Tag: Spiritwork

The Speaking Ones

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Several years ago I had a vision of the world becoming as a whirlpool from the source. ‘Green moving swards of vegetation, trees, people, marching through a labyrinthine kingdom back into the void carrying houses and entire civilisations.’ Sometimes people got stuck. With bird-headed ones they came knocking on the back of my head trying to shout through me. I was on Psylocybe mushrooms and alone at the time and didn’t dare let them.

The practice of a person allowing spirits to speak through them is found in many world religions from Voodoo to Evangelical Christianity. It was likely to have been an important component of pre-Christian Brythonic polytheistic religion and survived into the 12th century as recorded by Gerald of Wales.

Gerald writes of awenyddion ‘people inspired’. ‘When consulted upon any doubtful event, they roar out violently, are rendered beside themselves, and become, as it were, possessed by a spirit.’ Their speeches are ‘nugatory, ‘incoherent’, ‘ornamented’. When ‘roused from their ecstasy, as from a deep sleep’ they cannot ‘remember the replies they have given’. He conjectures: ‘perhaps they speak by the means of fanatic and ignorant spirits.’ (1)

Gerald’s words provide evidence for a Brythonic tradition of spiritwork in which there exist ‘soothsayers’, referred to as awenyddion, who are possessed by spirits by whom they speak in the metaphorical language of poetry.

I first came across the term ‘awen’ for ‘poetic inspiration’ in the Druid communities and saw myself as a bard before my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, initiated me as an awenydd. I have served Gwyn in this role for over ten years by journeying to Annwn to bring back inspiration for my communities. 

I have prayed for awen and for the Gods and spirits to inspire and come into me when writing in a similar way to the ancient Greek poets calling on the Muses and to William Blake asking the Daughters of Beulah to come into his hand. (2) I’ve also experimented with trance singing, letting go, just letting any words and tune flow. But, until recently, I hadn’t dared speak the voices of spirits.

This changed after a conversation with a fellow member of the Monastery of Annwn, who told me of his calling to channel Gwyn. It reminded me of the bird-headed spirits, who’d come knocking, whose desire to speak I had denied. I felt the time to offer my voice had come and journeyed to them.

I saw them as crows flocking in the sky in the shape of infinity then crossed bones. Their home appeared as the floating skeleton of a great raven. I offered to gift them my voice and they gave me some instructions. They would stand behind me. Then I must open the door and loosen my tongue. I tried it whilst in the Otherworld and received a prophecy about a distant son of Don.

Several days later on their prompting I composed a song to enter the trance state:

Crows, crows, the Speaking Ones
Y rhai sy’n siarad

Come, come from Annwfn
Come, come your will be done

Crows, crows, the Speaking Ones
Y rhai sy’n siarad

Come, come bring your words
Come, come you will be heard

Crows, crows, the Speaking Ones
Y rhai sy’n siarad

When I tried it the first time and asked who wanted to speak they told me they would take it in turns and each wanted me to make their words into an oracle. I did this by letting them speak out loud through me first then writing down what I could remember and putting it into more poetic form. (3)

On completion of the oracles I read them to the Speaking Ones and gained their approval. At first I wasn’t planning to make any of this work public but I was told they wanted their voices to be heard so I will be posting the oracles of these seven crow-guides over the course of the next week. 

(1) https://awenydd.weebly.com/giraldus-cambrensis-and-the-awenyddion.html
(2) ‘Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poets Song… 
Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose 
His burning thirst & freezing hunger! Come into my hand 
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm 
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry 
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine, planted his Paradise’
~ William Blake, ‘Milton’
(3) As a note I don’t consider this to be full trance possession because, whilst working alone, I don’t dare let go of my conscious faculties fully. Also, for this particular work, I have been asked to record the words so need to be aware enough to remember them. During this process I’ve felt something other has come through, but that I’m not fully out of the way, and suspect my consciousness might have coloured some of the content.

Review – Dwelling on the Threshold: Reflections of a Spirit-Worker and Devotional Polytheist by Sara Kate Istra Winter

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This book was published in 2012. When I first read it in 2015 I was delighted to find a kindred spirit who shared my deep devotion to the Gods and practices as a spiritworker, albeit in the Hellenic rather than the Brythonic tradition.

