Post by lorna on Aug 26, 2015 8:12:46 GMT -1
Hello,
A while back I said I'd try to put something together as my contribution for the 'Personal Interactions' section. I recently wrote a piece for the About page on my blog that with a couple of slight tweaks I think would fit the bill. I've pasted it here. Please could you let me know if you'd like to use it. If you need a word document I can send it across (Lee, I think you're the primary / only editor?)
I Give Voice
I live in Penwortham which was first recorded as Peneverdant in the Domesday Book and translated by Rev. Thornber as ‘the green hill on the water.’ Its history reaches back beyond Anglo-Norman rule to the Bronze Age lake village on the marsh and the Brythonic people who used the hill as a sacred site and venerated their ancestors, spirits of place, local and tribal gods and goddesses.
Little is known about the earliest people who walked this land yet I have been drawn to Brythonic religion by its great goddesses Brigantia and Belisama and more mysteriously by my patron god, Gwyn ap Nudd, a ruler of Annwn and the dead. Gwyn has no known ties with this area but as the Brythonic King of Fairy speaks in the strangenesses of its fairylore, in the ancestral towns which lie behind its towns. He leads the way to the deepest myths of Britain.
As an awenydd ('person inspired') I serve Gwyn and the gods and spirits of my local landscape by giving voice to the stories they gift to me. To their known and unknown myths.
I give voice to the land before my eyes: wren enchanted ivy-hung woodlands, rivers of swans and shining water, culverted and underground streams and dried-up wells, wild-flower strewn industrial wastelands and decaying cotton-mills, to the ridiculousness of shopping malls and office blocks.
I give voice to the unseen spirits: knotty dryads of trees, plant spirits, outstretched dried-out boggarts, to the ancient oak-men of the damp oak forest that was here before the bogs before they were drained. To the fay and uncanny beings who haunt the in-between.
I give voice to the ancestors: to the people who lived on and shaped this land. From the Setantii tribe through the rule of Romans, Saxons, Normans, Cotton Lords and corporations I listen for hidden voices. Voices of dissonance and dissent. In the voices of outlaws, Luddites, Chartists, survivors of workhouses, suffragettes, conservers of rivers and hen harriers, poets who stood for a vision in spite of derision and impoverishment I find inspiration and strength.
I give voice to the gods: Brigantia 'High One' warrior-protector goddess of the North. Belisama 'Shining One' goddess of the beautiful dangerous trout-filled waters of the river Ribble, this valley carved by her glistening curves. To Gwyn ap Nudd 'White son of Mist' King of Annwn, my Lord of the Otherworld; the not-world, the deep, of imagining otherwise with whom I ride a hound at my side aboard a mare of mist into the mist to the great beyond.
I give voice to the myths of ancient Britain to which Gwyn leads. I learn to see to their bones before the introduction of Arthur and Christianity and the rule of Anglo-Norman Kings. I strive to heal the break in tradition that has cut us off from the Brythonic gods and their irreplaceable wisdom for over a thousand years. To make these myths new and show they can guide and inspire us through catastrophic times.
I give voice to my vocation with gratitude for the freedom to give voice. I give voice to the necessity of giving voice when across the world so many have been made and are being made voiceless.
A while back I said I'd try to put something together as my contribution for the 'Personal Interactions' section. I recently wrote a piece for the About page on my blog that with a couple of slight tweaks I think would fit the bill. I've pasted it here. Please could you let me know if you'd like to use it. If you need a word document I can send it across (Lee, I think you're the primary / only editor?)
I Give Voice
I live in Penwortham which was first recorded as Peneverdant in the Domesday Book and translated by Rev. Thornber as ‘the green hill on the water.’ Its history reaches back beyond Anglo-Norman rule to the Bronze Age lake village on the marsh and the Brythonic people who used the hill as a sacred site and venerated their ancestors, spirits of place, local and tribal gods and goddesses.
Little is known about the earliest people who walked this land yet I have been drawn to Brythonic religion by its great goddesses Brigantia and Belisama and more mysteriously by my patron god, Gwyn ap Nudd, a ruler of Annwn and the dead. Gwyn has no known ties with this area but as the Brythonic King of Fairy speaks in the strangenesses of its fairylore, in the ancestral towns which lie behind its towns. He leads the way to the deepest myths of Britain.
As an awenydd ('person inspired') I serve Gwyn and the gods and spirits of my local landscape by giving voice to the stories they gift to me. To their known and unknown myths.
I give voice to the land before my eyes: wren enchanted ivy-hung woodlands, rivers of swans and shining water, culverted and underground streams and dried-up wells, wild-flower strewn industrial wastelands and decaying cotton-mills, to the ridiculousness of shopping malls and office blocks.
I give voice to the unseen spirits: knotty dryads of trees, plant spirits, outstretched dried-out boggarts, to the ancient oak-men of the damp oak forest that was here before the bogs before they were drained. To the fay and uncanny beings who haunt the in-between.
I give voice to the ancestors: to the people who lived on and shaped this land. From the Setantii tribe through the rule of Romans, Saxons, Normans, Cotton Lords and corporations I listen for hidden voices. Voices of dissonance and dissent. In the voices of outlaws, Luddites, Chartists, survivors of workhouses, suffragettes, conservers of rivers and hen harriers, poets who stood for a vision in spite of derision and impoverishment I find inspiration and strength.
I give voice to the gods: Brigantia 'High One' warrior-protector goddess of the North. Belisama 'Shining One' goddess of the beautiful dangerous trout-filled waters of the river Ribble, this valley carved by her glistening curves. To Gwyn ap Nudd 'White son of Mist' King of Annwn, my Lord of the Otherworld; the not-world, the deep, of imagining otherwise with whom I ride a hound at my side aboard a mare of mist into the mist to the great beyond.
I give voice to the myths of ancient Britain to which Gwyn leads. I learn to see to their bones before the introduction of Arthur and Christianity and the rule of Anglo-Norman Kings. I strive to heal the break in tradition that has cut us off from the Brythonic gods and their irreplaceable wisdom for over a thousand years. To make these myths new and show they can guide and inspire us through catastrophic times.
I give voice to my vocation with gratitude for the freedom to give voice. I give voice to the necessity of giving voice when across the world so many have been made and are being made voiceless.
