Tag: Gwyn ap Nudd

Ancestor Work – Remembrance and Healing

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Introduction – Gwyn and Remembrance

I have been working with the ancestors since I discovered Paganism in 2010 and, more deeply, since meeting my patron God, Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd, in 2012 and dedicating myself to Him as His awenydd ‘person inspired’.

Gwyn is a Brythonic God of the dead who gathers the souls of the deceased to His realm, Annwn (‘Very Deep’, the Otherworld). Ancestry is significant in the Brythonic tradition. This is shown in the medieval Welsh poem, ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’, wherein one of the first questions that Gwyddno asks Gwyn is about His descent. The genealogies of the Men of the North trace the lineages of sixth century rulers, such as Gwyddno himself, through seven generations, to common ancestors. The role of the bard was to keep alive the name of his lord and his predecessors, to tell their stories, exult their victories, and deride their enemies. Their legacies were tightly intertwined with the land where they lived, as shown by the names Urien Rheged and Maelgwn Gwynedd.

Whilst this tradition focuses on male wealthy male warlords, it would have been likely that that, during this period, ordinary people also had their share of ancestral stories that were passed down from generation to generation. Their tales, too would have been inextricably bound up with their local landscape.

Ancestors of the Land

When my service to Gwyn began, I was called to honour the ancestors of my locality – my hometown of Penwortham and the nearby city of Preston. Through a combination of research and shamanic journeying with Gwyn, I recovered the lost memories of the ‘Dwellers in the Water Country’ from the prehistoric period through medieval times and industrialisation to now. 

Learning about the prominent landowners and lords of the manor, such as the Fleetwood and Rawstorne families and cotton lords such as John Watson and John Horrocks, was unavoidable. However, I was inspired to focus more on those who had been oppressed and those who dissented, such as the orphans who worked in Penwortham Mill and the Preston Cotton Martyrs.

Penwortham Mill (now demolished) where John Watson’s orphans worked.

For me, giving voice to their memories was a magical act that honoured their lives and resistance, making them heard, making them visible. It struck me that Nudd or Lludd, Gwyn’s father, was associated with the Luddites in the form of King Lud and was a rallying figure for their rebellion.

Ancestors of Spirit – Orddu

Orddu

I was also called to work with and honour spiritual ancestors. An example of this is how I won the favour of my spirit teacher, Orddu, ‘Very Black’, a ‘witch’, who lived in a cave in Pennant Gofid, ‘the Valley of Grief’, in an unnamed location in northern Britain. Orddu’s story is recorded in Culhwch and Olwen. Herein, Arthur kills her by cutting her in twain with his knife, then drains her blood and uses it to grease the beard of the giant, Ysbaddaden Bencawr. 

This gristly story appalled me. After reading it, I couldn’t stop hearing Orddu’s screams. I journeyed to the cave in Pennant Gofid and found her remains. I was made aware that she had become one of the spirits of Annwn, the restless dead, whose fury Gwyn holds back to prevent the destruction of the world. 

This led me to doing further journeywork to recover and tell the story of Orddu and her lineage, from her mother, Orwen, ‘Very White’, back to their foremother, Eira, ‘Snow’ who I was shown was the first of their lineage to inhabit the cave in Pennant Gofid after the Ice Age. Their stories formed a central thread in my books, The Broken Cauldron and Gatherer of Souls. They recorded journeys in which I laid Orddu’s bones to rest, recovered the last drop of her blood and returned it to Pennant Gofid. Through these acts of bardic and shamanic magic, I placated her spirit, and she left the spirits of Annwn and returned to her home to become a spirit teacher.

Ancestors of Blood

I have honoured my blood ancestors for a while, but it’s only recently that I’ve started working with them on a deeper level for healing purposes. I started out with putting their photographs in an ancestral space on my mantelpiece. When I went to Samhain rituals with a local Druid grove it was notable that my grandfather on my mum’s side, Henry Collison, always wanted to go. When I took his photo everybody admired him and said he was a handsome man. He liked that a lot – he was always a lady’s man. I sensed my grandmothers were less willing. When I considered taking my grandad on my dad’s side, his photo fell down the back of the fire, showing he did not want to go to a Druid rite.

