“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.”
Let your soul rest gently as a butterfly on my chest
One of my practices during the heat and noise of summer is journeying to the Otherworld, where Vindos / Gwyn sleeps as Winter King, and finding rest with Him in His tomb in the Castle of Cold Stone.
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.
I’m very happy to announce that my shamanic practitioner training is complete. Fourteen years ago, when I first started attending shamanic workshops, I never dreamed that I might be standing in the shoes of the magical person who played the drum and carried out healings, but here I am.
My training began in May 2024 with an organisation called the Sacred Trust. In the first residential I undertook an initiatory shamanic burial ritual in which we dug our own graves in the Devon hillside and spent a night in them. It sounds formidable but, for me at least, it was enjoyable, as I like digging and relished the thought of a night in the earth with my Gods and spirits, particularly as my patron God, Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd had asked me to marry Him in death. I had far worse struggles with the change of routine and diet.
In the second residential, we covered Harner shamanic counselling (1). During this process, a shamanic practitioner guides a newcomer client through six shamanic journeys to solve a life issue with help from the spirits. The client wears headphones to listen to a recorded drumbeat and speaks their journeys out loud into a microphone. The practitioner and client then listen to the recording and the practitioner guides the client in their interpretation.
We (a group of 22) took it in turns to play the roles of practitioner and client and were assessed as we went along. Whilst I recognised the ingenuity and value of this method, as an autistic person who struggles with wearing headphones and virtual drumbeats and with being in loud crowded spaces (imagine all those other people speaking out their journeys loud!) I found it incredibly claustrophobic and this was reflected in my shamanic journeys. I returned home questioning whether a recorded drumbeat on headphones rather than a live drum, combined with the pressure of speaking a journey out loud, were the best way to introduce a newcomer to shamanism.
Before I had the chance to deliver the Harner shamanic counselling to volunteer clients, I decided to leave the Sacred Trust for ethical reasons (2). My mentor and supervisor, shamanic practitioner and embodied relational therapist, Jayne Johnson, supported me through the process. Afterwards, she offered to take me on as a shamanic apprentice. Working one-to-one suited me far better as it allowed my learning to be more flexible and spirit-led.
With Jayne, I decided, instead of delivering the Harner shamanic counselling, for my first client offering, to provide a six week introduction to shamanism inspired by the model but with a live drum and no need to speak into a mic. In the first session, I outlined the history and theory of shamanism. In the following sessions, clients undertook journeys to the Lower World to meet animal spirit guides, to the Upper World to meet a spirit teacher, to the Middle World to meet their local land spirits, then finally, underwent a basic shamanic healing at the hands of their helping spirits. I guided eight complete newcomers through the process. Discovering shamanism and meeting their spirit guides was a great gift to them and it was a pleasure and honour for me to hold the space, provide guidance and witness their progress.
Around this time and afterwards, I experimented with running shamanic journey circles, first at a local Spiritualist Church, then at a couple of local venues. Although I succeeded in running the circles, due to my autism, I found it difficult managing the needs and energies of a group (particularly co-ordinating the drumming, which really hurt my head!). After numbers fell and events were called off due to extreme weather, I realised the spirits were telling me running groups was not meant to be part of my vocation.
Stepping up into shamanic healing, which I truly felt was my soul’s calling, one of my first offerings was power animal retrieval. I learnt this at an introductory workshop with the Sacred Trust. Journeying for or with a client into the Otherworld to retrieve their power animal was a beautiful and exuberant process in which I almost felt like a celebrant as I helped reveal and seal sacred partnerships that will hopefully last for life.
I was then called to offer soul retrieval. This was a big initiation for me. I was aware of how sensitive the process of bringing back lost soul parts who have fled or been driven away due to trauma can be. I also felt it was a part of my soul’s purpose, being a devotee of Gwyn, the Gatherer of Souls. And there were times it was intense and scary and times I was unsure whether I ‘got it right’, but, largely the journeys and soul parts made sense to the client. Again, it was a great honour to play a role in helping the lost parts to return, to blow them into the client, to witness their becoming more whole.
