Dear friend,
You are receiving this Newsletter because you subscribed to The Magic of Connection, my free meditation course. I hope some of its suggestions have become part of your life and your spiritual harvest of the year.
This last week, I have returned to the land of my bloodline Ancestors and visited family, both living and passed. In Belgium, my country of birth, family graves are still cleaned and adorned with flowers ready for All Saints Day, when many people visit and say a prayer to those who have gone before.
The Magic of Connection has also taken me to my spiritual family in the last few weeks. I have spent a weekend at the White Horse Samhain camp, laughing and dreaming the future with my tribe. I have also stood in ritual with Cornovii Druid Grove and celebrated the season with a house sized bonfire – no exaggeration.
The same tribal connection led me to this week’s interviewee. Steve Gladwin, also known as Ardan, is a member of my Druid Camp tribe. For many years, he has journeyed deeply with connection and inspiration. The publication of his new book, The Seven, inspired me to invite him to contribute to this issue. I hope you’ll enjoy his story of magic, love and loss.
Blessings of the first frost,
Hilde
## In this issue
– Interview with Steve Gladwin, Druid, storyteller and author
– The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids
– What you can do to help Westacre
## Interview with Steve Gladwin (aka Ardan), Druid, storyteller and author
I met Ardan at an OBOD Lughnasadh camp several years ago. I know him as an accomplished storyteller and thoughtful man. When he started mentioning his book, The Seven, on social media, I decided he would be a great interviewee for the Westacre Newsletter.
Ardan’s answers to my questions proved me very right. He tells the story of his journey with the Welsh myths and stories, as well as with love and darkness, so compellingly that I haven’t had the heart to edit it down. So here it is in full: Ardan’s story of inspiration and connection. It reads like a myth of magical questing.
1. What brought you to Druidry and what keeps you there?
I have been a druid since 1994 and it has gone through many changes.
It began when I read two books; one which I knew I could not finish and later one which felt like both an old and familiar and a thrilling new coat. The first was The Celtic Shaman by John Matthews, which I knew then I was not ready for, and the second was Philip Carr Gomm’s The Druid Way which I still return to here and there and continues to move and inspire me. I knew nothing about druidry at the time apart from some crazy ideas no doubt inspired by The Wicker Man. The contrast with the gentleness of the journey Philip described in the book could not be greater but I also found in there other things like world issues, the question of religion and polarity, the battle of the sexes, war, and of course magic.
In the back of course you could send for an introduction to the full OBOD bardic course and with great excitement I did so and myself and my then partner studied and excited ourselves over it. We both signed up and were eventually self initiated as bards in our (thankfully not too overlooked) back garden. But there were two steps in the journey which transformed my life.
The first was the then annual OBOD retreat to Iona in June 1995 and the second the very first Samhuin camp in October 1996.
My going to Iona was I believe now the most important time in my life and I firmly believe that without it I wouldn’t be answering any of these questions.
So much so that it impacts on all the other questions. So if you’ll forgive me I I‘m going to use it to thread our way through the other questions.
At the time there was, very briefly something called The Druid Helpline and sometimes I imagine I must have made it up because maybe I was the only one who ever used it. Anyway for whatever reason I found myself talking to Chris Worthington as she was then and within a few minutes she’d told me that it sounded like I needed to come to Iona. So as I had money and that sort of thing in those days that’s just what I did. Which is where I’ll leave it for a while if you don’t mind because as I say, the subject is going to come back again.
You also ask what keeps me being a druid. Well as I’ve learnt once a druid always a druid. I spent barely a year and a half on the bardic grade and then on the ovate grade I seemed to go through everything during twelve years plus of that grade and am now you might say becalmed on the shores of druid grade with barely a toe in the water but it feels alright there. In that time I’ve felt that I’ve lost it altogether, this thing called druidry and belief and to be frank one of those times has been recently for various reasons.
But of late it has come back with a mighty surge and I think that’s the way to look at the whole thing. It keeps you there rather than you it. It’s very much that way and it’s taken me a long time to realise that no matter how grumpy I get with the whole thing it will and always has been there for me when I want to pick it back up. Lucky me.
