Burning Mary and the End of Days Sun

Following the revelations that Anrhuna, the Dragon Mother, was reborn as Matrona and replaced by Mary I journeyed to find out more about the land of the dragons. My dragon guide took me on her back to view a scene where the sky was pink, the molten orb of the sun was shrouded by mist, stony platforms floated, and a red dragon flew slowly and majestically by, leaving traces of smoke in the air.

I felt touched and honoured by its beauty but at the same time realised I felt fragile, paper thin. I was no longer sitting on a dragon but was in the tenuous hold of two winged beings, one on each shoulder.

They took me to follow the red dragon into a cave which I instantly knew was ‘the Womb Room’, where Anrhuna’s womb was taken for safekeeping after she had been slain by the Children of the Stars. Within it was a mural of Mary with her child and all around it were red flames.

The red dragon told me that Mary must ‘burn’ so that Anrhuna could return to dragon form again.

Then I received the insight that it is we, humans, who are keeping Anrhuna as Mary in human form. But, knowing how many millions of people love her, I realised that even if I had the power to ‘burn’ her and thus take her away it would be wrong and that this was not my role or my place. I wondered whether ‘burn’ might have a different meaning to being burnt or being destroyed. Could there be some kind of revelation of Mary as Anrhuna in which just her image was burnt away?

At this point I realised that other humans had been to the Womb Room before me to paint the mural and that there were offerings there – a vase of flowers and coins and statuettes and other treasures.

I was afterwards told that the sun always hangs within this land and is ‘The End of Days Sun’. That it is a piece of ‘dragon art’. That the sun isn’t really in their land, but they create this art to remind them of the imminence of the End of Days. I had a feeling this was an important part of their lore.

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This vision combined with my constant calling to ‘see Mary’ when I’m out walking, whether it is a visit to the site of St Mary’s Well and St Mary’s Church on Castle Hill in Penwortham, St Mary’s in Bamber Bridge, Our Lady and St Patrick in Walton-le-Dale, Ladyewell in Fernyhalgh, or the old St Mary’s in Leyland, prompted me to do some research on Saint Mary the Virgin in Christianity.

To my astonishment it revealed some imagery which fits quite closely with my vision. I found out that Mary is often identified with ‘the woman clothed with the sun’ in the Book of Revelations. She appears ‘with child’ ‘travailing in birth’ then appears ‘a great red dragon’ waiting to devour the child (!).

The child (Jesus) is taken up to the throne of God and the woman flees to the wilderness. Hence follows the battle between the angels and the dragon (the Devil) and his angels and their casting out. The dragon persecutes Mary but she is given eagle’s wings with which to fly away. He then tries to drown her in a flood of water but the earth saves her by swallowing it. Finally he turns on her descendants.

Here we find Mary with child and burning or ‘clothed with the sun’ which is also ‘the End of Days Sun’ relating to the time of apocalypse or revelation and a reference to a primal battle against a dragon.

Only the stories are very different. In the Christian story the red dragon is the adversary of Mary, God, with whom she conceives her son, and his angels, who battle against the dragon/Devil and his angels. In the story I have been gifted the war between Anrhuna as the Dragon Mother and the Children of the Stars has already taken place and the red dragon is advising me to ‘burn’ Mary. It is, at least, interesting that Mary was given eagle’s wings and I was held in the air by two winged beings.

I have no idea what to make of these complex overlappings and reconfigurings of images yet but feel that in some sense revealing them here is part of the process through which Mary may burn yet not be burnt. Perhaps like the burning bush – ‘the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.’

When I went to visit Mary at Our Lady and Saint Patrick’s on the first of June it was sweltering. She looked serene. Contrastingly my backpack was sweated to my back and the sun was scorching my bare calves.

Mary said: “It’s not me who is burning but you.”

Seeing Face to Face

In Corinthians Paul famously contrasts seeing ‘through a glass, darkly’ with seeing ‘face to face’. In Revelations we find a series of glassy images leading up to the servants of God seeing his face. We are told, before the throne of God, is ‘a sea of glass like unto crystal’. This is later described as ‘a sea of glass mingled with fire’ with those who have gained ‘victory over the beast’ standing upon it with ‘the harps of God’. The harpers play the song of Moses who ‘the Lord knew face to face’.

The city of New Jersualem is described as ‘pure gold like unto clear glass’, its street ‘pure gold, as it were transparent glass’ and the river of life, running through it, proceeding from the Throne of God ‘clear as crystal’. We are told the Throne of God is in the city and here, where his servants serve him, ‘they shall see his face’.

These images of glass, no longer dark but crystal clear, are bound up with the process of revelation. Of the revealing of the face of God, which is never described, of which his servants are forbidden to make graven images.

