King of Faery, Lord of Annwn, Dragon Ruler of the Not-World.
And yet You are.
You are a paradox.
You are a fortress filled with riddles.
You are an underworld riddled with serpents.
You speak in serpent tongues.
~
The day I saw Your face
You struck me dumb.
You stole my tongue.
From thereon I have known it will turn to stone if it ceases to sing for You.
~
The day I saw Your face
It made all the suffering of my past lives meaningful.
I run through them shouting “We will meet a God”
so loudly some hear me and some believe me.
~
I have seen so many of Your faces I could fill an ocean (none possible).
Today I pour the mead for Your unknown face.
~
At the end of August I celebrated the eleventh anniversary of my first meeting with my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, by reciting this poem to Him where I met Him on Fairy Lane in Penwortham at the leaning yew and making Him an offering of the last of the apples from our apple trees and a serving of mead. I sensed His presence and the approval of the land in the enchantment of the dappled light on the branches of the yew.
and life is filled with lumps and bumps and knots and cracks.
There will always be problems. You will learn to solve them.
There will always be pain. You will learn to heal.
That is the secret of our art – of the inspired one and the witch.
II. There is a cauldron in the cave and a vision in the cauldron,
the lining of the womb of Old Mother of Universe
and this is the Web of Fate. You are the needle travelling
in and out of the weft of time to re-weave the tapestry.
III. You are not perfect distant daughter of mine
and life is filled with perils worse than the monsters of Annwn.
One-eyed giants, eyeless, blind. You will learn not only to face
but to help these things that should not have been made –
to help them return to the dark of the Old Mother’s womb.
IV. A universe is in the cauldron and the cauldron is in you
kindled by the breath of ninefold wise women,
by wisdom of the ancestors. In it our visions boil and brew.
Be a strong vessel distant child so this old world can be born anew.
These words were received from Ogddu on a spirit journey to the Cave of the Ancestors this morning. I believe Ogddu to be the mother of Orwen and grandmother of Orddu. Her name derives from ogof ddu ‘black cave’ and one of her epithets is ‘the Voice of the Dark Cave’. Receiving this poem from her confirmed that my choice to walk Orddu’s path and to begin working more deeply with this lineage of Inspired Ones of the North (who I perceive to be spiritual ancestors rather than blood ancestors) is the right one.
There is the bard in the mead hall. The one who sings at the feast in Caer Vedwit, the Mead Feast Fort, in Gwyn’s hall, in a heavy blue-grey chain.
I sung there once, where the harp of Teirtu plays on its own. Where the ghost of Maponos walked. Where the fair folk and the dead dance and mix and eat the meat of leaves whilst the king watches from his throne of bones.
I drank enough mead to feast the dead for centuries and took the songs of our king to the halls of towns and cities, to libraries, pubs, shopping centres.
I sang in chains, tried to strangle myself with them, then cast them off.
I walked this path for a while but this path was not for me.
~
There is the path of the madman, the wild woman, the path of the followers of Myrddin Wyllt. Those who are afflicted by trauma and by the claws of Annwn torn out of themselves, split open, as if by a spear, their bird spirits flying out.
Hawk spirits, golden eagle spirits, goldcrest spirits, passerines in strange migrations. All heading to their forests of Celyddon. To pines and raided gold mines. To the damps of the Celtic rainforests where it rains five days a week. To the remnants of woodlands in the suburbs along the trickle of suburban streams.
I was the wren in the bush singing of how I tore myself open for our God and how my heart was my sacrifice on mid-winter’s day still beating beneath the yew.
A part of me is still there, singing for Him, loud yet hidden. No-one hears.
I walked this path for a while but this path was not for me.
~
There is the path of the cave woman, the inspired one, the witch. Orddu ‘Very Black’, Orwen ‘Very White’, all their ancestors around the cauldron.
Black skin, white hair, white skin, black hair, wolf furs, corvid feathers, black beaks.
Those who sing with crows and wash the skulls of their ancestors in holy springs. Cast the wolf bones. Lie beneath wolf furs waiting for visions of the Deep.