2. You work as a storyteller. What is your inspiration and what magic do you find in it?
We’re back to Iona again, which is where it all started. Before then I had dabbled with performance and some storytelling. I’d gone from being a well paid drama teacher in Somerset to taking a punt by setting up a theatre company. We had hardly started when I went to Iona and I hadn’t done much storytelling but in the last year or so. I suppose at the same time I found druidry I’d discovered that as far as I was concerned all the great truths were contained within all the myths and stories of the world which I had loved since being a child. Nowadays this sounds a bit naive because you know – of course they are but I didn’t know it then.
So I went to Iona and it’s a magical place where I had the most powerful time and will never forget the people I shared those times with but it was what happened after that was so life changing. We had been working all week on the story of Taliesin and our daily meditations became more and more intense until on the last day we had the opportunity to be more or less reborn from the cauldron. That happened for many but not for me at the time. Instead it happened quite unexpectedly a week later in a pub skittle alley in a pub called The West India House in Bridgwater Somerset where I and an ex student were doing a special storytelling for Beltane. But I didn’t want to be there because I missed Iona and particularly a person I had rather inconveniently fallen in love with,(Iona is intense like that — I’ll warn you !!) So I’d picked up this story and hadn’t bothered to prepare it – just more or less skated through it because I couldn’t be arsed frankly. But it was a story which spoke to me about Iona and was and indeed is called The Woman From the Sea; one of the many stories of the selkie or seal people. It was from a collection of English folk tales by Kevin Crossley Holland and later Kevin and I and indeed the book which would become The Seven would become connected in remarkable ways.
Anyway that night I introduced the story something like “this is a story from the island of Uist but I prefer to think of it being from a place I am missing in particular at the moment. A place called Iona.’ What a grumpy sod hey? But what came out of my mouth as I begun to tell this ‘under prepared even to be kind’ story was a stream of pure story of the sort I had never encountered before. I came to realise later that I had been granted what the Welsh call awen and it has been with me ever since. This was my gift from the cauldron a week later than most others and I have always had it since and never taken it for granted.
That then is how my storytelling career and later The Seven and everything started. So you ask what my inspiration is. Well I was given it like little Gwion before he transformed into Taliesin, quite literally. And of course that was the other thing which Iona first gifted me, the story of Taleisin. A figure and a particular inspiration that has been with me pretty much ever since in one form or another.
So one way or another I’ve been a storyteller ever since and it has woven always into my life and druidry. My spiritual work has always had story at the root of it and continues to do so. My storytelling performing and writing work has been through many phases from life to both death and if you like my own resurrection more than once. I’ve just had — I feel – in many ways another one so that feels more than special. That’s something that The Seven has brought me which I’ll come back to.
3. You live and work in Wales. How did that come about and what is your connection with the land you live in?
The simplest answer to the last part of that would be ‘everything’ but that would be a bit glib maybe. I came to Wales because I fell in love with someone on a storytelling course and that, after Iona, was the second thing which changed my life. I recently went back to Ty Newydd where I met Celia for – would you believe it – the seventh time. It is also the seventh anniversary of her death so sevens are very much in evidence at the moment. Anyway we met at this wonderful writers’ centre and ended up working on a magical tale together called Midir and Etain; a rich and fabulous Irish myth which tells a tale of love, loss and reconnection over literally thousands of years and should really have warned us of what was to come.
Celia died of cancer in 2006 having been diagnosed in April 2005 and been granted what I now believe was a year’s relapse. But we had been living here in Meifod together since October 2001 and had been granted a few lovely years of storytelling and performing and among my best memories of that are the ones where we performed as Merlin and his lad in a series of shows for country houses, fairs and the like and for Shrewsbury museum. Sometimes as in many times in my career, things need to be profane as well as sacred and I will never forget the sight of a 50-odd year old woman with a baseball cap on backwards pretending to be a surly, gum chewing lad of 17.
A far cry from the magical myth side whereby we met but equally important and part of the overall picture. The fact that my grumpy Merlin shows up again in The Seven is not a co-incidence.
I love where I live now and always have done. Celia adored the Vyrnwy Valley if not so much the living on the A495 bit, (although that’s not as bad as it sounds). There is the river and the many walks which I need to take more of and be more courageous with it like she was and of course there is the grove, but that’s jumping ahead.
So yes of all the stories I have ever loved it’s the ones from Wales that speak to me the most. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that there are certain characters and themes I have been obsessed with since I first discovered them in the early nineties; Taliesin himself, the first two branches of the Mabinogi and maybe above all the one poem which is equally confusing, mythical, magical and impenetrable, The Preiddeu Annwn or ‘Spoils of Annen’ which is said to have been written by Taliesin. It’s maybe no coincidence that all of these things made their way into The Seven. Try stopping them !
