Category: Polytheism

The Origins of Houses and House Spirits

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Introduction

In ancient and modern polytheistic and shamanic cultures, houses are viewed as inspirited and as being occupied by one or more house spirits. My recent efforts to build a better relationship with my house and house spirits has led me to researching how people in Britain and, in particular, in my local area and more widely across Lancashire, have related to theirs.

Living Lightly

The earliest people of Britain were hunter-gatherers. They were highly mobile. Those who dwelled in Lancashire spent their summers in temporary camps in various locations on the West Pennines and moved to larger and more static base camps in the western lowlands over the winter. 

I live in Penwortham in a lowland area close to the river Ribble. A couple of miles upriver was a camp at Walton-le-Dale where blades were made. The closest upland camps are on Withnell, Wheelton, Anglezarke, Rivington and Smithills Moors. 

These people lived so lightly on the land not a trace of their dwellings has been found. They slept in tents made from animal hides that they carried with them, supported by stakes made from dwarf birch and willow. The animal hides were viewed as imbued with the spirit of the animal who was killed and the stakes with the spirits of the trees who had been felled. Prayers and offerings were likely made to these spirits before and after their deaths. 

The First Houses

During the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, settlements were rare but did exist. The most famous example is Star Carr in Yorkshire. Here, the earliest house in Britain was found, dating to around 8,500 BCE. It consisted of a ring of 18 wooden posts enclosing a circular floor 3.5 meters in diameter. It was likely thatched with reeds from the nearby lake. Three later houses were found along with timber platforms from which offerings were made to the lake.

Reconstruction of Howick House in Northumberland, Wikipedia Commons

Another example is Howick House in Northumberland dating to 7500BCE. At Lunt Meadows in Merseyside, three houses dating to 6000BCE were found. Close by was an intricate arrangement of stones consisting of two granite boulders, stained red, with sparkling mica pieces, with struck blue flints and a smaller pebble. These likely served a ritual function. Also, a tree had been set alight on the site and a white flint blade deposited underneath it.

It has been theorised that, whilst most of the population remained mobile, some people might have lived permanently at these camps and made them ‘home’. Here, perhaps, we found the earliest house spirits. 

It is likely that offerings were made to placate the land spirits before building a house and to keep them happy whilst people were in residence. It’s possible that some of the land spirits who were recipients came to be house spirits.

During the Neolithic period, in southern Britain, people began settling in farmsteads and taking to small-scale agriculture but this was less common in the north. The earliest domestic settlement in my vicinity is Irby, on the Wirral, from the Middle Bronze Age. It’s a circular structure with post-sockets in which pottery and clay artefacts were found – likely offerings to the land spirits. Within was an oven, pottery and bronze work. Cereals were farmed.

Such farmsteads, and other roundhouses, were simple structures with a hearth in the middle and beds around the outside. People worked and slept in them and no doubt told stories around the fire through the winter months. These houses would have been alive with the spirit of the family, their work, their tales. The fire would likely have been honoured along with the house spirits.

Here, in Penwortham, there was a Bronze Age lake dwelling on Penwortham Marsh consisting of a brushwood platform and piles measuring 17m by 7m. This may have been occupied during the winter and by people travelling the Ribble in dug-out canoes (two of which were found in the nearby area).

Hill Forts and Foundation Burials

In the Late Bronze Age and in the Iron Age people began building hill forts. These ranged in size. Some were a single fortified building with defensive palisades, banks and ditches, whereas others contained whole villages with roundhouses, granaries and storage pits, and shrines.

It’s possible that an earlier small prehistoric fort (or burial mound) lay beneath the Anglo-Saxon fort that gave its name to Castle Hill in Penwortham. Along the Ribble, there were possible promontory forts on Frenchwood Knoll and along the banks at Fishwick Allotments, Red Scar Wood and Boilton Wood.

Hill forts across Britain are often associated with foundation burials. For example, there was an adult burial beneath Maiden Hill in Dorset and at South Cadbury in Somerset there were numerous burials in ritual pits. These may have been made to placate the land spirits and / or to incorporate ancestors into the house. These spirits likely became house spirits.

Maiden Castle, Wikipedia Commons

The tradition of foundation burials of humans and animals is long standing. Two human skeletons were buried beneath a house on Orkney during the Neolithic period and a sea eagle was also buried as a foundation deposit. At Cladh Hallan, in South Ouist, on the Outer Hebrides, two mummified skeletons were deposited beneath a Bronze Age roundhouse. These were composed of different persons showing a complex merging of ancestors and house.

Hill forts were seen to have their own spirit and to be inspirited by past owners. In medieval Welsh literature, we find references to Caer Gwenddolau (‘the Fort of Gwenddolau’) and Staffell Cynddylan (‘The Hall of Cynddylan’) about whose fall exists a lament describing it as ‘forlorn,’ ‘desolate’, ‘dark’.

Roman House Spirits

Unfortunately, the Britons didn’t write anything down, so we don’t know much about their specific beliefs about house spirits or their names. However, we do know about the traditions brought by the Romans. 

It’s worth noting here that Roman building traditions differed to the British. When they came here, they built houses with multiple rooms, including kitchens, dining rooms, baths and individual bedrooms. 

Examples here in Lancashire include the fort at Kirkham and the Roman town at Ribchester known as Bremetennacum, ‘the Fortress by the Roaring Ford’, due to its proximity to the River Ribble. There was also a Roman industrial site at Walton-le-Dale, continuing the earlier blade industry.

The Romans honoured a variety of house spirits. The Lares domesticus were house spirits and might formerly have been spirits of the land. The Lares familiaris were spirits of the family – family ancestors. The penates were spirits of the pantries and kitchen and often had altars in the cupboards and were seen to look after the food and were gifted with food offerings at mealtimes. The male head of the household had a genius who helped him to govern the home and the female a guiding spirit called a Juno. Each family also had their own patron God or Goddess and worshipped the local deities.

Roman Lararium (a shrine to the Lares), Wikipedia Commons

Whereas we see examples of Romans taking over British shrines and equating British and Roman deities via interpretatio Romana (for example, Belisama, Goddess of the Ribble, was equated with Minerva at Ribchester), we do not find any examples of British and Roman house spirits being equated. This is likely because household shrines were small and made of organic materials and did not leave any traces in the archaeological records. 

It’s likely that the Britons also honoured both spirits of the house and family and possibly had guiding spirits for their male and female lineages. 

‘Unclean Spirits’

With the coming of Christianity and its establishment as the mainstream religion in Britain following the conversion of Constantine in 312CE and the Augustinian Mission in 597CE, interaction with spirits became frowned upon. Pre-Christian sacred sites were replaced with Christian ones. People were told to pray not to the deities of the land but to the Christian God. ‘Unclean spirits’ were routinely banished by the Christian priesthood.

