When Gwion Bach enters water, he is admitted into an almost alien world, a place not often explored by man, or at least not for very long. Life down here is incredibly different to that of the land, and the creatures that inhabit it are equally as mysterious and enigmatic. In Celtic tradition, the salmon is traditionally associated with wisdom, which implies that water is a conduit for the transmission of wisdom. In Irish traditions the Salmon of Wisdom is eaten, and it is the act of consuming its flesh that imparts wisdom; however, the British system differs significantly, for it is not a salmon that is found in the weir but a human being. The salmon is the carrier of wisdom, whereas Gwion Bach, who later becomes Taliesin, is the actual personification of wisdom. (More on this in the section devoted to Taliesin.) Water is perceived as a conduit for the transmission and assimilation of wisdom, but this is fraught with another of its attributes: emotion.
In the esoteric arts, water is seen as what represents the emotions; the ebb and flow of our hormones’ impact upon our emotional stability. The waters of our oceans are pulled by the gravitational attraction of the moon, which in turn is believed to influence human emotions. Considering that we are primarily made of water, it stands to reason, esoterically, that we are affected by our satellite. Our emotions mimic the nature of water; they both arise from an unknown, invisible place and they must run their course or risk breaking their banks or, worse, being dammed. The relationship that we have with this invisible world within us teaches us a great deal about the nature of our selves and the nature of the realm of water. Not everything in life is visible or in plain sight, and as students of the mysteries, we gain this teaching from the wisdom of water. Throughout the tale, its presence is constant—the initial components take place on the edge of a vast, deep lake. The cauldron requires water to contain the ingredients for the brewing of Awen. The mysteries are transmitted via water, the drops, into the body of Gwion Bach. The salmon and otter interact with a sacred river before Gwion Bach swims in the amniotic waters of the witch goddess. The newborn child is placed on a river and set adrift for forty years before being discovered in a weir. The waters of our tale are symbolic of the interaction between the land and the element that sustains it and its riches. It is a constant that holds the initiate and causes him to be moved from one experience to another; it facilitates assimilation. The teachings that it transmits are suggestive of the hidden worlds and the effect they have on the apparent world. It is the conduit for the transmission of wisdom and the assimilation of it before its utilisation in the visible world.
EXERCISE
Meditate on the quality of water within your own body. Your blood emulates the action of rivers, irrigating and bringing nourishment to what surrounds it. It holds within it a life force that no microscope can detect, no scientist eviscerate. The ebb and flow of your hormones floods the bloodstream, the rivers and streams of your being, and causes you to affect yourself and the world around you. The water within you acts in the same manner as every other body of water on the face of the earth. Therefore, the elements of mystery contained within it are, by their very nature, contained within you.
The Celts were renowned for their riddles and for their tendency to answer a question with a question. On the surface of things, this can appear a little annoying, but there is much that can be learnt from this process. Contemplation is a vital skill of any student of the mysteries. With this in mind, I ask that you contemplate the following statements made by Gwion Bach after his transformation:
Awen I sing,
From the deep I bring it,
It is a connected river that flows.
I know its might,
I know how it ebbs,
And I know how it flows,
I know of its course,
I know when it will retreat,
I know what creatures there are beneath the sea.101
Taliesin is describing the knowledge of these things; his immersion in water has enabled this knowing. What do you know of the nature of water? Do you go with the flow, or is it only dead fish that go with the flow?
It is one thing to be observant of water and indeed to be immersed within it, but how different is it to “be” water? Taliesin elaborates:
I have been a drop in the air,
I have been a bridge over sixty estuaries,
I have been a coracle on the sea,
I have been the sparkling bubbles in drink,
I have been a raindrop in a shower
And foam in water.
From the ninth wave’s water was I made.102
Repeat the verses above; if possible, memorise them and chant them in a mantralike fashion. If you are able, contemplate the nature of water whilst reciting the verse near a body of water—allow the mind to drift, letting the words flow like rivers from your lips.
The ninth wave is a common motif in Celtic mythology; although its meaning is lost to the mists of time, it carries a certain enigmatic quality that inspires awe to this day. The ninth wave contains within it the magic of the Celts’ most sacred number, three. The number nine—three times three or the square of three—was perceived to be immensely sacred. The ninth wave can be perceived as the mystical border between the worlds; it is the wave that carries the mystery of the sea to the land.
Record your experience in your journal.
