I didn’t go to Tyburn to ‘go to Tyburn’. (1) I went to London to attend an introductory weekend as a prerequisite to a three year shamanic healing course. But I ended up staying in a hotel in Tyburn as it was relatively cheap. When I visit a place I like to do a bit of historical research before I go and have a map of the land past and present to help me connect with the spirits and this what I found out.

The Tyburn Tree

The dark but now absent centre of this place is the infamous Tyburn tree. It was the King’s Gallows from 1196 to 1783. It has also been known as the Elms, the Deadly Never Green Tyburn Tree and the Triple Tree (because it was a wooden triangle on three legs – a ‘three legged mare’ or ‘three legged stool’). The triangular traffic island where it once stood mirrors its structure.

All manner of criminals were executed there by being hanged, drawn, then quartered. Many of the victims were religious people of the Catholic faith – friars, priors, abbots, monks and hermits, who resisted King Henry VIII’s separation of the Church of England from legal ties to the Catholic Church and papal authority of Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries.

The Carthusian Martyrs, 18 monastics of the Carthusian Order from the London Charterhouse, were executed between 1535 and 1537. As a result of the Lincolnshire Rising, the Pilgrimage of Grace and Bigod’s Rebellion over 250 rebels met their deaths again including large numbers of monastics. Many were northerners, such as the bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland, and people from my home county, Lancashire, joined the rebellions.

This had meaning for me as a polytheistic monastic because these Catholics were standing for the freedom to practice their religion and to continue to lead monastic lives. The anglicisation of the church and dissolution of the monasteries removed much of the mysticism and sanctity from Christianity in England.

Tyburn Convent

In 1901 the Tyburn Convent was established near the site of the Tyburn Tree with a shrine to the Tyburn Martyrs. This order of Benedictine nuns was founded by Mother Marie Adèle Garnier as the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre in Paris in 1898. When the nuns were forced to leave due to restrictions on monasteries in France they made their home in London.

What is unique and beautiful about their tradition is their perpetual adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What this entails is that, at all times, day and night, at least one nun is kneeling before the eucharist worshipping Jesus’s heart.

Mother Marie is ‘honoured and remembered’ for her ‘ardent love of Christ’, ‘her heroic love of God and neighbour, her spirit of prayer, divine contemplation, rich mystical and spiritual doctrine, humility, obedience, patience, simplicity and purity of heart, and above all for her spirit of total self-abandon to the Holy Will of God, which she declared to be her unique good.’ (2)

This is one of her prayers – 

‘O blessed portion! Lot worthy of envy!
My heart is ready, O Lord, my heart is ready!
Here I am, speak, act, inflame me,
unite me to Yourself!

O Mary, O my tender Mother
entrust me to Jesus,
love hidden in the adorable Eucharist.
Henceforth make my life
become a repeating with you:
I look for nothing other than Him…
I know only Him alone…

Jesus, my soul is thirsting for You
so unite it to Your Heart
that no longer may I be able to live without You.’ (3)

When the nuns make their act of consecration they speak a prayer that has been spoken in their communities since Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the 11th of June 1899.

‘Lord Jesus, Redeemer of the human race,
look down upon us humbly prostrate before Your altar.
Yours we are, and Yours we wish to be;
but to be more surely united with You,
behold we freely consecrate ourselves today to Your Most Sacred Heart. 
Many, indeed, have never known You;
many, too, despising your precepts, have rejected You.
Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus,
and draw them to Your Sacred Heart…’ (4)

The Sacred Heart and Healing

I had never come across the perpetual adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus before. It resonated deeply with me because over the past few years my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, has revealed His heart to be the Heart of Annwn, which He inherited from His mother, Anrhuna, the Mother of Annwn.

My personal practice has increasingly involved devotion to the Heart of Annwn. Keeping the heart beat by drumming and chanting. Meditating, journeying on and recording the stories gifted to me about Gwyn’s Sacred Heart.

Before I set off to London I was instructed by my guides to make a pilgrimage walk to the Tyburn Tree and the Tyburn Convent. I was told I must take ‘purity, grace and the pain of the dead’ in a small obsidian spearhead I was gifted by a fellow nun of Annwn and leave it as an offering.

I did this on the first day in the early evening after I left the course. I was disappointed to find the stone and three young oak trees put there in 2014 to mark the site of the Tyburn tree had been removed. I can only guess this was done because people were hanging about the site or leaving offerings. In spite of the rush of traffic and people I paused and spoke some prayers then made my offering at the foot of the London Plane tree on the island. 

I went to the Tyburn Convent and paused to pay my respects to the Tyburn Martyrs and shared my gratitude for the work of the nuns and gained a sense of release and peace and of our unity in the adoration of the Sacred Heart.

When I got back to my hotel room, although I didn’t have my drum, I played the beat of the Heart of Annwn on my knee, sung one of my chants, again imagining my offering of song as uniting with the devotion of the Tyburn Nuns.

My weekend course, The Shaman’s Pathway, with Simon Buxton of the Sacred Trust, was profoundly moving and deeply healing. Whilst the first day was more introductory on the second day we practiced ecstatic union with our spirits, healing each other, and the culimination was a powerful group healing ceremony in which I was honoured to take the role of drummer.

In the following of my heart, in alignment with Gwyn’s heart, the Heart of Annwn, I feel healing has taken place and I have received confirmation I’m on the right path in pursuing the three year training to become a shamanic healer.

(1) ‘Going to Tyburn’ or ‘taking a ride to Tyburn’ are metaphors for being hanged.
(2) https://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/site.php?menuaccess=161
(3) https://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/site.php?menuaccess=240
(4) https://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/site.php?id=234