“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.”
On the Challenges of Shaping Sanctuary in Shamanic Practice
My relationship with my home hasn’t always been one of sanctuary. Some days, it still isn’t. I recognise the irony that as soon as I decide to offer some shamanic guidance on the subject, my mum’s ceiling starts leaking, and it turns out we need a new roof and have roofers banging on the roof for two weeks!
The term ‘sanctuary’ didn’t have much meaning for me when I was young. The first time I started thinking about it was when I watched the Disney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Esmerelda knocks on the doors of the cathedral crying, “Sanctuary, please give me sanctuary.” Thus, I came to associate sanctuary with churches and cathedrals. Places I felt banned from because I neither worshipped nor felt any connection with the Christian God.
Still, home was a safe place. The only safe place. Safe from school. Safe from the bullies (although I always feared they would follow me home). There, I could hole myself up in my room with my Playmobile riding school, with a fantasy book, with a new story to write, with characters from it to draw. Unfortunately, it was a place where I shut myself away with chocolate too.
I’ve lived in this very same house, in Penwortham, Lancashire, since I was four years old. Only a few times, briefly, have I attempted to move away. The walls recall every single one of my temper tantrums, every argument with my parents, every time I stuffed my anger and despair down with food. They held me through those times. They stood there without judgement.
They held me through my difficult teen years when I blu-tacked onto them posters of Jon Bon Jovi, Guns N Roses, the Manic Street Preachers, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Joy Division, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails. As I hung them with feather boas and filled my room with glitter and balloons. As my taste in music and my life got darker, they bore witness to me smoking cigarettes and joints out of my window and my heavy drinking and self-harm.
Their holding of me largely went unacknowledged. I was far too caught up in my own world, my own pain, to be aware of anything or anyone else.
This began to change when I discovered Paganism and Druidry. When I began to tentatively reach out for relationship with the other-than-human world. I’d long been able to perceive spirits, but, as someone with an overactive imagination, was unsure how to discern what was real and what was not. It turned out I needed to stop asking that question and trust my imaginal faculties (which have long been denigrated in the Western world).
I made contact with the guardian of this patch of land who has been here long before the houses were built. I made a clay statuette of him and began making offerings of butter. However, these went icky and didn’t feel right. Although this is a traditional offering, I’m not sure that my dad’s Morrison’s Unsalted Butter had the same meaning as homemade butter made from one’s own cow milk in pre-industrial times. I’ve tried leaving processed milk at the bottom of the garden, but that was messy and smelt bad. So, I’ve settled for prayers and attention, and that seems to be enough.
In spite of making contact with our guardian spirit and setting up an altar to my Gods and local spirits in my bedroom, my relationship with our house as a whole wasn’t good. Outside of my room, I didn’t feel it was truly ‘my home’. It didn’t cross my mind that relationship doesn’t equate to ownership.
Although I was religious and devoted to my Gods and spirits in many ways, totally offered myself in service to Them through my creativity and devotional practices, my relationship with my home and my parents was very poor. I spent much of my time shut away, drinking and writing, living my life through the Pagan and Polytheist blogosphere, ignoring the reality around me.
My parents didn’t take much care of the house either. My mum kept it clean and did a little painting, but largely, no decorating was done since we moved in. We live in a damp area near to a drained off mossland (Penwortham Moss). Damp was coming through the walls. There was mould in the bathroom.
“You don’t speak very good house speak,” I was told by our guardian spirit.
Soon afterwards, Covid struck. By this time I’d realised I was never going to make a living as a Brythonic polytheist author and was attempting to volunteer my way into conservation work. My work parties were called off. With nothing else to do, I turned my eyes to the house and garden. I took carloads of my parents’ accumulations to the Recycling Centre. I deep-cleaned. I began to tackle the damp and the mould but dared not touch the bathroom.
This changed a year later, coinciding with the arrival of a birthday present – Dver’s Mycorrhizal Dionysus. The day it arrived, the mould began to spore. I donned a mask and a hazmat suit and managed to remove it from the walls and stripped off the painted wall paper, taking it right back to the plaster. (What kind of idiot puts up wall paper in a bathroom then paints over it?). This took me over three days and another three days to apply anti-mould paint.