An important related technique I mastered was soul exchange. This involves holding space for a client and another person to exchange soul parts they have picked up from one another in a relationship and cutting unhealthy cords. I experienced this to be a simple yet profound process.
Next, I moved onto extraction. This involves removing intrusions into a client’s energy field which cause sicknesses. Previous work with my own energy system led me to seeing this was just one form of shamanic energy healing (which also involves shifting and transforming blocked and congealed energies). Thus, I offered it under that title. As I’m usually a little awkward around other people, I wasn’t sure how working closely on their energy field would feel, but once I was in shamanic trance I was fine. I found shamanic energy healing really intuitive – my hands and body knew what to do and my spirit helpers were always beside me with their help and advice. My hounds, who I’d seen more as hunters, proved to be great healers. This fit with Nodens / Nudd (Gwyn’s father) being associated with healing hounds. Having more experience, I tied in other techniques, such as power and soul retrieval with shamanic energy healings where needed. My clients reported improvements with illnesses and ailments and having more energy.
All was going well until a great interruption. Following a week of meditation, I realised being a nun, Sister Patience, and running the Monastery of Annwn were no longer my calling. I was catapulted back into being Lorna Smithers, with all her shit, which Sister Patience thought she had transcended.
I ended up writing like mad to get to the root of it and found out what I had been trying to escape was an eating disorder which began with childhood bullying. I was carrying a great deal of shame from binge eating and drinking, which had led to restrictive dieting and excessive exercising to control my weight. I’d thought, with my monastic routine, I was ‘better’. But, although my exercise and food habits were healthier, I still had issues with restriction and body image. I identified this as my ‘core wound’ and am still working with it today. I see this as essential inner work that has come out of the apprenticeship.
Throughout my training, I have explored ancestor work, building my family tree and journeying to family ancestors with my mum and offering healing where fit.
My training in psychopomping built upon my existing experience of witnessing Gwyn guiding the souls of the dead and being guided to help in rare situations. As my apprenticeship has progressed my psychopomp work has increased and I have helped stuck souls in a variety of situations to pass. I am now offering psychopomping for free as a service to Gwyn and the dead.
Towards the end of the apprenticeship I also trained in depossession. I learnt enough to be able to handle situations where this difficult technique is needed, but will not be offering it as a service until I have more experience.
My shamanic training has been challenging, healing, and transformative. Following the tumult with the Sacred Trust it felt safe and right and like a homecoming to be training with Jayne – for which I’m deeply grateful to her and my spirits. Working one-to-one with Jayne meant I could work at my own pace and cover the techniques in the order I was inspired to. It meant I could take time off client work to work through my personal crisis. I also had far more in depth tuition than I would have got from the Sacred Trust. Jayne is incredibly knowledgeable not only about shamanism and psychotherapy. With her, I have learnt a lot about counselling skills and how the psychological material of clients might appear in their journeys. We have also done a good deal of work with my soul parts and their needs and conflicts.
Thus, I’m also very happy to say, that following my shamanic apprenticeship, I will be continuing with more advanced training with Jayne. I’m hoping to explore the intersection of shamanism and psychotherapy and working with soul parts more deeply and to progress further with ancestral healing and psychopomping.
Another avenue that I am considering is putting my experience of an eating disorder and my special interests in nutrition and exercise to use by investigating ways of combining them with shamanic work to provide a holistic approach to healing for others who have issues with food and body image.
This is the beautiful personalised certificate that Jayne awarded to me.
I’d like to give a huge thank you to all my volunteer clients and to those who have paid student rates for offering your time, energy and money so we can come together to do this much needed and sacred work.
I’d like to thank Jayne for being a superb teacher and for supporting me through all the ups and downs that have come my way (there have been a lot!). Also, Jason and Nicola Smalley at the Way of the Buzzard with whom I have been learning and practicing shamanism for many years and whose journey circles and coaching calls have been an invaluable source of support.
