I recently spoke at the OBOD winter gathering in Glastonbury on Saturday 7th December-the theme of the day was Animals in Druidic Tradition. There are many watershed days in life, some large, some smaller. I'm not sure of the size of this particular watershed but it seems worth reflecting on. 

I first met Philip Carr Gomm, the Chief Druid of OBOD, about 25 years ago when I was doing a talk and workshop on Totem animals in Therapeutic Practice. In those days I was still a probation officer and describing work I had undertaken with  people on probation, using aspects of the Mabinogion, to help them find a connection with their spirit animal. This too was a watershed period for me which led to me shortly afterwards leaving the probation service and training as a psychotherapist. Mine and Philip's paths did not cross again until 2012 when I received an email from him; in the meantime he had created a worldwide spiritual community based on the legacy he inherited from his teacher, Ross Nichols.  I had trained in a style of psychotherapy based on working with the body and with aspects of Buddhist psychology. I  became a teacher of that form for 10 years,left it and returned to teaching independently creating the Annwn Foundation and the Awen Training as a vehicle for the fusion of the old welsh traditions with my understanding of working with the body and awareness.

It was good to hear from Philip,  to meet up with him again and to attend the Druid gatherings in Glastonbury as a guest. Philip has a stillness, presence and courtesy that puts you at ease and it was great to witness the community he has created. One very pleasant surprise was the quality of Druid music: I was prepared for the music of Damh the Bard which I enjoy but was delighted to discover Arthur Billington a master blues musician who has gathered around him some very talented younger musicians. There were also excellent poets and storytellers, drummers and dancing and all in all the fruits of a spiritual community that is mature enough to not to take itself too seriously.

I was keen therefore to respond to Philip's invitation to do an experiential session at the winter gathering in working with spirit animals. I was intrigued also to be addressing the same subject 25 years later.-  a fresh turning of the wheel.

The day began for me by attending Glastonbury Town Hall just before 10am; the hall was festooned with druid banners, images of the Awen, sacred Trees and Beasts, the God and the Goddess. Several hundred chairs were arranged in a circle around the room and in the centre was a great heap of mistletoe with a candle in its centre. The day began by the lighting of the candle.

The mistletoe is a potent image and form out of the mists of Druidic tradition-the mysterious all-healing plant that grows on the Oak and the Apple in great Globular web-branching clusters. It is seen as the seed of the stars which, in being ritually brought down to earth, impregnates Her with new life. It is the Awen seeding new expression. E Graham Howe, another Druid, saw it as the image of non-duality becoming dual-the mystery of the division of the indivisible; that deep dynamic against which our life unfolds. Philip made a brief but powerful comment while looking into the great pile of  mistletoe and invited us to see it as the cosmos with many star points and suggested we find our own star. A simple and powerful contemplation connecting the immediate fragility and beauty of the plant with the vastness of the cosmos and our own deeper nature and one that might hark back to an ancient understanding of the plant.

Philip continued with a deceptively simple but powerful exercise inviting an animal to come to us. I had a small wolf come to me with a puppyish manner that I have met before though not for a long time. There is both sweetness and power  in him-he plays lightly,  seriously and fiercely and as I write these words I recall the need for that quality in my life.

The day moved on with an  excellent group exercise in which several hundred people picked cards from the Druid Animal oracle and then had to  find the people in the room who had the same animal. It was a great invocation of the energies of chaos and meeting and gathering. I picked the water dragon card which, as I have pondered,  has gained significance for me. My creativity is often very watery, I flow around fixed forms and shapes but I periodically have problems in finding edges and defining myself. The image in the card is of a rearing dragon breaking out of the depths, looking wrathful. Much to ponder here about breakthrough and the creative potential of wrath.

The afternoon began with the wonderful Kriss Hughes doing a stunning and very funny talk on animals in the Mabinogion concentrating on the hwch the magical pig and on the relationship between essence and appearance in the transformation process.

