‘They strive to lead their lives in the world but not of the world’
~ Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart Los Angeles

When I took my monastic vows as a nun of Annwn in October 2022 I was leading a very solitary life centring on devotion to my Gods and on my writing. My only connections with the outside world were online – with fellow members of the Monastery of Annwn and with the Pagan and Polytheist blogosphere. 

Things changed after I realised my book, The King of Annwn, wasn’t destined to be professionally published and I received the gnosis I must give my ambition to be a professional writer up for good. 

In spring 2024 in a shamanic journey I was shown I must ‘re-root the monastery’. It took me a while to work out what that meant. I took it literally and tried returning to horticultural volunteering but ran into physical limitations with knee problems and Raynaud’s.

I also began training as a shamanic practitioner and have now realised that is where my true calling lies. Over the past six months I have been providing shamanic guidance and running shamanic circles in my local community and have recently begun to offer shamanic healings. 

In some ways that I’m able to go out and work shamanically with individuals and groups of people has come as a surprise as I’m autistic and an introvert and usually find social interaction draining. In other ways it hasn’t because from the very first time I did a shamanic journey I felt a sense of potency and calling and a deep connection with the spirit world that I wanted to share.

Fifteen years since that first shamanic journey, following completing my apprenticeship to my patron God, Gwyn, a ruler of Annwn, the Brythonic Otherworld), I have finally proved ready to guide and heal others.

This has opened the possibility of leading a more outward-facing life than I guessed when I first took my vows. Of serving not only the Gods but other people.

For this I’ve looked for inspiration to other groups of monastics and have found my deepest sense of kinship with the Lay Carmelites. This an order of the Discalced Carmelites who were founded by St Teresa of Avila in 1562. 

Their charism is contemplative prayer, community, and ministry. Their rule of life is characterised by six obligations: meditation, morning and evening prayer, mass, Mary, meetings, mission. (1)

These come very close to what included in the Monastery of Annwn nine vows: keeping morning and evening prayers to the Gods and Goddesses of Annwn, deepening our relationships with Them through prayer, meditation and trance, checking in and praying with other members, and building the monastery. (2)

I particularly like what the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart Los Angeles have to say about secular Carmelites being those who are called to ‘devotion to prayer’, ’an intimacy with Jesus Who dwells within the soul’, a ‘heart-to-heart encounter with God’ and cultivating a ‘friendship’, ‘a conversing’, a ‘listening to Him which becomes the normal way of life.’ (3)

This fits with my striving to make all my daily activities offerings to Gwyn with my shamanic work fitting so well with Him being a God of the Otherworld. 

They also refer to Lay Carmelites being ‘In the world but not of the world.’ (4) That also fits with my life being centred around my Gods first and foremost rather than on money, career or social life, with my service to other people being one of the ways I serve my Gods.

I’m now two-and-half years into living by vows and am now contemplating the possibility that when I take my lifelong vows in autumn 2026 they might be as a lay nun as opposed to a nun who is leading a near-hermitic life.

“You’re a nun with a drum,” Gwyn told me when I asked if I could bring monasticism and shamanism together. His joking words now summarise my path.

(1) ‘The 6 M’s on being a Carmelite’, Life as an OCDS Carmelite, https://ocds-carmelite.blogspot.com/2009/01/6-ms-on-being-carmelite.html
(2) ‘Our Nine Vows’, The Monastery of Annwn, https://themonasteryofannwn.wordpress.com/our-nine-vows/
(3) ‘Can a Lay person be a Carmelite?’, Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart Los Angeles – https://carmelitesistersocd.com/2013/lay-carmelite/
(4) Ibid.