I dream of a wren’s nest on a wooden beam overhanging tidal waters. Then I’m holding it. It’s warm and soft and feathery and filled with baby wrens. I’m afraid for them. I fear they will fall into the water. 

The scene shifts and I’m watching from beyond as the wren chicks fall as I feared, but before they drown each of them is saved by a kingfisher with a blue-grey beak, who plucks them out and places them on the nearby sands. 

I’ve been struggling of late. Minor health problems. Exercise niggles. Burning myself out by working 7 day weeks even though I’m not in paid work. Problems with my spiritual practice and lamenting having no human teacher, no existing structure or tradition to turn to. 

I’ve been losing wrens.

Wrens. They’re secretive birds. A lot of people can’t or don’t see them. I’m not brilliant with birds or bird calls but I often spot the ‘little pointy tails’ in the undergrowth before hearing their loud song and I also see wren chicks around this time of year. In the Wildwood Tarot they’re associated with voice and prophecy and folklorically they are a sacrifical bird killed around mid-winter.

Kingfishers. Contrastingly I don’t see kingfishers often and when they do show up I know something deep and numinous is happening. The last time I saw a kingfisher it was connected with the death of a friend and spiritual guide.

The message of this dream seems to be not to be too harsh on myself or on our fledgling spiritual traditions. To stop getting frustrated and jettisoning my wrens. 

This time the kingfisher has shown up to save them. I’m not sure who the kingfisher is. Glas y dorlan ‘blue of the riverbank’. Maybe Nodens, the Fisher King. Maybe a messenger of His or of His son, Vindos/Gwyn, my patron. Or maybe something or someone else turning up to remind me I have been guided less formally by a number of different mentors in different ways along my path*.

Perhaps here is represented the Monastery of Annwn and the polytheistic movement as a fledgling endeavour. Although we have no structure or tradition we have each other for support and the saving grace of our Gods.

*To name them Phil and Lynda Ryder in Druidry, Brian Taylor in animism, Greg Hill in the Brythonic tradition, Jason and Nicola Smalley in shamanistic practices.

*Images courtesy of Wikipedia.