Measure of Annwn – Eternity of Yew

Dare we accept the challenge inherent in the paradoxical question posed above by Taliesin, the sixth century 'Primary Chief Bard of the Island of Britain'? I believe that we must and I'd like to propose that the 'measure' of Annwn, the name for the Otherworld in Welsh tradition, can be directly experienced as a transformative and visionary healing force through the radiant presence of a being —the yew tree— who uniquely holds the original power and intensity of that 'measure' as the sentient expression of an incarnated force of eternity on Earth.

Annwn as Origin

The 'Celtic' Otherworld acquired many names such as the Irish, Tir –na –nog, 'the Land of Youth', Tir– Innambeo, 'the Land of the Living', Tir Tairngire, 'the Land of Promise', Tir N-aill, 'the Other Land (or World)', Mag Mor, 'the Great Plain' and Magh Meall, 'the Honey Plain.' The Otherworld was generally described as a realm of peace, harmony and abundance, untouched by illness or death and often said to be located on a far-away island, across a great ocean or hidden as a subterranean realm or as a 'land beneath wave'. The heroes of myth and even the early Christian monks all went in search of it and when sailors landed in South America they thought they had finally arrived at the Celtic 'Atlantis' of O' Breasail or Hy-Brasil. This land is still named as Brazil today.

The 19th century Welsh Barddas, (Bardism) said to have been copied from the transcripts of older documents, states that, "in the beginning there was nothing but God and Annwfnn". The Welsh Otherworld of Annwn is here given in its earlier name as Annwfnn, (Anooven) and is defined as the primal beginning - the very source of Life. The Bards sought to preserve the teachings of the ancients who referred to this original abundant condition of life as a Golden Age presided over by an original sun – Saturn.

The Yew Tree

Few people encountering a yew tree for the first time will fail to appreciate its otherworldliness. It forms part of and yet doesn't seem to fully participate in the world around it. Its tendency toward hollowing in single trunks and in some rare cases the creation of vast inner chambers composed of layered branches reveals the underlying gesture of literally turning away from the Sun. Every part of the yew, if ingested, is a deadly toxin apart from the fleshy aril, (the name for the 'berry' of the yew). A yew stands between the polarities of sex, with female branches appearing on a dominantly male expressed yew or vice-versa. Some yews have been known to enact a complete reversal of sexual expression in less than a year. The yew is also very long lived with age estimates now controversial and ranging from several hundred to a thousand or more years for the same tree. The yew tree is a living mystery. It is my personal opinion, based on direct experience, that many of our ancient yews are several thousands of years old and the oldest living beings on our planet.

A series of traumatic events that began in 1987 in the far north of Scotland (see bio) led me to one of these mysterious beings - an ancient 'female' yew tree near Edinburgh that was to heal me and that was eventually to lead to the work I now refer to as the Yew Mysteries. It was clear from my first encounter with the yew that I had entered a sanctuary space entirely sealed off from the outside world. At first sight the tree was not recognizable as a tree at all but rather had the appearance of a giant bush, shaped like a blunted pyramid. A darker section at the base of this evergreen pyramid revealed a low hanging opening that led into a narrow passageway composed of a weave of living branch contortions. The sinewy passageway opened into a large, slightly elevated and darkened chamber. The trunk of the yew stood at the centre as a single mighty pillar supporting a tangle of thick boughs that arched into space to inscribe the form of a vault, creating an impression not dissimilar to the interior of a Gothic Cathedral. The arched branches of the vault then swooped to the earth some 15 feet in all directions around the trunk to form a perfectly circular and sealed interior. On contact with the soft earth the branches had taken root to grow horizontally - giving the impression of a writhing nest of serpents - to form a peripheral, impenetrable and circular fortress of yew beyond and around the central chamber and trunk. The entire circumference of this yew organism comprised a staggering 400 feet. The only way out of this enclosed chamber was through the same narrow passage that had allowed me to enter. I felt that I had been led into an entirely other world - and that oddly, I had come home.

Tree of Good (God) Measure

I was to spend over nine years under this yew, healing and learning from it. Much of this learning was experiential but I could not find a language through which to communicate or describe it. Gradually it became necessary to learn what had been said and written about the yew through the ages. I found many answers in comparative studies of world religions and traditions involving the presence of a World Tree or of a Tree of Life. Research into the Icelandic Voluspa, for example, indicates that the yew was very likely once known as the 'tree of good measure'(1), implying 'God' measure. The Voluspa opens with the Seeress, summoned from her 'grave' by Odin, recounting the origin of the world and of all first- created things. She then speaks of her own origin.