It is a collection of essays covering diverse topics from relationships with Deities, land spirits and personal spirits to practices such as oracular trance and possession and the use of entheogens. As the author states, it ‘isn’t geared towards beginners’ but is a record of ‘thoughts and experiences’ that serve to ‘inspire and stimulate’ ‘anyone on a devotional and / or spirit-work path’.

In the introduction Winter notes the term ‘spirit-worker’ is recent and is ‘not well defined. But it generally indicates a polytheist and / or animist who serves the gods and spirits directly in some capacity, and with a level of intensity and devotion above the average worshipper… They might serve a community, but unlike a a shaman they don’t necessarily have to. A spirit-worker traverses the road between humans and gods, between this world and the otherworlds, and they do this because they must, because they are called to, and because it is quite literally their work in life.’

She says, ‘devotional polytheist’ ‘was coined partly as a counterpoint to strict reconstructionism’. The differences lies in placing ‘a high level of importance on personal and direct experience of the holy powers’ and the devotional practices of ‘prayer, ritual, offerings etc’ whilst remaining respectful of the historical sources rather than attempting to reconstruct past traditions.

The rest of the essays form an exploration of these ‘twin paths’. A piece that particularly still resonates is ‘Mysticism as Vocation in Modern Paganism’. Here Winter rails against the view not only of secular society but ‘the majority of pagans’ that ‘spiritual vocation’ ‘is a luxury to be fitted around daily life’. Why cannot ‘home, family and career’ ‘be fitted around spiritual vocation?’ With no state support for Pagan religious vocations here in the UK those of us who share such a calling are left with a constant struggle to balance the need for financial security with fulfilling our calling from the Gods and spirits.

Those who follow Winter / Dver’s blog ‘A Forest Door’ will know she writes beautifully about her relationship with lands spirits. Here, too, she describes her practice, traversing her ritual landscape, carrying a ‘beeswax taper’ ‘like a ritual torch’, following crow feathers, making offerings of ‘mandrake root’, ‘an old and crackled coyote’s tooth’, ‘fly agaric’, for a local land spirit.

In ‘Evolving Patron Relationships’ and ‘Two Decades with Dionysos’ Winter talks about how He crept into her life ‘in bits and pieces’ with poetry, red wine, the Doors and how she became a Hellenic Polytheist and served her God ‘in the community at large’ before seeming to withdraw in order to lead her elsewhere – into ‘entanglement’ with the spirits. She prompts the reader to ‘recognise the possibility that a patron relationship might end’ or one might find it ‘evolves in a new unexpected directions’ ‘to where you needed to be all along’. I cannot imagine my relationship with Gwyn ap Nudd ending but do appreciate the warning of that potential and for unexpected change.

‘The Gods Are Real and Trance Isn’t Just Visualisation’ is important in stating that argument in relation to the writings of Diana Paxon and others who fail to point out the difference between ‘visualising a pre-set series of events’ and ‘actually meeting the gods and spirits in a foreign land’.

Of immense value are the pieces documenting Winter’s reconstruction of her oracular practice for Apollon based on the traditions at Delphi. Winter visited Delphi in 2003 and performed ritual and ceremony and a night long vigil. She was later inspired to take up the practices of the Pythiai after seeing similarities between her landscape of Cascadia and that of Delphi. This inspired a pilgrimage to the source of her local headwaters and to setting up her own adyton andtaking to the tripod on the seventh day of the month. In ‘On the Tripod’ she describes emptying herself to receive Appollon’s words.

‘Lord Apollon,
enter into this place
made only for Your entry
and no other’s.

I have emptied out my skull,
and await your voice to fill it.’

Eight years on I have found this book to be packed with wise words and inspiration and to be incredibly relatable as someone still walking the ‘twin paths’ of devotional polytheism and spirit-work as a polytheistic monastic. I would recommend it as a core resource for anyone wanting to learn more about these paths or delve more deeply into the issues that confront modern practitioners and the struggles and joys of building sacred relationships.

Of Inner and Outer Voices

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I recently had a revelation about a voice* that has haunted me since high school telling me if I don’t acheive certain goals such as passing exams, staying in paid work, fulfilling a role in society, my life is worthless and I don’t deserve to be here.

Mental health-wise I have been much better over the past year as a result of strength training and yoga and working on my spiritual development with my mentor Jayne Johnson. A few months ago for the first time I heard my healthy body saying ‘I want to live’ and this has helped me to combat the negative voice.

