Tag: Gwyn ap Nudd

To the Spirit of the Sanctuary

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A place of quiet beyond the row,
the heartbeat of Annwn
is Your only sound,
the occasional song rising
like heartbreak from the Deep.

To keep me safe Your invisible roses twine around.

Your forget-me-nots remind me
of the King of Annwn in the summer.

Into You I am gathered by the Gatherer of Souls.
In You, with my Beloved, I am at home.

In You I can heal and I can heal others too.
Into You I gather the lost pieces of our souls.

In You I am complete in every single moment.
In You I can breathe every single breath.
In You my heartbeat is at one
with the heartbeat of Annwn – the heart of my Lord.

So hold me here, until I die, my sacred home.

Guide of Souls Prayer

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I pray to the Gatherer of Souls,
You who waits patiently,
You who works ceaselessly,
gathering the souls of the dead,
being there for those who are on the brink.

May I be a good guide of souls.
May I share and lessen your burden
by guiding others on their paths in this world
and through Your doors and into Annwn.

May I be a good guide of souls
for the living and for the dead.

May I serve You patiently and ceaselessly
on my days of joy and my days of sorrow
on this sacred day and on every day until my end.

A Nun with a Drum – Contemplating being a Lay Monastic

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‘They strive to lead their lives in the world but not of the world’
~ Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart Los Angeles

When I took my monastic vows as a nun of Annwn in October 2022 I was leading a very solitary life centring on devotion to my Gods and on my writing. My only connections with the outside world were online – with fellow members of the Monastery of Annwn and with the Pagan and Polytheist blogosphere. 

Things changed after I realised my book, The King of Annwn, wasn’t destined to be professionally published and I received the gnosis I must give my ambition to be a professional writer up for good. 

In spring 2024 in a shamanic journey I was shown I must ‘re-root the monastery’. It took me a while to work out what that meant. I took it literally and tried returning to horticultural volunteering but ran into physical limitations with knee problems and Raynaud’s.

I also began training as a shamanic practitioner and have now realised that is where my true calling lies. Over the past six months I have been providing shamanic guidance and running shamanic circles in my local community and have recently begun to offer shamanic healings. 

In some ways that I’m able to go out and work shamanically with individuals and groups of people has come as a surprise as I’m autistic and an introvert and usually find social interaction draining. In other ways it hasn’t because from the very first time I did a shamanic journey I felt a sense of potency and calling and a deep connection with the spirit world that I wanted to share.

Fifteen years since that first shamanic journey, following completing my apprenticeship to my patron God, Gwyn, a ruler of Annwn, the Brythonic Otherworld), I have finally proved ready to guide and heal others.

This has opened the possibility of leading a more outward-facing life than I guessed when I first took my vows. Of serving not only the Gods but other people.

For this I’ve looked for inspiration to other groups of monastics and have found my deepest sense of kinship with the Lay Carmelites. This an order of the Discalced Carmelites who were founded by St Teresa of Avila in 1562. 

Their charism is contemplative prayer, community, and ministry. Their rule of life is characterised by six obligations: meditation, morning and evening prayer, mass, Mary, meetings, mission. (1)

These come very close to what included in the Monastery of Annwn nine vows: keeping morning and evening prayers to the Gods and Goddesses of Annwn, deepening our relationships with Them through prayer, meditation and trance, checking in and praying with other members, and building the monastery. (2)

I particularly like what the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart Los Angeles have to say about secular Carmelites being those who are called to ‘devotion to prayer’, ’an intimacy with Jesus Who dwells within the soul’, a ‘heart-to-heart encounter with God’ and cultivating a ‘friendship’, ‘a conversing’, a ‘listening to Him which becomes the normal way of life.’ (3)

This fits with my striving to make all my daily activities offerings to Gwyn with my shamanic work fitting so well with Him being a God of the Otherworld. 

They also refer to Lay Carmelites being ‘In the world but not of the world.’ (4) That also fits with my life being centred around my Gods first and foremost rather than on money, career or social life, with my service to other people being one of the ways I serve my Gods.

I’m now two-and-half years into living by vows and am now contemplating the possibility that when I take my lifelong vows in autumn 2026 they might be as a lay nun as opposed to a nun who is leading a near-hermitic life.