Still, amongst rural people, the older traditions lived on. These were recorded in later folklore. In his Journey Through Wales, in 1188, Gerald of Wales records the existence of disruptive house spirits in Pembroke. He refers to them as ‘unclean spirits’ who ‘have been in close communication with human beings. They are not visible, but their presence is felt all the same… They have been in the habit of manifesting them-selves, throwing refuse all over the place, more keen perhaps to be a nuisance than to do any real harm.’

In William Not’s house, ‘They were a cause of annoyance to both host and guests alike, ripping up their clothes of linen, and their woollen ones, too, and even cutting holes in them. No matter what precautions were taken, there seemed to be no way of protecting these garments, not even if the doors were kept bolted and barred.’ 

In Stephen Wiet’s house, the spirit argued with humans. ‘When they protested, and this they would often do in sport, he would upbraid them in public for every nasty little act which they had committed from the day of their birth onwards, things which they did not like to hear discussed.’

Gerald notes that Christian priests failed to banish these spirits with holy water. 

Bwbachan

In British Goblins (1880), Wirt Sikes records several stories of the Welsh Bwbachan, ‘house fairies’. He provides the following description: ‘The Bwbach, or Boobach, is the good-natured goblin which does good turns for the tidy Welsh maid who wins its favour by a certain course of behaviour recommended by long tradition. The maid having swept the kitchen, makes a good fire the last thing at night, and having put the churn, filled with cream, on the whitened hearth, with a basin of fresh cream for the Bwbach on the hob, goes to bed to await the event. In the morning she finds (if she is in luck) that the Bwbach has emptied the basin of cream, and plied the churn-dasher so well that the maid has but to give a thump or two to bring the butter in a great lump. Like the Ellyll which it so much resembles, the Bwbach does not approve of dissenters and their ways, and especially strong is its aversion to total abstainers.’

He records a number of tales of how these spirits have come to help on farms. In Glamorganshire, Rowli Pugh was down on his luck. An ellyll ‘elf or fairy’ offered to help on the condition that he bid his ‘good wife leave the candle burning when she goes to bed, and say no more about it.’ Every night, ‘his wife set the candle out, swept the hearth, and went to bed; and every night the fairies would come and do her baking and brewing, her washing and mending, sometimes even furnishing their own tools and materials.’ ‘Everything prospered’. Then, ‘one night… she took a peep at the fair family… through a crack in the door. There they were, a jolly company of ellyllon, working away like mad, and laughing and dancing as madly as they worked. Catti was so amused that in spite of herself she fell to laughing too; and at sound of her voice the ellyllon scattered like mist before the wind, leaving the room empty. They never came back any more; but the farmer was now prosperous, and his bad luck never returned to plague him.’

In a story that shares resemblances with others from across Britain, at Hendrefawr farm, in Merionethshire, a farmer is tormented by a Bwbach who he wishes would ‘flit’. To get rid of the troublesome spirit, he feigns leaving the farm, putting his household goods on a cart and leaving for England. When he reaches a ford called Rhyd-y-Fen, a neighbour asks if he is leaving for good. From the churn on the cart comes a shrill cry, ‘Yes, yes, we are flitting from Hendrefawr to Eingl-dud, where we’ve got a new home.’ The farmer, realising his plan has failed, takes the Bwbach back to their home. 

This shows that once a house spirit has formed an attachment with a certain family, they will often follow the family, rather than remaining with the new owners.

Brownies

Brownie, by Alice Woodward, Wikipedia Commons

In Scotland and some areas of northern England and the midlands, house spirits are referred to as brownies. In his Fairy Mythology, (1828), Thomas Keightley describes a ‘Brownie’ as ‘a personage of small stature, wrinkled visage, covered with short curly brown hair, and wearing a brown mantle and hood. His residence is the hollow of the old tree, a ruined castle, or the abode of man, He is attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside, even for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house… He is, to a certain degree, disinterested; like many great personages, he is shocked at anything approaching to the name of a bribe or douceur, yet, like them, allows his scruples to be overcome if the thing be done in a genteel, delicate, and secret way. Thus, offer Brownie a piece of bread, a cup of drink, or a new coat and hood, and he flouted at it, and perhaps, in his huff, quitted the place for ever; but leave a nice bowl of cream, and some fresh honeycomb, in a snug private corner, and they soon disappeared, though Brownie, it was to be supposed, never knew anything of them.’

Here, we find some overlap with other British house spirits with the helping with household chores and enjoyment of offerings of dairy products. We also find the additional rule against giving other forms of payment, particularly clothing.

In other tales, Brownies given clothing take offence and depart. ‘A new mantle and a new hood; / Poor Brownie! ye ‘ll ne’er do mair gude!’ ‘Gie Brownie coat, gie Brownie sark, / Ye ‘se get nae mair o’ Brownie’s wark!’ A Brownie given bread and milk left taking ‘the luck’ of the house with him.

House Boggarts

Here, in Lancashire, house spirits often appear as troublesome boggarts. These spirits traditionally dwell in boggart holes and come to take up residence in farms and cause trouble, possibly because they have taken a disliking to the draining of their land by the ditches that drain the fields. 

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.’

A 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.

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 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.’

Here we find again the themes of ‘flitting’ and the rule against giving clothes.

Approaching House Spirits

The archaeological and literary evidence for house spirits suggests they originated as land spirits and became incorporated into the house and then became attached to certain families, who they would often follow. They exercise a certain amount of freedom, choosing who they serve, setting conditions, and causing trouble or departing if they are not met. Some are satisfied by any offering of food or drink whilst others demand dairy. Giving them money or clothes appears to be a universal no-no. 

Assessing whether your house has a house spirit and whether it is happy might be evidenced by the feel and condition of the house. Is the house clean and airy? Do you feel like you’re helped with the chores? Does anything get on its own? Or are things always breaking or being misplaced? Is everything always a mess? Do you find you’re plagued by mould and damp?

For those who feel comfortable it is a good idea to try to commune with the house spirit. This can be done in meditation or light trance. A candle can be lit and an offering of food or drink (dairy products if it feels right) can be made. 

Be polite and respectful. Don’t immediately ask for help or favours. Check in with the spirit about who they are, how long they’ve been there, what they need. Depending on your own and the spirit’s ways of speaking and listening, you might see and hear the spirit directly with your inner sense or might receive feelings, an inner knowing, or some physical sign like a creak or blast of wind. Be aware that such spirits have likely not been talked to for a long time and might be feeling hurt and resentful about their neglect. 

Afterwards, if drawn to, you might set aside a space for the spirit with a representation, a candle, or a place for offerings, as you both see fit. 

The spirit can then be consulted on questions relating to the house such as cleaning, decorating and renovation and even asked for advice on family affairs.

When considering moving house you might ask if the spirit wants to stay or leave. And… if you don’t… you might find that it comes flitting with you!