Henry Collison – Grandad on mum’s side

I’ve long sensed that my grandad, Henry, remains quite close to me. He died of a heart attack whilst my mum was pregnant with me and I intuit our souls met. When I attended a local spiritualist church for the first time, in 2024, and one of the members got a Henry, being autistic and having better relationships with household objects than other humans, my mind went straight to our new extra-large Henry hoover with super suction. By the time I’d recalled that my grandad was called Henry, I’d lost the chance to receive a message and dared not speak up and admit my late realisation because of the hoover. The next morning, when I woke up, my hair dryer had been turned round the wrong way and the nozzle had been taken off. I sensed Henry laughing. I admitted to what had happened the next week. 

At this time, I had decided to start working with my family ancestors in earnest through the Way of the Buzzard ‘Ancestral Echoes’ course and with my shamanic mentor, Jayne Johnson, as part of my apprenticeship. 

The reason I had delayed working with them for so long was because I have a difficult relationship with my dad and feared it would place limitations on my how well I would be able to relate to my ancestors on his side. There have been a few blocks, but I’ve discovered most have been open to contact. 

I began with the basic step of finding an ancestor ally to guide this work. I then started doing some ancestral research but, unfortunately found that the Ancestry site which most researchers used was too confusing for my autistic brain. Luckily, my mum, who I introduced to shamanism a few years ago and is techy, fell in love with this area and got hooked on researching our ancestors. She’s managed to get back seven generations along most of our bloodlines and followed some back to as early as the fourteenth century. 

We’ve since been journeying to our ancestors, starting with my grandmothers and grandfathers, then moving on to my great grandparents and beyond, to check whether they’ve passed safely and any of them need healing and, with the help of our guides, carrying out any work that has been needed. This has, so far included basic healings, soul retrieval, and psychopomping.

I have also learnt that our ancestors not only live on in the otherworlds and in other lives in which they have been reincarnated, but within us. That means their healing can take place within us. For example, I feel that overcoming binge eating and not being overweight for too long and becoming diabetic (as happened to my grandmother on my mum’s side and my mum) has helped heal this tendency within our lineage. Likewise, my giving up of alcohol has helped heal this addictive trait on both sides. My grandmother on my dad’s side was an alcoholic and my great grandfather on my mum’s side died an alcoholic in a mental hospital when he was in his 30s. I believe some of my fears about becoming an alcoholic and going mad came from him. 

Client Work

Although I am not officially offering ancestral healing, as I’m only just starting out myself, I have done ancestral work with clients as and when it’s come up. I have provided clients with guidance on how to research ancestors of land, blood, and spirit, held space for clients to journey to ancestors, and journeyed with and for clients to gather ancestral information. I have also helped a client to meet and build a relationship with an ancestor ally.

Conclusion – Ancestral Healing as a Lifelong Process

My work with ancestral healing to date has shown that it isn’t a quick fix, but a lifelong process. The work is long as the ancestral lines, leading back generation by generation, doubling (by the formula 2n) each time. 

I feel I have a reasonable knowledge of working with and honouring land ancestors and a strong relationship with one lineage of spiritual ancestors, Orddu and her kindred, who as ‘witches of Annwn’ are fellow followers of Gwyn. 

My work with my family ancestors remains ongoing. I am slowly getting to know them better. As an autistic person, unlike my mum, I’m never going to have a cup of tea and make small talk with them as it isn’t in my nature, but I feel they appreciate that I have made the effort to reach out and learn their stories.

I am confident that I can provide basic guidance to clients on ancestral work when it comes up, but for more in-depth ancestral healing, I would suggest finding a shamanic practitioner who specialises in this subject.

The Art of Transforming Suffering

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

‘No mud, no lotus.’
~ Thich Nhat Hahn

If I was to define my core purpose in life at present, I would say that it is transforming suffering, within myself and within others, in service to my Gods. When I met my patron God, Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd, I was struggling with suicidal ideation. He showed me the Brythonic Otherworld. He made me His awenydd ‘person inspired’ – a poet and spirit worker in the Brythonic tradition. He gave me meaning and purpose. My vocation has given me the strength to begin to heal my own wounds and, more recently, to help others.