4. How does Druidry weave into your life?
I’ve sort of pre-empted this a bit in question one but I’ll do my best to flesh it out. I think one of the very first things which attracted me to druidry was the celebration of the eight fold year and its cycle. After all in a perfectly mercenary way what could be better than the excuse for a party every six weeks or so? And when I first really experienced druidry other than on Iona it was this time with my then partner Josie and with that magical Samhuin camp I mentioned in Oxfordshire. It was all new and frightening to her and of course to me a little but not in the same way because of Iona. There really were dogs on a string, people with dirty looking dreadlocks, a huge bloke with a big belly in a sarong, (bless you Ivan) and shall we say some slightly approximate cooking at times. But there was also love and support and warmth and the only time I have ever felt an actual sense of no time and who cares if there is or isn’t?
Unlike some people I have never been blessed with visions or communion with other worlds but on the second night after the most magical journey called The Samhuin Nightmare I had my dead come to me there in my tent and parade smiling in front of me. I knew it was real because it had a certain ‘off’ quality to it. An — if you like — sense of connection. And it felt like what I used to call my ‘Doctor Who’ dreams when I was under gas at the dentist.
At that time camps were run by some really quite magical people and that made for a particular intensity.
Best of all they were from Dobunni Grove who were our local grove so after the camp we could go away from there and join the grove and do this sort of thing all over again.
I mention this because that first year and a half was the best of druidry for me and I feel enriched by both Iona and that first camp in ways that I couldn’t be by anything else. Druidry has continued that enrichment ever since through friends and experiences and that includes the one dear wise friend who both married Celia and I and then rather shockingly only two and a half years later had to preside at her rite of passage, but I have gradually fallen out of love with communal druidry for all kinds of reasons and for a long time I have practised a very private form. Sometimes and often by even not seeming to practice it at all.
But of late and much to my delight I have met up with a very small group of like minded druids who want to do magic without – if you like — the whistles and bells and over worthiness and I enjoy being with them so far.
5. What are The Seven? What can you tell us about the book and the steps that led you to writing it?
Mm well how long have you got? I will do my best to explain this organically and in the stages that it happened. But before that you ask who The Seven are to which the answer is many things and if I gave some of them away it would spoil the book. But I will tell you some of the – if you like — historic sevens. First of all they are the grove of trees that Celia and I found in 2004 and inspired this version of the book.
They are also the two companies of the cauldron; the remnant of the warriors of Arthur mentioned in the ‘none but Seven’ reference in the Preiddeu Annwn and maybe even more significantly the seven who formed the company of the Noble Head at the end of the story of Branwen. Both of these sevens feature heavily in the story which became The Seven. As I say there are also other sevens in the book but best leave that to when you read it.
So what was to become The Seven goes back as far as 1998 when I was on my own in the house when Josie was away for a week and it gave birth to the two things which would later have the greatest creative import in my life.
The first was the story adaptations which would eventually form the first draft of my adaptation of The Song of Taliesin, the wonderful collection of stories by John Matthews which I had fallen in love with, and would later perform and turn into a CD, and the entity which was to many years later become The Seven. And without the first there would have been no second, simple as that so thanks again John.
The Seven started as a children’s quest book inspired by the images in Nigel Pennick and Nigel Jackson’s Celtic Oracle which during that time I used as inspiration for a poem and accompanying bit of prose. Then when I was done with that I did the same with Philip, Steph and Bill’s wonderful Druid Animal Oracle, (which makes a very quiet undercover appearance in The Seven which I really should acknowledge here and now and say thanks for all of its inspiration).
Again it was poems followed by stories but of course this time there are 33 of them and increasingly the tone became more adult, themes, characters and threads appeared and became for a number of years a series of books for adults called ‘Lies of the Summerlands’. But my advice is never write from a series of inspirations like this because lovely as it is at the time it’s then impossible to pin down.
Years later and after many walks up and down the various places I have lived and gnashing of teeth and losing Celia I did the thing they say you should never do and dumped everything to do with the book; the printed drafts, the floppy discs, the actual computer stuff, and odd scraps of paper with ideas on. I regretted it for a while but then after a couple of mild panics quite unexpectedly the ‘great work’ was reborn in 2008 as a children’s book which was then called “Singing Head”. By this time I had discovered the real grove of course and it had given me great comfort after Celia. I had named the trees after the seven in the early book; The Child, Dark Lord, Warrior, Queen, Bard, Seeker and Mage, and now it played much more of a part in the book than it ever had and that felt right.