SOURCES

Barrowclough, D. Prehistoric Lancashire, (The History Press, 2011)
Crosby, A. The Lancashire Dictionary, (Smith Settle, 2000)
Keightley, T., The Fairy Mythology, (1828), https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/tfm/tfm130.htm
Harland, J. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folklore, (1867), Project Guntenburg Ebook (2012), https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/41148/pg41148-images.html
Lamb, J. ‘Lancashire’s Prehistoric Past’, Linda Sever (ed), Lancashire’s Sacred Landscape, (2010, History Press)
Lecouteux, C. The Tradition of Household Spirits, (Inner Traditions, 2013)
Sikes, W. British Goblins, (1880), Project Gutenburg Ebook, (2010), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34704/34704-h/34704-h.htm
Turner-Bishop, A, ‘Fairy and Boggart Sites in Lancashire,’ Sever, L. (ed), Lancashire’s Sacred Landscape, (The History Press, 2010)
https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/lunt-meadows-mesolithic-settlement/
https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2024/research/hunter-gatherers-orderly-home/

The Sanctuary is a Place not a Product

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“The sanctuary is a place not a product,” says Vindos.

That’s easy for Him to say when He’s the King of Annwn. From the heights of His golden throne. When He’s got all the treasures of Annwn arrayed around Him. Heaps of golden coins. Plates. Cups. A horn of ever-flowing mead. A cauldron that feeds a kingdom of fair folk and all the dead who ever walked there. 

He who has no fear of hunger. He who has no fear of thirst. He whose four-cornered fortress belongs to Him, is part of Him, requires no mortgage nor rent. 

And it’s not as if I live in poverty. By the generosity of my parents, I have a roof over my head, enough to eat, a lovely garden where I grow wildflowers. 

But I won’t be able to live here forever. The day will come when I must stand on my own two feet. When I must earn my living. My shamanic work is paying far better than my writing ever did but still is not enough to live off.

I take a business course. I learn some useful things. I get pulled back towards the drive to endless productivity, endless growth, attempt to go back on social media and laughably end up faced with multiple dead ends. I’m banned from Facebook and Instagram. I refuse to go on X. I try Linkedin. It’s corporate, soulless, the Land of the Vampires. Drained, I make my escape.

“The sanctuary is a place not a product,” says Vindos. He tells me to embody sanctuary and this is not possible when I’m selling my soul. “Start at home. Heal yourself, heal your relationships, only then will others come for healing.”

Start at home. Do the moneyless work. Heal my own wounds. My relationship with this place, with my family, with my ancestors. A lifetime’s work. 

“Do your soulwork,” he says. “It will pay, if not in this life, in the next or the next.”

“And as for the sanctuary?”

“Between you and I and those who come it will take shape.” 

The Seven S’s of the Sanctuary of Vindos

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During my time as a nun, I lived by vows and a rule within the Monastery of Annwn. When I left, although I gave up my monastic name, I took Six S’s of Sister Patience with me. They, plus, one more, now form the core values of the Sanctuary of Vindos. I see the guidance of Vindos / Gwyn in this as He was the patron of the monastery. 

The Seven S’s are: sanctuary, simplicity, sustainability, stability, solitude, silence and service. Here, I provide an outline of what they mean to me and how they contribute to the ethos of the sanctuary.

Sanctuary

The term ‘sanctuary’ derives from the Late Latin sanctuarium, ‘a sacred place, shrine,’ from the Latin sanctus ‘holy’. Originally, it referred to a container for holy things, then to a consecrated place for holy things (ie. a shrine, temple, or church). Later, it was extended to refer to a place of refuge for fugitives or debtors, then for any humans, then for protected habitats and animals.

The sanctuary is consecrated to Vindos, His family and my local land spirits. I tend a shrine for Him in my bedroom and I do my best to relate to the house (which I share with my elderly parents) with reverence when doing the housework. The garden is sacred to Creiddylad, Vindos / Gwyn’s consort. I work with Her and the tree and plant spirits when sowing, growing and re-wilding.

Although I cannot offer refuge due to my living conditions, I strive to embody sanctuary when I am holding space during my client work and in my relationships with family and friends.

Simplicity

Living simply, I have cut down to essentials to reduce clutter and distractions to make more time and space for relationship with the Gods and spirits. This includes food, clothes, books, ornaments, ritual objects, social engagements, group memberships and social media use.

Sustainability

Where possible, I buy locally grown and produced food and eco-friendly toiletries and cleaning and laundry products. Most of my sacred objects are either bought from local and ethical suppliers or found in my local area. I walk or cycle to most places within distance unless I need to transport heavy loads. It’s very rare that I travel by car outside of South Ribble and Preston.

Stability

Staying in the same place and paying attention to the seasonal changes year by year provides a depth of relationship with home, garden and locality.

Solitude

For many people, shamanism is mostly communal. Yet, there have always been practitioners who have dwelled alone on the edges. Hermits, cave dwellers, mad men and women. Time in solitude (from other people) helps me to rest, relax, reconnect with my Gods and spirits and receive inspiration. 

Silence

For me, silence is not so much the absence of sound but the absence of noise. The noisome content of much of the virtual world and my own inner chatter. Silence makes possible deep listening. To hear the words of the Other beyond the chunnering of the everyday and to access deeper insights.

Service

For fourteen years, I have served Vindos and the Gods and spirits of Britain through my writing and shamanic practices. More recently, I have begun to serve other people as a guide and healer. Serving someone greater has given me a sense of meaning and purpose in life that was lacking before. It has brought challenge, pain, joy, achievement and transformation.

The sanctuary and its Seven S’s provide the sacred ground which allows me to thrive and to help others to grow and transform on their journeys.

Awareness as the Greatest Offering

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On Reclaiming Awareness in Contemporary Shamanism and Polytheism

‘There is no greater offering than awareness.’ These words came from my patron God, Vindos, from an old, old form of Him who predates this name.

In prehistoric times, when Vindos was worshipped across Britain and Gaul, people lived in deep awareness of the natural world and its energetic and spiritual dimensions. This has been lost over the centuries. Indigenous cultures retain it and meditative traditions provide the key to reclaiming it within contemporary shamanic and polytheistic traditions in the West.

In this article, I cover how our awareness has been lost and look to the guidance of the yogic tradition and its Lord, Shiva, and to Vindos Himself, for how awareness might be reclaimed as the greatest offering. 

How We Lost Our Awareness

It’s my personal gnosis that Vindos, a God associated with hunting, wolves and dogs, has long been venerated by the hunter-gatherer peoples who populated Britain and Gaul and perhaps further afield. 

These people were animists, who saw the whole world as inspirited, from the animals, trees, plants and fungi, to hills, mountains, rocks, the smallest of stones. It was all viewed as alive and aware. Their culture was also shamanic. Through shamanic trance, they were able communicate with each individual awareness not only on the physical level but on energetic and spiritual levels and to access the universal awareness of the entire cosmos.

They were also polytheistic and worshipped numerous Gods and spirits. These included the Deities of natural features such as mountains and rivers and those who presided over functions such as birth, death, war and healing. These Gods were multifaceted and many performed multiple roles. 

The awareness of these people was expansive. For their survival, they depended on being deeply aware of the physical, energetic and spirit realms. 