Those who drink the awen, scry in the cauldron like our God, sing of past and future things. Swallow stars. Universes. Things too big to speak. Die in His arms.
I swallowed the star of the King of Annwn and it is within me still and I am still in my cave after all these centuries with a murder of crow women inside me.
The nun in her cell who still flies, still runs, divines with black feathers.
I walked this path for a while and have decided it is for me.
I wrote this poem as a step along my journey in discerning what it means to be an inspired one and nun of Annwn devoted to Gwyn ap Nudd in relation to the Brythonic tradition and my solitary life in suburban Penwortham.
I. You are the plant who tells the truth (as if other plants are fickle).
Your flowers are purple. Your leaves are amplexicaul. Your seed pods are known as siliques.
Their stubble reminds me of a dice game.
I count them – no ones, twos, threes. I see some fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, no nines.
To count in nines is just too terrifying.
II. I was brought up to tell the truth thinking it would lead to praise, to handclaps,
not to snotty sobbing no tissues can stem, no pillow can smother, no word.
I did not know that truth is ugly and unflowerlike.
That your long long taproot reaches into the underworld where the dark moons of your seeds fall and fall and fall and fall and fall and germinate.
III. Lunaria, you are like the moon, waxing and waning, the call of magic that attempts to assemble all the parts of my soul
in the dark tower of your being before the time of your fall.
The dark nun, the dark magician speaking our truths in our tears and blood,
learning discipline and devotion to the truths before our eyes.
V. In your presence we are held by our God who is the darkness of the edges all around us even when He is asleep or dead haunting the shadows of the inbetween places in leafy dapples.
VI. There are two sides to your coin, to your money pennies, to your bets.
You pose the question of how many nuns are in the void, how many spirits of Annwn can dance on my fingertips.
As many as the seeds that will fall in my garden this year and grow and germinate
beneath the soil and beneath my skin
as I strive to make a study in honesty through the seasons every year.
‘Though you may get that, there is something you will not get. Twrch Trwyth will not be hunted until Gwyn ap Nudd is found – God has put the spirit of the demons of Annwfn in him, lest the world be destroyed. He will not be spared from there.’ ~ Culhwch ac Olwen
I. I have completed the impossible tasks.
I have found You and Your water-horse and Mabon and His dark white-maned steed and every one of Your hounds and every single one of their leashes.
I have ridden down Twrch Trwyth ‘Chief of Boars’ and feasted upon him.
I have found all the giants who Arthur killed but I have not found their beards or the pieces of flesh he cut from them – Ysbaddaden’s ears, his cheeks are gone.
I have found all the treasures and returned them to You – their rightful owner.
I have returned the last drop of Orddu’s blood to Pennant Gofid.
As for Culwhch and Olwen I have seen they did not live happily ever after.
Finally I killed Arthur – see his blood beneath my fingertips as I type these words?
II. Your next task feels more impossible.
You tell me to ‘build the Monastery of Annwn’.
How? Why? When you mocked at Saint Collen, taunted him with visions of Your fairy feast.
You tell me “a nun is not a saint.”
III. I think of how Collen derided You and Your people and how I have danced with inspired ones – wild men, mad women, witches, on the brink of the Abyss.
How I danced towards death – too many pills, too much drink, not enough sleep, not knowing if this would be the night, not caring, hoping we would be united.
I wonder, if You’ve got devils within You, I’m allowed to have devils within me too?
You tell me I must “embrace paradox” and “be a servant of mystery”.
IV. You show me a vision of a tapestry detailing all three hundred of the knights in Arthur’s retinue woven by a monk in a distant abbey, You amongst them, my unpicking of the weave
and following of the threads to where we know each other best in the spiralling madness of the Abyss where You, God of the Dead, have known death.
V. You tell me nothing is impossible and I know nothing is impossible except You.
Thus I will strive to fulfil my impossible task for You.
*A poem based on the difficulties of building a monastery that does not fit with recognised religions and that is dedicated to Deities who are ‘other’ / ‘otherworldly’ in relation to practical necessities such as having our own bank account to fund our forum, website and potential Zoom channel.