Yet I went through a difficult time after my attempt to write a novel for Gwyn failed and I realised I must truly give up my ambition to be a professional author (as I promised Him over ten years ago!). I ended up back at the Abyss with the choice between three gates – to live as I was, to die, or to change. I took the third gate.

During a period of prayer I discerned what to do next – return to outdoor work in horticulture and become a shamanic practitioner. So I started working towards those goals. I began studying for my RHS Level 2 in Horticulture and volunteering with Let’s Grow Preston. I applied for the Sacred Trust’s three year shamanic practitioner training and was over the moon when I was offered a place. However, the downside is the course and the train fares to Devon will cost all my savings and then some. 

The negative voice returned as I began to struggle with concerns about finding paid work in horticulture before my savings run out. Long term I am planning to start a nature-friendly gardening business but I am aware it will take a while to complete my training, set up, find clients and start earning. So I started applying for any outdoor work from plant nurseries and garden centres to grounds maintenance and also cleaning (which Gwyn advised me against). 

That week, the more jobs I applied for, the more I panicked, the louder the voice grew. Telling me I’m a fool to spend so much money on a course which is my soul’s calling but isn’t likely to help me earn much. Preventing me from meditating and journeying saying instead I should be applying for jobs. 

The afternoon before I attended a Radical Embodiment workshop** with Jayne and Alex Walker I had a terrible interview for a cleaning job. I arrived at the workshop scatty with the voice shouting loudly at me telling me the practices were pointless and worthless and wouldn’t help me find paid work.

I spent the first half, in the morning, battling against the voice. Then, in the afternoon, when I was more relaxed and present and connected with other bodies the voice stopped. When finally we came to dancing our insights I decided to have it out with the voice once and for all but found it had vanished.

I then received the gnosis – ‘It’s not my voice’. 

This was one of the most significant revelations of my life. For decades I thought it was a part of me, an inner critic, formed from my internalisation of the capitalist work ethic. A little like the inner Sheriff of Nottingham Nicola Smalley describes in The Path to Forgotten Freedom only a whole lot nastier.

Then, finally, it struck me, no part of my psyche would tell me I was worthless or want me dead. This voice differs from my true inner critic who, of course, is critical, can be harsh and judgemental, but is looking after my integrity.

I realised any voice inimical to my life is not my voice.

Then what is it? I began to wonder. I intuited it must be a malevolent entity. When I asked Gwyn He told me it was not one of the spirits of Annwn. I sensed it wasn’t from the underworld or any of the lower worlds but was bound up with the middleworld. Unlike the spirits of Annwn / ‘fairies’ who live in a reciprocal relationship with Thisworld but have their own independent world and reality it could not survive without parasitising upon human emotions.

Names that came to my mind were ‘liar’ and ‘deceiver’ which I remembered are applied to Satan ‘the Father of Lies’. Was I being tormented by the Devil?

When I asked one of my spiritual ancestors she replied that it was a malicious spirit, an ysbryd drygioni. Christians have blown such beings up into one big Devil in the same way they have raised Jahweh into one big God.

I asked whether I needed to hunt it down and destroy it (like Ged does the gebbeth in The Wizard of Earthsea – my experience reminded me of that story). My guide replied, ‘No’, as such beings feed on our attention and negative emotions. The best defences against it are to do the things it tells me not do because they will not help me gain a job and earn money – prayer, meditation, journeywork, sitting still in nature (which I really struggle with), being with other bodies, dancing, play and fun (which I never allow myself). 

Realising this voice isn’t mine and hearing how to defend myself from it are huge steps I am hoping will help me move forward towards earning a living in a way that allows me to stay physically and mentally well and fulfil my vocation.

I’d be interested to hear whether anyone else has had similar experiences. How do you tell the difference between inner and outer voices? I’m hoping to get to grips with such discernment processes better towards the end of my shamanic practitioner training when we approach practices such as depossession.

*Here I’m referring to intrusive thoughts not to auditory hallucinations.
**A development from embodied relational therapy.

Stepping into Orddu’s Lineage

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I am told I must step into Orddu’s lineage. 

Warrior. Prophet. Spirit Worker. Inspired One. Healer.

I am old but on this path I am still so young.

Heretofore I have proved myself only with words,
with books, although those months on the mosslands
planting cottongrass and sphagnum might count for something.

I have said too much – talking about me, me, me, my problems.

The time for whining and complaining has come to an end.

It’s time to listen, to learn, craft a new art to heal the violence.