Gwyn is a ruler of Annwn (the Otherworld) and a guide of souls. In  a medieval Welsh poem (1), He speaks of gathering the souls of the battle dead. He and His people, the spirits of Annwn, later known as fairies, who also appear as the Wild Hunt, are depicted taking the souls of those who have died suddenly or traumatically to the Otherworld. 

I believe Gwyn is the one in Annwn, in the poem ‘The Hostile Confederacy’, attributed to Taliesin, who knows ‘what sadness / is better than joy’. He’s seen countless sorrows, carries the weight of the battle dead, has gathered the souls of countless suicides, murder victims, those who have died in tragic accidents. Thus, He has an investment in the transformation of suffering so that such untimely deaths are less likely to happen.

Gwyn, as the Fairy King, and the fairies, are also renowned for taking living people, often those who have suffered trauma, to Their realm, or for leading them to wild places, where they mostly recover and then return. (2)

Gwyn and His people are associated with trauma and its healing. This usually takes place in the Otherworld or the wild. This is also shown in a fragment from the fourteenth century Latin document, Speculum Christiani, which describes how common folk in Wales invoked Gwyn to cure the evil eye: ‘Some stupid people also go stupidly to the door holding fire and iron in the hands when someone has inflicted illness, and call to the King of the Benevolent Ones and his Queen, who are evil spirits, saying: ‘Gwyn ap Nudd who are far in the forests for the love of your mate allow us to come home.’ This passage suggests that those suffering from the evil eye are ‘away’ and that Gwyn, who has a distant abode in the wild, is able to bring them home. 

In medieval Welsh literature and later folklore, the Otherworld is depicted as a place of green hills and lush forests where there are sparkling rivers of wine and mead. The fortress of its king, with towers of glass, lit from within, is the centrepiece. Within are shining treasures, an endless feast of meat, fruit and mead.

Activities in the Otherworld include: hunting, feasting, dancing and carousing. Coming back from the land of no pain is difficult. Some people crumble to dust, some go insane, others pine away, those who survive become poets. The saying ‘Dead, mad, or a poet’ summarises the outcomes.

In the Brythonic tradition, poetry provides the means of processing trauma, transforming suffering and giving voice to experiences of ecstasis and healing. Medieval Welsh bards, such as Taliesin, Aneirin, Myrddin Wyllt, and Llywarch Hen all gave voice to personal and cultural trauma. In, and through them, their suffering and the suffering of their people was transformed into some of the most tragic, beautiful and potent works of poetry within our heritage.

I also found that poetry could help me to transform my suffering and that of the land and the ancestors but, alone, it was not enough. A bardic lifestyle of drinking too much and writing and performing poetry, unsurprisingly, proved to be detrimental to both my mental and physical health. At this point in time, I was very good at having ecstatic, often drunken experiences, and writing lots of poems, but not very good at coming home.

I began building a better relationship with my body and a meditation and mindfulness practice during the period I was a nun and began training as a shamanic practitioner. ‘Being present for Gwyn’ became one of my core practices.

Gwyn, through His likeness with Shiva, guided me to the yogic and Buddhist traditions. Over the last few months, I have been greatly inspired by the works of Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dharma teachings from Plum Village. Unlike other forms of Buddhism I have come across that preach negation of the body and the world to achieve enlightenment and view animals as inferior, the Plum Village tradition is embodied, trauma informed, and is based on inter-being in respectful relationship with the world and all beings. Joy and enlightenment can be found in the present moment at any place and time.

The Plum Village teachings centre on mindfulness, which involves the practice of coming home to our breath and to our bodies in the here-and-now. Mindfulness is the key to transforming suffering. In his book, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering, Thich Nhat Hahn outlines the Buddha’s teachings on suffering and its transformation in the Four Noble Truths.

The first Noble Truth is that there is suffering. Suffering exists within us on physical, mental and spiritual levels and outside us, in our families, friendship circles, within our ancestry, within our culture and within the environment. In the West, rather than being taught how to handle our suffering, we are sold countless forms of numbing and distraction. We drink it away, stuff it down, or lose ourselves in social media and other virtual entertainment.