It is interesting following somebody in something like this, especially when the person is good and presents so well. It leaves you very conscious of the things that you're not. In my case South Walian from a fractured industrialised community whose grasp on the old ways and certainly the old language is sketchy at best. I have images of the Mond Nickel works and the polluted canal I used to walk along. Then I see the similarities, deep love and knowledge of Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi and Llyfrau Taliesin (the 4 branches of the mabinogion and the books of Taliesin); commitment to the deep way of the heart and the land. I breathe again as I come back to myself.

Now it is my turn to introduce a meditation and lead us through it. How I do these things is to open to the field of the group and to Annwn the very deep place that is NOT and to surrender to the spark of Awen that is arising. Not easy here with such a group after such a day.

I find myself speaking about the necessity to unite the worlds and the art of bridging outer and inner. Bid ben bid bont- who would be Chief must be a bridge, must lay their body down between the worlds in an act of joining. I make reference to the tale of Cormac in the Land of Promise- a tale of the abuse of the silver branch that opens the road to Annwn and shows the path of  healing through following the 5 senses backwards into the heart grove in the middle of the body, in the middle of experience.

 I lead us through this journey where  is found the deep wellspring and the Taliesin-salmon who spins us down into an essentialised journey through his myth -it comes like Tibetan vajra pith instructions. The salmons spins in a vortex drawing us down to Gwion Bach becoming little, small,  the watching awareness around which things crystalise; we go down and down to the cauldron's bottom opening to the radiant drops of awen born out of deepest darkness, falling into the hands of the beloved, crooked-back black/white woman of holiness: the old sow who births and devours. 

With her breath on our back we run as beasts of the field knowing with animal senses the ways of the sacred land; shedding that shape we plunge into water's world, being the upstream, leaping salmon flowing in the flowing world before leaping into sky as the crowned Jenny Wren. From land and sea and sky we drop, dropping all shape,  being the singularity, the single drop that has absorbed the Three Realms in its knowing heart.

We are swallowed down by old,black-crested hen into the womb of wombs- reshaped, remade, finding a new arising of our human form born of the cauldron and the worlds. We are squeezed out, singing into coracled containment, driven by currents across the great sea then unfolding in darkness rhythm and metre, metaphor and allusion; naming and shaping while being named and shaped. Driven up the estuary which unites and divides the worlds we are  caught in the net of the body, opening our senses and allowing the bendith blessing of the revealed drop of  Awen to flow into the world.

All of which leaves me reflecting on the mystery of identity; at the heart of Welsh tradition is the this question of the relationship between anian or nature and ffurf or form or to put it another way between the radiant drop of the Awen, the star of our being and the the expression of that star through myriad creative forms. Thus the Master Druid proclaims with Taliesin,

"
I have been a multitude of shapes,Before I assumed a consistent form.I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,I have been a tear in the air,I have been in the dullest of stars.I have been a word among letters,I have been a book in the origin."


Here we touch E Graham Howe's image of the Mistletoe simultaneously non-dual and specific, quantum and particle-both are necessary in our embrace of life. So who am I? what is my identity here? Like Taliesin I have been a multitude of shapes but what is my consistent form- I have been Qabalist, Buddhist, Shaman, Probation Officer, Manager, Educationalist, Psychotherapist, son, husband, lover, friend etc. There is however a consistent thread that runs through my life and that would be  the Mabinogi and the Llyfrau Taliesin. I have never been without them. In childhood they were mysterious books I read and reread immersing myself in images to ward off the pain and fragmentation of family life. As I grew they informed my understanding, helped me work with damaged and disturbed people and continued as a teaching presence as I learned the art of psychotherapy.
When my teaching career in psychotherapy ended suddenly and dramatically I found myself marooned without direction- a dark night of sorts, I suppose. The new direction comes in a vision. I am working on Preiddeu Annwn-the spoils of Annwn- one of the more mysterious poems of Taliesin which begins with the song of  a prisoner in the depths of Annwn- in my vision a doppleganger is drawn from Annwn a wounded self who has been kept in darkness for much of a life. In my quest for healing of this form I am taken back to my childhood home-in the back of the house was a cave which contained a pit into which my Aunt in an unhappy moment had thrown all the family papers. I am taken into this cave to face old memories old selves and all the dead of my family. I am shown the need to renew the old traditions, to help heal old ancestral wounds and am given a way of understanding Preiddeu Annwn and using it as the basis of a training course to help us open to the Awen and surrender to it.

