Coffee & Divination
Coffee & Divination
Kristoffer Hughes on Awen, Art, and Inspired Divination
Author, teacher, and Druid priest Kristoffer Hughes joins JoAnna to explore the living current of Awen: how song, poetry, and art become vessels for spiritual knowing—and how the currents of awen can inform divination in real, grounded practice. We also discuss Welsh Druidry as a living tradition, and tarot as a vibrant, constantly evolving language.
If this conversation resonates, please follow/subscribe, rate & review the show, and share it with friends. It truly helps others find the podcast, and supports our work.
About our guest — Kristoffer Hughes:
Kristoffer is Chief of the Anglesey Druid Order, a Mount Haemus Scholar, and a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD). He’s a teacher, writer, workshop leader, and frequent speaker at Pagan conferences throughout the UK, Europe, and North America. He's the author of numerous books including From the Cauldron Born, The Book of Celtic Magic, As the Last Leaf Falls, and Cerridwen, and is also co-creator of both the Celtic Tarot and the Yuletide Tarot.
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Links for Kristoffer Hughes' work:
- The Anglesey Druid Order: https://www.angleseydruidorder.co.uk/index
- Kristoffer's books through Llewellyn Publishers: https://www.llewellyn.com/author.php?author_id=5316
- Book on Arianrhod by Kristoffer Hughes: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/pagan-portals-arianrhod
- The Bee Tarot: https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738769981
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Watch Coffee & Divination episodes on YouTube: The Coffee and Divination Podcast - YouTube
Find us on Instagram: @coffeeanddivination
Our Website: http://www.coffeeanddivination.com
Theme music: "Come with Me" by JoAnna Farrer, featuring Alasdair Fraser, Natalie Haas, and Yann Falquet.
Ending music: "Pollen Path" by Elana Low.
So awen and the meaning of awen, consisting of two syllables, awen, essentially translates, it poorly translates, it doesn't translate perfectly, it still loses some nuance, but it translates loosely as blessed or holy breath. And that in a nutshell, the awen is the creative force of the universe singing in praise of itself. And that everything in the universe, you, me, a blade of grass, a tree, a seagull, we're all verbs of the universe. We're something the universe is doing, like actively doing. And as verbs of the universe, we can express the creative output of the universe through art, through bardism. That that's how we express that creative force of divine inspiration. And in doing so, the universe is... experiencing more of itself. And that regardless of where we are, what culture we come from, inspiration and creativity is something that unifies us in a way that other things might struggle to do so.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to Coffee and Divination, a podcast about the arts of obtaining hidden knowledge in changing times. Join me, Joanna Farrar, to chat with experts from around the world on tarot, runes, geomancy, and the many ways divination can help us navigate and plan our paths ahead. I'm excited to share today's episode with you, which is with the author, teacher, and druid priest and leader, Christopher Hughes. Christopher is chief of the Angleseed Druid Order, and he is also the author of numerous books, including From the Cauldron Born, The Book of Celtic Magic, As the Last Leaf Falls, and Keridwen. He has created numerous tarot decks as well, including the Celtic Tarot, the Yuletide Tarot, and the Bee Tarot. In this conversation, we explored the living currents of Awen in a number of different forms, including art, song, and poetry, as well as how bardic fires of inspiration inform divination in our practice. If you enjoy this episode, I'd ask you to please leave a five-star review for Coffee and Divination and share it with others who may enjoy these topics. You can always subscribe on YouTube if you don't already and join our newsletter to find out more about upcoming workshops and other events. Thanks for listening and enjoy this conversation with Christopher Hughes. So it is my absolute pleasure. I am so very happy to welcome onto the show Christopher Hughes, who is someone whose work I have admired for many years now. and who I'm sure many listeners to the show are very familiar with as well. So thank you for being on the show.
SPEAKER_01:You're very welcome. It's a joy. It's a delight.
SPEAKER_02:I'm very happy to hear that. So we have a traditional first question on the show, and I promise it's not a trick question or anything, but given that this is a podcast that is, you know, primarily centered around divination and those arts, the question is, what was your first introduction to divination? Was it, you know, some people it's, you know, part of their family, there's a family story, There's something when they were three years old, they saw tarot cards for the first time. But what was your introduction?
SPEAKER_01:So I'd not come across any kind of divinatory tool at all in my youth until I was about 13 years old. And I lived on the island of Anglesey in a small town called Cadgubby. And we had a gorgeous, musty, untidy little secondhand bookstore that I used to frequent regularly. fairly often. And one day I was in there, being an avid reader, just going through all of the boxes that probably came from house clearances. And in this box of old Mills and Boone romantic novels and some other old battered paper bags, right underneath the bottom of this box, there was a deck of cards. And it was, I think it was a very early version of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. It was in a box that no longer had The lid on it, it was battered. It was tea and coffee stained. It had been through the wars. It had been through the mill, this deck. The edges were blackened. They were grimy, but there was something about, I didn't know what they were. I had no idea what they were. I took them out of the box. There was a full deck in there and I was instantly intrigued. And I think the word I would use would be enchanted by them, but I had no idea what they were. So when I took this battered old deck up to the counter, the old man who worked in the shop, he kind of knew me, you know, from coming in every week. And he looked at the deck and he looked at me and he said, do you know what they are? I said, no. I thought, but I want them now. So I put my 20 pence piece, right, so 25 cents So literally a quarter of a dollar on the counter. And I ran with my, my heart was in my throat. I was excited for some reason and exhilarated by the discovery of this mystery. And I took the deck and myself to this little den that my friends and I had created just on the edge of a park on the coastline, just adjacent to the sea. There was a storm coming in from the west. It was very dramatic. It was like something from a movie. And I was sitting in this den with raindrops coming through, you know, the shoddy roof that we'd built, looking at these cards with all of these images, these powerful words, death, lovers, strength, ace of cups, all leaping out at me. And I had no idea what they were. But in that moment, in that place, it's as if it's a, it's like it's a movie scene in my head, in my memory. I remember everything about that hour or so that I spent in that den with this pack of cards. I had no idea what they were. And I had to take myself to the local library about a week later to try and discover if anybody there might be able to help me discover what they were. And of course, the librarian knew exactly what they were. So she led me over to some appropriate books, but they were the kind of books that that you don't really see anymore. I think the book was called something like Everyday Fate and Fortune. And it was old, it was from the 1950s or 1960s. And it did have a section on tarot in there, but Tarot of Marseille. And so I knew what they were and I was utterly engrossed. And for some reason in that library, looking at all of these books, that were available in a small Welsh town, I had a sense that somehow or another they were going to be a part of my life, not just a part of my childhood. And of course, I was perfectly right in those feelings.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. And that is, it's always really interesting to hear how cards appear for the first time because yeah, they are, they're amazing, especially when we first open those, that box and see them. So yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That thrill.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. So for those who may not be as aware, obviously, you know, I have said a little bit about you for those who have not already read your books, but can you maybe give us a brief kind of look at how you came to follow a druid's path and how you know these early um inklings of this led into the path that you now are on very very clearly as a leader