The need for such finely honed awareness likely began to decline with the development of agriculture and more sedentary societies, who relied on the strength of their warriors and their defensive fortifications in order to live. 

With the coming of Christianity, awareness of the inspiritedness of the natural world and of its energetic and spiritual dimensions declined as people were told that nature and the body were sinful and that God and the saints resided in a heavenly realm only accessible to the righteous upon death.

Our scientific worldview eliminated the existence of spirits entirely, presenting the natural world as dead matter governed by scientific laws.

The industrial and technological revolutions have separated us further. For the most part, we experience nature and human relationships on screens.

We are suffering from myopia both theoretically and literally. This is epitomised by the 996 work culture wherein some people in the tech industry work 9am until 9pm six days a week – 72 hours in total at a screen. We lose hours, even days, scrolling news feeds and binge watching Netflix. 

The worst of the matter is that we’re not even aware of our unawareness.

Awareness in Shaivism and Yoga

In prehistoric times, the cost of a lack of awareness was death. I believe that practices designed to cultivate awareness in meditative traditions such as yoga likely date back to older animistic and shamanic cultures. These provide clues to the life-or-death matter of awareness and how it might be reclaimed.

In Insight into Reality: The Tantric Teachings of the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, Swami Nischalananda, speaks of how yoga and tantra originate from ‘Shaivism, the Path of Evoking Shiva, a system of mysticism rooted in indigenous shamanism’. My explication of Shaivism derives from his work.

In Shaivism, ultimate reality has two sides. One is Parama Shiva – ‘Supreme Consciousness’ or Universal Awareness. The other is Shakti – matter and energy. 

Ultimate Awareness is the ground of individual awareness – that which remains constant throughout our lives and gives us the ability to know our sensory perceptions, emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams. Individual awareness is not limited to humans – all other beings are aware too. As individual awarenesses we are Shiva and as embodied beings we are Shakti. 

Unfortunately, too often, we lose touch with our awareness. This is not solely a modern phenomenon (although modernity has made it worse). It has its basis in the nature of our mind and our predisposition to lose ourselves in our thoughts and emotions. This tends to happen when we are looking ahead to the future or back upon events of the past. Our abilities to plan and to learn from our mistakes are important survival mechanisms. However, when we lose ourselves in simulations of what might happen (which is rarely the case) or what has happened (which is often skewed) we are unaware of what is happening in the here-and-now and miss out on life itself. Awareness is only possible in the present moment. 

The meditative techniques found in yoga and other traditions train us to become aware of what is happening presently by offering methods of stilling our thoughts and learning to witness them rather than being lost in them.

In Shaivism, when we, as embodied beings, realise our individual awareness, we partake in the unison of Shakti (matter and energy) with Shiva (Ultimate Awareness). The marriage of these Deities takes place through and within us.

The practice of awareness might thus be seen as the greatest of offerings.

Likenesses Between Shiva and Shakti and Vindos and Kraideti

Yoga and Brythonic polytheism have shared roots as Indo-European traditions. Both my research and personal gnosis suggest that Shiva and Vindos and their consorts, Shakti and Kradeti, shared similar roles. 

There are notable likenesses between Shiva on the Pashupati Seal and Vindos on the Gundestrup Cauldron. The Pashupati Seal, from the Indus Valley, dates to 2200 BCE. It depicts Shiva horned and surrounded by animals. The Gundestrup Cauldron was found in the Rævemose bog in Denmark and is dated between 150 BCE and 100 CE. On one of the panels is a horned figure with animals surrounding Him. He has been identified as Cernunnos, ‘Horned’, which may be another title of Vindos. Later known as Gwyn ap Nudd, He appears as a ‘bull of battle’ in a medieval Welsh poem called ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’. Shiva and Vindos share associations with bulls, serpents and destruction. 

Shiva is well known for His third eye and Vindos appears to me with a jewel in His forehead which grants the capacity of Clear Sight. Near me, in Furness, a bronze head was found with a hole for a jewel in its forehead. It resembles a bronze head of Bhairava (a fierce form of Shiva) from Nepal.

The consort of Vindos, Kraideti (1), later known as Creiddylad, shares similar qualities to Shakti through her associations with sovereignty and fertility in a medieval Welsh text called Culhwch and Olwen wherein Gwyn and His rival, Gwythyr, do battle every May Day for her hand in marriage. 

It might, therefore, be suggested that Vindos can be seen as Ultimate Awareness and Kraideti as primal matter and energy within Brythonic polytheism. As embodied beings, we are Kraideti, and as awareness we are Vindos. Our awareness can be the greatest of offerings to these Deities.

The Practice of Awareness as an Offering

Since I began practicing yoga, the core of my path has been ‘being present for Vindos’. It’s only recently that I have come to associate this, on a deeper level, with awareness and with uniting with Him as the Ultimate Awareness.

This is something I incorporate into my yoga practice. When I am practicing yoga – asana ‘body postures’, pranayama ‘breathwork’ and meditation – I do so with the intention of cultivating awareness and entering deeper unison with Him.

Yoga, or any form of mindful movement, breathwork, and meditation can easily be built into a shamanic or polytheistic practice. Moving and intentional breathing help to calm and slow the mind and emotions in preparation for meditation. In meditation, both the mind and the body become still and we achieve deeper states of awareness. 

There are many types of meditation that we can choose from. These include body awareness, breath awareness, sensory awareness, witnessing thoughts and emotions, bringing awareness to our energy body (in yoga the pancha kosha ‘five sheaths’ and the chakras) and visualisations of Gods and Goddesses.

Drawing on karma yoga, ‘the yoga of action’, and Bhakti yoga, ‘the yoga of the heart’, we can make awareness an offering during our daily activities. When I am walking, gardening, or doing housework, I strive to be aware of what I am doing in the present moment, what’s happening in my body, and of the myriad individual awareness with whom I am interacting. Where appropriate, I attune myself not only to the physical but the energetic and spiritual dimensions. I practice this as an offering to Vindos and Kradeti and to all the beings with whom I have the privilege of sharing this earth with.

For me, the greatest challenge is being aware in situations when I’d rather not be present – such as when the roofers are banging on our roof, I’m getting to the last rep in the gym, or I’m having an argument with my dad. It’s particularly difficult when I’m struggling with anxiety about surviving in a world where my gifts as a shamanic practitioner and author are tough to make a living from. It’s times like these that the practice is designed for.  

When I am aware, when I am the witness rather than caught up in my thoughts, fears and desires, I can see more clearly. I am no longer controlled by my emotions. I can recognise my habitual behaviours, begin to understand them, to release them, to make positive changes. 

When I am united with Vindos, His Clear Light (2) grants me Clear Sight and I am able to make choices and judgements from a greater perspective.

I recognise that not all who practice shamanism or polytheism will relate to these conceptions of Shiva and Vindos as Ultimate Awareness and Shakti and Kraideti as primal matter and energy. However, it might be possible to find Gods and Goddesses who do. If not, awareness can be an offering to the beings one is aware of, to Mother Earth, to whatever one holds sacred. 