I had taken to asking everyone who I took up to the grove to pick their tree in the way Tony does in the book and it was always the right choice for them. I still do that.
The book itself in its new form tells the story of a grumpy boy of 11 who lives in Wales in a little village and who has lost his mother. He finds himself with an odd new best friend and on a strange quest inspired by seven paintings she has left him to both fulfil an ancient prophecy and eventually find his own identity. It mirrors the characters and story of Branwen, the second branch of the Mabinogi and includes appearances by Branwen, Efnisien, and also Taliesin, Arthur and Merlin amongst others. But it is also important to me that this is above all a story about loss and coping with change and the need for personal transformation.
I was lucky enough in this age of e-books to have a wonderful editor at Pont Books, a fine Welsh publisher, take it up and shake it around and very much make a silk purse out of a potential sow’s ear. The book wouldn’t normally have come out until the end of March but Viv left early to train for the priesthood, (that’s what what happens when you have to edit me) and so it came out Mid October and I feel very lucky in this respect. I have said elsewhere and will say again that even though The Seven is supposed to be a book for 7-11 year olds I hope that it is the sort of book that parents and children in particular can enjoy together. That would be my wish.
6. What does the magic of connection mean to you.
I’ll answer this in two parts if you don’t mind. First the course itself is something which I love the idea and indeed the generosity of your sharing in the way you have.
I myself began it before as they say life took over but that was enough to make me realise that it would be something I will value and cherish in the winter months to come. Its approach and discipline is something I very much need at the moment and I look forward to resuming it.
But as for the bigger question about connection well to me it means everything. The idea of connecting outside yourself with the wider entity of goddess and universe in particular. I think I’d like to mention the idea of synchronicity here which to me is one of the first things you pick up on on any magical path and there’s a the sort of thrill which is a bit like coming home when you do. That is of course all about connection. There is a reason you picked up that odd library book, or went that route instead of the other, or say in my case went on a course I could in any way afford when I’d given up on the idea.
Then there is the very opening out of yourself into the wider world and when it’s at its best bathing in that like it was in Iona and on my first Samhuin camp. And with me it has always been about the magic of story and connection and that is the part of my path that has never left me. The part that first granted me my awen all those years ago through a very special story.
And I’ll finish by saying that, that connection through that story is alive and well. I went back to Ty Newydd where Celia and I met for a writers course run by Kevin Crossley Holland and Malachy Doyle. In one of Kevin’s newer books the very first story is “The Woman From the Sea”.
I have now been on two more courses at Ty Newydd with Kevin and his and my journeys are forever linked by his story, by Celia and many other things and I count him now as a friend as well as a mentor.
Celia who so loved his work would have been delighted by the magic of that connection.
## The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids
In his interview, Ardan mentioned OBOD, the Druid order of which both of us are members. It has been an important influence in our lives and the lives of many others. Here is my story.
About a decade ago, I was deepening my investigation of Earth-based spirituality with shamanic practices as taught by Caitlin Matthews. But after years of working on my own, I felt a need for a community of like-minded people.
The idea of Druidry always appealed to me. It called to me as the shamanism of the land I lived on. At Pagan conferences and gatherings, I met some Druids who confirmed this for me. OBOD’s distance learning course and its network of Groves and Seedgroups seemed like a good place to start.
So I signed up for the Bardic grade, and joined the London Grove, as it was then called. One of its members, talked enthusiastically about OBOD’s Camps, and I decided to investigate. Before I knew it, I was co-running the London Grove under its new name of London Tamesis Seedgroup, and going to the camps as often as I could. It was obvious: I had found my community.
As is the case with many people, the OBOD community helps you find your strengths and to mould a creative life around them. Without the support of OBOD people, I would not be who I am today, and I would probably not be dreaming the Westacre dream.
For more information on the Order and its wide network of groups, camps, gatherings and initiatives, visit
www.druidry.org
## Help Westacre spread its story
The Westacre dream is taking shape, slowly but surely. Alex has been digging out the foundations so that they can be insulated.
We want to use the topsoil we are removing, so at the same time, Alex is constructing a raised bed by the South facing wall of the house. It will be filled with a mix of that top soil, compost, and other organic material.
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