Finally, I’d like to say my biggest thank you to Vindos / Gwyn and my helping spirits. I couldn’t have done this without you. A shamanic practitioner is nothing without their Gods and spirits.
Vindos, my patron, my inspiration, my beloved and my truth, tonight I dedicate my services as a shamanic practitioner to Your sanctuary and to You.
The term ‘psychopomp’ derives from the Greek psyche ‘soul’ and pompos ‘guide’. A psychopomp is a ‘guide of souls’. In shamanic traditions, a variety of deities and spirits, along with human practitioners, act as psychopomps.
Psychopomping is a core shamanic practice and involves helping the dead, typically those stuck in the Middle World or between the worlds, to cross to a suitable place in the spirit world in accordance with their beliefs.
The dead can become stuck for a number of reasons. One of the main causes is sudden or traumatic death. When a person dies traumatically, such as in an accident or a natural disaster, in war, or by murder or suicide, the shock can deprive them of their faculties and their ability to pass cognisantly. This can also be the case with those who are heavily medicated at the time of death. Sometimes, these souls do not realise they are dead. They can remain stuck at the place and time of their death until they recover their faculties or a psychopomp from the spirit or the human world helps them to pass over. Sometimes, they wander in confusion through the Middle World, or end up between the worlds (a place where lost souls are commonly found, referred to in core shamanism as the interworld, in the Christian tradition as Purgatory and in Buddhism as Bardo).
Souls can also become ‘bound’ in the Middle World for personal reasons. They might not want to leave a loved one or a loved one might not be able to release their hold on them. Those with unpaid debts, a desire for vengeance, or unassuaged guilt may refuse to leave until their affairs have been put into place. Those with addictions may find it difficult to leave the objects of their addiction.
It’s important to remember that not all souls who die traumatically need psychopomping. Some pass naturally or with the help of their spirit guides. Also, just because a soul is in the Middle World or between the worlds, doesn’t necessarily mean they need help. Like us, the souls of the dead can move at will between the worlds. It is common for family ancestors to visit and to look out for their descendants and to guide them home at death. Some ancestors choose to stay around as guides and protectors.
Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd – An Ancient British Psychopomp
My patron God, Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd, ‘White son of Mist’, is an ancient British deity who rules Annwn ‘Very Deep, the Otherworld, and its people, the spirits of Annwn or fairies. It’s my personal belief that He also rules the dead. He is depicted gathering the souls of the dead back to His realm. As Pen Annwn, ‘the Head of the Otherworld’, He is the keeper of the Cauldron of Rebirth.
It’s my intuition that prehistoric burial monuments with stonework made from chalk and limestone, with deeply defined white-marked boundaries, were associated with Vindos and were marked this way to guide Him to the dead.
In a medieval Welsh poem called ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’, Gwyn is depicted as a psychopomp, as a ‘Bull of Battle’. He appears to guide Gwyddno, a dead warrior-king, to Annwn. At the end of their dialogue, He recites the names of a number of famous warriors whose souls he has gathered from the battlefield.
In later folklore, Gwyn appears with the Cwn Annwn, ‘Hounds of the Otherworld’, as a leader of the Wild Hunt – a chase for human souls. In one instance, He is depicted with a black face and horns on His head hunting down a ‘sinner’. The hunt rides yearly, on Nos Galan Gaeaf, and through the winter, gathering up any souls of the dead who have not passed over.
He and His people, the spirits of Annwn, or ‘fairies’, are often seen to guide and even to ‘take’ the souls of those who die suddenly or traumatically.
Witnessing with Gwyn
Since I met Gwyn, I have been working with the dead in a number of ways. I have long been journeying to learn the stories of forgotten ancestors in my local area and to share them in poetry and prose. This has included witnessing their deaths, for example, a cotton worker who died of pneumonia.
I have journeyed with Gwyn, physically and in spirit, to witness scenes where He has served as a psychopomp. One example is a visit to the site of the tragic Battle of Arfderydd, where Gwyn gathered the soul of Gwenddolau and Myrddin Wyllt became mad due to battle trauma. I spent time in meditation there, journeyed into the scene, and wrote about it.