“You’re a nun with a drum,” Gwyn told me when I asked if I could bring monasticism and shamanism together. His joking words now summarise my path.

(1) ‘The 6 M’s on being a Carmelite’, Life as an OCDS Carmelite, https://ocds-carmelite.blogspot.com/2009/01/6-ms-on-being-carmelite.html
(2) ‘Our Nine Vows’, The Monastery of Annwn, https://themonasteryofannwn.wordpress.com/our-nine-vows/
(3) ‘Can a Lay person be a Carmelite?’, Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart Los Angeles – https://carmelitesistersocd.com/2013/lay-carmelite/
(4) Ibid.

On Singing in Chains

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In the Monastery of Annwn meditation group we have recently been exploring the medieval Welsh poem ‘The Spoils of Annwn’ from an Annuvian perspective rather than from the views of the ‘victors’ Arthur and Taliesin.

Last week, in the guided visualisation meditation, we journeyed to the first fortress, Caer Siddi ‘the Fairy Fort’, on our magical monastic boat and gained personal visions based on lines from the poem:

Maintained was Gwair’s prison in Caer Siddi
throughout Pwyll and Pryderi’s story.
No-one went there before he did –
into the heavy grey chain guarding the loyal lad.
And before the spoils / herds of Annwn he was singing sadly,
and until Doom shall our poetic prayer continue.

I found myself standing before Gwyn wearing chains with Gwair in a scene resembling the Devil card from the Rider Waite Tarot. Whilst Gwair was imprisoned in a heavy grey chain I was wearing only toy-like silver handcuffs and felt they were close to breaking and to my being released.

Gwyn said:

‘As long as you sing you will be in chains.
In the silence of meditation you will be free.’

Gwyn’s words reminded me of the shift in my path from being a bard in the mead hall to becoming a Nun of Annwn. To moving away from performing poetry to a more monastic and shamanic path.

Another way of looking at it was that the singing is the voice of the incessant thoughts in my head and that only when I’m silent in meditation will their song and the chains be gone.

Nodens Father of Sea Horses

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Recently, in one-to-one sessions with another monastic devotee of Annwn, we have been exploring her intuitions about Gwyn ap Nudd’s associations with the sea. Gwyn’s father, Nodens / Nudd, is equated with Neptune at Chesterholm in an inscription which reads Deo No / Neptu. This suggests, like Neptune, He is associated with freshwater and the sea, seahorses, and with horses more widely (Neptune was worshipped as Neptunus Equestris – God of horse racing).

Little is known about the myths of Neptune but there are many about His Greek counterpart, Poseidon Hippios ‘of the horse’, the Father of Horses. When Demeter fled Poseidon’s lust in the form of a mare He took the form of a stallion and mated with Her and She bore a colt called Arion ‘Very Swift’. In another tale He mated with Medusa and She gave birth to Pegasus.

These stories remind me of my personal gnosis about Nodens mating with Anrhuna, the Dragon Mother of Annwn, to bear Gwyn and Creiddylad and other children who might have included horses and seahorses. Intriguingly Rhiannon, who like Creiddylad is a Queen of Annwn, is a Horse Goddess. I often wonder if Creiddylad and Rhiannon are titles for the same Goddess who takes horse form. If so this would suggest that Nodens is the Father of Horses and likely Sea Horses here in Britain. That He might be the father of Gwyn’s sea-going steed, Du y Moroedd, ‘the Black of the Seas’.

It also make me wonder if Nodens and Anrhuna might be the parents of white winged horses like pegasus from whom my closest spirit animal, a white winged mare, is descended. March allelog, ‘flying horses’, are known in Wales.

The devotional art above was born from these musings and is based on the mural crown depicting Nodens on a chariot pulled by four seahorses from Lydney and a triumph of Neptune in a chariot drawn by two seahorses from Sousse Archaeological Museum.

The King of Annwn’s Cheekbones

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If I had a thousand words 
to describe the King of Annwn’s cheekbones 

I would say they were like icebergs, 
like the hulls of the ships that crash into them and sink, 
like the angles of the limbs of the dead men who float to the surface, 
like the way He lays out the dead in the icy caverns where the ice dragon
roams with a single icy jewel hidden deep within his forehead.

I would say they are like the way He says
the letter ‘A’, the capital, with the triangular tip, 
as if it is not the beginning but the end of the alphabet.

