Post by lorna on Oct 9, 2014 9:14:44 GMT -1
This is a poem based on the idea going to sleep / entering the dreamworld (the land of Nod) is analogous to entering the Temple of Nodens, a British god of healing, hunting and dream. Dream work and dreaming as a sacred pursuit was introduced to me by John Newton at a talk at UCLan Pagan Society three years ago.
Since then I've been working with Nodens on and off mainly as a god of sleep and dreams, including a visit to a site on Winmarleigh Moss in Lancashire where Romano-British statues dedicated to him were found, Cockersand Abbey, which is nearby on Lune estuary and used to be a hospital and his famous temple at Lydney This is how I experience him here and now in Lancs.
Temple of Nodens 21st C
Dream source comes powering back
over the land in heavy rain,
primal point from which this world emerges
the injured or insane lowered into the abyss,
waves crashing over them
in the sanctity of Nodens’ Temple.
In every bed sleepers descend,
dreaming a storm where he teaches them
how to man a coracle, with catching hand fling out a net,
the unflinching trajectory of a steadfast spear
knowledge of the wound that heals them,
licked clean by his eager hounds,
the necessity of his lost arts
beneath the dizzying calls of two tawny owls
where culverted rivers roar under tower blocks
and roads strain on concrete scaffolds.
In every bedroom lights are out,
windows closed, shutters down,
behind the sheet rain a land of sleepers
is dreaming a panacea in the not-light
of his twenty first century sanctum.
Since then I've been working with Nodens on and off mainly as a god of sleep and dreams, including a visit to a site on Winmarleigh Moss in Lancashire where Romano-British statues dedicated to him were found, Cockersand Abbey, which is nearby on Lune estuary and used to be a hospital and his famous temple at Lydney This is how I experience him here and now in Lancs.
Temple of Nodens 21st C
Dream source comes powering back
over the land in heavy rain,
primal point from which this world emerges
the injured or insane lowered into the abyss,
waves crashing over them
in the sanctity of Nodens’ Temple.
In every bed sleepers descend,
dreaming a storm where he teaches them
how to man a coracle, with catching hand fling out a net,
the unflinching trajectory of a steadfast spear
knowledge of the wound that heals them,
licked clean by his eager hounds,
the necessity of his lost arts
beneath the dizzying calls of two tawny owls
where culverted rivers roar under tower blocks
and roads strain on concrete scaffolds.
In every bedroom lights are out,
windows closed, shutters down,
behind the sheet rain a land of sleepers
is dreaming a panacea in the not-light
of his twenty first century sanctum.