SPEAKER_01:but peculiarly my discovery of the tarot was in no way an indication at the time of anything spiritual it was a mystery it was an intrigue but i was 13 years old you know so it was just an exciting little period in my life that I wasn't aware at the time that it was going to lead to anything like the exploration of spirituality. So when that happened later on in my late teens, I tried Christianity, but it just didn't quench my thirst for what I needed, something that would sing to my spirit in a way that Christianity just wasn't able to do. And nobody in my family had any spiritual inklings whatsoever, like not a single person. We never went to church. I come from a very non-religious family. My parents' opinion were, it's up to you to discover any form of religion or spirituality. We're not going to send you to Sunday school. We're not going to send you to any of these. You need to make that decision for yourself, which I'm very grateful for. So we weren't forced into anything. But of course, being a teenager in Wales in the mid-1980s, there wasn't anything to explore other than Christianity. So I explored that and I just didn't get it. I was baffled by it. I don't get this at all. And so it just didn't resonate with me. So I started to look at what else possibly was around me, speaking to other people in my family, in my circle of acquaintances. And the peculiar thing about growing up in Wales is that Druids in particular are endemic to our culture. They're just here. a part of our culture. We've never been introduced to them. We've never had any formal introductions to them. They're just always there. So the National Eisteddfod of Wales, which is an annual cultural festival, which is enormous. It's absolutely enormous. It's televised 24 hours a day. It runs over 10 days. 150,000 to 180,000 people attend the festival. And I always go. And from when we're very young children, if you speak Welsh, if you come from a Welsh family, the second you can articulate more than three words together, you're kind of trained into the Eisteddfod into music and art and drama and all of the creative bardic expressions that are at the heart of the National Eisteddfod and supervising that particular festival and holding space as the ritual and ceremonial facilitators of that festival are Druids. Druids are the Gorsedd of Bards of the island of Britain. So they've always been there. But for some reason, I didn't put two and two together and made that connection between the Druids of the now, any connection that they had to the Druids of the then, and any connection that they may have had to a spirituality. That took another couple of years before I realised that there was another way of approaching spirituality that didn't necessarily have to be poly and monotheistic so i started looking at the new age world i guess we we used to have i don't think it exists anymore but we used to have a monthly magazine called prediction magazine and that ran for oh it ran for for decades and decades and it had all sorts from tarot articles to mysticism to witchcraft and spiritualism and, of course, Druidry. So through that magazine, I realised that there were people out there beyond the National Eisteddfod of Wales that identified as Druids. So I very quickly found them. I started reading some books from some of the older early 20th century academic scholars, historians about Druids and then realised that, oh, hold on a second, this isn't just a part of my landscape. This has always has been a part of my landscape. So let's explore that. And very quickly, I realised that it was something that through language, through history, through heritage, through culture, it connected me to my land, not to the Middle East or not to Rome, but rather to the very fabric of my land and my people. So suddenly I felt at home exploring this idea of a contemporary spirituality that had its foundations and roots in the past, but wasn't necessarily of the past, but rather something of the now as well, which is a peculiar thing, right? Because usually when in discussions about contemporary Western paganism in general, when people consider Celtic paganism, there's a tendency for people to consider or use the term Celt or Celtic in the past tense, which to a Celt is really peculiar and almost slightly offensive because we um we still exist right we're still here we didn't go anywhere and um so it was a bit of a fusion of all of that stuff really but i'm still convinced to this very day that tarot was the door you know it was the gateway drug to this entire spectrum of
SPEAKER_02:woo-woo. Through tarot and then into other art forms. It's interesting, my father was British, he was from Yorkshire, and when he first heard that I was interested in witchcraft or something, he said, well, you know there's Druidry. He'd heard of Druids, and he was like, well, they're real. I don't know if this witchcraft thing but there were even a British gentleman who was like you mean druids
SPEAKER_01:ah that's hilarious but that's that's peculiar right as well because there's there's this peculiar cultural paradigm that in England, particularly today, if you were to say that you were a witch, people wouldn't necessarily have a knee-jerk reaction. They'd be like, oh, I know what that is. I've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer and read a book, even if they know nothing. But if you say you're a witch in Wales, there's a peculiar reaction because the Welsh people don't necessarily know what that is or what it looks like because we don't have those words in our vernacular. It's a very complicated history. the magical landscape of Wales. But you say you're a Druid. And they know what that is. And yet the distance between myself and England is only 95 miles. And that border is invisible. It's not really there. Foxes cross it without even realising that they have. And yet there's this cultural shift in people's perspectives when it comes to the spectrum of the magical and the numinous. But that's a really lovely comment that your father made. Let's live that. You know they're real, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, exactly. And I think that's also an interesting thing that, as you're saying, the festival that you are going to is a massive part of Welsh culture, and whether or not people that are going to that festival would ever have anything to do with what someone else would consider neo-paganism, it is just endemic and rooted in the culture. So it is not necessarily to do with a religious structure, but it is inherent in the culture. And so that is slightly different from when we're talking about other cultures where people are sort of reconstructing or re-creating traditions because this is, it has roots outside of religious tradition. Is
SPEAKER_01:that accurate? That's totally accurate. It's... which I guess is why there is some divergence, perhaps, not much, within what is referred to as contemporary pagan Druidry and cultural Druidry. They're both Druidrys. They're just approaching the philosophy, perhaps, or the reason why they're Druids from slightly different angles. So that's not to say that there aren't other people who are spiritual or even religious within the, you know, the cultural druidic movement, because there certainly are. I mean, I'm in that as well. I'm an initiated druid within that tradition. And I'm certainly a pagan druid as well, you know. But you don't have to be. They're just druids. And druids are there to perpetuate awen, which is the divine force of inspiration. So I guess it doesn't really matter how you define the divine. That's really difficult for a Welsh person to say. LAUGHTER to define the divine is kind of irrelevant within a cultural spectrum because that culture encompasses all the colours of the rainbow and every spirituality and religion you could possibly imagine in what is a very multicultural, diverse country.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and you have already mentioned a word that I was planning to ask you to define for listeners because I am sure it is going to be a part of pretty much all the rest of our conversation today. And that word is awen. And I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with definitions of that, but I would be particularly curious to hear your sort of quicker, you know, introductory sort of look at that word and why it is particularly important for Druidry and also, you know, other forms of magical practice.