"Nine worlds I remember, nine wood ogresses,
glorious tree of good measure, under the ground."

"Nío man ek heima, nío ívidiur,
miotvid maeran, fyr mold nedan.(2)

These wood ogresses are known as the Ividiur or 'Ividia'. Vid means 'tree' but Ivid means 'yew tree' or 'yew roots.'.(3) Dia is a female guardian spirit. In Ividia we therefore have I as yew, vid as tree, and dia as female guardian spirit. These Ividia bear a remarkable similarity to the Irish Goddess of the Otherworld, Danu as we shall see. Tree of good measure is translated from the Icelandic word miotvid. Miot refers to 'precisely measured estimates', thereby revealing miotvid as a tree of 'measured sufficiency, supplying the existence of the universe...' The tree's location, 'under the ground' almost certainly implies that the 'measure' of its power and vitality comes from the Netherworld or Otherworld. The 'glorious tree of good measure' is therefore in this case an otherworldly 'female' Yew Deity with the power to create Life itself! These are the attributes of a God or Goddess.

During the 19th century, the British historian J.G Cumming indicated the yew as the Tree of God. "Yew is ancient British and signifies 'existent' and enduring having the same root as Jehovah, and yew in Welsh means 'it is', being one of the forms of...(the)... verb 'bod', 'to be.'"(4)

Jehovah is a name for Yahweh, the primary God of the Hebrew Old Testament. Yahweh is one of the Elohim. The name Yahweh is said to have originated from the yew through the Hebrew Yod, the first letter of the name for Jehovah which in turn is controversially said to have come from the Irish word Jodh for 'yew.' (It is amusing and somehow appropriate that Yoda, the mysterious character in Star Wars was given a yew name!) The word El as the singular form of Elohim means Shining One but it was also a name for the planet Saturn. The same pattern can be found with the Babylonian Enki/Ea as names for Saturn. In the ancient world Saturn was recorded as the primordial sun and regarded as the 'Great Father God' or as the 'Firm Heart of the Sky', the 'Stationary God' said to have organized the heavens. To the ancient Egyptians, Saturn as the primordial Sun was Atum-Re, Osiris or Horus depending on the region. There were many other names for Saturn in the ancient world including, Huang-ti in China, Yama in India and Quetzalcoatl in the Americas.(5) Today we might think of Saturn as Old Father –Time, based on the Kronos of the Greeks. Saturn was the God of Time – the God of Measure.

Paradoxically, Saturn was also said to reside on earth as a great king. How could this be so? One clue to this paradox can be found in the Gnostic Books of Yew said to have been given to Enoch in Eden beneath the Tree of Life and describing Yahweh – Elohim as a Great Angel who '...comes forth through the veil... clothed in the material world.' The Gnostic texts actually directly name this Great Angel as Yew and as the 'Overseer of the Light' who comes forth from 'the pure light of the first tree.' This divinely incarnate Yew-Deity was also known to the Gnostics as the 'First Man'. We see then that the Gnostic Yew is one with Yahweh-Elohim who incarnates the God Measure into the Earth. But why would such a God seek to enter the earth in the first place?

Measure of Annwn

The earliest known name for the god-like yew tree is the Hittite Eya (1750BCE) which translates as 'eternity,' and by extension, 'to be touched by eternity.' The word taxus for yew is likely derived from the Indo-European 'Tax' which relates to the verb 'to touch.'(6) I was to increasingly experience and understand the 'touch' of the yew as a profound healing force. At first this experience of touch involved a web of gossamer-fine tendrils of light that seemed to originate from the dark periphery of the yew chamber to approach specific 'nodal' points on my skin through which to enter the internal environment of my sick body. I would feel a great pressure build within my body as the light fibres would surround and penetrate an organ, perhaps my liver, and where the liver would then seem to be seized and stretched by these light fibres beyond anything that could be defined anatomically as 'liver'. The light fibres would then seem to draw the liver from my body to inscribe what I have described as a visual- visceral 'language' into the space of the yew chamber that seemed to describe a new form.

