The Passion of Ceridwen – A Vision

I saw proud Ceridwen, great Queen and Goddess,

Long blond curling hair and pale skin, a red dress,

Alone in the fort on the lake, an evening of storm and silvery light.

Her Lord rode hard to hounds and shouted, far away,

Full of the joy of freedom and male companionship.

The light from the door as she opened it, falling on their children,

On Creirwy, Bright One, on Afagddhu, Utter Darkness,

His pale grey face screwed up with grief, even in sleep,

Little ogre, who would stamp his foot, his little clubfoot,

And beat his little cudgel on the ground,

So that her heart hurt for him.

Her daughter ran with flowers in her hair, Sun Child.

But Afagddhu howled and wept, so hurt by the world was he,

In shackles.

She rode out on her white mare Sea Foam,

Across the causeway and into the night,

Her cloak streaming behind her through the dark.

As Dawn broke, she was far away, at the foot of snow-capped mountains.

I saw her ride through the high passes, the snow spiralling down,

Her face pale and beautiful and determined.

She arrived at the great city of towers high in the mountains,

And went across the bridge that spanned the abyss to the high high doors,

And smashed the great ring against them and banged the gong.

They opened; light spilled from inside; the shadow of a dark slim figure,

Long robes, long black hair: Crone or Maiden?

No, she was a woman with pale skin, dark eyes, hair as soft and black

As midnight.

Her name is Rowena, I remember.

She led Ceridwen into the vast city within, huge space and stairs,

Towers that went both up and down,

Clinking of hammers and fires in the deep,

Great clockwork engines, vast turning wheels.

Rowena led her to a round chamber where a Council of Thirteen

Sat in a half-circle at a crescent table, and they were robed Druids.

They heard her appeal and judged her case.

Chief among them, wizened with long beard,

Declared they would grant her request,

And Rowena led her up the spiral stairs tuathalach,

So far and high, up through space and Tower,

At times open to the great cavern of the city,

At times within walls.

They seemed to stretch taller as they rose.

At the summit of the Tower of the Moon was the library,

Escheresque, stairs and shelves extending in impossible directions all around,

Convoluted, upside down and inside out.

In the middle on the table she threw down the first great book,

Bound in leather, billow of dust, gold seal on the cover.

Reddish leather.

She opened to the first page, and began to read,

Tracing the words with her finger.

I saw her scribble notes on an unfolded parchment with a goose-quill.

I saw her gradually amassing stacks of books of different sizes,

Tracing their lines, her quill splotching, by the light of candles,

By pale daylight through the high windows onto only sky.

I saw her there with her golden hair tied back, late at night,

Ink smeared on her cheek; I saw Rowena bring her books.

I saw them, in Rowena’s low-ceilinged, vaulted attic room,

Their limbs entwining, the dark one and the light,

Drawing a nightdress up over her head.

I heard them moan in each other’s embraces,

I saw one rise above the other and plunge down between her legs.

I gasped and ached as I saw their beauties mingling.

I saw them stand close, on top of the Tower,

Under the Full Moon, under the Crescent.

Time passed.

I saw them take leave of one another at the great door,

And they kissed and Rowena wept, and Ceridwen pulled up her fur-lined hood,

And cradled at her lap on White Foam’s saddle the bound sheets of the Book

She made.

She rode swiftly through the changing landscapes, to the fort on the lake.

Her children. Creirwy laughed, Afagddhu wailed.

I saw the children as the seasons changed,

Creirwy crowned in the May, Afagddhu always grey and pale,

Stamp his foot and cry at the unfairness of it all.

She loved him.

I saw her gathering herbs and roots, sea-wrack on the Western shore at Dawn;

I saw her wade with gathered skirts in the pools, through the lilies,

Her basket in hand.

I saw her at the Cauldron, as she added the ingredients and stirred.

I saw her meet them in the forest, Gwion Bach and the old blind man he led.

Imperious, she commanded them from horseback: her finger pointed.

He a little boy with tousled golden curls and too-big clothes.

I saw them stir the Cauldron and stoke the fire,

Play fidcheall as the Winter nights grew long, laugh softly together, tell stories.  

I saw the night approach, as Summer came again,

As she dragged Afagddhu and Creirwy, each by the hand, to the hut by the lake.