SPEAKER_01:I think the Welsh language is peculiar, right? Because the peculiar thing about the Welsh language is that that it evolved hand in hand with Bardism and poetry. So the language evolved with that system. So the words that we use in the language usually have a multiple of meanings. And the words are telling a story. They're telling a story of their origination and perhaps of a worldview or a philosophy or an idea. So Awen and the meaning of Awen consisting of two syllables, Awen, essentially It doesn't translate. It poorly translates. It doesn't translate perfectly. It still loses some nuance. But it translates loosely as blessed or holy breath. And that in a nutshell, the Yawen is the creative force of the universe singing in praise of itself. And that everything in the universe, you, me, a blade of grass, a tree, a seagull, we're all verbs of the universe. something the universe is doing, like actively doing. And as verbs of the universe, we can express the creative output of the universe through art, through bardism, that that's how we express that creative force of divine inspiration. And in doing so, the universe is experiencing more of itself. And that regardless of where we are, what culture we come from, inspiration and creativity is something that unifies us in a way that other things might struggle to do so. It's something that we feel a compulsion to do at times, something we feel that we need to do rather than want to do. And to people within the Welsh culture the name we give that awen as blessed holy breath is that the song of the universe is blowing through all things the music is always the same but the lyrics always change depending on who is singing the song and that our job is to keep singing it and keep inspiring the world and inspiring each other and it gives rise to its symbol which is three rays, which I think you can probably see around my neck, which is a central ray and two on an angle. And they represent to know truth, to love truth, and to maintain truth. And that those are the first triadic tenets of the awen, that we do what we can to maintain, to know, and to love that which is righteous or that which is true in our lives and in the world. And that we can express that through our creativity. And that when creativity or inspiration is missing or lacking, we all suffer as a consequence thereof because then we fall into the antithesis of that, which is, you know, in the Druid tradition of Wales, the Awen is an anabolic force and its antithesis is catabolism. So when we're not inspired and when we're not serving to inspire, we fall into catabolism rather than Anabolism? And I find that quite interesting as well, you know, that so much power, so much credence is given to the force of inspiration. And at the Nationalised Establishment of Wales, which I go to every year in August, I find it quite humbling that as a nation, Wales doesn't offer the highest accolades that that culture that it can give to any individual, to a military commander or to a politician, it gives the highest accolade to a bard, to a poet, who become our chief bard, chief bow poet for the remaining 12 months. So that at the very top, if you like, of the structure of Welsh culture, the very pinnacle of it is a poet. I think there's something really beautiful and humble about that. And that they are, in a way, a representation of the power and fulfillment of Awen. And their job is to inspire us. Not to tell us what to do, never that, but to inspire us, to create, to be creative, to express that Awen in the world. And so flippantly, I refer to that as a DTI or a Druid Transmitted Infection. And the infection is inspiration, right? So there isn't an ointment or a tablet to get rid of it. Once you're inspired, all you can do is pass that inspiration on. And if you don't and allow it to fester, I think we do a disservice to the universe.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. It's a very complex topic. I am a fan of your Caridwen book as are our
SPEAKER_03:other
SPEAKER_02:mates. And I know that you have a, for those who have not read that book, there was an excellent discussion about Alwyn in that book. And I really do enjoy part of how you also spoke about Alwyn in that book was in the connection to the ways in which Alwyn then transmits itself or translates itself through human action and through sort of like inspiration that then has to have structure and pattern within it. And I'm sure we're gonna talk about that when we get to like more of a conversation around divination forms, but how do you kind of think about the act of being inspired or sort of like having that connection to Awen while also sort of the need for structure or training methods or example, like to kind of think of poetry as an example of like the different forms of poetry, that there are rules and structures that they are flowing within. But sometimes I feel like, especially in our Western culture, it is, people will think of inspiration as something that just strikes and then it's, I don't know, it hits you and then it just washes over you in a wave, but there's also like a need to be able to do something with it, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and I think structure is important. I think there are two different types of awen that we might receive. might receive our end or feel it blowing through us by going to a concert or listening to an engaging speaker or attending a class and there might be one line or one sentence that that individual says that blows through us and causes us to think oh gosh I'd not thought of that in that manner before or I'd not engaged with that thought like that before and I think that's a sudden a acute form of inspiration where the person's intention may not have been in that moment to have been inspirational and yet their actions were inspired and somebody else will catch it and they might run with that and offer structure to the breath that came upon them. But then I think the structured form of Owen is what we see particularly particularly within the Welsh Bardic tradition, where it is honed and, like you said, particularly in poetry. Poetry in Welsh is extremely strict, extremely strict. And we have systems, one of the systems is called canhannedd, which essentially are words that are held in chains. So they're bound, or rather they're restricted only in a manner in that... their meaning becomes extremely clear in the way that they've been composed. And the reason for that structure is that it casts the light of the awen in a particular direction for a particular desire or for a particular outcome. Otherwise, inspiration can become vague and ethereal and too numinous for us to be able to do anything with it. So when a poet comes along and uses a particular form of or a songwriter or a dancer is doing something that has taken time to hone they're doing it in order for it to be transmitted in that particular stream of inspiration that has primarily inspired them. So whether you're writing a book, writing a poem, creating a dance or a drama, all of these things are structured in such a way that it allows the awen to come into existence long enough for other people to actually have a direct experience of it. Otherwise, it doesn't have anything to hold it and it just floats away, you know? So that all of the disciplines within art, whether you're learning music or learning poetry, I think is to hone your inspirational qualities in a way that others can then be inspired by them and have a sense of