The practice of awareness frees us from subjection to our thoughts and emotions and to the thieves of awareness who are rampant in our world. In each moment of each day, we have the capacity to make the greatest offering.

Let me be aware in every moment
for You Great Vindos.

Let my life
be an offering to You.

(1) I reconstructed this name from the medieval Welsh name Creiddylad. Craidd, in Welsh, means ‘core’ or ‘heart’ as does kerd or *ḱr̥d in Proto-Indo-European. The ending is simply fashioned to sound feminine and poetic.
(2) Vindos means ‘White, Blessed, Holy’. Vindonnus means ‘Clear Light’. He cured eye ailments and, as Gwyn, He removed the Evil Eye. 

Between Texto and Gloss

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I. The Glosa

As an awenydd and polytheist writing and sharing poetry is an essential part of my path. Of all the poetic forms I have experimented with, including English, Welsh, Irish, French, and Italian metres, I have found the Spanish glosa the most conducive to religious practice.

The glosa was invented by the Spanish court poets during the Golden Age. It takes the form of four lines of text (texto) from an existing poet and four ten line stanzas of commentary (gloss) written by the glosser with the final line taken consecutively from the quatrain. The conventional rhyme scheme is ABBAACCDDC.

This versatile form was popular in Parisian literary salons during the reign of Louis XVI, in Germany in the Romantic period, and in Latin America throughout the struggles for independence. It was introduced into the English language comparatively recently by the Canadian poet P. K. Page in 1994.

Hologram by P.K.Page

In Hologram, Page used a series of glossae to pay homage to other poets. Her use of a rhyme scheme where the sixth and ninth lines rhyme with the borrowed tenth, and italicisation of the text and its repetitions, has set the form for poetry in English.

Page’s work prepared the ground for Charlotte Hussey, another Canadian poet, who teaches Old Irish and Arthurian literature and studied Celtic Shamanism with Tom Cowan. Her collection of glossae, Glossing the Spoils (2012), glosses the ‘earliest Western European texts’ to ‘mend a break in tradition and time’, thereby reweaving the ancient myths into modernity.

Glossing the Spoils by Charlotte Hussey

In these glossae Hussey opens a visionary space between texto and gloss where it is possible for conversations with mythic personages and experiences of the transformative qualities of ‘the spoils’ to take place. In ‘Lake of the Cauldron’ she glosses lines from ‘Branwen Daughter of Llyr’. After watching a ‘huge man with yellow-red hair’ emerging ‘from the lake with the cauldron on his back’ the narrator is pushed ‘into the boil’ by a woman with ‘dreadlocks’, ‘long breasts’, and ‘a sweaty belly’ who ‘hacks / shoulder blades, buttocks apart, / scrapes off chunks of flesh / bones sinking then surging to the rim’. The ‘great monstrous man’ from the text watches her dismemberment ‘with an evil thieving look about him’.

Many of the poems reveal the subliminal influence of these near-forgotten myths on our time. ‘Trolls’ is based on lines spoken by the Loathly Lady in Parzival. It ends with ‘The knight, lifting his fluted, iron / visor with its narrow sights’ to ‘stare out’ for ‘a crusading convoy / to join, another holocaust to start, / or a melancholic witch to burn’. Glossing Perlesvaus, Hussey draws parallels between the animistic qualities of the ghastly black shield of the knight’s aggressor with its ‘dragon’s head throwing out / fire and flame with a terrible force’ and the atom bomb – a weapon of destruction she notes cannot be contained or exorcised (1).

I read Glossing the Spoils for the first time in 2012. Discovering the glosa and Hussey’s use of it as a gateway to visionary experience has had a profound effect on my spiritual path and my approach to the medieval Welsh texts that are central to my tradition as an awenydd.

II. The Bull of Conflict

I wrote my first glosa in September that year after an initiatory encounter with Gwyn ap Nudd, a god of the dead and ruler of Annwn, the Brythonic Otherworld. Desiring to honour and thank him for pulling me back from the brink of an abyss and to learn more about him, I decided to gloss four lines from ‘The Dialogue of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’ (2).

This poem, from The Black Book of Carmarthen (1350) documents a conversation that takes place in the misty hinterland between the worlds following Gwyddno’s death. Gwyn appears as a ‘bull of conflict’ – a divine warrior and psychopomp – to guide Gwyddno back to Annwn. Set during the fall of northern Britain to the Anglo-Saxons it contains some of the most powerful and poignant lines in Western European literature, ending with Gwyn’s lament:

I was there when the warriors of Britain were slain
From the east to the north;
I live on; they are in the grave.

I was there when the warriors of Britain were slain
From the east to the south;
I live on; they are dead.

Choosing four lines I started by meditating on the first and was taken back to walking the streets of Preston that afternoon in the aftermath of the Preston Guild Festival (4) and the pervading melancholy. Drifting amongst shadow-people I found myself in the Harris Museum surrounded by the spoils of war and face-to-face with Gwyn stepping from the poem.

The Harris

The Harris Museum

In this familiar yet unfamiliar space, between texto and gloss, between poet and god a conversation took place that would change my life. Gwyn’s imperative of ‘enchanting the shadowlands’ gave me a purpose, became the title of my first book, and has guided my path ever since.

The Bull of Conflict

I come from battle and conflict
With a shield in my hand;
Broken is the helmet
By the pushing of spears.
‘The Dialogue of Gwyddno Garanhir and Gwyn ap Nudd’

On an empty day automata drift,
Wending suit shapes through the mist.
Touchless I fade like a symbol unhitched.
The spoils of war quake in the museum.
Piercing the grey wearing horns of a bull
A white warrior blackened and bloodied
Disguises his limp in an infinite gloom,
On his spear leans, softly says:
“My comrades are slain and yet I live,
I come from battle and conflict.”

His dire avowal brings howling winds,
Chill clutch at my shoulders their lament dins
Of hero light fading from mortal skin.
In glass cabinets swords clash savage,
Raging figures thrash on ragged pages
Chanting the desolate past of ravaged war bands.
With war-torn wisdom, sombrely he whispers:
“These gathered memories to you I give.
Gone are the days I crossed this land
With a shield in my hand.”

His barrage of sadness barks in my mind
Like hapless hounds on a winter’s night.
Fierce their madness, dark their plight,
For the perishing souls they collect,
The past’s great spirit protect.
Like thundering wind obligation overwhelms me.
The blade of futility threatens to unfasten me.
“How do I cherish and defend these memories
When like the kingdoms of Rheged and Elmet
Broken is the helmet?”

I ask the Bull of Conflict.
His tears run bright with the passing of time,
Chariots wheeling in multihued light,
Victims reflected in star lit skies.
He says: “this shadow land needs enchantment
To banish the blight of despair.
Nurture the memories with magic
And they’ll sing a blessed new year.
Do not be pressed into fear
By the pushing of spears.”

