Tag: Brythonic Polytheism

IX. Your Doors

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Day Nine of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this ninth day
I consider Your doors.

How they are without number
yet You can name every one of them.

How I searched for Your doors
but could not find them
until I stopped
looking

and You
opened a door
and galloped through.

Since then I have known
all manner of doors in many places –
seen and unseen, in caves, springs, trees, walls,
holes in the sky, hell holes, gates guarded by fierce hounds

yet I have found the best of doors
is always an open heart.

VIII. Your Hound

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Day Eight of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this eighth day,
I consider Your hound
and find myself staring
into the jaws of death.

His mouth is wide open,
his throat a long corridor
to Your realm – the pass
of the dog’s mouth.

His name has been translated as ‘Death’s Door’.

In passing through it we practice death,
time after time until his jaws
close forever
and there is no return.

VII. Your Horse

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Day Seven of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this seventh day
I consider Your horse –
Carngrwn from battle throng
and wonder why You introduce him
before You introduce Yourself
when You gather the soul
of Gwyddno Garanhir.

Is he so much a part of You,
of Your identity and of Your destiny,
leading You away by the bridle to battles
in both Thisworld and the Otherworld
You must speak his name first?
Your horse before Yourself
Your role as Gatherer of Souls?

This horse You ride must be relentless
carrying You to battles everywhere at once.
Many his round-hooves cutting reeds, churning mud,
many his fetlocked legs, many his proud heads,
many his foaming mouths chomping the bit.

You must be many too gathering souls
from here, there, everywhere, no rest, no relent.
Your horse, Your destiny, Your love and Your lament
forever living on whilst the Warriors of Britain lie dead…

VI. Winter

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Day Six of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this sixth day
I consider winter.

How I wrote a story about
You winning the gift of ice from an ice dragon
and holding it in the palm of your hand as a snowflake,
yet it escaped You and grew to be a monster
bringing about an Ice Age.

This year people hung snowflakes
in the houses across the road.
Days later followed an Arctic Blast

reminding we who imagine winter of its harsh realities.

The snowflake is back in Your hand – innocent,
so completely perfect in its symmetry
but I will remember how it grew
to become a monster.

V. Your Battle

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Day five of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

This fifth day
I consider Your battle.

How Calan Mai seems far away
but already we’re both counting down
the moons, the weeks, the days.

How every year you face
fighting a battle you cannot win,
how every year you have shown up anyway
for the seasons must turn, the ford must be crossed,
from death new life won, flowers from pain.
I think with shame of the times
I have failed to show up.

There will be no more excuses this year. 

IV. Your Beloved

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Day Four of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

I come this fourth day
to consider Your beloved.

How, at the beginning of time
You shared a womb, hearts beating as one.

How You were torn apart, separated, found each other.
How She foresakes You for another lover every year.
How, with each separation, Your love grows stronger.

I think of how I was separated from You
and it took me thirty years to find You
although our paths crossed
and I did not recognise You in the books,
the land, my dreams, although I was searching…

I think of all the times we have been separated,
when I have been woman and/or man,
tree, plant, animal, stone, fungus and bacteria,

how my love for You has grown stronger
since the beginning of time,
the shattering of the cauldron,
since when we all shared a womb.

III. Your Hunt

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Day Three of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this third day
I consider Your hunt,
Your hunt for the souls of the dead
and of the living – for shapeshifting magical creatures.

How You are a hunter of soul itself appearing
like an epiphany in the soullessness
above streets and towerblocks
in the modern world,

breaking through
our isolation and depression,

awakening souls to other souls
and to the urge to hunt within us all.

How You awakened the huntress in me
and took me to places I would never have explored.

How you placed my soul in my hands changing
like a Rubix cube into countless animals
and departing as a snake.

You are a hunter of souls
and one day all souls will be gathered
in You, all the magic, all the magical creatures.

I will live until this day through many lives devoted to You.

II. Your Boyhood

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Day Two of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this second day
I consider Your boyhood,
all the boys you have been.

The boy in the serpent skins
born to transform a land
of bones and gore
into beauty,

Your return
as a wolf cub
or a boy in wolf skins
to Your awenyddion letting us
sit You on our knees,
tell You stories.

How when
You were a babe
You never cried but howled.

There was a little of Your boy in me
when I was growing up –
I always hated dolls, played
with Thundercats and Ninja Turtles
and wrote about characters from
Streetfigher in the back
of my exercise books at school.

There are parts of me that refuse to grow up
and keep returning to the playground
where I swing over the top
of the swings

that are no longer there on Middleforth Green

knowing You will catch me
and take me to
the stars.

I. Your Birth

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Day One of Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

On this first day
I consider Your birth,
how you were torn from the womb
and flung into the Abyss,
how You were born

falling

and wonder
if I was born falling too.
For it seems I have never stopped falling,
spiralling downward through life,
never up the career ladder,
deeper into the well,
into the Deep,
into You.

I think of how we have both
crawled from the Abyss
and reclaimed our kingdoms –
Yours built out of dragon bones
and mine from words.

I have built mine for You
and welcomed You in as You
have welcomed me into Yours
and each in the other’s we
have been reborn.

Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd

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For the last couple of years, as a Pagan/Polytheist alternative to the traditional ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ (26th December – 6th January) I have been practicing twelve days of devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd, my patron God, as a Brythonic Winter King.

This year, over the twelve days, I am going to be meditating on the following aspects of His identity and mythos and writing and sharing devotional poems addressed to Him.

I. Your Birth
II. Your Boyhood
III. Your Hunt
IV. Your Beloved
V. Your Battle
VI. Winter
VII. Your Horse
VIII. Your Hound
IX. Your Doors
X. Your Kingdom
XI. Your Cauldron
XII. Your Death

If you would like to join in with this or do something similar for Gwyn or your personal Gods please feel welcome and let me know how it goes.