what you felt as you were creating it, but that that feeling might change when it passes to that other person who might feel compelled to then go and create something, maybe using a different method or a different discipline. And that's what I love about particularly the Welsh baddic tradition is that it's a celebration of that. But also an encouraging of it so that you can attend classes or attend workshops to hone those skills which are primarily to do with inspiration and that the motive or the mo for for doing that is is just inspiration is to pass that inspiration on which again i think is very humbling and and very simple in its intention and integrity and Yeah, I love it. I love the fact that we can have moments where the awen hits us like a spark of light and we gasp and clutch our metaphorical pearls. But at other times it comes to us in a more structured way where we can sit down with it and ponder over it or listen to it in a way that allows it to seep into us in a different manner. So yeah, I think there's two ways in which... our end can impact upon us but what it does we are certainly aware of it you know, whether we call it Awen or not, I guess we're all aware of moments when we are inspired.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. So I had the chance to meet you for the first time at the Sacred Space Conference this
SPEAKER_03:past
SPEAKER_02:month. It's very brief. And some of my friends also came to some of your workshops. And of course, from your writings, but then also what you did in person with people, there was an element, and of course, like I said, this is also in your writings, of the importance of singing that is emphasized and what you did in the workshops there also involved singing.
SPEAKER_03:And
SPEAKER_02:as someone who's a musician, I am in complete agreement with you and love the inclusion of that. But there's also a story that you tell in one of your books, I can't remember which one now, of someone asking you to do a connection activity with a tree. And you then sat there and was not quite sure how to connect with that tree while other people did. And there are a number of ways that you've talked about using song to connect with other forms of life other beings and I really love that and I feel that that ties nicely into our discussion of how Awen you know connects us and allows us to communicate so could you maybe talk about why song
SPEAKER_01:oh gosh yeah yes totally so so it is considered that um the Awen is a song uh it's a song that the the universe is singing and and as I mentioned earlier the music is always the same the lyrics are always is different and that everything in existence sings inwardly and outwardly of the Awen, of that first initial burst of the universe coming into being. And of course, the peculiar thing is, is that in modernity, we actually know that the universe sings. It sings a single note in the key of D, 27,000 octaves below middle C, and it's constantly singing. And then each sphere, each planet, each nebula, each solar system, then has its own music. And here on our planet, which is a fascinating thing, and I keep reading up on all of these papers that are being written about the hum of the Earth, about how the Earth itself is also humming, that there's a song, and some speculate that it's something to do with the resonance of the oceans, and others think it's something more atmospheric. But when you read between the lines, it also boils down to the fact that they probably don't really know for sure, which I love. because there's mystery there, but that the earth herself also sings. So in the Druid philosophy and worldview, everything is singing of its own experience, singing of its own being. And because everything is singing, that's one thing we all have in common, animate and inanimate, we are all singing. And the amazing thing about, because I come from a medical background as well, I worked as a coroner for 32 years and pathology and anatomy and physiology were a deep aspect of my career and also of my passions. And the amazing thing about song, and we see this not just, well, I'm about to see it at the National Establishment of Wales as I always see it there with all of the singing, but whether we are singing in ritual, singing in groups or just singing around a campfire, there's this peculiarity a peculiar thing that happens, right? And it's called synchrony, where song music, and particularly human voices, not just human voices, it applies to any animal that can sing or emit a sound, that very quickly, if we take humans as an example, if we start to sing together, very quickly we start releasing particular chemicals within our bodies. And the very first one to be released oxytocin which is the they call it the cuddle hormone which makes us feel good and makes us feel connected to one another and that happens through song and through music and and then very quickly after that we start to release dopamine which is the feel-good hormone and then within several minutes later we start to release immunoglobin a which heightens and boosts our immune system but simultaneously while all that is happening our brain waves start to synchronize until they fall into the exact same pattern. So scientists have recorded this with humans and particularly in a cave in California with a load of bats. So they were able to measure the electromagnetic spectrum of these bats and how all the sound waves started to move into synchronization. And in humans, it happens to our brain waves as well, which I find quite fascinating that we even use within our vernacular. We're on the same way length you know and that's exactly what's happening and that it happens through song so in welsh culture we don't make we don't differentiate between a song as in a ballad or a disney tune and a poem they are both what we refer to as a can c hyphenated a n and a can means song but if you're up or Orating a poem, in Wales it will be in strict metre, in any number of different metres, you are still considered to be singing. Or whether you're up singing a show tune, that's still singing. So that concept of can, of song, of sound is inherent. And of course, when you consider that our means, blessed holy breath, it's our breath that carries that. And that's the unique thing about living on a planet with an atmosphere is that we're able to give that experience to the universe that it doesn't have on Mars. or Jupiter, or out of the depth of deepest space where it's just a vacuum. Whereas here we have this tool that connects us to the entire biosphere. So I always think that, and it's a bit of a pet hate of mine as well, seeing people go into sacred sites and leaving physical offerings. I'm like, don't do that. It's littering. Some of us have got to go there and clean that muck up. Go and sing. You have this tool. in your chest and it sings you sing to sing to it and it will sing back to you and Yeah, that's a bit of a soapbox I like to get on every now and again. Sing to it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I will just interject. I think it's because our, at least, perhaps I'm speaking more of American culture, but there is sort of the prejudice of, oh, no, but I can't sing. There's professionals. And then it's sort of that, you know, a little bit too much of an emphasis on needing to be an expert or needing to have some sort of qualification. And what you're saying of like everything's everything, you know,
SPEAKER_01:which
SPEAKER_02:means we are meant to share that. Totally.