This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience which led me to devote myself to Gwyn as my patron god. Nothing quite like it has happened since and I have written many glosa, good and bad.

III. The Spoils

Hussey’s title, Glossing the Spoils, works on many levels. By ‘the spoils’ it refers to the spoils of war, the spoils of the distant past gathered in museums, and the spoils of our literary heritage. It also subtly alludes to ‘The Spoils of Annwn’, from The Book of Taliesin (14th C). Taliesin, the narrator, accompanies Arthur and his men on a raid on Annwn to plunder its treasures, including the cauldron of Pen Annwn, ‘Head of the Otherworld’ (Gwyn). There a catastrophic battle takes place, which Gwyn later describes to Gwyddno:

And to my sorrow
I saw battle at Caer Fanddwy.

At Caer Fanddwy I saw a host
Shields shattered, spears broken,
Violence inflicted by the honoured and fair.

Arthur assaults ‘the honoured and fair’: the fair folk ruled by Gwyn, who are forced to retaliate. In a moment suggestive of both pillage and rape Lleog thrusts his ‘flashing sword’ into the cauldron and it is ‘left behind in Lleminog’s hand’. Arthur escapes from Annwn with the spoils, slamming ‘Hell’s Gate’ shut. Only seven of three ship-loads of his men survive the conflict.

Analogously most of the spoils in our museums have been plundered violently from other lands. The literary heritage of Western Europe is largely based on a history of the victors, mythic and real, crusading, conquering, colonising. As Walter Benjamin says: ‘There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’

These thoughts were on my mind when I embarked on a quest to explore the contemporary relevance of the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain (3). They include the cauldron (which is kept by Dyrnwch the Giant), the Hamper of Gwyddno Garanhir, vessels for eating and drinking, weapons, items of clothing, and vehicles for transport. It is likely most of them were won or stolen from Annwn by the northern British warlords who own them.

Like the spoils evoked by Hussey the treasures are animate, inspirited, alive, expressing their agency through magical qualities. The cauldron will only brew meat for the brave. Brân’s horn provides any drink one wishes. Morgan’s chariot takes a traveller wherever they wish quickly. Rhydderch’s sword bursts into flames in the hand of any man who is well-born.

The Gwyddbwyll Gwenddolau, ‘Chessboard of Gwenddolau’ (4), is made of gold and has silver gwerin, ‘men’, who play by themselves. The men represent Gwenddolau’s army and his enemy and serve a divinatory function – the outcome of the game predicts the result of real battles.

Writing a glosa based on four lines about the chessboard took me on a visionary journey to Gwenddolau’s seat of rule in Arfderydd (modern day Arthuret in Scotland) and gave me a glimpse of its magic outliving Gwenddolau to predict the outcomes of upcoming wars.

View from Liddel Strength

Caer Gwenddolau

The Chessboard of Gwenddolau

The Chessboard of Gwenddolau…
if the pieces are set,
they play by themselves.
The board is gold and the men silver (5).
The Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain

I leave my world behind at Carwinley Burn
to follow the feral steps of a girl,
red-haired, torqued, coloured-trousered,
a wild thing with fox’s teeth at her neck
down a fox-hole to the grave
of Gwenddolau.
Beside his bull-horned corpse
stands a table and upon it a golden board.
Round its edges silver dead men lie.
“The Chessboard of Gwenddolau

has lain here as long as my father,”
she says. “It predicts the outcome of battles.
It played before Arfderydd, Catraeth,
when Britain’s air force clashed
with the Luftwaffe,
on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. As yet
it has never mispredicted an event.
At times of peace it sleeps.
At times of threat
if the pieces are set

they play out every move in the coming conflict.”
As she speaks the eyes of a warrior
jerk open and his spasmodic
hand grips his spear.
A warhorse rises from a tangle of stirrups and mane.
A bishop shakes off his robes and delves
for fireballs and mist in his pockets.
Caers rebuild their ramparts.
Returning to health
they play by themselves

speechless as automata resuming their positions.
Warriors move forward two squares
spearing on the diagonal.
Warhorses leap
over the mounting carnage,
on a fiery blast fall into splinters.
A king drags his queen into a caer.
As the bishops prepare the final spell
I am shaken by a premonitory shiver.
The board is gold and the men silver.

For me this glosa reveals the sad fact that since the war-torn period when Gwenddolau lived and now there has barely been a time when the warriors of Britain have not been at war. The uncanny battles fought between the gwerin, beneath the earth, in Annwn, represent our militant history.

As modern glossers we are faced with a past of ravaging, wounding, spoiling: a world spoilt by Arthurian warlords. How, between texto and gloss, can we enchant its shadows, heal its wounds?

Footnotes

(1) In ‘Glossing Faery’
(2) At this point I was working with William Skene’s 1868 translation. I recommend the 2015 translation by Greg Hill. The title and glossed lines are from Skene, but the other two are from Hill.
(3) The Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain appear in several medieval Welsh manuscripts. The earliest is the autograph of Gwilym Tew in Peniarth Manuscript 51 (1460).
(4) Gwyddbwyll means ‘wood-sense’. Its translation as ‘Chessboard’ isn’t entirely correct because chess originated in the Arab world and was imported to Britain by the Normans in the 11th century.
(5) Here I took the poetic liberty of changing the form and tense of the original quote.

Sources

Charlotte Hussey, Glossing the Spoils, (Awen Publications, 2012)
Charlotte Hussey, ‘Glossing Faery’, Awen ac Awenydd
Greg Hill, ‘The Conversation Between Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’, Awen ac Awenydd,
Keith Ellis, ‘The Glosa: A Genre to be Noticed for its Constructive Values’, Comparative Literature and World Literature, Vol 1. No. 2 (2016)
Marged Haycock, Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, (CMCS, 2007)
P. K. Page, Hologram, (Brick Books, 1995)
Walter Benjamin, ‘On the Concept of History‘, Marxists.org
William Skene, ‘The Dialogue of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’, The Four Books of Ancient Wales, (Forgotten Books, 2007)

How to Pray

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After Rilke’s First Duino Elegy

‘In Annwn below the earth…
There is one who knows
what sadness
is better than joy’
The Hostile Confederacy

Who, if I cried out, would hear me
in the depths of Annwn? Its spirits
have wings yet are not Rilke’s angels.
I am all alone in my dark sobbing.
My hands are clasped. How to pray
when told prayer has little worth?
How to fling out this heartfelt cry
on the unclipped wings of a bird,
throughout Prydain make it heard
and in Annwn below the earth?

Voices, voices, whisper in my ears.
I, unsaintly, do not know how to hear.
How to listen as saints have heard
to voices of spirits derided as devils,
denied, defied on summits of hills,
chthonic shrines now unhallowed?
How to respond to spirits of Annwn
cast out with their unangelic terror?
Deep below, so very deep below
there is one who knows.