Taranis moving across the dark sky! Hail to the Thunderer!
Taranis moving His chariot wheels cry! Hail to the Thunderer!
Taranis moving His lightning bolts fly! Hail to the Thunderer!
Taranis moving I roar my reply! Hail to the Thunderer!
*We have had very hot weather here in the UK which has been broken by some much appreciated thunderstorms. Whilst I was reading a book in the midst of one this evening a massive roar of thunder made me leap from my seat. I interpreted as a sign that Taranis, ‘the Thunderer’, desired some acknowledgement. I poured Him some tea but it didn’t seem enough. So I wrote this poem and read it for Him and will continue to use it to show my appreciation when, again, He brings our much needed rain.
“Stop thinking about money!” ~ the voice of my God
I. I am the blindfolded woman and two arrows have pierced my heart in spite of my charms and incantations against love.
I have been wrapped up in my own heartbreak leaving me blind.
I have been trying to weigh inspiration against money, a feather against gold – one heavy one light.
I have been a slave to what is bled from rocks over millenia at such toil and cost, ignoring what is easily shed, fletched, lifted by a breath.
You are the archer and as always Your arrows strike true.
II. What is it I fear? Hunger? Having no home?
I do not think I could sit and beg but would rather walk, homeless, foodless, until I could walk no longer, lie down and die, be back with You.
III. When I think of my worst fear it is fear of madness –
I am looking into a round tunnel without a train but just a whistling train track rushing through it,
the dance of limbs on the platforms belonging to no-one, not to people, to robots, or to spirits.
That the whole journey of life is nothing but meaninglessness.
IV. I think of my longstanding fear of falling apart.
I recall my vision of a knight riding forth, the plates of his armour rusting, his flesh starting to decay, falling from his limbs,
the skeletal man falling from his skeletal horse
but his horse going on to where the bones of all horses crumble and the dust of dead horses is borne on the winds to where You ride Lord of Annwn.
You taste the wind, lick Your forefinger, another failed quest.
Your hounds prowl and sniff at the dust and Your pale horse rolls in it.
IV. Yet I have chosen to collect feathers not gold for the birds are giving and we are nothing but birds who are learning how to fly and to empty out our pockets.
I want to be light, my lord, to depart from lands where scales exist.
To where we no longer need to weigh, measure, measure up. To where You tear my blindfold off and show me the truths that lie in my unbroken heart.
‘The first time I saw an Athonite monk pull a smartphone out from the pocket of his long black robes, I nearly fell over backwards… the pit that appeared in my stomach when I first saw a monk on the Holy Mountain with one of those black mirrors in his hand came from an instinct I’ve long had: that the sacred and the digital not only don’t mix, but are fatal to each other. That they are in metaphysical opposition.’ ~ Paul Kingsnorth, ‘The Neon God‘
He sees a monk on mount Athos take a smart phone from his black robes and nearly faints in horror
whereas I run on – a nun of Annwn with an Apple watch on my wrist telling me when I have completed split one, split two, split three, the exact mileage I have done, my pace, how many calories burned, congratulating me when I close my move ring and exercise ring, teaching me to breathe by mimicking my breath with a cool blue cloud.
When I look into the black mirror I wonder whether it is a parasite or a companion,
a trustworthy advisor or a replacement for my body’s knowing.
I pose the question – IS TECHNOLOGY HOLY?
The black plastic reminds me of the primordial material, the dark matter of the womb from which the universe was birthed,
the cauldron from which spilled the elements that would make ion-x glass, liquid crystalline, an aluminium case, a polyester with titanium strap,
the lithium ion rechargeable battery
(from cobalt mined by children in the Congo).
By age, height, weight, gender, heart beat movement, workout type it measures whether my day has been a success.
Like counting the fall of apple, cherry or orange blossoms I wonder if it is beyond good and evil?
It keeps my horarium for now and warns me when the sun will be too hot and when my heartrate is too high
The Sanctuary of Vindos 