from my past lives stacatto across
the battlefields where barbed wire is strung.

From the executions of firing squads from the guns.

You grant to me Your perspective.
You tell me I must find peace.

III.
Dragon of my Heart black and beautiful
with Your wings filled with the hung

You take me up high into the sky,
show me how far I am from

the forests of the suicides,
where they hang from the trees
driven to their deaths by who knows what.

From the bullies on the streets and on the screens.

You grant to me Your perspective.
You tell me I must be kind.

IV.
Dragon of my Heart black and beautiful
with Your wings terrifying to angels

You take me up high into the sky,
show me how far I am from

the Gallic Wars, the Crusades,
the Wars of the Roses, the Napoleonic Wars,
from Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

From Vietnam, Crimea, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

You grant to me Your perspective.
You tell me I must love.

V.
Dragon of my Heart black and beautiful
with Your wings filled with light

You take me up high into the sky,
show me the heights of my privilege.

You tell me I must found a monastery
for one day like You I will bear
the dead in my wings.

To an Apple Tree

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I.
Apple tree, sweet apple tree,
who grows in my suburban garden,
know I am no Myrddin and no prophet.

I fought not in the Battle of Arfderydd.
I was not a golden-torqued warrior.

I wandered not in the Forest of Celyddon.

But I have wandered for thirty years
with madness and madmen
in the wildernesses of suburbia
not knowing what is real and what is not.

I have known my pigs and my stolen berries
and my maidens of the suburban drains,
my Chwyfleian beneath her trap.

II.
Apple tree, sweet apple tree,
who grows close to my garden fence,
know I am no Myrddin and no prophet.

I knew not Gwenddolau and his two eagles
who feast on the flesh of the Britons every day
but I have been devoured by death-eaters.

I did not get involved with the games
of Gwenddolau and Rhydderch
on the gwyddbwyll board,
men gold and silver,

but I predicted the outcome
and did not speak up about Caerlaverock.

I ask that my Lord of Hosts have mercy on me.

III.
Apple tree, sweet apple tree,
near where the birds come to feed,
where the sparrows pick, the starlings peck,
where the long-tailed tits come to twirl their tails,
know I am no Myrddin and no prophet

yet I was torn out of myself

not after the Battle of Arfderydd
but when I was but a child, a fledgling
by the bullies who called me a pig,
knowing not Myrddin’s sweet little one,
when I was only half-pig half-bird.

I knew not what kind of bird.

Not a hawk certainly not a merlin.

Perhaps a blackbird or the big black bird
perching on my chimney-top blotting out the sun.

IV.
Apple tree, sweet apple tree,
with your blossoms white and pink,
foxglove pink, the colours of the fair folk,
know I am no Myrddin and no prophet,

yet I was invited to walk not in Celyddon
but in Avalon with my Lord of Hosts.

Oh happy happy days beneath your boughs
with the long-tailed tits twirling,
picking at the worms

as the snake
returned to the garden
and the Dragon King spread His wings
and they were filled with the apples of the sun.

This poem is inspired by ‘The Apple Trees’ from The Black Book of Carmarthen wherein Myrddin Wyllt speaks his woes to an apple tree after the tragic Battle of Arfderydd. I believe ‘the Lord of Hosts’ referred to in this poem is Gwyn ap Nudd, who is also referred to as ‘the Lord of Hosts’ in ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’. Gwyn, ‘White’, has paradoxically appeared to me in the guise of a black dragon. It’s a poem about knowing in spite of my defects and limitations I am loved.