I would say they are like the broken glass
of shattered coffins in my good dreams and not the bad.

I would say they are the antithesis of polar bears and the peak of antinomy.
I would say that I have seen many a skier slide down them to death.

I would say they are like runways and the paths of aircraft
and the flightpaths of starships,
the souls trampling
across them to the otherworld.

I would say they are like the travels of swans and geese.

I would say they are like the strobe lights that shine down 
from the helicopters that fly over my house at night,
sometimes hunting for the criminals 
as He is always hunting 
for the dead.

I would say
they are like the spotlight
in which I stood, dancing, seeking to win His favour.

I would say they are like His anger, like His fury, like His lament,
that they were bent with a hammer in a forge that was
neither hot nor cold nor even burning.

I would say they are his secret.

I would say everybody knows but keeps quiet.

I would say they are like the divine madness that unfolds
itself within His followers in their shapeshifting,
folding, unfolding, spreading wings.

I would say they are bone-light
but heavy in my hands.

I would say
they are like the precipice
I walked on so narrowly between life and death,
so very thin and dangerous on both sides a fall into the abyss.

I would say they were the answer to my prayer after a long dark night
of soul searching, the first slants of the appearance 
of a face in the darkness,
the first strokes
of a name written on my soul.

I would say they were the remedy 
to the poison within me, the pharmakon, the paradox.

I would say they were the pride that summoned me from shame.

I would say they were the answer to my cry for help.

I would say they will help old men 
and feeble infants regain
their dignity again.

I would say
they will once more
be serpents and dragons
with wings bent at cheek-bone-like angles.

I would say I have spoken only half the words 
and will speak the other half 
to him alone 
in death.

When I unburied the Wise Lad

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and polished all his statues
I fell into his smile

and I smiled too

and all the world smiled
and all the universe smiled
and all the people of Annwn.

I can’t rememer how long ago
I forgot how to smile

but here it is –

this sign upon my lips,

not just for me but for you
the Wise Lad’s gift.

When I drew this image it was supposed to represent the unburying of a multitude of meditating Wise Lad statues being unburied from the earth from where they’d lain for eons. On completing it I realised that looked at from another perspective they appear to be hovering over drop down toilets! One of His jokes I think!

The Wise Lad and the Meditating Frog

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Many years ago, in early spring at sunset, the Wise Lad was wandering the Frog Song Marsh, watching the frogs and toads emerge from their places of hibernation, forming long slippery lines as they headed to the many ponds.

As darkness fell the mating calls of the male frogs and toads were deafening – a thousand thousand voices raising their caphony throughout the marshland.

Thus the Wise Lad was surprised to find a solitary frog sitting apart on a stone.

“What are you doing?” He enquired. “Why aren’t you seeking a mate with the rest?”

“I’m meditating,” the frog’s legs were crossed and his pads rested on his shins.

The Wise Lad knew a little of meditation from sitting still with his father, Nodens, staring into the waters as they waited together for a fish to take the hook.

“I’ve never known a frog to meditate before,” the Wise Lad was stunned.

The frog frowned. “Can you not see these legs were made perfectly not only for jumping and swimming but for sitting in meditation? These pads not only for catching prey and clinging onto mates but for holding hand gestures? These lungs and gills for breathing deeply both in and out of water?”

“You can meditate under water too?” the Wise Lad asked in admiration.

The frog nodded glibly and demonstrated by hopping into a nearby pool, sinking down to the bottom and once again taking up his meditating posture. 

On getting out, “And don’t you believe the lies of the other frogs who will tell you I’m not a frog at all, that I’m the son of a chieftain who the Hag of Marsh Pond put a spell upon, that I’m avoiding the mating rites because I don’t want to be kissed by a frog or a woman and turned back into a human again.”

“I wouldn’t believe such lies at all,” the Wise Lad reassured him.

“Good,” said the frog as he continued meditating through the nocturnal frog-song.

This story was received as taking place near Marsh Way Pond in Penwortham.

The Wise Lad and the Boy with the Empty Bowl

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Many years ago the Wise Lad was wandering the Broad Oak Woodland when he came across a boy sitting beneath the boughs of an old oak tree. 