(I will not speak again of how Arthur killed her with his knife,
drained her blood into two bottles to grease a giant’s beard,
neither will I drive Carwennan again into my own wounds.)

A life off the page lies ahead of me now – the spirits call.

Strong as an Aurochs, Patient as a Heron

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A figure has been appearing in my journeys back to the time of the ancient Britons to the lake dwelling on the marshland close to the green hill that put the ‘pen’ in my home town of Penwortham.

I first saw her as I approached the dwelling on a wooden pole decorated with animals. Amongst them she sat seated cross-legged on a bull with a crane in flight emerging from her head above her.

The second time I encountered her within the dwelling itself, again in a meditative position, a cord of light down her spine shining upward through the smoke hole into the heavens and down into the earth. She was encircled by worlds, flickering in out of existence, like juggling balls or fairy orbs.

Read this and you will probably be put in mind of non-Western traditions. Yet there is evidence that, like the indigenous people of the North-West Pacific Coastal communities of what is now called  America and Canada, the ancient Britons carved and erected ‘totem poles’ displaying sacred animals. For example at Stonehenge there were four pits with post holes dated to between 8,500 and 7000 BC.

I like to think of the new wooden carvings on poles between the docks and the hill on the Ribble and upriver on Frenchwood Knoll as expressions of animistic relationships with local creatures and as a call from our ancient ancestors to return to their worldview in which the natural world is inspirited.

Again, the cross-legged figure will likely put you in mind of the lotus position of the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Yet, the artwork on the Gundestrup Cauldron, dating to between 200 BC and 300 AD, features Gaulish artwork including an antlered figure sitting cross-legged surrounded by animals.

It seems likely this position was adopted for meditation by the Indo-European and Eastern cultures because it works. It was possibly used in Gaul and in Britain by spirit-workers when journeying into the spirit world to meet with animal spirits and to shift into animal forms and invoke their qualities.

The fluid relationships between human and animal, and shapeshifting, are fundamental to Celtic art. In relation to my vision Tarvos Trigaranus, ‘the Bull with Three Cranes’, appears with the divine woodsman, Esus, on the Pillar of the Boatman from Paris and on a pillar from Trier and may be related to statues of bulls with three horns found at Autun and at Maiden Castle in Dorset.

A bronze bucket mount found at Ribchester, fifteen miles up the river Ribble from Penwortham, features a bull with knobbed horns and a prey bird emerging from its head with a human head on the back.

It has been suggested that the image of the Bull with Three Cranes may have originated from the mutual relationship between cattle and cattle egrets who stand on their backs and eat their lice as well as eating the worms and insects from the soil that is overturned by their great hooves.

Maybe this is the case but I also feel such images are representative of the human impulse to participate in and become one with the wider ecosystem, to feel the strength of aurochs, the joy of crane. To be taken out of oneself, to get out of one’s head, to soar with the wetland and prey birds.

I’ve recently been having a difficult time not only because of the stress of COVID-19 as a threat to the lives of my parents and an obstacle to finding paid work in conservation, but because my mum had a fall and broke her hip and had to have a hip replacement on top of my dad’s ongoing health problems.

Through this time in my morning meditations I have been guided to take the position of this ancestral figure and to invoke the strength of the aurochs and, rather than the qualities of the crane, the patience of the heron. I believe this is because this is a time, not of joyful dancing, but of waiting.

Aurochs is an animal I have long felt a connection with due to early experiences in journeys leading me to the aurochs skulls in the Harris Museum which were found in the vicinity of the lake dwelling. I often wonder whether some were offerings to my patron, Vindos/Gwyn, a hunter god referred to as a ‘bull of battle’. Whatever the case they are primordial and powerful presences.

I have been seeing herons in increasing numbers along the Ribble and beside local lakes and ponds for many years. They are a bird I am much in awe of for their quiet waiting and sense of wisdom along with their quickness and determination. I have seen a heron tustling with a huge eel on the riverbank. Recently I came within a foot of a young heron absorbed in fishing beside the Lancaster canal.

‘Strong as an aurochs, patient as a heron,’ is my current chant and this and the image of the awenydd seated on an aurochs bulls with a heron emerging from her head help me get through the days.

I wonder whether the awenyddion of the past worked with and depicted the animal spirits in similar ways?

*With thanks to the Harris Museum for use of the photograph of the aurochs skulls.