Oh what does he know?
Speak, please, not of sorrow,
the hardness of being dead and those
who move between the dead and living,
who died violently and could not rest,
wandered lost to their madness
until he called them home.
Speak instead of the glow
of his mead hall, the gladness
of his poetry, not what sadness

lies within his soul of many souls.
It’s said he contains the fury of the devils
of Annwn within him – an eternal current
sweeping through all the ages,
both worlds. Swept along
only knowing him when we die,
we have lost so much and are so lost.
How to pray to him in his immensity?
Fling out my cry knowing his reply
will be better than joy?seagull-flying-3-public-domain-photos

The Defwy – A Brythonic River of the Dead

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In the sixth verse of ‘The Spoils of Annwn’ Taliesin berates ‘pathetic men’ (monks) for their lack of knowledge of the answers to riddles which in his day must have been well known. He says they do not know ‘who made the one who didn’t go to the meadows of Defwy’.

The meadows of Defwy are clearly in Annwn. Marged Haycock notes it has been suggested Defwy is a river-name from def-/dyf- ‘black’ ‘as in Dyfi’ and may be ‘a river between this world and the next’. Taliesin also sings of this river in a list of fine things in ‘The Spoils of Taliesin’: ‘Fine it is on the banks of the Dyfwy / when the waters flow’.

Rivers dividing Thisworld and the Otherworld, the realms of the living and the dead, are found in many world cultures. In Greek mythology the Styx ‘Hatred’ divides Thisworld and Hades, the dead must cross the Acheron ‘Woe’ to reach their destination, and surrender their memories to the Lethe ‘forgetfulness’ to be reborn. There are another two rivers: Cocytus ‘Lamentation’ and Phlegyton ‘fire’. All originate from Oceanus ‘Ocean’. Each is a deity. Each flows through both worlds: the Styx is a stream in Arcadia, the Acheron and Cocytus flow through Thesprotia, the Lethe through Boetia, and the Phlegethon near to Avernus.

In Norse mythology eleven rivers called Elvigar ‘Ice Waves’ arise from Hvergelmir ‘Boiling Bubbling Spring’ in Niflheim ‘Mist-World’. Amongst them is Gjǫll, which flows past Hel’s Gate and separates the living from the dead. There are forty-two rivers in total. Some flow into the ‘fields of the gods’. Others ‘go among men’ before falling into Hel. Midgard, Thisworld, is encircled by an impassable ocean where Jörmungandr, the world-serpent, lives.

Unfortunately in Brythonic tradition we possess far less lore about the cartography of Annwn. Whether it was simply lost or actively erased by Christian scribes is impossible to know. Much of what we have is obscured by Taliesin’s riddling. In ‘The Hostile Confederacy’ he speaks of:

‘the connected river which flows (around the world)
I know its might,
I know how it ebbs,
I know how it flows,
I know how it courses,
I know how it retreats.
I know how many creatures
are under the sea’

It seems the Britons shared with the Greeks and the Norse a concept of a river/ocean encircling the world. To me this speaks of an intuitive knowledge of the oceanic currents of our ‘global conveyor belt’ which flow through the world’s oceans maintaining its ecosystems.

Another riddle suggests we once possessed knowledge of many rivers thisworldly and otherworldy:

‘how many winds, how many waters,
how many waters, how many winds,
how many coursing rivers,
how many rivers they are’

It’s my intuition that, like the Greek and Norse rivers, the rivers of Annwn flow through Thisworld and the Otherworld too. In ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’, Gwyn, a ruler of Annwn and gatherer of souls, says he is:

‘Hurrying to battles in Tawe and Nedd.

Not the Tawe here in this land
But the one far away in a distant land
Where the tide ebbs fiercely on the shore.’

The Tawe is a river in Thisworld that flows through ‘a distant land’ – Annwn – too. It seems likely the Defwy, which might be identified with the Dyfi, appears in both worlds.

Afon_Dyfi_-_geograph.org.uk_-_242012

Afon Dyfi – the Defwy here in this land?

It is notable that Gwyn speaks to Gwyddno of his ‘sorrow’ at seeing ‘battle at Caer Vandwy’, ‘Shields shattered, spears broken / Violence inflicted by the honoured and fair’. Caer Vandwy ‘The Fortress of God’s Peak’ is mentioned in the same verse as ‘the meadows of Defwy’ with the legendary Ych Brych ‘Brindled Ox’.

Gwyn is speaking of a devastating battle between his people ‘the honoured and fair’ (the dead) and Arthur and his men who Taliesin accompanied on their raid on Annwn to plunder its spoils, which included the Brindled Ox and cauldron of Pen Annwn ‘Head of the Otherworld’ (Gwyn).

Even the impervious Taliesin describes this part of the raid of a ‘sad journey’ and says ‘save seven none returned from Caer Vandwy’. Arthur set out with ‘three loads full of Prydwen’ (his ship).

It seems Gwyn is sorrowful because the dead, who should be free of sorrow, were forced to fight and die again and he had again to gather their souls – a task he performs at battles in both worlds.

On a journey to the Defwy with Gwyn I saw people approaching the river, some to kneel and pray, some to cry, some to pour into it great jugs of tears. He told me that the Defwy is the place where the dead discard their sorrowful memories so they can move on to the lands of joy.

He also said the living can come here to do the same, but discarding one’s sorrows is a dangerous process, a form of death, and that they can never be regained because they flow away into the ocean to be reborn in new shapes walking abroad in forms unrecognisable to us.

In ‘The Hostile Confederacy’ Taliesin says in Annwn ‘There is one that knows / what sadness is / better than joy’. I believe this is Gwyn, who knows too well the sorrow of the dead who leave their memories at the Defwy in order to travel onward into his joyful realm.

Taliesin is, of course, ‘the one who didn’t go to the meadows of Defwy’, the one who continues to evade death, who claims to know all, remember all, yet in spite of this feels little sorrow, little guilt, for the catastrophes that he has witnessed and played a role in.

Knowing neither sorrow nor death will this mysterious glib-tongued entity, who was created by the magician-gods from fruit, blossoms and flowers, earth and water, ever truly know life or joy?

 

Nodens and the Weather Shapers

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I. The Mural Crown

At Lydney overlooking the Severn stands a Romano-British temple dedicated to Nodens. From it was recovered a mural crown. It depicts him riding from the waves on a chariot pulled by four water-horses. Flanking him are wind-spirits and water-spirits.

Plate XIII Bathurst

 

I had used this image on my altar to Nodens for several months before thinking to pose the question of who these mysterious spirits are. Out walking in my locality in the voices of the winds I received the answers: ‘weather-shapers’ and ‘shapers of dream’.

My meditations have led me to the intuition that the spear-bearing wind spirit on the right is the piercing east wind. The spirit on the left with the spiralling rag is the west wind who brings both the warm moist air that keeps our climate temperature and storms and hurricanes.