He’s holding a wooden bowl, the lad noticed, sniffed up, but it’s empty.

He saw the boy was staring in trance into the bowl and recognised a sitting quest. 

For three days and three nights he watched in approval as the boy slipped in and out of his trance, moved not, slept not, ate not. Wondered, what does he see?

As the third night reached its end the Wise Lad foraged for him the tastiest of hazelnuts, the juiciest of blackberries, caught, strangled, cooked a tasty hare.

At dawn the boy fell into an exhausted sleep and the Wise Lad padded up silent as the mist and slipped his gifts just as silently into the empty bowl.

“You,” the boy reached out, grasped his arm, caught him in his dark gaze, “you were watching all along from the sidelines and with me in my visions.”

“Tell me about them,” the Wise Lad spoke curiously and encouragingly.

The boy picked a hazelnut from the bowl. “You took me into one of these, right into the kernel, taught me of its wisdom, from flower and catkin, to nut, of its journey in the belly of squirrel, of jay, of salmon, its growth into a hazel tree.” 

The boy picked a blackberry from the bowl. “You took me to the stars to visit a planet as black as one of these, frosty, taught me of how ice can flow as rivers, volcanoes, how the coldest of planets tastes sweet as blackberries.”

The boy picked out a morsel of hare’s flesh. “I followed a hare to her form and she led into the ground and through to another land where I saw you playing, hunting with other boys, with the dead boys of my tribe and others. They had faces like clouds and mist and smiles like the otherworld’s sun.”

“But there is no sun in Annwn,” the Wise Lad spoke confused.

“I know,” said the boy, “yet still they smiled like it.”

The Wise Lad smiled. “You have completed your sitting quest and one day amongst your people you will be an Inspired One, a Soothsayer, a Wise One.”

I received this story as taking place here in Penwortham in the remainder of the oak wood on Hurst Grange Park. A little closer to me is an area known as Broad Oak. A Damp Oak Forest covered much of Lancashire from the Neolithic Period until the late Bronze Age when much of it was replaced by bogs.

The Wise Lad and the Old Three Bears

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Many years ago the Wise Lad was wandering through Ribblesdale. In the limestones crags he espied a cave and was immediately drawn into its darkness.

What drew him was not so much the dark, for there would soon be much of that with winter on its way, but the smell of a delicious stew cooking. Inside he found a skin cauldron boiling over a fire and around it three wooden bowls. 

In each bowl was a mixture of berries, nuts and meat that made his mouth water. He tried the first bowl, “Agh!” He dropped the wooden spoon. “Too hot!” He tried the second bowl. “Ugh!” He spat it out. Too cold!” He tried the third bowl. “Just right.” He grinned, wolfed it down, only slightly disconcerted when he found a golden hair at the bottom.

Full up, rubbing his belly, he collapsed into one of the three wooden chairs. “Too small.” It barely fit his arse. He tried the second. “Too big – enough room for two of me and my dogs on here.” When he sat on the third chair it wobbled because it was already missing a leg then collapsed beneath him. “Someone else has been here before me and broken the chair that is just right!”

Moving into the next cave he was relieved to see three beds lined with mosses and twigs. He tried the first. “Too hard.” The sticks dug in his ribs. Then the second. “Too soft.” He sunk into the moss. Finally he lay down in third. “Just right.” As he curled up he realised he was lying in the sleeping shape of someone else who had slept there before and caught a girl scent.

“Hmm…” Something told him it would be unwise to fall asleep in that bed. 

The Wise Lad got up and made his way into the next cave where he found the skeleton of the girl who the bears had stripped of flesh and put in their stew. By the remnants of her skull and golden hair she had been pretty.

“No wonder the stew was so tasty,” he picked a piece of meat from his teeth. 

“You ate me,” her golden-haired ghost appeared and spoke accusingly. 

“You ate the third bowl too,” shrugged the Wise Lad.

The ghost-girl glanced at the other skeletons piled up in the cave. 

“Once again,” he heard the voices of the Old Three Bears, “someone’s eaten my stew,” “someone’s broken my chair,” “someone’s been sleeping in my bed.”

“It’s time to go,” said the Wise Lad to the golden-haired ghost, “take my hand and we’ll go and share your story with the people who need to know the risks of having their stew, their chairs, their beds, everything in their world just right.”