So who am I now? What is my consistent form? I find myself buying an Awen pendant and wondering " Am I a  Druid?" I don't and have never have belonged to a Druid organisation.


  What is it to be a Druid? The name is thought to derive from old Welsh and Irish sources and seems to mean oak-knower or oak seer. It is linked also with the welsh word dryw the word for wren a mysterious shapeshifting bird linked in the Mabinogi with the spirit self of Lleu - the son of light. To be an oak knower is to enter into the heart of the  Tree of life and death; to be the bridge between worlds; to gather the understanding of the mistletoe year upon year, deepening in that knowing as the world turns. The wren shows us the power of the small and the liminal, the singularity that is between- the King of the birds called Jenny; the earth bird that flies higher than the eagle by resting on the wings of the universe and at the singular  moment of deep knowing hops into the centre of the sky. It takes us back to Gwion Bach, the small being that catalyses all.


The Druid grades of Bard, Ovate and Druid can be roles within an organisation but can be seen as archetypal functions- three aspects of Awen: 


Bard-the holding of lore, of the stories that heal and renew


Ovate-shaman and seer


Druid - bridge and  centre point


These roles revolve and flow into each other returning us to the mystery of the mistletoe and the Awen's arising in the depth of Annwn.


In this sense, yes I suppose I am a Druid- I take it as my continuous form.

Central to the story of  Pwyll is the experience of changing shapes with Arawn and being him for a year and a day. this movement into Annwn and shapechanging is one of the key practices in Celtic shamanism. It is in a way the practice of aligning with the deep energies of creation- a work of crossing boundaries of being the skillful thief who goes and returns with the riches of the Otherworld. It always howver involves a death. It is interesting to contemplate the mandala form we found in my last post. We see the earthly hounds and the Cwm Annwn encircling and creating the protective space for the transformation and Pwyll and Arawn gathered around the dying stag who has brought them together and is in  way the catalyst of the work through which they exchange shape.

 

This art of creation and exchange is described in somewhat coded form in a collection of spells found in Irish and scots gaelic  which make the subject invisible by placing upon them a different seeming or shape. It is related to the lorica or protection prayers such as the breastplate of St Patrick which encircle or enclose the person prayed for in a circle of protection.  

Fith fath can be translated as the deer’s aspect and originally may have been a charm which was about becoming a deer but Alexander Carmichael’s researches suggest that men might become bulls or horses and women a cat or hare.  The fith fath while at one level being a simple protection prayer for those on a  journey contains within it the heart of shamanic practice-the capacity to move between levels or worlds; the connection with a shamanic ally or guide; the experience of transformation and the experience of returning with whatever has been found.

A simple example of a fith fath is this:

A magic cloud I put on thee,
From dog, from cat,
From cow, from horse,
From man, from woman,
From young man, from maiden,
And from little child.
Till I again return.

Here we see the creation of a magic cloud which hides the person from sight and which ambiguously either seems to avert the eyes of those named or draws power from them so that the guarding or encircling of the person enspelled be accomplished. This is a charm which evokes a small landscape perhaps a rural village; it is connected also with the sense of journey as implied by the final verse in which the speaker suggests he or she is going and will return.

Another example, which draws on a larger cosmos  invokes Mary and Bride and a much wider selection of animals from cultivated land and wilderness.

Fath-fith will I make on you

By Mary of the Augury

By Bride of the Corslet

From sheep, from ram,

From goat, from buck

From fox, from wolf

From sow, from boar

From dog, from cat,

From hipped-bear,

From wilderness-dog,

From watchful scan

From cow, from horse,

From bull, from heifer,

From daughter, from son,

From the birds of the air,

From the creeping things of the earth,

From the fishes of the sea,

From the imps of the storm.

The lorica or protection prayer of Patrick draws on all the powers of the Christian Cosmos as well as those of the natural world and is used to transform him and all his monks into the likeness of deer. Here again we have the sense of a journey and the need for protection combined with the invocation of all the energies of creation.