Both water-spirits have the bodies of men, the frontlegs of horses, and the tails of serpents. The spirit on the right carries two pick axes and the spirit on the left a hammer and chisel. They are the shapers of the cloud formations that arise from evaporating waters approaching from the east (across the Continent and North Sea) and the west (the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea).

One of the translations of ‘Nodens’ is ‘the Cloud Maker’ from the Proto-Celtic stem *snoudo ‘mist, clouds’. He is later known as Nudd ‘Mist’. He and his spirits are the shapers of Britain’s weather.

II. The Cry of the West Wind

Whereas the east wind came across as quick-witted, clear-minded and bold, the west wind struck me as inconsistent and troubled, like a misunderstood youth: smiling, enthusiastic, and eager to please, but also moody, prone to fits of violence, brooding on some kind of trauma.

This reminded me of the words of Nimue Brown in her evocative essay ‘Watching for the winds’. Nimue lives ‘Where the Cotswolds meet the Severn / And the Severn seeks the sea’. She witnessed the tryst of the east and west winds last March on Swift’s Hill and noted their parting was ‘hesitant and regretful’ as if ‘they might not meet again’ or feared the circumstances of their next meeting. After the east wind departed the west wind remained, uneasy, not knowing what to do with himself, and shared ‘a warning, perhaps, or a cry for help.’

To interpret this cry I had to look beyond Britain to the direction from which the west wind blows: across the Irish Ocean (the domain of the sea-god Manawydan) to the Atlantic Ocean (associated with the sea-goddess Iwerydd and her consort the sea-god Llyr – Manawydan’s parents).

III. The North Atlantic Gyre

The warmth of the west wind is connected with the complex system of the North Atlantic Gyre, one of four gyres that form the ‘global conveyor belt’ of oceanic currents that determine the earth’s climate. It begins near the equator off the west coast of Africa where warm water driven by the easterly trade winds becomes the North Atlantic Current.

In the Gulf of Mexico it becomes the Gulf Stream. Joining the Antilles Current in the Straits of Florida it gains strength before the westerly anti-trade winds drive it toward Europe bringing 300,000,000 kWh/s of warm air – equivalent to the heat of a million nuclear power stations.

It then splits into the Irminger Current, which heads toward Greenland, and the North Atlantic Drift, which continues to Europe. The interactions of the west wind and the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift raise Britain’s temperatures 5 – 10 degrees Celsius higher than other continents at the same latitude and play a large role in shaping our mild, wet weather.

When these currents have lost their heat the cold water sinks (in the Denmark Strait it drops dramatically 11,500 feet as the world’s biggest waterfall) and returns as the Labrador Current beneath the Gulf Stream and the Canary Current past Africa.

Lines_of_sargassum_Sargasso_Sea - Copy_By Unknown - Ocean ExplorerNOAA, Public Domain, httpscommons.wikimedia.orgwindex.phpcurid1175629

In the centre of the gyre lies the calm deep blue Sargasso Sea, which is named after its unique sargassum seaweed. The bounding currents deposit the refuse they carry in its midst disturbingly creating the ever-growing North Atlantic Garbage Patch.

IV. The Re-Shaping of the Weather

It’s well known that anthropogenic global warming is having a drastic effect on our climate, which has been relatively stable since the last Ice Age. The rise in sea temperature has led to storms and hurricanes forming further north buffeting Britain’s coast and to more rain and flooding.

Some scientists claim that the melting of the ice caps will lead to the water around Greenland cooling and becoming less saline. Salinity is one of the factors that causes cold currents to sink. If their circulation stops this will shut down the North Atlantic Gyre issuing in a new Ice Age.

Even the gods and spirits are in trouble. The west wind, impelled to bring storms, his nature threatened by the cessation of the warm currents cries out for help, but his voice falls on deaf ears.

Centuries of Christianity and reliance on the predictions of science have cut us off from the weather-shapers. The arguments of our modern aeromancers, ‘weather-diviners’: the meteorologists and climate scientists who strike up a conversation of sorts with the gods through their instruments have not been listened to and now it’s too late to turn back the clock.

V. The Last Salmon? The Last Eel?

Atlantic_salmon_fish_Wikipedia_Commons

On the mural crown beneath Nodens and the weather-shapers is an enigmatic figure with a short tail hooking an enormous salmon. Salmon also appear on the mosaic in the centre of the temple.

The Severn was once renowned for its migrations of salmon leaping upriver to their spawning grounds. Atlantic salmon are now in decline due to the lethal combination of weirs preventing them returning and spawning, damage to habitat, industrial fishing, and global warming.

Changes in the currents of the North Atlantic Gyre due to rising sea temperatures have affected Atlantic salmon who use them to swim to and from their feeding grounds in Greenland.

European_eel__Anguilla_anguilla_clipart_web

Eels, who spend part of their life in the Severn, use the cold currents of the gyre to swim to their breeding grounds in the Sargasso sea. Their larvae utilise the warm currents.

Could the snake-like creature wrapped around Nodens’ arm be an eel?

Both these creatures, sacred to Nodens, whose lives have been intrinsically connected with the Severn for thousands of years, are currently in decline. New fish passes have been placed in the weirs. This might help, but the changes in the North Atlantic Gyre lie beyond human repair.

V. The Broken Crown

The image of Nodens and the weather-shapers provides us with a picture of the ‘beauty and integrity’ of Britain’s climate and the fecundity of its rivers during the Romano-British period.

If the mural crown was crafted again today its vision of wholeness would be broken by the agony of the west wind torn between two fates – stormbringer and bringer of a New Ice Age. The water-spirit in the west would be the crafter of ominous storm or snow-clouds. The salmon would be in distress, the eel wriggling nervously, both on the brink of disappearance. Nodens, ‘the Cloud-Maker’, would be a troubled god, riding far less victoriously on his chariot.

This crown was once worn by a priest of Nodens who had the task of interpreting pilgrims’ dreams. Who would wear it today? Who would interpret the dreams shaped by the beings shaping Britain’s weather – hurricanes of garbage, seas rising over coastal towns, salmon lost in sealanes, stranded elvers wrapped in sargassum? Who could bear the cries of distress?

SOURCES

David Righton, ‘Empirical observations of the spawning migration of European eels’, Science Advances, Vol 2, No. 10, (2016)
D. Freidland, ‘Oceanic changes in the Sargasso sea and declines in recruitment of the European eel’, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Volume 64, Issue 3, (2007)
J. Dadswell, ‘The North Atlantic subpolar gyre and the marine migration of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar: the ‘Merry-Go-Round’ hypothesis’, Journal of Fish Biology, 77, (2010)
Nimue Brown, ‘Watching for the winds’, A Beautiful Resistance, (Gods & Radicals, 2016)
Renee Cho, ‘Could Climate Change Shut Down The Gulf Stream?’, State of the Planet, (2016)
‘Nodens’, Wikipedia
‘Scheme to re-open Severn to fish wins almost £20m in funding’, The Guardian
‘The North Atlantic Gyre’, Eduspace,
‘The Gulf Stream Explained’, In a Nutshell