Air/Sky
The teachings of water are transmitted and the salmon grows weary; the waters become murky and the brine of the sea stings the gills as it nears the estuary. The otter is relentless, merciless; she continues her pursuit, pushing the initiate ever onwards. As the waters shallow, the salmon is forced upwards, and as its head appears above the surface, a beak takes its place. Feathers appear where once scales were, and a tiny wren emerges from the water’s broken surface. Its small form ascends into the sky; its pure, bright voice calling to the element that holds it. The otter breaks the surface tension of the river and she emerges as a hawk; her cry shatters the air with its piercing call, pushing the little wren onwards and upwards. Cerridwen senses the resentment rising within her yet again, but it is subdued by the mysteries. This is her task: to force the wren onwards into the mystery of air.
The realm of air/sky is perhaps the most ambiguous of the elements, for we are so accustomed to it that we barely pay it any attention. Unlike water, we do not seek to consciously replenish ourselves with air; the process happens naturally. When we need water, we thirst, thereby responding to the call of water within us; it is not often that we encounter situations of suffocation that would make us gasp for air. Our need to breathe is obviously vital, but we tend to give it little thought. Yet the breath has long been associated with the spirit, and this can be seen in the etymology of the word spirit, which is derived from the Latin spiritus, meaning “breath,” which in turn is related to spirare, meaning “to breathe.”103 The breath carries the voice and the voice carries the power of words; magic exists within breath, within the element of air.
Air is the realm of winged creatures, both physical and mystical. Inhabited by birds and insects, the world of air is also believed to be the domain of other elemental creatures and spirits, in particular the Fair Folk. On the physical plane, many birds and insects have long been associated with divinity or as vessels for gods and goddesses. Several archetypes of the British Celtic system are identified with the crow family or with the wren. In the insect world, the bee is particularly associated with the dead for its ability to carry the spirits of the dead across the border into the next world. It is believed that aspects of the spirit are held within the breath and that at the last breath it is set free to continue its journey into mystery.
Air has long been associated with magic, and the raising of the winds was a particularly special skill of the witch. In Britain, the “tying up the wind” spell is as ancient as man’s ability to build sailing vessels. This spell involved the tying of three knots into a piece of string
, rope, or cloth. The witch would summon the winds as she tied each knot and use her breath to invoke their powers into the material used. This would then be sold to a sailor who in turn would release the wind tied into the knots, if and when needed. For a moderate wind, one knot would be untied. Two knots untied would summon half a gale, whereas all three would surely call a hurricane. This spell is still used to this day in coastal regions of Britain.
As Gwion Bach, in the form of a wren, takes to the skies, he is immersed in the teachings of that element. As he flies through it, it also courses through him, his heart thumping as it takes the vital gas and sends it to his organs, powering him away from the claws of the hawk. As you course through air, stop and meditate on its qualities. As each breath enters your mouth and descends into your lungs, its encounters the bronchial tree. Incredibly, within our bodies we have a representation of a tree, the most sacred symbol of the British Celts. Albeit upside down, the tree mimics the nature of trees in its processing and exchange of gas. The magical quality of air happens within our bodies every single second of our lives. Each red blood cell holds a molecule of gas in its concavity and sends it to the tissues and organs of your body, thus ensuring your well-being. The powers of air are entirely invisible, yet their effects are more than apparent. A gentle breeze can be a welcome relief on a warm, sunny day. A hurricane may mercilessly kill thousands of innocent lives. Like all the other elements discussed, air acts only according to its nature; it is amoral, it simply serves to be itself.
EXERCISE
Consider the following riddle from the Book of Taliesin. It speaks of something indicative of the element discussed, yet I shall not offer the answer. Meditate on the statements and the message and teaching that it relays.
Guess who it is.
Created before the flood,
A creature strong,
Without flesh, without bone,
No veins, and no blood,
Without head and without feet.
It is not older, nor younger
Than it was in the beginning,
It will not stray from its mission
Through fear nor death.
It has not the needs
That created beings have.
It is in the field, it is in the wood,
With neither hand nor foot,
Without old age or illness.
It is not troubled by affliction.
It is as wide as the face of the earth,
And it was not born,
And cannot be seen,
It is on the sea and on the land,
It sees but is not seen.
It is bad, it is good,
It is there, it is here,
It unarranges and apologises not.
It makes no amends for what it does.
For it is blameless.104
Meditate on the riddle above, but do so in the knowledge that what you read connects you to countless centuries of wisdom and magic. These are not words that have been plucked from air; instead they speak of it in a manner that is as old as the standing stones that decorate the fields.
Record your encounters with air in your journal.