This imagery interests me, as a Brythonic polytheist and devotee of Gwyn ap Nudd, because in a number of texts his castle is described as being made of glass or crystal and surrounded by water. In The Life of St Collen, Gwyn is depicted seated on a golden throne in ‘the fairest castle’ Collen ‘had ever beheld’ on Glastonbury Tor. Gerald of Wales notes Glastonbury ‘used to be called Ynys Gutrin… the Island of Glass, no doubt from the glassy colour of the river which flows around it in the marshland.’

In ‘The Spoils of Annwn’ Arthur sails across the sea in his ship, Prydwen, to raid seven otherworldly forts on otherworldy islands. It is my belief they are appearances of the same fort – the abode of Pen Annwn ‘the Head of the Otherworld’ (an older name for the King of Annwn/Faery – Gwyn).

One of the fortresses is named Caer Wydyr ‘the Glass Fort’. The narrator, Taliesin, mocks ‘pathetic men’ (monks) ‘who hadn’t seen Arthur’s feat beyond the Glass Fort’. He tells us ‘six thousand men were standing on its wall; it was hard to communicate with their watchman’. In Nennius’ History of the Britons thirty ships of Spaniards sailing to Ireland find in the midst of the sea ‘a tower of glass, the summit of which was covered with men, to whom they often spoke, but received no answer.’

The Fairy King’s castle is described as being made of crystal in Sir Orfeo:

‘Amid the land a castle tall
And rich and proud and wondrous high
Uprose, and all the outmost wall
Shone as crystal to the eye.
A hundred towers lit up the sky,
Of diamond all battled stout;
And buttresses rose up near by
Arched with red gold and broad about.’

In the Biblical and Brythonic traditions the paradisal abodes where the gods are enthroned, the centres of the mysteries where their faces are revealed, are associated with glassy waters and crystal walls.

One wonders whether there are any stories of people meeting the gods of Annwn face to face. In Sir Orfeo we are told he could not look upon the Fairy King or Queen ‘their crowns, their garments, glistened bright… so hot they shone’. This ‘noble sight’ brings him to his knees before the throne. Afterwards he takes up his ‘merry harp’ and sings the lay that wins his wife, Heurodis, back from Fairyland.

This reverent response is echoed in the First Branch of The Mabinogion when Rhiannon, a Queen of Annwn, unveils herself to Pwyll. This does not take place within a crystal castle, but near the fairy mound Gorsedd Arberth. We are told she ‘drew back the part of her headdress that should cover her face, and fixed her gaze upon him’. ‘And then he thought that the face of every maiden and every woman he had ever seen was unattractive compared with her face.’ He immediately falls in love with her and agrees to marry her, choosing her above all other women.

When I first met Gwyn, he did not reveal his face to me in his glass fortress, but beneath the shadows of a leaning yew tree on Fairy Lane in Penwortham. My response was similar. I recognised him as my patron deity, a god who I chose above all gods, who I could not help but love and serve.

In Ethics and Infinity the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas notes that the face to face to encounter draws us into service to the Other. Also ‘the face… signifies: “Do not kill me.”’

In the Welsh myths we find this ordainment repeatedly broken by Arthur and his warriors who commit a panoply of acts of defacing. The heads of the witches of Caer Loyw and Pennant Gofid are split in twain. The beard of Dillus Farfog is plucked out whilst he is still alive before his head is cut off. The giants Diwrnach and Wrnach are beheaded. Most horrifically, before Ysbaddaden Bencawr is beheaded, his face is mutilated – Caw of Prydyn shaves off his beard, ‘flesh and skin to the bone, and both ears completely’.

Because Arthur cannot bear the thought of the head of Brân being beneath White Hill as a threat to his sovereignty over Britain he orders it to be dug up and removed. Interestingly Brân’s head lives after his death for eighty-seven years and only when it starts to decay, when he loses his face, is it buried. It seems that Arthur cannot abide even the distant memory of Brân’s face evoked by his head.

The surrounding stories suggest that either Arthur himself or (Llen)lleog beheaded Pen Annwn with Caledfwlch during his raid on Annwn and this was how he gained his cauldron, the leadership of his hunt, and usurped his role as the warrior-protector of Britain. One might see the beheading of the Head of the Otherworld, ‘Arthur’s feat beyond the glass fort’, as the ultimate crime against the Other and the face of the numinous.

This killing blow, with the thrusting of Lleog’s flashing sword into the cauldron, may be seen to bring about the shattering of the glass fortress, the fragmenting of the mythos of Pen Annwn. We are left only with pieces of the narrative like shards of broken glass, the images within like creatures trapped in amber; seeing through glass darkly as the Dark Age is ushered in.

Yet beyond the glass walls Pen Annwn picks up his head and makes himself whole again.

I see his face and he is laughing.