In the place of distraction, Buddhism posits mindfulness – ‘the capacity to dwell in the present moment, to know what’s happening in the here and now… with mindfulness you can recognise the presence of suffering… it’s with that same energy that you can tenderly embrace the suffering.’ He speaks of taking care of our suffering as being like a mother holding her child.

The second Noble Truth is: ‘there is a course of action that generates suffering’. We are encouraged to look deeply at the roots of our suffering. These often lie in past trauma, ancestral trauma, and the fears and habits that result. They can also lie in our attachments to materialist ideals. Gaining insight into the causes of our suffering helps to prevent us from making the same mistakes.

The Third Noble Truth is: ‘suffering ceases (ie. there is happiness)’. The key to true happiness is that it isn’t an aim for the future, ‘I will be happy when this problem is sorted, I have my dream job, my health is better.’ Happiness lies in dwelling mindfully in the present moment and if we can’t do it now, this very minute, we won’t be able to do it when that future moment arrives either.

This was a big learning for me because I have always been future orientated and placed my happiness in the future at the expense of ignoring the now. ‘I will be happy when I have my shamanic practitioner qualification’. ‘I will be happy when I am earning a living from my vocation’. No. ‘If I can’t be happy with my life now I won’t be happy if I achieve these aims in the future.’

The Fourth Noble Truth is: ‘there is a course of action leading to the cessation of suffering (the arising of happiness’)’. The Noble Eightfold Path, provides a tried and tested framework for generating happiness. It consists of Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. Mindfulness and ethical living form its core.

For me, the art of transforming suffering lies in a combination of mindfulness and shamanic work. Being able to go to the Otherworld and come home. Then, once I am home, making art out of the insights I have been gifted with.

When I gave up being Sister Patience, it was a shock to the system coming back to Lorna Smithers and all her shit (which I thought I’d transcended). Yet the shit has made good compost and flowers have grown from it in the form of three books (3) written in the last few months as well as recent articles.

If you’re interested in the process of transforming your own suffering through shamanic work, creativity, and coming home, I’m currently providing shamanic guidance sessions for £15 an hour at a student rate (contact lornasmithers81@gmail.com). 

(1) The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir (HERE).
(2) For example, see Sir Orfeo and the mythos surrounding Myrrdin Wyllt (HERE).
(3) A memoir – The Edge of the Dark (HERE), a poetry collection – They Called Me Pig (soon to come), and an epic novel called The Lost Shrine of Nodens, which will be published through Sul Books in May 2017.

What is Brythonic Polytheism?

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This is an article for those who are new to this website explaining what Brythonic polytheism is and its significance for me as someone living in present-day Lancashire.

Brythonic polytheism is the worship of one more of the many Gods venerated by the Brythonic peoples who inhabited most of Britain from around 4000 BCE to around 800 CE. During the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the Brythonic culture and language were replaced by English in what is now England, but continued to live on in Wales.

There are various sources of evidence attesting the veneration of the Brythonic Gods. The first is archaeological and includes Romano-British temples, shrines, inscriptions, statues and altars. The second is place names (such as Luguvalium which means ‘Strong in Lugus’). The third is Roman records. Although the Roman writers don’t say anything about the Brythonic Gods they do speak about how the Gallo-Brythonic Deities were worshipped in Gaul. The fourth is medieval Welsh literature and later folklore. Herein we find the myths of the Brythonic Deities rewritten by Christian scribes and traditions of interactions with the spirits of the Brythonic Otherworld (Annwn ‘Very Deep’ or Faery) recorded by folklorists. 

During the post-Roman period northern Britain and southern Scotland were known as Yr Hen Ogledd ‘the Old North’. In medieval Welsh literature there are numerous poems documenting the fall of the Old North to the Anglo-Saxons and recording the lore associated with it.