Gwyn has shown me how He has been there for the souls of the battle dead from ancient times and still supports soldiers who die in war whatever their beliefs.
He’s also revealed to me how He’s there for people who are considering suicide and supports them, whatever decision they make. I met Gwyn when I was experiencing suicidal ideation. A number of others who have become devoted to Him have told me they met Him during dark times.
It’s my personal belief that Vindos, whose name means ‘White’ or ‘Clear Light’, is the white light that is seen at the end of the tunnel in reports of Near Death Experiences and that’s how He appears to those who don’t know His name.
Psychopomp Work
Most of my experiences of psychopomping have happened spontaneously. My first experience was many years ago, in my locality, where I came across a Roman soldier who had left a battalion, who according local legend still march along the old Roman road. He was fed up and wanted to go home. With my guides, I took Him through the Middle World back to Italy, to one of the rivers near Naples that is associated with the Roman land of the dead. A Roman guide appeared and took him across the river and he vanished.
A few years ago, during a meditation, I came across three Victorian boys wandering through the forests of the Otherworld. They told me they were afraid they wouldn’t be allowed into Heaven and had wandered into the forest and were lost. I asked them if they would like to go on to another life and they agreed. So I led them to Gwyn’s cauldron to be reborn.
During my shamanic counselling training with the Sacred Trust, I had a difficult experience, which led to an unexpected psychopomping journey. I was acting as client, with a drumbeat on headphones, speaking my journey out loud, in a hall packed with people, like sardines, doing the same. I’m autistic and hate wearing headphones, virtual drumbeats, and crowded spaces. It was incredibly claustrophobic. Failing to get to the Lower World, I got stuck in a mine, where I found a dead canary. I was told to put it into my heart. I was then led to a holding place between the worlds where there were hundreds of dead canaries. I released them all. My heart cracked open and molten gold poured from my heart with the canaries down the tunnels. It flowed from the mine through all the mines in industrial Britain. This was accompanied by a sense of release and healing. I kept the canary in my heart for a few weeks and finally returned it to a magical place on the other side of the Canary Islands where canaries sung like stars on trees.
Shortly after leaving the Sacred Trust training due to ethical issues, I asked for a healing for something that happened during the initiation rite. Afterwards, I found myself transported to a cellar under a pub in York. There was a man who I intuited was also autistic and had his hands over his ears. He was dressed in clothing that looked like medieval sack cloth. He explained he couldn’t stand the unfamiliar noise of the city up above. I offered to take him to a place where there was no more noise. He agreed. Following the guidance of my spirits, I took him to a pool in the Otherworld, where he was mesmerised by watching the beautiful dragonflies. This calmed him. I left him there for a few days. Only then was he ready to recall his painful memories of how he died. He had got drunk (a way of shutting out the world) whilst working in the cellar and had an accident with the barrels. I was then guided to take him to Gwyn’s cauldron to be reborn.
Several months ago, during my morning meditation, Gwyn guided me to help an ex-soldier who had initially passed to the Otherworld but had been lured back by a bottle of beer left outside the Royal British Legion club in my locality. He told me that he and his wife, who had also passed, had visited the Niagara Falls in the Middle World before going to the spirit world and that he needed to tell his grandma about it. I asked my guides to find his grandma, who was in the Lower World, in a little house looking over a cliff. He told her his story, then his wife appeared, and they stepped over the cliff into the mist.
When it came to covering psychopomping towards the end of my shamanic apprenticeship, I told Gwyn I was open to further opportunities. One arose in the context of some ancestral healing. The ancestral journey involved releasing a part of the soul of my great grandfather, Harry Shell Allen, which was trapped at the site of his death in the London County Asylum so the energy could be returned to him in his present incarnation in Spain.