SPEAKER_01:And I always think, you know, I think it's utter poppycock that people have been led to believe that they can't sing and that perhaps in modernity we may have professionally gatekept those talents and skills as it has to be superior. Yeah. But we've been singing forever. If there's anything that unites us, it's sitting around a campfire and singing without feeling that we're unable to. I think that's probably a fairly new thing in the human experience, or in the human condition, to be judged for. And yeah, in a forest, you come across a rowan tree, you don't have anything to offer it, I would argue. Yes, you do. Just sing to it. If you feel a connection to that tree in that moment, sing to it. And it doesn't matter if there's anybody there who can hear you. The tree will hear you and will sing back to you. And I love that about my culture. It encourages so much of that. We have extremely vibrant pub scenes where people... just sing folk songs they don't have to be accompanied by any instrumentation or anything they just sometimes they are and sometimes there are groups in there jamming away you know and usually they're folk groups of some description but gosh i've been to so many taverns where there isn't a piano there isn't anything it's just people singing because it unifies them somehow it brings people together and yeah and I love that that is a vibrant part of not just my culture and my life in general but of my spirituality as well because it just has to be in there somehow it would feel odd and naked without it I
SPEAKER_02:completely agree and I think that that ties in also to the concept of how song and all of these forms that we've been talking about are also connected to what the nature of magic is in general because some of the roots of a lot of these like you know charm and stuff like that they come from the same roots of singing and there's a lot of connections between song and what it means to sort of change the universe to change the nature of reality which you have thought in a number of places in your books and I was wondering if you could just for people who may not have thought of like music necessarily, or this song connected to, uh, magic, what would you, how would you define that?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, totally. I mean, as in define magic.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, well, I mean, that would be a rather ambitious thing to have you two sentences. There we go. Um, but, and it's, it's connection to Owen and singing or this kind of creative inspiration.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, totally. Totally. I mean, even as I mentioned briefly earlier on that, there are huge physiological changes that happen to the mammalian body when we sing. And we know that sound waves, short waves, long wave therapies are used to open the chemical and electrical gates of cells within the human body for healing and repair in therapeutic treatments. It's using sound to alter the convention of a cell. And if that happens on a cellular level, then I hasten to add that that probably also happens on a subtler level as well. And that because everything is singing in unison, we can sing concordance into that. So for me as a druid and also a magical practitioner, because I practice magic as a part of my druidry, it will almost almost invariably include or involve song. And whether that song is orated or lyrical, it will be an integral part of it. And we see that as well, you know, in common witchcraft practices of rhyming in verse. Well, as a Welsh person, I still consider those people to be singing, right? Because that's still a can. And that rhyming in verse is not only having a profound effect on the individual who's doing it and on the group who's doing it, but it's also having an energetic influence on the surrounding world. And as magical practice, condition as an occultist we also then believe or have a knowing that that is affecting the energetic world where our intentions and integrities and um magics are being directed towards. So I think that when I look back at magical practices here in Wales, particularly through our folklore, it almost always involved some form of can, of song in one shape or another, and almost always in verse, so that it gives you then that rhythm and that rhyme so that it becomes lyrical. It's moving, it's shifting, it's energetic. So yes, again, magic without music, magic without song. I think Ken is naked.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. So kind of looking at this from then the perspective of divination, we can talk about just how Awen sort of interacts with the concept of divination and looking at the past, the present, or the future, because obviously any of those three. But what would you say is... the way to begin a discussion of how Awen interacts with the concept of divination and the process of divining and sort of gaining information that way? I
SPEAKER_01:think... I think primarily because Awen is a divine force, but it's also blowing through us, which implies that we are embers from that bonfire, from that conflagration of the divine, that it is blowing through us and then we are blowing through others. And I think when it comes to divination, for me, the most engaging, most powerful type of diviners are those who are inspired by the system itself and inspired to do that particular work. Something has pulled them into that spectrum to do that work to begin with. So for me in that bookshop in Kargabi, all the way back centuries ago now, it seems, that was a moment of inspiration, but a moment of inspiration that I wasn't able to articulate because of my youthfulness. But it was still a moment of awen it was the divine speaking you know through a deck of cards through the images painted by pixie 80 years previously so there are levels and levels of inspiration of of awen. So that's the word I would use in my culture. The Irish would call it immas, and other cultures will probably have their own terminology for it. And that when it comes to divination, of course, it has the term divine in there. So to me, as a druid, the awen is also flowing through the systems of divination because they are ultimately linked to that force or to that source and how it's blowing through people so we can see that particularly like in tarot we can see an echo of the divinity within ourselves in the major arcana cards but then we see how inspiration and life flows through us and into the apparent world in the minor arcana so that you've got this level of the divine filtering down into the experience of the of the human condition and then that then blowing out into the world. And, you know, and I'm aware of the words that I'm using of something emerging and then blowing, blowing through. And, of course, that blowing through comes from my bias of understanding what awen means, you know, of the breath of the divine is flowing through us and that there are tools we can use to, again, to provide us structure to bring the owen down so that it's not ethereal and numinous so that it can be actually focused on and then worked with and then taken from that moment and carried forth into another moment so whether the querent I would hope a querent would come to me not only would they hopefully receive clarity to whatever issue or question that they had but that they also left feeling inspired by the time that they had spent with me, the cards, and by proxy, the divine through the Awen which I channel every time I go into a divination session. I purposefully shift myself into the currents of Awen so that the divine wind blows through me and through the system that I'm using, which is usually Tarot.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and
SPEAKER_01:that's... In a roundabout way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And I have questions about that process in general. But you are very also well known for the decks that you have created. And I believe right before we started recording, you told me that there were some awards that were just won. So congratulations.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much. We did.