The Cauldron hissed and sizzled, spat, three drops on Gwion’s hand,

He sucked his thumb, and knew all that’s passed and passing and to come.

He spun in darkness, in the Universe, his head in Stars, Starchild.

Her eyes flamed and the Cauldron exploded and the potion flowed away.

He as a hare suddenly fled across fields and ditches;

She as a grey bitch hound raced after him;

He flickered into a salmon and plunged into the fast-flowing stream;

She as an otter undulated after him;

He leapt and soared as a bird;

She swept as a hawk and followed, stooped over the plunging bird and swooped,

He shot into a pile of grain beside a barn;

She was a black hen who darted down and swallowed him.

He plunged into her dark womb and quickened.

Her pale belly swelled and grew round and taut,

She laboured by torchlight,

The golden child was born and cried,

And she held him and wept for he was so beautiful.

She wept and sang as she sewed him into the leathern bag,

And by the shore at dawn she pushed him off into the waves of the sea.

He drifted long, tossed by waves, moved by tides,

Under the Moon that waned and waxed,

Borne up by sirens and selkies,

By the Boy of the Waves.

The little man set his nets and came to check them,

At high tide under the Full Moon.

He found them empty of silver fish.

But there against the pole was the leather bag.

He patiently cut the stitches with his dagger,

And crooned to the struggling babe, who came out,

Golden curls and a laugh,

And he said, “Taliesin, Bright Brow!”

And the child declared “So be it!”

The babe grew into a boy in his father’s castle,

Jesting and singing,

His clothes always too big.

But in the fort on the lake,

Ceridwen wept,

As her blood returned,

Her white shift stained between the legs,

She waded in the pools.

At night by torchlight her black-bearded Lord

(and he was me)

Took her hard on all fours,

His hairy bristling body rising up behind her as he pumped

Against her pale and shapely buttocks,

Her nightdress gathered round her waist,

Between her legs the blood dripped,

Around his cock,

It mixed with his spurting seed,

She dropped her hand down and gathered it

For witchcraft,

And her proud face gleamed in the flickering light,

And he shouted as he came,

Triumphant.

Taliesin grew, into a blond-headed bright-faced lad of twelve,

And his dark little father was found to boast to the Lord,

And his twelve master-poets, of the skill and singing of his son.

Summoned before them, the little lad sang and played his harp;

They scoffed and shouted, these bards,

With their robes too big on them and stiff with brocade,

Their strange-shaped hats, their pale sheep-silly faces.

They cried out in outrage, for he broke all their rules.

He sang up the wind, which whirled around the Court,

Which whirled them all up into the air,

Which sent all their papers flying round the chamber;

They tumbled and spun in wild circles around the ceiling.

It unbound their books and sent them spinning,

It toppled their tall hats and whipped their robes up

Over their heads, on pale hairy legs and arses.

The little dark father was dragged from the cells where he had been flung,

Dark dungeon, and his shackles were struck off by a

Pure note

Sung by Taliesin.

And then things whirled into the future,

And the past,

And I saw Ceridwen crying,

And crying out as he took her by torchlight,

And Rowena’s sorrowful face,

And the weir,

And Taliesin as a grown man with long blond hair

And a green cloak,

And I realised I had dreamed him thus as a child,

That he was always there, had always been there.

There was always Taliesin, with a golden harp,

And he announcing Myrddin, Merlin,

And then Arthur drawing the sword in the forest glade,

And everything whirling on, all part of the same story.

I saw Fionn burn his thumb on the salmon skin,

And suck it and spin,

And Fionn as an old grey man seeing auburn-haired Gráinne,

And pursuing her and Diarmuid,

And denying Diarmuid the drink from his cupped hands,

And the Torc Binne Gulben snorting,

His gored blood on its snout and tusks.

And Fionn’s grief, even as it is reflected in Arthur’s eyes,

His beard now shot with grey,

As he sees his friend, and how she looks at him.

And everything spun,

Fire in the head,

Imbas forosnai,

Awen.

And on into the future

And Robin in the Greenwood,

And all of them,

In a long line and lineage,

And all the way down the ages.

Kaleidoscope,

Whirling colours,

The spinning Tower under the Moon,

Waxing and waning.

The Universe.