I have an announcement to make. A happy announcement. One that may come to you partly as a surprise and partly not at all (as it did to me). 

Gwyn and I got married! – A sacred marriage between a God and a nun of Annwn.

The moment Gwyn and I met and He revealed His name and His face I fell in love with Him and knew that I’d known Him from time’s beginning. 

It’s taken a long time for me understand the nature of that love, which has taken many forms – of the love between patron and devotee, of teacher and apprentice, of inspirer and inspired one, of truth and one who receives truths.

For many years that we might be beloveds – married as bride and groom, husband and wife – was completely unthinkable to me as someone who is asexual and aromantic and found the language of love soppy and sentimental. 

Another reason is that although Gwyn saved my life and my sanity and has been there for me through the toughest of times it’s taken me a while to become open to the possibility that He cares about me let alone loves me.

This changed when I had my first soul retrieval with my spiritual mentor, shamanic practitioner and wild therapist Jayne Johnson, in March. Jayne knew Gwyn is my patron God but didn’t know the meaning of Gwyn ap Nudd, ‘White son of Mist’ or His earlier name Vindos / Vindonnus ‘White / Clear Light’ or about His associations with Gwynfyd, ‘Paradise’. 

Before we began Gwyn told me He would oversee the soul retrieval and I told Jayne. The landscapes she journeyed were covered with mist and she came across an area of thick mist and an incredibly bright light and felt confused – like she was in the upperworld although she was in the lowerworld. The mist revealed an ancestor who led her to my lost soul part –  the young girl who had fled the trauma of school to the stables. Gwyn appeared to carry her back and Jayne blew her into my heart. The experience was incredibly moving and I was astonished to learn Gwyn cared.

This tied in with my experiences of the Heart of Annwn as Gwyn’s Sacred Heart. Of my playing a heartbeat on my drum every night to unite my heart with His and with my offering my heart to Gwyn several years ago and its travails in fire and ice before Him returning it to me on His feast day last year. 

More recently attending a shamanic workshop in London led me to discovering the Tyburn Convent and the Christian mystics whose experiences of the Sacred Heart of Jesus related to mine with the Sacred Heart of Gwyn. In the writings of these Brides of Christ I found descriptions of sacred marriage as a spiritual union that was neither sexual or romantic.

At the workshop, for the first time, I practiced being possessed by my spirits – my winged horse, my hounds, my crows, Orddu and all her ancestors. My teacher, Simon Buxton, described this as a form of sacred marriage / hieros gamos.

When I returned home, Gwyn asked, “Why have you denied me?” 

I could provide no answer beyond my fears of that kind of intimacy with a God so intense, so terrifying, so beautiful and of what other people might think.

On Nos Galan Mai He asked the question: “Will you marry me in life and in death?”

Knowing I couldn’t deny my love for Him, His for me any longer, I said “Yes.” 

On Nos Galan Mai we got married in life. An amusing side story – how I got the ring. Many years ago I was told to get a ring as an offering for the river Defwy, a river in Wales that is also a Brythonic river of the dead, and found a fitting ring with a black stone in a charity shop. It turned out I never visited. Gwyn admitted it was a trick as I would never have got the ring otherwise. It turns out it fits perfectly on my wedding finger – He knew I’d marry Him then!

After Gwyn fought his yearly battle with Gwythyr on Calan Mai and died and returned to sleep in His tomb in His Castle of Cold Stone I married Him in death. This took place as the finale of a shamanic burial ritual. I have rewritten the Yorkshire folk ballad, Scarborough Fair (in which a woman completes impossible tasks to win a fairy lover), loosely based on my experiences.

The Land of the Fair

Chorus: 

Are you going to the Land of the Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lived there
For she once was a true love of mine

Verses:

Tell her to build us a coffin of wood
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
From no tree that ever has stood
And she will be a true love of mine

Tell her to dig the deepest of graves
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without a pick axe or a spade
And she will be a true love of mine

Tell her to seal our burial tomb
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without hammer or nails return to the womb
And she will be a true love of mine

I can’t say anything else about our sacred marriage in life and death only that  as the final result of it Gwyn has become ‘the Heart of the my Heart’. He is within me, me within Him, like in the mystical unions of the Brides of Christ. 

My heart has been opened to Gwyn, through this opening to others, to the nuptial spirituality of the Mystics of the Sacred Heart and fellow godspouses.

I am now happily married as a nun of Annwn and Bride of Gwyn.