SPEAKER_02:The Bee Tarot is a favorite of mine, and I'm sure a number of listeners. When was the... Impetus, when you sort of... What inspired you? What was the moment when the Awen hit that you said, you know what? In addition to these beautiful decks that already exist, I need to create my own. What drew you to that?
SPEAKER_01:To initially working with
SPEAKER_02:design
SPEAKER_01:or just the B tarot?
SPEAKER_02:Not necessarily the B tarot,
SPEAKER_01:but just... Oh, right. Okay. I think... I've always been a tarot collector, probably to my detriment. Because there's so many of them. Oh my word. But I tend to usually, if I go to do a reading, I only have maybe two or three decks that I will automatically reach for. And for a number of years, even though my favourite is Pixies and Arthur Edward Waite, Rider Waite Smith. That's my favourite. But that's because it was the first one I was ever exposed to. So I think that stuck and will never, I'd never go away. But as I progressed and as I developed as a tarot reader, as a tarotist, I kind of wished that there was a deck that was able to incorporate some of the wisdom and the magic from my culture. And there wasn't one in particular. There were some Celtic type tarots out there. Courtney Davis, I think, created one. in the 1980s, I think. And it was beautiful. I mean, the artwork in it was beautiful, but it was, I think, trying to capture all of Celtica, which is just too vast. That's like six nations, six different cultures. It was a huge undertaking. And yet the artwork was beautiful, but it still didn't quite do it. And I wanted something that captured some of the magic of my own culture, but didn't take away from the mystery school of the Rider Waite Smith system. So I toyed with the idea for a number of years. It was a long time. And then I just happened to have a conversation with who was to become my tarot editor at Llewellyn Worldwide. And she encouraged me to write some thoughts down and see whether they could help me bring something to life that would encompass both those loves well three loves really the system of tarot the riderway smith and my love of celtic wisdom and so i did i sat down with it for about a year and pondered and took time over it and llewellyn liked the idea and and that was it but then i and i kind of got the bug then I just got the bug then for, I enjoyed the process so much. And I think what I enjoyed, the thing that gave me so much pleasure was with the Celtic Tarot and the Yuletide Tarot. So Chris Down who illustrated the Celtic and Erin Brown who illustrated the Yuletide Tarot, neither one of those knew anything about Tarot, nothing whatsoever. Erin Brown didn't even have a clue that there was an esoteric world out there beyond movies. She's lived her life as a children's book illustrator, but I saw her work and thought, can we please get her? And luckily we managed to get her to do it. And it was seeing the delight and the joy in those two people as they learnt tarot. And we worked on these projects for three years. It took three years to bring them to life. That's like a master's degree in tarot, right? They were immersed every single day in tarot and they both fell in love with it. Nadia Turner, who did the B tarot, is not unfamiliar with tarot. So that was a different experience again because I was working with somebody who had a familiarity and was able to inject quite a lot of her inspiration into the deck as well. So it came about in that manner and I think... I can probably continue to design tarot because I just love tarot so much. And it lends itself so beautifully to adding other layers on top of it without being detrimental to the existing layers. And we keep bees at home. We have bees in the backfield and we've kept bees for over 20, 25 years, I think. And they're such a... a beautiful, magical component of our lives. And we have a catch hive right in the backyard. So if there's a stray swarm wandering around, we have a catch hive and we invariably will catch a swarm from somewhere. And in that moment when they're swarming, they're not interested in you whatsoever. They don't perceive you to be a threat. Their bellies are full of honey. They're carrying stock. They're just looking for a new home. And you can stand in amongst them and they will be all over you. And I remember doing that and feeling the magic of the bee queendom around me tangibly. And then them disappearing into this hive, into the darkness of the hive and still able to communicate with one another. And then I'm like, oh, do you know what? That would make a really nice tarot deck. Because human beings have always had a connection with bees. They've been such an integral part of our evolution, of our development. And they nourish us. They guide us. They're a part of our folklore. So the tricky thing with the bee tarot was limiting it to 78 images. because that was brutal. That was a brutal task because there's so much globally in relation to the bees, so many myths and folklore. And we had to limit it to 78, but I'm very happy with how we did it.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And I think that that ties in because in, I mean, you have done work with also with animal bones as like part of bones and other forms that are, that are not tarot based, but that are still very rooted in the natural world involving herbs and people when they think of Druidry probably also immediately think of Oum. And there is that sort of connection to the natural world in all of those different forms.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:The exact medium changes whether it's cardstock and images with artists or it is something that you've captured by a thing you found and you put into a bag.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Are there times that you, like you've said that you mostly work with tarot and clearly created, you know, beautiful decks that many people work with. Are there, what is the conception or when you are sitting down to read, are there times that you will say, no, this is not the time for tarot. This is the time for another form of divination. Like what would push you to use something else?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That would be an exception. I tend to, my factory setting is to always reach for tarot. I do use a bone oracle. I have a bone oracle, but I generally only use the bone oracle around Kalangayav, Halloween. I tend to only use it around that time. And so my connection and relationship with the bone oracle is limited to a particular time of the year. And although I'm a druid, I'm not a massive lover of Oum. It's just something I quite enjoy aspects of it, but it's not something that I've ever felt compelled to use fully as an everyday system of divination. There are times where I will use it, but again, they're They're usually for my own personal meditations or contemplations, or we might use om in a group practice within the Anglesey Druid Order, or there might be a class on om. So it's there as a part of my divinatory spectrum, but it isn't my go-to tool. And whilst the bones, I really enjoy working with the bones. it feels that that is a sacred component of the three knights of Halloween. So it's a part of the practice of that particular period. And usually I don't cast the bones for other people either. I usually cast them to receive messages for myself and for the year to come and to have a connection with ancestral spirits. So even though they're divination or they're oracular Those systems I'm using within my practice as a druid, not necessarily as service to other people, whereas the tarot is certainly service to the other people, but also service to my spirituality. But it doesn't matter where I am. I'm sitting at my desk now and I'm surrounded by tarot cards. They're everywhere. They're behind me. They're up here. They're just everywhere. Because... that's my but again you know it just it just goes back to that moment that one moment in that second-hand bookstore that had evidently such a massive impact on my life that it's now ingrained into my very fabric
SPEAKER_02:And I think I'm trying to formulate a way of asking this question, kind of giving me a little bit of a trick right now. But in your book on Keridwen, you mentioned how, you know, Ronald Hutton and lots of other scholars have been, you know, have looked at a lot of these different mythic figures and goddesses and gods who are very important in the neo-pagan community. Keridwen is clearly one of them. And there is now, like, obviously we all now at this point can understand and talk about how some of these figures were not seen as goddesses in ye olden days of, you know, 3000 years ago, perhaps. And yet they are spirits who have come forward and have very, very strong impacts on people and entire cultures. And I, I've been thinking about that in connection to what you were saying about the sort of like the figures on the opened when you were a child, kind of having that impact on you. And I'm wondering, what is your conception of sort of the archetypes of tarot? Do you feel like they are something akin to deities? Are they something that are, they're nameless and they're beyond that? But it also, it kind of feels like there's something about that liminal nature of Ceridwen becoming a goddess, tarot decks having spirit within them. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my word, that's a kettle of fish.