Early on my path to Brythonic polytheism I was called to look to the evidence for the veneration of the Brythonic Gods and spirits in my local area and to construct a practice based around it. I first found out that the Goddess of my local river, the Ribble, is Belisama, as evidenced by Ptolemy’s Geography, which labels the estuary Belisama aest. I discovered that there are altars to Matrona ‘the Mother’ and Maponos ‘the Son’ at Ribchester and to the Mothers at Lund, that Brigantia was worshipped in the Pennines and that two Romano-British statuettes dedicated to Nodens (as Mars-Nodontis) were discovered on Cockersand Moss. I began praying to and making offerings to these Deities and writing poetry for Them. I made contact and established relationships. Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd (the son of Nodens / Nudd) appeared to me at a local fairy site in an intense theophany that led to me devoting myself to Him as my patron God. I also built relationships with the spirits of my house, garden and local valley.

I was initially surpised by Gwyn’s appearance even though the site mentioned is associated with a local fairy funeral legend. I didn’t realise He, the a Brythonic King of Annwn / Faery, was the fairy leader. It made further sense in relation to the statuettes dedicated to His father and to the place name Netholme (Nudd’s islet) near Martin Mere. Then, even more, when I read ‘the Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’ and discovered that Gwyn gathered the souls of several famous northern warriors and Culhwch and Olwen wherein Gwyn appears in two episodes (the Battle for Creiddylad and the Very Black Witch) that take place in the North.

Having a relationship with Gwyn and other Brythonic Gods rooted in the myths and lore of the Lancashire landscape and more widely of the Old North is significant to me for a number of reasons. These relationships are valuable in themselves as a source of companionship, joy, wonder and awe which moves my soul on the deepest of levels. They are also of value because they offer an alternative way of being rooted in connection with the land and local tales in opposition to the monoculture of modern technocratic capitalist society. The inspiration and guidance of these Gods and spirits provides meaning and purpose beyond the norms and rules that have led to our exploitation of the earth and both non-humans and other humans. Simply taking time out to pray, meditate, journey or create art is an act of resistance to productivity and constant screen time, as is walking, gardening and working on the land in communion with the spirits.

In Gwyn’s mythos I found a different seasonal cycle to work with – Calan Mai (Gwyn and Gwythyr’s Battle for Creiddylad), 29th Sept Gwyn’s Feast, Nos Galan Gaeaf (Gwyn’s Hunt) – as an alternative to celebrating the commercial festivals and the Wiccan / Druidic Wheel of the Year.

I’ve been a Brythonic polytheist for over thirteen years. My path has shifted and changed from being a performing poet and conference speaker, to working in conservation, to experimenting with monasticism, to my current shamanic work. Throughout, my constants have been devotion to Gwyn, creativity and having a shamanic practice and these remain my lifelines in a changing catastrophic world.

The Edge of the Dark

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A memoir in the form of a novella based around my childhood, teens, and twenties. It records a confrontation with the darkness within the land, our culture and in my own psyche and a failed initiation into adulthood and shamanism. Finally, how my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, saved me from myself.

Free digital copy HERE. If you enjoy it please share the link to this post.

Black poplars who do you grieve?

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We have not the myth of a son
of the sun who got burnt
by the sun and fell.

When Maponos
stole the horses of Bel
and rode skywards to the horror
of His mother He did not come to grief.

Although Maponos burned He was not burnt.

He returned instead alive and ablaze,
replenished, youth renewed,
as the Sun-Child.

So, why, black poplars, do You grieve?

Do You grieve because Your brother lives?
Do You grieve because You are jealous?
Do You grieve because You got no grief?

Or is there a story of another brother?

A forgotten son of Matrona,
daughter of the King of Annwn,
who mounted a black horse and rode
after the black sun when it set and sunk
to the depths of the Underworld?

Did He drown in a black lake?
Was He eaten by a black dragon?
Or does He still wander lost in sorrow
through a labyrinth unillumined
by the rays of the black sun?

Poor brothers, did You search 
for Him and almost lose yourselves?
Did You get trapped in a dark prison
and scrape Your bloody fingers
against the walls and weep?

If so, how did You get here?

Did You ride with the black sun
or with the King of Annwn on the back
of His black horse who carries lost souls?

Did He plant You here, He and His Queen,
with labyrinthine roots winding down?

Did He seal Your tears deep within?

Did He kiss Your fingers like His Bride’s,
tuck them into a yellow bud
to emerge again
only in the spring to reach
not for the black sun but the love of a mate?

