Cerridwen, Colonisation & Creativity: And a Story

This past year I discovered I have a very recent Welsh ancestor, whose name I know. I knew he was there before records released him. I didn’t need him to be there for any particular reason, but all the evidence from oracular and trance work pointed to it.

There are a variety of reasons - known and unknown to my mother’s family - as to why we didn’t know the identity of the father of my maternal grandmother whose own biological mother (of English heritage) died giving birth to her. But then we did discover it. And we also discovered that he lived in the house right across the road from the last house I lived in, in Meanjin (colonially named Brisbane). A beautiful house I looked at a lot walking along that street. The name of that street also happened to be the last name of my fetch-mate during one of his human lives. But he lived that live in Portsmouth and as far as I know I have no biological ancestors from there. This all happened to coalesce around the time that my beloved Ravyn and I - after years of working with Cerridwen at WitchCamps, in classes, and privately - said yes to Her being the main guide and initiator in our nine month spell-work and story course we are facilitating. She kept being there at the edges. Silent. At least for me.

I know I don’t need a Welsh ancestor in order to feel drawn to the Welsh myths and spirits. I would never say to someone drawn deeply to venerate Ganesh or Hanuman or Durga that they need to have Indian or Balinese or Thai or Malay genetics or even culture to validate this, or make it okay. I would offer and provoke that relationship building and history learning, respectful culture engagement, and earnest, sincere study (in all the ways) would be a worthy offering and orientation! I’d suggest this for anything - any discipline, practice, or learning - at all. It is also true that for me a huge part of my attraction to witchcraft as I first understood it when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, was that it might help me link to my Celtic-speaking and British ancestors. It is true that I really wanted to know the magic of my mother’s peoples and in various ways I have learnt some of that magic. From human teachers from those places, yes, but also from the privilege of being initiated in those lands, of working magic there, of travelling and listening and opening to sense and perceive the Great and Mighty Ones who form the magic of those webs. However, I maintain that I didn’t need to have the DNA of those peoples within me in order to engage any of that. Once again, respect for context and carriers (not just human) of that context, is key.

I do not think of myself as Welsh, or Irish, or Scottish, or English… I barely think of myself as Australian. For the sake of convenience, I say I am Balinese-Australian, and when I feel I have to expand on that, I will speak of my mother’s recent ancestors and the places they came from. My mother’s recent ancestors - as am I - are of course complicit in colonisation. How could we not be? Even those who were brought as convicts - I am speaking specifically of my direct ancestors - when freed, were given stolen land, and then “used” that land to farm and raise livestock, only to grow quite wealthy. I imagine - from the stories - some of them were involved in dispossessing First Peoples from their own lands either directly or indirectly. And others simply remained silent. A few of them did not, I know that from stories too. Either way, we are all complicit. This is historical and cultural fact and truth. I live currently on the stolen and unceded land of the Gadigal and Bidjigal Peoples.

I know many of my friends whose ancestors did not flee war or poverty, or who were never cast out as convicts… or whose ancestors were not murdered in the streets… and who remain today in what we think of as Europe, often feel they are not so intimately connected with these colonial realities like we are in the so-called US or Australia. The reality is we are all linked through colonisation - perhaps even more so - and to acknowledge imperialism and colonialism as horrors whose impacts still affect Indigenous peoples and their lands and kin today (empire and colonisation continues after all) is the very beginning. It also affects and fragments us all. It leaves many of us rootless. I know that some folks in Europe will now offer this in land acknowledgements when we begin our rituals, convergences, and meetings…

No matter where we are on Earth I think it is important to acknowledge colonisation and empire and its effects, the work and leadership of First Peoples everywhere (we may also be a part of those communities), and the power and sovereignty and spirits of the lands we are all in. And the lands we carry. It is also imperative, as so many Indigenous leaders, activists, and leaders express, that we link these acknowledgements with action of some kind. That we move the spirit of these acknowledgements through our lives practically.