The Prayer of Saint Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness 
Of the Creator of creation. 
I arise today 
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism, 
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial, 
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom. 
I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs, 
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven; 
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea, 
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock. 
I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me, 
God's wisdom to guide me, 
God's eye to look before me, 
God's ear to hear me, 
God's word to speak for me, 
God's hand to guard me, 
God's way to lie before me, 
God's shield to protect me, 
God's hosts to save me 
From snares of the devil, 
From temptations of vices, 
From every one who desires me ill, 
Afar and anear, 
Alone or in a multitude.
I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul, 
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry, 
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul. 
Christ shield me today 
Against poison, against burning, 
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance. 
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, 
Christ on my right, Christ on my left, 
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, 
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, 
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, 
Christ in the eye that sees me, 
Christ in the ear that hears me. 
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

Isobel Gowdie the  17th Scottish witch has a  fith-fath which is almost certainly one of the spells of women that Patrick was seeking to protect himself against is much simpler and direct. Here again we see her making a journey and calling on her master the devil. This brief verse has a power and simplicity which speaks of the potency of the shamanic adept who composed it.

I shall go into a hare, 
With sorrow and sigh and mickle care; 
And I shall go in the Devil’s name 
Ay while I come home again.

It can be an useful not to say instructive exercise to speak these spells aloud and to feel the sense of energy and imaginative reality that manifests when we speak them. For me the first fith fath  has a gentle pastoral feeling a sense of summer glow while the second a sense of a much wider and wilder world. St Patrick’s lorica invokes the powerful but narrow world of the Celtic Christian tradition but the most potent and mysterious is Isobel Gowdie’s fith fath. It conjures the sense of journeying into danger and sorrow, needing much attention and care, journeying in the name of the Devil(or the horned God, Lord of the Wild etc.).

 This apparently simple charm of invisibility and protection speaks to me of the heart of shamanic practice and the harnessing of the energies of the Deep Imagination. The inner dynamic of this process involves an experience of vanishing into smallness finding the golden drop or spark of fire and then returning again to the outer world bringing the power of transformation into that world.  In Celtic tradition there is a well attested dynamic of interplay between the everyday world and what in Wales is described as Annwn or Annwfynn:- the Not World or the very deep place. This very deep place is conceived of as within the earth, beneath the lake, within the hill etc. and the shapeshifting art described in the fith fath is a movement between these worlds.  The creation of the cloud of mist is described in many celtic stories and is an invocation of the borderland between the outer world and annwn. The process of encircling then makes you invisible to the human world and visible to annwn. In  the seeming therefore of a sacred animal a journey is made into the depths of the cauldron  of annwn returning from there crossing the boundary again and appearing as a human being.   

In this process we have the heart of shamanic practice: the encircling of self, companions etc and the calling for help from spirit allies of whatever kind and then the crossing of  the boundary the hedge or wall of mist in the shape or form of the spirit ally who is our guide and helper. The pivotal nature of the totem animal or spirit companion whom we become in this moment and their mysterious nature is central to the fith fath and to all shamanic work. Then there is a journey and a return-the journey will have different intentions depending on the needs of the moment but  fundamental to the dynamic is the exchange of gifts between the worlds. The key journey of the bards was the  finding of awen or imbas that spark of fire that is the smallest of all that has the power to remake all. The gift that is given is the surrendering of human shape and knowledge being embraced by the form of the spirit ally and carried by that being into the centre of all things; here giving up all forms in order to receive the spark of renewal that is then transmitted to the faery or totem being before becoming embodied in the human form and world. In the words of John Crowley this is a process of being Little;Big.

We can feel from this the inner attitude of shamanic practice: the combination of confidence and surrender; of power and prostration in the face of the enspirited universe. This central practice is different for each shaman yet we will notice similar features in them all.

In Isobel Gowdie’s case she repeats a charm to travel into Annwn,

I shall go into a hare, 
With sorrow and sigh and mickle care; 
And I shall go in the Devil’s name 
Ay while I come home again.

Then on returning to the human world;

“Hare, hare, God send thee care.