SPEAKER_02:I know it is. I know that's why I was having trouble even formulating the question, but.
SPEAKER_01:So my approach to tarot and the archetypes of tarot, even though I'm a Druid, my spiritual practice is a Druid, I'm also a Kabbalist, right? So I study Kabbalah in the Toledano tradition and I have done for quite a long time now. And I was introduced to Kabbalah through my love of tarot by a very, one of my earliest inspirers, one of my earliest mentors. Her name was Mavanwi Davis and she lived here in North Wales in the coastal town of Hill and she was a cauldron of different influences but she had a love of tarot and I met her through my love of tarot and she was also a Kabbalist. She was a member of the Society of the Servants of the Inner Light. And she introduced me to the tarot and Kabbalah. So the tarot was my gateway drug into spirituality and Druidry and also into Kabbalah. And so in my very early, so this is like in the 90s, the mid 90s, that I was being introduced to the tarot on the tree of life and that the archetypes of the major arcana of the tarot from the paths on the tree of life and the minor arcana the fruits if you like the the sephira the the discs on the tree and she she explained it to me in such a naturalistic way using the terminology of trees which of course as a druid as a welsh person i'm i was i was well up for that and oh i get this trees you know so my perception of the archetypes in the tarot are primarily informed by my Kabbalistic studies in that I perceive the archetypes to be the apparent emanation of the divine moving into the manifested world. So beginning from no thing, you know, an abstract beyond an abstract that to even call it a nothing is to call it something and immediately limits it. And I'm that the Fool, for me, I've always considered that if there is one archetype in the tarot, it's the Fool, because I consider that the Fool is the only true tarot card, that even though there's 78 cards in an ordinary deck of tarot, I believe that there's actually only one card in the tarot, and that's the Fool, and every other the 77 cards of the tarot live inside the fool and they are emerging and emanating from the fool and then meeting these archetypal forces that are ancient and timeless and part of the human condition, parts of the very fabric and song of the land itself in relationality with us so that we meet the fathers and the mothers and the mothers and the magicians and the lovers and the chariots and the deaths and the strengths. And... So I don't necessarily perceive them as deities, although I can't see that that would be a far stretch either for anybody to consider them to be deities. But I certainly perceive them as archetypes that are, again, are blowing through the universe. And as things become closer to different expressions of manifestation, they're encountering these different archetypes at various stages of life or various stages of experience but that ultimately we are the tarot being the fool and that as fools as the only card the true card in the tarot deck we carry those archetypes within us and they emerge re-emerge disappear they emanate in different times of our lives. And the fact that these archetypes are also timeless components of the human condition, the fact that they may appear antiquated or they may appear ancient, I don't think diminishes the fact that they are utterly timeless. That the imminency of the tarot is also imminent within the human condition and experience. And that behind it all, when you consider the fall, the traditional fall on the Rider-Waite-Smith card, and you see that, you know, which is peculiar. I've only ever heard a handful of people go, why is the sun white? I say, well, it's because it's Cata, right? It's Cata, it's the crown at the top of the tree of life. And that beyond the fall is, is just the no thing of the divine blowing through us and it's up to us to step off that cliff and straight into the experience of living with potentially the hands of these archetypes to guide us to sometimes discombobulate us but to ultimately be a part of this experience that we've got, this amazing experience we've got of being alive. So that was a rather convoluted answer.
SPEAKER_02:No, I think that makes absolute sense. I mean, well, it makes a lot of sense and yet is also transcendent and, you know, try to put words.
SPEAKER_01:But do you know what I mean, though?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, of course.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_02:that also kind of speaking of the speaking of the ineffable. Ha ha ha. There's there is one question that is outside of the the realm of tarot, but I am just curious to hear your thoughts on, because it is the stories from Wales of, and I'm going to attempt pronunciation of a word, so here we go. Awanothion. Did I do okay? Awanothion.
SPEAKER_00:You did really well. Okay, I got it. Really well.
