Sacrifice – The Sanctuary of Vindos

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.

Boggarts are a type of spirit found in Lancashire and Yorkshire. In The Lancashire Dictionary Alan Crosby defines a boggart as a ‘ghost, sprite, evil spirit or feeorin.’ He says ‘there was scarcely an old house or a lonely valley which did not have its terrifying tales of creatures which roamed, shrieked and caused havoc – though most do not appear to have been especially malevolent, and some were just a nuisance.’ (1)

There are numerous boggart sites and tales in Lancashire. An old farmhouse in Boggart’s Hole Clough in Blackley was haunted by a creature with ‘a small shrill voice’ ‘like a baby’s penny trumpet’ who played tricks on the residents and their children. Having decided to leave, as they made their departure they heard the shrill voice say “ay, ay neighbour, we’re flitting you see.” Realising wherever they went the boggart would follow they turned back. (2)

The boggart of Barcroft Hall in Burnley was reputedly ‘a helpful little fellow’ until given a pair of clogs. After this he caused trouble, breaking pots and pans, making animals sick and lame, preventing the cows from milking and in a grand finale putting the farmer’s prize bull on the roof. Fed up of his tricks the farmer decided to leave. Crossing a small bridge he heard a voice call from beneath “stop while I’ve tied my clogs, and I’ll go with you!” The farmer resigned to go back.’ (3)

A story called ‘Hanging t’Boggart’ is set at the Boggart Houses in Hindley Green. A boggart with ‘aw mi mosses dreighed up’ appears as a man to Sammy. The man tells Sammy he can hang him, if he can hang Sammy afterward. Presuming the man will die, Sammy garrottes him. Leaving the body he finds the man sitting comfortably at his table ready to complete his part of the bargain. After Sammy’s corpse is found his acquaintances see ‘a big, black shape, mauling about the houses after dark.’ After a ‘terrible struggle’ accompanied by ‘spitting, hissing and other noises which sounded like curses in a foreign language’ they think they have hung the boggart to discover a big black cat in its place the following day. (4)

Other sites include Boggart’s Hole in Bolton and Boggart Bridge in Burnley, where the cost of crossing is a living thing or one’s soul. Clegg Hall hosts a boggart chamber and is haunted by a phantom boy, who was killed by his wicked uncle. Boggarts have been laid at Towneley Hall and Hothersall Hall. In Joseph Delaney’s recent series of Lancashire based children’s books The Wardstone Chronicles boggarts travel down leys wreaking havoc and the Spook’s household boggart manifests as a gigantic ginger cat.

In contemporary poetry boggarts appear as grander more primal elemental beings. In Seamus Heaney’s ‘Bog Queen’ a female boggart lies between turf and demesne wearing a black glacier for a sash, her breasts moraines, her diadem of gemstones dropping ‘in the peat floe / like the bearings of history.’ ‘Barbered / and stripped / by a turfcutter’s spade’ she rises ‘from the dark, / hacked bone, skull-ware, / frayed stitches, tufts, / small gleams on the bank.’ (5)

In ‘Milesian Encounter on the Sligachan’ Ted Hughes describes his intimations of what might have been ‘a Gruagach of the Sligachan! / Some boggart up from a crack in the granite!’

‘Eerie how you know when it’s coming –
So I felt it now, my blood
Prickling and thickening, altering
With an ushering-in of chills, a weird onset
As if mountains were pushing mountains higher
Behind me, to crowd over my shoulder-

Then the pool lifted a travelling bulge
And grabbed the tip of my heart nerve and crashed.’ (6)

These stories and poems show boggarts are intimately connected with ancient mosslands and ravines, farmhouses and their residents. They are spirits of place old as the lowland raised level peat bogs which once covered the majority of Lancashire, of which less than one percent remains. As the mosslands have been drained, cut for turves and enclosed for farming their spirits have been displaced into houses, attaching themselves to the families who farm the land.

Some are benign until treated in the wrong way whilst others are more sinister, instigating pacts based on exchanges of life for life. Bog bodies found in peat such as the Lindow Man as well as offerings such as axes, palstaves and spearheads (7) suggest the mosslands and / or their spirits were treated as deities with whom sacrificial exchanges once took place. What the stories continue to show is that when reciprocal relationships between families and the land, and perhaps within families themselves are damaged boggarts become troublesome.

In the urban mythology of today boggarts have been replaced by poltergeists, which fit better with contemporary theories about the paranormal. However I believe that throughout the landscape they remain, dried out forms stretching through the earth beneath our dwellings, appearing as helpful house sprites, stalking shadows or cats without names. And I believe it is possible, with due care, to form relationships with them.

(1) Alan Crosby, The Lancashire Dictionary, (Smith Settle, 2000), p26. Feeorin is a Lancashire word for fairy.
(2) Aidan Turner-Bishop, ‘Fairy and Boggart Sites in Lancashire,’ Lancashire’s Sacred Landscape (The History Press, 2010), p101
(3) http://www.ormerod.uk.net/History/Barcroft/barcroft_boggart.htm
(4) http://www.hindleygreenra.com/oldfacts.htm
(5) http://inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/198-bog-queen-seamus-heaney.html
(6) Ted Hughes, Collected Poems, (Faber and Faber, 2003), p655. The creature turns out to be a salmon.
(7) David Barrowclough, Prehistoric Lancashire, (The History Press, 2008), p159

The picture of the boggart is from The Faery Ring Tarot.