Hagalaz – The Sanctuary of Vindos

‘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.

On the second of February, the date of the Celtic festival of Gwyl Ffraid/Imbolc, I was not celebrating the first signs of spring but was in hospital having an umbilical hernia repair operation.

Snowy GCV 3

The land was covered by snow and ice and I was aware of the presence of my god, Gwyn ap Nudd, Winter’s King. To he, who guides our souls between the worlds of the living and the dead, I prayed to lead me into the near death-like state of coma that is general anaesthesia and back to wakefulness again.

To he, who dies a ritual death at the hands of his rival Gwythyr ap Greidol every year at Calan Mai, who enters a frozen sleep throughout the summer months in Caer Ochren, the Castle of Cold Stone before reviving again in autumn to lead his hunt across the winter skies. I knew I could trust my soul.

I knew he understood what I was about to go through and worse for he comes from ‘many deaths’.

And so he took me, but not to where I’d expected. Just two weeks previously I made my lifelong dedication to Gwyn and that night during my vigil I was taken on a really intense journey of descent. I was expecting something like that or worse like waking up whilst I was being operated on.

Instead I awoke feeling as if I was roaring drunk raving about Maredsous. For about fifteen minutes I had no idea what Maredsous was and neither did anyone else in the recovery room. Finally I remembered it was a Belgian beer. Gwyn had taken me on a tour of the bars in Belgium! I have always loved Belgian beers but never been able to afford to visit Belgium and he had taken me there.

Another uncanny thing that happened is that, afterwards, the nurse told me that when I went under everywhere went icy cold and they had to turn the heating up – a definite sign of Gwyn’s presence.

So I woke up feeling wowed and grateful and much firmer in my trust of him.

Post-operation I have been stiff, sore, and had more far more bloating and swelling than I expected. However, as the snow has slowly thawed, I have been making a slow recovery. As I have walked a little further from my house every day I have noticed the snowdrops in my garden in full flower, the first celandine flowering in Greencroft Valley, a yellow wagtail dipping in the brook, the wood alive with the songs of tits and robins.

Since the beginning of November, when I drew the Hagalaz rune, ‘Hail’, at the Way of the Buzzard drumming circle I have experienced a winter of harsh descent which began with a stress fracture of my metatarsal leading to me being unable to walk for over six weeks. Then I had my lifelong dedication to Gwyn, which was challenging and intense, but ultimately confirming and wonderful. Now, finally, this operation, significantly on my naval, my natal place, which seems bound up with the visions of death and dissolution and rebirth that I experienced during my vigil on my dedication night.

The Anglo-Saxon rune poem for Hagalaz/Hægl speaks of my experiences of being the white grain of the initiate in Gwyn’s cold castle, tossed about on the winds of his hunt, and finally brought back in celebration and confirmation to melt into water and take seed in this soil as his lifelong awenydd.

Rune-Hægl