On our visit to the asylum, I noticed a young woman who was mopping and seemed stuck with two grey looking spectral figures beside her. Afterwards, I consulted Gwyn, who suggested I could try to help her. I received the name Jane Locksley. When I looked up the Locksley family in London, I saw that they were from Nottinghamshire, but there were records of them passing through to do business and that there was a Locksley Street. I received the gnosis that the two figures were Jane’s parents and they left her at the asylum, due to a mental health condition, on their way to get a ship. They felt unable to leave the Middle World because of their guilt at abandoning Jane.
When I journeyed to help Jane, I discovered that she was deaf, but could communicate telepathically. She heard people’s thoughts in her head. That was why people thought she was mad. She enjoyed mopping as it helped shut the thoughts out. The swish and slop of the mop and the water calmed her. She also enjoyed spending time in the garden. When the voices got very loud she got distressed and had to be medicated. The last thing she recalled was being heavily medicated and confusion before being drawn back to mopping.
She was aware that the garden was gone and it was scary outside. I explained to her gently that she was dead and told her that were far better gardens in the spirit world. She asked me if I meant the Garden of Eden, which was somewhere her parents told her she would never go if she didn’t behave. I said I could help her get there if she wished. She was unsure. I suggested she might want to say farewell to her parents, to which she agreed. My guides brought them and I also called to Saint Michael as a psychopomp, who was familiar and could take them all to Heaven. In the end, Jane said she didn’t want to go with her parents to Heaven.
I took Jane, with my guides, from the asylum across the Middle World to find an entrance to the Otherworld and she said she wanted to go to Nottinghamshire. She pointed out Sherwood Forest and told me she had always loved the legends of Robin Hood, Robin of Locksley, who was associated with her family. She particularly loved Maid Marian. Marian and her maids appeared in the forest and she danced with them into the Otherworld.
Reflections on Psychopomping
When I started reading about psychopomping, I came across a number of stories about people who had been called to it as a vocation from a young age. They had long seen the dead. They had long been called to help them (1). I heard stories of people so bothered by the dead they needed to create waiting rooms. I realised this wasn’t me. I only started seeing the dead in my late teens. I wasn’t called to help them any more than living humans I saw about.
I read about others who are called to war zones and scenes of accidents and natural disasters to help the dead pass, or to check places where people die in confusion, like hospitals and mental hospitals, and realised this wasn’t me either.
This confused me, because I am devoted to a God of the dead who is a psychopomp. When I asked Gwyn about whether I should be more open to the dead or should seek out more opportunities to help them, He told me that I should maintain my boundaries and wait until told for psychopomp work.
My experience of psychopomping to date has been limited but varied. I have worked with persons from across time periods of a variety of different backgrounds and ages. A common theme has been working with people who, like me, find noise overwhelming and have experienced addiction to alcohol. I wonder if this is because we carry similar energetic vibrations. I noticed that the souls who I was guided to help did not hold strong Christian beliefs and were amenable to a shamanic conception of the Otherworld.
A learning that occurred that I hadn’t heard about before was that if a soul is stuck at a site of trauma, it might not be the whole soul, but a part of the soul. Of course, I’d come across this when doing soul retrieval. It highlighted the complexity of this work and the need for discernment and listening to my guides, as the processes of releasing a stuck soul part and crossing a soul, in its wholeness, to the Otherworld are a little different.
Another point to note is that I had heard from many sources of psychopomps taking souls ‘to the light’. This felt familiar in that there are places in the Upper World that are incredibly bright and beautiful and are associated with intense emotions and ecstatic states. In the writings of Iolo Morganwg the Upper World is known as Gwynfyd. For me it’s the state of being in the arms of Gwyn. So I can see why people would want to go there. However, I came across a cautionary tale in a book by a death midwife (2), wherein she suggested a dying man go to the light and he recoiled because it was incredibly painful for him because he associated the light with migraines. This shows that we should always check in about where a soul wants to go.
Psychopomping as an Offering
My experience to date of pyschopomping has been one of a slow education under the guidance of Gwyn. As I have progressed with psychopomping, I have steadily grown in confidence in my abilities to communicate with the dead in a clear and compassionate manner and assist them in crossing to the spirit world. I was unsure about whether I would be called further to do psychopomp work in spite of receiving good feedback on my progress so far from my mentor.