SPEAKER_02:Which is a description of potentially sort of more of the possession-based sort of like France form of divination or prophecy. As someone who comes more from the Hellenic side of the Neopaganism, I immediately think of the practices of Delphi and the other oracles of ancient Greece. And I was wondering if you feel that that is a fair comparison from your experience or your research and what can you tell listeners about that? Oh,
SPEAKER_01:totally. Absolutely. I think the Awinavion are the Welsh equivalent of the Oracle of Delphi. And And that the Auenovion, according to folklore and our history, were... people that you went to to seek clarity or advice. However, the utterations of the Awanuvion were not necessarily clear, succinct, or sensical at all. They may speak in utter gibberish. So they had other people there to interpret. So a bit like what was happening in Delphi, there were people to interpret the oracles utterances, which may have been utter gibberish at the time. And that because the Awenavion or the Aweniv, so Awenavion is the plural of Aweniv. So the singular person would be an Aweniv, those who are inspired. And they would use various tools to enter a deep trance state in which they went directly into the stream of Awen. And the Awen would come out of them in a beautiful, hot, illuminated mess. And then it would be up to the different oracles around them to then catch the elements of that awen and give it shape and form and structure for the querent to understand, right? Which I find quite fascinating, particularly with its parallels with ancient Europe. And... So to a modern druid, so all of the druids of the order that I had, the Anglesey Druid Order, they're druids, right? But they're actually, when they complete our training, they become this. So they become an aweniv. They become those who are inspired and then they're tasked with the responsibility, which... kind of means they also have the ability to respond to the Awen, to being an Aweniv in the world. And sometimes that does involve going into trance states and accessing the Awen and speaking in gibberish. At other times, it involves other forms and expressions of inspiration. And so the function, if you like, of the Aweniv and the Awenavion has kind of moved on a little bit from the times of Geoffrey and Monmouth and deep folklore into the transcendent ability of the awen to cause enormous changes in an individual and in other people's lives, which is what we see, which is what's captured essentially in the rituals of the gorsed of bards and the druids of the nationalised stedvard when they chair or crown the chief bard. There's a transcendental quality to that in which that person becomes an awenid They become... almost an oracle, I guess, through their work, through their ability to inspire. So, yes, I love that word. And that's always impacted on me, even as a very young child, that term. I was familiar with that term. So I think it was only a natural development that the Druids of the Anglesey Druid Order would be called Awen of Yon.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it's a very fascinating and beautiful word. I agree. So as we kind of like come to sort of the end of our interview, I always like to, there's two questions. And the first one is more related to how you would, what advice you would want to share with people about either how to better integrate divination into their practice or why you think it might be important. because I'm always curious for people who do this, what is it that is a guiding principle for you of why you think it's important or what you hope it also brings to other people when they practice these arts?
SPEAKER_01:Totally, yes. I think the reason why is that it's an expressive tool that connects us directly to the divine. So if we consider... just a deck of cards. I mean, on the surface of things, they're just pieces of paper, right? But they're significantly more than that because these have evolved as thought forms within a particular structured system that was inspired by the divine. So whether it's systems like Kabbalah or just systems within the tarot as a mystery school, I always consider that wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I'm only this far away from guidance, advice, and help. So whether it's my deck, and these have been designed by me, illustrated by Nadia, there's still a part of Patricia Coleman-Smith in there because they're still based on her work. Pixie is in there. Arthur Edward Waite is in there. Other people of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn are in there. All of the other people who have ever used us system, they're in here. And Alistair Crowley had a fascinating way of describing the animistic force and essence of tarot cards in his book of Thoth. And that really struck me as a young person. And I was young when I read the book of Thoth. And I really fixated on that particular passage in his book of the power of the anima within the tarot. So that in a way, using tarot as an example, because that's my factory setting, I guess, is that these are the faces of the divine coming into manifestation and the divine coming into manifestation also through me and through the querent and through the world. So I'm only ever this far away from being able to touch the face of the divine through this, what I consider to be an incredibly powerful thought form that it's alive, it's emergent, and they reveal emergent truths in a way that I've been reading tarot for nearly 40 years and they still continue to surprise me, astound me in their ability to be direct when somebody approaches me approaches them with sincerity and gentility and curiosity and that to me divination isn't just a sensationalistic tool for fortune telling I think that fortune telling is one of the least exciting and interesting parts of divination I think the most interesting part is that it causes us to connect to the very essence of our fate to understand our destiny and to navigate the fortunes of our lives and that it can help us to refocus perhaps on the lots that were dealt to us into our bag as we stepped in the guise of the fall off that cliff. It causes us to be able to look back into that bag and go, what was put in there just before I stepped off the cliff? And that the tarot can actually guide us back to that. And it does so because it's intimately connected through this mystery square to the power of the divine, of that no thing beyond all things. And I think it's remarkable that human ingenuity and imagination was able to deduce that and define that and then express that in 78 cards and to make that fit beautifully and almost seamlessly with other esoteric systems that still carry that same thing thought form so as as somebody who uses the kabbalah with the tarot it's kind of like a double whammy right well it's like a triple whammy for me it's the um hermetic movement like the golden dawn it's the kabbalistic movements particularly the toledano tradition that i that i follow and and and also my druidry is all in there so and as a druid i like things to be in threes
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I mean, that is usually the way of things. So,
SPEAKER_01:yes. sitting down and studying the mystery school that they come from, because that connects you even deeper to the immense cauldron of potential magic that underpins the system, regardless of what form they take. They're connected. As Alistair Crowley said, they're alive, you know. I love that because that's just the nice bit of woo-woo that I need in my life.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And then that back to the animism of the cards are alive as absolutely. That is a really beautiful thing to end on. And I really appreciate all of that. I have probably another 40 questions on my list. So I hope that we will be able to find another time to have you back on. And I deeply appreciate it. Is there anything, of course, there's going to be links to everything in the show notes. Is there anything in particular that is coming up that you would like to share with people or. So,
SPEAKER_01:um, um, Well, I've got a book that's just about to be released. Seeing that I just mentioned fate and destiny and fortune, I've written a book about Ariane Rod, who's the Celtic goddess of fate, destiny, and fortune. And that's coming out towards the middle of August from Collective Inc. for Moon Books. And so it's my first time writing for Moon Books because I usually write for Llewellyn. And so, yeah, that's been really... really nice, actually, to be able to focus on Arianrhod, because there's not an awful lot of material about Arianrhod to maybe warrant a full-sized book, but to be able to write one of these pagan portal books, which are very easy and accessible to people, while still being able to honour the scholarship and cultural significance of Arianrhod has been a bit of a delight. Yeah, so that's coming out soon, and then I'm working on another two-tarot project Tarot book.
SPEAKER_02:Well, there we go. So when that's out, then I'll have another conversation. That sounds wonderful. Well, I will put links to everything that I can in the show notes for people. And I want to thank you so much for your time. It is very much appreciated. And thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Black moon above, stars overhead Don't you dare guide me back to my bed The river is frozen, the pollen pads bare Don't wait for me, darlin', there's thorns in my hair