Did He bring You here to tell me when
I grieve my fingers are not talons
to scrape the walls
and my tears are not sap
to entrap the insects who get in their way?

Did He bring You here so I could learn
from Your clawing, Your crying,
my clawing, my weeping,
to turn my grief inward in winter
and then, in spring, to reach out in love?


*This poem is addressed to the two black poplars who stand at the source of Fish House Brook, near to the Sanctuary of Vindos, in my hometown of Penwortham. The photograph is of one of the fallen catkins, taken in spring 2022, not quite emerged.

Trampled like Cut Reeds to the Ground

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‘Gwyn ap Nudd, helper of hosts,
Armies fall before the hooves of your horse
As swiftly as cut reeds to the ground.’
~ ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’

So far it’s been a grim month. Grey skies. Heavy rain. Storms. 

The scythe of the Reaper has been swinging, chopping, cutting. The cut reeds have been falling swiftly. The huge round hooves of His horse, of the horses of Annwn have been trampling them into the rain-soaked ground.

Sister Patience, chop, cut, gone. The Monastery of Annwn, chop, cut, gone. My dream of living the rest of my life as a nun of Annwn, chop, cut, gone. 

It’s happened so suddenly. Yesterday I spent a moment, like waking in the morning after a night I’d self-harmed, in shock, thinking what have I done? 

Yet this was not the work of my blade but the Reaper’s blade…

Gwyn was there to reassure me, His hand on my shoulder (slightly bony) letting me know that it was for the best, that dying reeds have got to fall. 

I could see the monastery was dying but Sister Patience felt alive to me.

“Sometimes you don’t know you’re dying until it’s too late.” 

I trust His wisdom in taking a part of me – a sacrifice to save the whole. 

What now? I stare down at crushed reeds in the muddy churned-up ground, attempting to scry a message from the mess of my life – the mash of criss-crossed stalks and the rain-filled half moons of the hoofprints spilling into pools.

There’s always been an obvious road that I’ve never managed to take. Write that much-needed book on Brythonic polytheism or Brythonic shamanism. Write some how-tos on how to meet the Brythonic Gods. It’s always been blocked. That dark hooded figure with His scythe in the way.

“That is not your work,” he slides a whetstone along the curved blade. “I want you to write the words that cut to the truth, that hurt, that have edge.”

I see I’ll always be an edge person. Not salesy enough to sell. Not humble or practial enough to crawl away from the blogosphere and get a proper job. Suburban in the sense of lower down rather than rows of identical houses with cut lawns (although I live in one). Far too English to be properly Brythonic.

I’ll never be able to say, “Look at my bright shiny life you can have this too!”

Yet, in giving voice to uncomfortable edges, to exploring the messier, lesser-spoken side of relationship with Gods and spirits I feel I have a place as a writer and guide.

A place of cut and trampled reeds, muddy waters, dark hooves, forever shadowed by the Reaper’s hooded form and His skeletal touch.

Photograph from when I was cutting reeds during a fen cut (albeit with a brushcutter rather than a scythe) when I worked for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust on the Wigan Flashes.

Swaying White Fields

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Swaying white fields,
dancing white mist,
a mouse on each wheat ear –
around them tails twist.

Oh Grey King
You’ve haunted this land,
memories lost,
now You’ve returned.

Your poor hungry people
had nothing to eat
but now they’re well feasted
on white ears of wheat.

Oh Grey King
You’ve haunted this land,
memories lost,
now You’ve returned.

And tonight we will feast
on apples and mead,
You and Your mouse wife
in these bare fields of wheat.

Oh Grey King
You’ve haunted this land,
memories lost,
now You’ve returned.

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I wrote this song for Gwyn ap Nudd to celebrate September which is known in Cornwall as Gwyngala ‘White Fields’ and in Wales as Mis Medi ‘the Reaping Month’. Here I equate Gwyn with Llwyd ap Cil Coed from the Third Branch of The Mabinogion, who sends His people as a plague of mice to eat the wheat fields with His wife as the ring-leader. Llwyd is likely to be the Welsh folkloric figure Brenin Llwyd ‘the Grey King’.