I am in a hare's likeness now,

But I shall be in a woman's likeness even now.”

She then appears in her human shape bringing  the blessing of the Otherworld back home.  These 2 verses of Isobel Gowdie’s are the equivalent of a Tibetan terma or treasure teaching which if contemplated and followed can open up  a profound teaching.The transformation verse begins with a statement of intent and focus,’I shall go into a hare,’ this is the verse that invokes the mantle or cloud of invisibility so that she takes on the seeming of the hare. In this verse she sheds her human shape and is held in the chalice and protection of the totemic hare who is the guide through the otherworld.  This union with the hare is a potent shift of the basis of her experience and the emergence of a magical or fairy self within which she can operate in the mysterious Otherworld.  The verse moves on, ‘With sorrow and sighing and mickle care,’  here the adept indicates the motive for entering the otherworld-the attempt to conquer sorrow and sighing and the capacity to pay precise and careful attention to all that we meet in the course of the journey being essential. There are deeper resonances in this verse which can apply itself to the notion of the Fall with its consequent sorrows and the subtle and refined awareness  needed by one who would work the path of the Thief.  She makes her Journey in the Devil’s name that is in the name of the otherworld power that is her patron, guardian and teacher and goes from home into the wild and back again.  This allusion conjures up images of the archetypal witches cottage in the forest  and the passage between one world and another. In Isobel Gowdie’s case she goes to a church at midnight; she goes to visit the King and Queen of the Fairies; she   is active in the subtle layer of the world around her.

It is this same process that Pwyll undergoes and embodies in his case the journey is concerned with sovereignty, the ancestral bequest and the balance between Annwn and the human world.

The Mabinogion is one of the earliest books i can remember; my initial experience of it was in texts for welsh children and when I got a little older I recall a small pale blue Everyman book that was my constant companion. Much of the stories were obscure to me but the layers of images, tangles of plots, mysterious names and evocation of Annwn(the very deep placeless place) drew me back to it time and time again.

I have studied and practised many spiritual traditions in my life, some very venerable with long and established pedigrees. By comparison the fractured and disreputable revivalist traditions of the Mabinogion can feel insubstantial but they continue to speak to my heart summoning me to a deep place in the heart of the body and the world.  It is the Mabinogion as gateway into depth and mystery that I want to speak to here.

There are many commentaries on it, the best of which, come from my friends John and Caitlin Matthews(Mabon and the Guardians of Celtic Britain and  King Arthur and the Goddess of the Land from Caitlin; Taliesin the Last Celtic Shaman from John). What makes their books the best in my opinion is that they understand that they are writing to help others bring these traditions alive again within the soul.


In my view this is the same intention the medieval bards held in the creation of the Mabinogion- a creative reinterpretation of ancient traditions -the generation of a new mythology in a collection of stories that contain archetypal images, mandalas, quests and riddles. Engaging with this surreal hypertext  awakens the roots of inspiration creates relationship between the tangible formed everyday world and the formless originating depth of Annwn that exists in the centre of each experience and in the middle of each sensation.


To give a flavour of this let us consider the beginning of the First Branch-the tale of Pwyll Prince of Dyfed. Pwyll whose name means sensible judge goes hunting and pursues a magical stag. The stag is pulled down by a magical pack of hounds with white coats and red ears in Glen Cuch. He drives off the white hounds and sets his own pack on the stag before being challenged by the otherworldy huntsman and King Arawn who is dressed in grey and who in turn drives off Pwyll's pack.


We are then presented with the image of Pwyll and Arawn at opposite sides of Glyn Cuch with the earthly hounds and the  otherworldly creating a circle or mandala , in the centre of which is the dying stag. This is the setting for colloquy and interchange and through which Pwyll the man of sense and judgement becomes Pen Anwnn-the one who has become the source or head of the otherworld experience.Within this meeting of the man of earth and the shimmering grey one in the moment of the dying stag we find many of the key themes of the mabinogion. 


In order to find these themes we have to enter into the chase, follow the stag, encounter the hounds of arawn and drive them off thus staking our claim and making our challenge. We must enter into the otherworldly colloquy, give and be given to and above all must become and be the dying stag.