• • •
At the culmination of the chase, Gwion Bach is forced by the relentless hawk to descend into a farmer’s yard and assume the form of a grain of wheat. Here he becomes, in essence, the symbol of life itself: the humble seed. Cerridwen, in her form as the hen, maintains her role as initiator; sensing the journey’s end, she pecks at the grain until she consumes the initiate. Instead of certain death, Gwion Bach is mysteriously transferred from the belly of the hen into the womb of the witch goddess, whose fury returns upon the assumption of her human form. Within the form of various animals, it seems that Cerridwen is able to temporarily switch off her vengeance and accept that the chase is part of a mystery that even she may not entirely understand. Yet within her human form, her anger returns to the forefront of her mind: within her womb is the subject of her wrath, and she is still intent on killing him.
Gwion Bach now finds himself in different waters, the womb waters of the mother. This process is necessary for the assimilation of the previous experience. For it to be fully incorporated into the mind and spirit, a period of isolation and absorption must take place. The initiate must retreat in order to make sense of what has happened and to become one with the knowledge and wisdom that he or she has received. With any course of study there must always follow a period of reflection and revision, but there are obvious questions that warrant asking. Primarily: if Gwion is in possession of the Prophetic Spirit and is indeed the vessel for all the knowledge and wisdom of the universe, why does he not prevent the chase from ever taking place? Surely he has the ability to transport himself to the furthest reaches of the galaxy or to another realm entirely? With his newfound abilities and powers, Cerridwen would surely be unable to follow him. With a similar question in mind, one would imagine that for a witch as learned and skilled as Cerridwen, she could prevent the transfer of the grain into her womb. With her magical prowess, one would imagine this task to be easily achievable. There must be a reason why these alternatives do not take place. It seems that Gwion must pass through a triple birth to be in effective possession of the Prophetic Spirit and be reborn as Taliesin. First he is born of his ordinary mother in a small Welsh village, secondly he is born to the witch goddess Cerridwen, and finally he is birthed, almost by means of a caesarean section, from the coracle, or skin-belly. On some level both the initiate, Gwion, and the initiator, Cerridwen, are aware of this. The old life of Gwion Bach, including his features and personality, is destroyed in the womb of the great mother; for all intents and purposes, he is killed. It is his spirit that is transferred into the foetus that Cerridwen carries. It is at this point that our exploration of Gwion Bach comes to its natural end, but we have explored much. We have established that Gwion has a supernatural element to him, that his birth and life are not as clean-cut and transparent as we may have initially thought. We discovered the nature of what nourishes and also poisons, and that learning and assimilation are imperative to transformation. We have also established that Gwion Bach, in essence, represents you—you are the hero of your quest, and Gwion’s tale serves as a template that guides you into the understanding of mystery.
EXERCISE
Gwion’s initiation is silent; he does not protest nor raise his voice in objection. For the duration of the chase he is silenced by being in animal form. He is silent in the womb, and only when he is reborn does he begin to speak. But one could argue that this is no longer Gwion Bach. An exercise into the nature of Gwion Bach is, in a manner, counterproductive, for the act of immersion in the tale and assuming Gwion is the exercise. But there are methods that our ancestors used to prepare themselves to be in receipt of Awen.
It was common for the Celts to retreat into dark cells for long periods of contemplation, where light was not permitted entry. Within the darkness they would meditate on questions that required answers or clarity. After several hours or days, they would emerge into the sunlight, at which point Awen would fill them with wisdom and the answers would spill forth. In a similar fashion, take yourself to a room or space that can be entirely darkened to prevent any admission of light. Ensure that you will not be disturbed, and remain there for a lengthy duration of time. Watch your thoughts as your mind projects images onto the walls of darkness. Immerse yourself in the nothingness, and relish in the sheer potential of the unmanifest.
Memorise and meditate on the following questions:
• What is silence?
• How important is it in your life to have periods of silence and reflection?
• Do you set aside times to reflect? Do you retreat periodically?
• What is the nature of retreating?
• When you last studied a subject, how did you assimilate the information?
; • Why do you seek mystery?
• Why do you seek transformation?
• What is your most innocent quality?
• What is your most poisonous quality?
The goal here is to lose the restraints of your mind by being deprived of the sense of sight; this, in turn, will affect your other senses. Some may be heightened, others dampened. Remain in the darkness until you feel it is time to leave. Walk out into light and record your experience in your journal.
[contents]
88. Ford, The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, 21.
89. Williams, Chwedl Taliesin.
90. Hamp, “Varia II,” 149–154.
91. Matthews, Taliesin, 21.
92. Ibid.
93. Hamp, “Varia II,” 153.
94. Peniarth MS 111, Hanes Taliesin.
95. “Kadeir Kerritwen,” The Book of Taliesin.
96. “Prif Gyuarch Geluyd,” the Book of Taliesin (my translation).
97. Matthews, Mabon and the Guardians of Celtic Britain, 141.
98. Davies, Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, 236.
99. Graves, The White Goddess, 400.
From the Cauldron Born Page 22