I can not change that my DNA was forged by the lives of people we now think of Balinese, Irish, Chinese, Welsh, British, English, Scottish… these are the peoples and therefore lands alive in me. As a witch and ancestor/spirit-of-place venerating spirit-worker I acknowledge, praise, and respectfully offer sacred attention and magic to these multiple threads each day. In the way that I align my souls within the cauldrons in the landscape of this One (Body)* I also acknowledge and praise at least three great realms and at least three rivers of ancestry. The ancestors of my blood, of the land, and of my traditions and inspirations. All of this - this messy and complex weave - is how I even come to exist. It is where I begin and it is what I have to work with in that beginning, the rest is up to me and all the connections that change me.

I also pass other lineages, lineages that come up from and drink from all those aforementioned rivers and wells within me… I pass magical currents and lineages that were passed to me by spirits and dead and living human witches. I witness and wonder at the ways in which this work affects and transforms peoples lives. This has become a heart-broke-open kind of magic that consistently teaches me about the magic of being human and being alive in these times. Certainly and especially if those people who seek these initiations rise to meet themselves in it, if they dance with the challenge and heartbreak of it all, and witness to the wonder (as my friend Jarrah would say) of the potent magic of it all, then we become both extremely human and extremely faerie/other. The witches.

Cerridwen - a witch? goddess? character? - has been here this whole time at the edges and on flight last year from so-called to Portland to so-called Baltimore this story flowed through my fingertips. I offer it to you all now. I feel it has something to say about how we might meet these challenges and mysteries today.

And if you desire to learn even more about Welsh mythos, magic, and especially Cerridwen please engage the work of Mhara Starling and Kristoffer Hughes.

Cerridwen

Written on a plane from PDX to Baltimore on the 20th of July, 2023.

I walk barefoot by the lake. This is our home. The home of my husband, Tegid Foel, a giant, a giant in my heart and also a giant who forms the very breath of this land.

They say I’m crooked woman, they say my name means fair or white or shining, or She who is noticed or She who notices.

I am told of a Story by ravens and eagles, by river fish and all the creatures of the earth and the deep below that I have two children.

That there is the Most Beautiful Daughter, and She is the Dawn, and the radiance of the Sun.

That there is the Most Dark, or Ugly Son, and He is the west and the setting of the Sun, and what lies beneath the waves… the Dark Crow Morfran, the Afaggdu… He is Night. Neither bad nor ugly, except to those who are twisted inside.

I knew that from the Dark must come great knowledge and so to my Son who is the West and the Night and what lies beneath, I must make this offering of all knowledge, that I might swallow all knowledge and become as a God.

So forever - or a year and a day - neither a long time nor a short moment I begged for a young boy and an old man to keep the cauldron stirring, to tend the fire, while I would stalk all the worlds for the plants and magics that would reveal this knowledge.

I already possessed the Cauldron called Awen. So the living inspiration pouring through all realms might bring me Knowledge. Knowledge of the nature of all realms and all shapes, and so I must acquire plants and beings from all realms…

But not even I could see the twist of fate that had the good first three drops of the potion land on Gwion Bach’s thumb. And so he stuck his thumb in his mouth and knew all things. He reacted immediately, as a living animal would when pain happens.

And so he ran. He ran because I must devour him and so first across the land… as hare he ran and so I as greyhound and then through the water, the sea, he as salmon and I as otter… and then into the sky, the living air, and he as wren and I as falcon. And then he - so wise - became a kernel of grain and I wiser became a black hen with a red comb and crest… and I ate him up.

Nine moons turned in me and I wanted to destroy him but Knew he would bring Poetry and Knowing into the world of humankind… and so I placed him in a leather bag and I gave him to the sea… to the river… knowing a good person would take him in and raise him.

He was then discovered by Elffin and because of his shining brow he was called Taliesin.

And so out the darkness of my womb he emerged victorious as the radiance, in him both my children and more. Kindness as well, for a year and a day, he cared beautifully for the blind man who was with him at the Cauldron of Awen.

Taliesin, the Shining Poet, the Bard, the Knowing One, lover of Justice challenged all kings and rulers with deep and abiding kindness.

He shocked them into the possibility of what lays beyond, between, within, above, below. His very presence reminded them,There is Cerridwen who possesses the Cauldron of Awen. She devours all in the end but births all through all worlds.

In this way I learnt the mysteries of all realms, all shapes. 

*See this free class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqG_q1N_PZ4&t=2449s