Then, to my surprise, earlier this week, Gwyn requested that I begin offering psychopomping as a free service for Him and any souls who might be in need of help. If you have any concerns about the passage of friends or family or persons in your locality, please get in touch. I can’t promise to be able to help everybody, but I will take on cases that I feel are within my ability as guided by Gwyn and my spirits.
(1) See for example, Soul Rescuers, by Natalia and Terry O’Sullivan. (2) The Art of Death Midwifery by Joellyn St Pierre.
On May Eve, the night before my patron God, Vindos (Gwyn ap Nudd), ‘dies’ as Winter’s King, I will reach the end of my shamanic apprenticeship. Therefore, this is the last chance to enjoy the benefits of my student rate shamanic offerings for only £15 an hour. What better time to be exploring your spiritual growth and potential than now as the sap rises and the flowers blossom?
Shamanic Guidance
*If you’re struggling to make time for your spiritual practice this is a great way to carve out an hour to connect with your spirit guides and seek advice and support from the spirit realm. *Are you feeling stuck on your spiritual path? Together with our guides I can help you find a way forward. *Are you facing a difficult life issue? A divinatory journey or a tarot reading can provide fresh insights.
*Feeling lost or disconnected? Consider a power retrieval or a power animal retrieval to restore lost power. *Do you feel like a part of you is missing or you’re not fully here? Soul loss can occur as result of trauma and soul retrieval and soul exchange can restore absent soul parts and help you feel more grounded and whole. *Do you have an ailment or an illness that won’t shift or an energetic imbalance? Shamanic energy healing can help.
Shamanic guidance sessions are one hour and shamanic healings around two. I can provide in-person, online and distance options.
If any of these offers take your fancy please get in touch for a free informal chat on Zoom. Also, if you know somebody else who may benefit from these offerings please pass on the details.
Let me tell you a story. When I came into the world, it was too loud, too scary, too overwhelming. There were too many bright lights. Too many people. Too many faces and too many voices that I could not comprehend. I did’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be me. I didn’t want to be present.
This got worse when I was bullied. I fled to the horses. I fled into fantasy novels. When I couldn’t gallop away, I ran away. I danced until I dropped. I ran to the point of exhaustion. I stuffed myself, starved myself, drank more booze than all the bards of the medieval halls put together, took all manner of drugs. I flirted with death. Death flirted back. He saved me.
And I ran to Him in the Otherworld and He brought me back. I flew to Him in the Otherworld and He brought me back. I swam to Him across the oceans of the Deep and the starry sea of the Heavens and took Him a star. And He brought me back. And He said, “You belong here, now, in the present.”
And He gave me a monastery and made me a nun and married me. “If you can’t be present for yourself, be present for me, now I live within your heart.”
And I was present. But I still couldn’t be me. So He trampled down the monastery and He tore off my habit and left me naked with myself.
And it’s hard, so hard, being present with this body. With these senses. With this pain. With these memories. But this is the quintessence of healing.
The visions of the Otherworld have their value. The molten stars. The silver spaceships. The serpents who swallow us. The hounds who tear us apart. The gentle mothers. The tender soul parts who come back, childish, laughing and smiling, to our astonishment, to our dismay, as we fear to hold them. For what place have joy and tenderness and love in this cruel, cruel world?
The visions of the Otherworld have their value but only if we can integrate them into Thisworld and it is hard, so hard, when there is no room for dragons and goddesses with big bellies and laughing, smiling, children.
It is hard. But this is the work. The journeying is easy. This part is harder.
Presence is like a brittle star that has fallen from the sky of the Otherworld and become a seed that must grow to see and feel and experience all the pain, all the joy, all the trembling, crumpling anxiety, all the fear of this failing world.
It is a gift of the Otherworld’s King. It holds more worth than all His treasures – the trays of fruit and meat, the over-spilling mead-cups, the heaps of gold.
Help me to be present for You, for me, this day, all days, in every now, Immortal Lord.
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.
‘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.
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.