It wasn’t the last time the hazmat suit was required. We have a crumbling Artex ceiling in our dining room that I was forced to patch up and paint over.
In all honesty, I didn’t work in relationship with the house very well. I was far too angry with my parents for the years of neglect and this coloured my work.
Yet, when it came to decorating, I did ask what it wanted and listened to its replies. House speak is a bit different to communicating with a guardian spirit. The spirit of my house doesn’t appear in anthropomorphic form. Our communication takes place more through the felt sense, through groans and creaks, through visible signs. And, of course, events, like a leak or the gutter falling down. I got a feel for what colours it wanted then integrated this with my mum’s desires. (My dad refused to accept we needed to decorate at all).
Over the past few years, I have re-decorated nearly the whole house. Two years ago, I did my room. As I got rid of the old chest of drawers and wardrobe, replacing them with my great grandmother’s chest of drawers (I’d downsized my clothing), I felt a sense of release from the past. Those wooden beings had borne witness to all my bad habits. They were thanked and taken to be recycled. As I cleaned and painted the walls, which were grubby with smoke from when I smoked and from my candles, I felt the darkness from past years lifting, their breathing anew. The new carpet was so thick and luxurious after the old one I rolled around it like a horse on a new bed (an impromptu ritual it seemed to appreciate). I remade my altar and reconsecrated ‘the sanctuary’. The atmosphere has been lighter since.
I’ve done a lot of work in the garden too but that’s another story I won’t go into here. What is being asked of me now by my Gods and spirits is that I be aware and present as I go about the house. Treat it all as a sanctuary. That I embody sanctuary. That my embodiment of sanctuary is reflected in my everyday relationships with my house and with my parents.
This is the core of my current work. It’s very different to when I was doing deeper trance work and writing drunkenly and having lots of visionary experiences. One might say I have become very boring. On the outside, that is true for sure, but on the inside I have grown a lot in terms of recognising and challenging my bad habits and become a safer, more compassionate person.
The shaping of the Sanctuary of Vindos remains a work in progress. It is one that requires co-operation between myself, Vindos, the Spirit of the Sanctuary, my room, our house, and my parents.
My meditation practices have helped me to regulate my nervous system better, but I’m still anxious, stressy and irritable. I have come to accept, as the Buddhists say, these seeds will likely always be strong within me. I am learning to water them less and to water calmness and gratitude more.
Life continues to have its ups and downs. Some days, I come close to living, breathing and embodying sanctuary. Sometimes, it feels as far away as the moon.
Whether a time will come when I feel worthy of offering ‘shaping sanctuary’ sessions I remain unsure. I would be interested to hear about the experiences of others of creating sacred space and ways of being amidst the complexities and the difficulties of the everyday world in their spiritual practice.
During my time as a nun, I lived by vows and a rule within the Monastery of Annwn. When I left, although I gave up my monastic name, I took Six S’s of Sister Patience with me. They, plus, one more, now form the core values of the Sanctuary of Vindos. I see the guidance of Vindos / Gwyn in this as He was the patron of the monastery.
The Seven S’s are: sanctuary, simplicity, sustainability, stability, solitude, silence and service. Here, I provide an outline of what they mean to me and how they contribute to the ethos of the sanctuary.
Sanctuary
The term ‘sanctuary’ derives from the Late Latin sanctuarium, ‘a sacred place, shrine,’ from the Latin sanctus ‘holy’. Originally, it referred to a container for holy things, then to a consecrated place for holy things (ie. a shrine, temple, or church). Later, it was extended to refer to a place of refuge for fugitives or debtors, then for any humans, then for protected habitats and animals.
The sanctuary is consecrated to Vindos, His family and my local land spirits. I tend a shrine for Him in my bedroom and I do my best to relate to the house (which I share with my elderly parents) with reverence when doing the housework. The garden is sacred to Creiddylad, Vindos / Gwyn’s consort. I work with Her and the tree and plant spirits when sowing, growing and re-wilding.
Although I cannot offer refuge due to my living conditions, I strive to embody sanctuary when I am holding space during my client work and in my relationships with family and friends.
Simplicity
Living simply, I have cut down to essentials to reduce clutter and distractions to make more time and space for relationship with the Gods and spirits. This includes food, clothes, books, ornaments, ritual objects, social engagements, group memberships and social media use.
Sustainability
Where possible, I buy locally grown and produced food and eco-friendly toiletries and cleaning and laundry products. Most of my sacred objects are either bought from local and ethical suppliers or found in my local area. I walk or cycle to most places within distance unless I need to transport heavy loads. It’s very rare that I travel by car outside of South Ribble and Preston.
Stability
Staying in the same place and paying attention to the seasonal changes year by year provides a depth of relationship with home, garden and locality.
Solitude
For many people, shamanism is mostly communal. Yet, there have always been practitioners who have dwelled alone on the edges. Hermits, cave dwellers, mad men and women. Time in solitude (from other people) helps me to rest, relax, reconnect with my Gods and spirits and receive inspiration.
Silence
For me, silence is not so much the absence of sound but the absence of noise. The noisome content of much of the virtual world and my own inner chatter. Silence makes possible deep listening. To hear the words of the Other beyond the chunnering of the everyday and to access deeper insights.
Service
For fourteen years, I have served Vindos and the Gods and spirits of Britain through my writing and shamanic practices. More recently, I have begun to serve other people as a guide and healer. Serving someone greater has given me a sense of meaning and purpose in life that was lacking before. It has brought challenge, pain, joy, achievement and transformation.
The sanctuary and its Seven S’s provide the sacred ground which allows me to thrive and to help others to grow and transform on their journeys.
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.
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.
Beside the source of the brook in Greencroft Valley stand two black poplars. There aren’t any known British myths about black poplars but, in Greek myth, they are associated with Hades (the Underworld) and death.
In Homer’s Odyssey, poplars, described in different translations as ‘tall’ and ‘dusky’, so likely black, with willow, form Persephone’s Grove. Springs, throughout world myth, are seen as entrances to the Underworld.
In another story from ancient Greece, Phaethon, son of the sun God, Helios, drives his father’s chariot too close to the sun. His blazing end brings deep grief to his sisters, who are transformed into black poplar trees. The amber sap is said to be their tears. Thus its associations with death and sorrow.
In more recent folklore the red male catkins are referred to as ‘Devil’s Fingers.’
This leads me to believe that there might have once been parallel British myths about black poplar, connecting it with springs at the entrance to Annwn and with the groves of Annwn’s Queen. Perhaps there was once a story in which the red male catkins were the bloody fingers of Annwn’s King?
I will admit that I’m not sure if these trees are true black poplars (Populus nigra) or hybrids because black poplars are rare. Plus, I’m not referring to the true source of Fish House Brook but to the outflow pipe that the culverted brook emerges from. The original source would have lain further south, somewhere on Penwortham Moss, which has been drained and replaced by housing. The brook is culverted under the gardens on the other side of my street, Bank Parade, also giving its name to Burnside Way. I feel this relates to my founding of the Sanctuary of Vindos / Gwyn ap Nudd, a King of Annwn, very near to the ‘black poplars’ at the ‘source’.
In a shamanic journey I visited the poplars for advice on descending to the ancestors in preparation for some ancestral healing work. I was shown the left tree represented my mother line and the right my father line. I slid down the roots of the left into a cavern where a group of spirits were drinking from cups from the same source. I was told that on the new and full moons I must consecrate a cup of water and make an offering:
“To the Gods, spirits and ancestors – we all drink from the same source.”
I felt this related to keeping the source clean – something I have been trying to do as a volunteer in Greencroft Valley with the Friends group I set up (now part of Guardians of Nature).
Beloved Vindos, my patron, inspiration and truth, on this night of the Reaping Month, on the total eclipse of the full moon, I hereby dedicate this Sanctuary to You.
May I honour You well with my prayers and inspiration.
Through Your guidance as a Guide of Souls may I guide and heal others too.
Together may we reweave the ways between Thisworld and Annwn.