Over time I began to recognize that the light tendrils not only extracted the sickness from my body but they also seemed to be weaving the form of a peripheral body – a non-physical and yet perceptible body that passed beyond my skin to mirror the inner shape of the yew chamber. I began to have the odd sensation of being conscious in two bodies at once, one sick and another surging with a darkly ebbing life force on the periphery. During this phase I was approached by beings that helped me to stabilize my perception of my 'new' body. I referred to them initially as bird beings because of their bird-like faces. I also referred to them later as the bird shamans. (see drawing) With the help of these beings I was able to be conscious of this peripheral body as an incarnate experience that seemed to hold a force that could heal my physical body. It was as if my body had been turned inside-out to become merged and continuous with the chamber of the yew but that I was being challenged to turn the new form of my peripheral body outside-in again, to literally incarnate it as a form of healing.

I searched for a language for this experience of a peripheral body (what I now refer to as the Dragon Body) in books about shamanism but other than repetitive accounts of dismemberment with bones and organs being removed and replaced I found nothing that was accurate to the living dynamic of my experience. Only when I discovered the language of human embryology did I see an analog to the process of my healing. It was as if the spiritual body of the embryo achieved incarnation by progressively passing through a series of primordial, peripheral and undifferentiated tissue veils that took on the shape of its passing as specific organs such as the blood and the heart. With the revelation that my healing followed my origin, the bird beings were able to support me to gradually comprehend that what I experienced as healing beneath the yew, was actually a condition of consciousness dominant in another world that was actually our world but in an utterly different and embryonic condition, prior to its current solar condition. It has taken me well over 20 years to gain the understanding that the world these beings revealed to me was that of the earth in its former condition while it was nurtured by Saturn as its primary sun. I discovered that although the ancient traditions described or portrayed this primal sun as Saturn it had simply been assumed by historians and mythologists that the ancients must have been referring to the Sun we see in the sky today. However, even Nasa admit that the earth and the Sun had separate births!(7)

The bird beings showed me that the Otherworld referred to here as Annwn was originally the living etheric wholeness of Saturn, surrounding, permeating and nurturing the early 'embryonic' earth like a placental membrane – a great expansive and etheric veil that a daring scientist today might call a plasma membrane. The Sun made a spiraling approach to the Earth-Saturn configuration over countless eons, where it might approach and then withdraw and then approach more closely and then recede again until it came so close as to cause the 'placental membrane' of Annwn (Saturn) to withdraw – to involute. This was a startling revelation because it meant at the subtle level that what we refer to as the Otherworld of Annwn is actually the living etheric counterpart of the former placental (plasma) membrane of Saturn.

We might see this dynamic of inversion described in the Mythological Cycles of Ireland in the stories of the Tuatha de Dannan's retreat to the 'hollow hills' after their supposed defeat in battle by the Sons of Mil, the last in the series of supposedly historic invaders to Ireland. The early Christian church seeking to obscure the true nature and attributes of the Tuatha cleverly merged myth with history giving the Tuatha spurious genealogies and physical attributes they never had. The Tuatha de Dannan were and are Shining beings, the Sidhe. They are our true and original ancestors who once inhabited the etheric realm of an earth sphere while it was surrounded and permeated by the envelope of Saturn as its original Sun. This inversion of this 'outer' realm gave birth to the Otherworld of Annwn - the new 'intensive' home of the Shining Ones, the realm of the ancestors. This realm never solidified to become physical like the earth of today. Annwn therefore holds the original etheric measure of Earth – Saturn!

The goddess of the Tuatha de Dannan is Danu. She was and is both goddess of the Otherworld as well as a Yew Deity with her father, sons and brother all bearing yew names. Her father, the Dagdha was also known under the epithet Eochaidh Ollaithair – 'Yew – All (eternal) Father.' Her two sons were named Eogabal meaning 'fork in the yew tree', and Uainide meaning 'yew foliage.' The Sidhe mounds at Cnoc Aine in Ireland are dedicated to Danu's yew family. Sadly, the links between the yew, the Tuatha de Dannan and Saturn as coupled with Annwn were obscured by the church and finally forgotten.

The Chair of Saturn

We can now return to Taliesin. As the Primary Chief Bard, Taliesin held the Presidency or Chair of Caer Saidi. The word Caer has been interpreted to refer to an island, a circle, an enclosure or a sanctuary. The word Sidi, or Saidi refers to Saturn. Caer Saidi therefore implies an enclosed place of Saturn or is the Sanctuary of Saturn. Caer Saidi is also clearly equated with Annwn in the Welsh literature.

From his Chair of Caer Saidi Taliesin proclaims the 'doctrine and the law' – basically the rule or measure of Saturn, or as we have now realized - the etheric measure of Annwn. Taliesin, which means 'radiant brow' was not an individual but the name for a Bardic initiate who had reached a very high level. In the poem, the Spoils of Annwn (or the Spoiling of Annwn), Caer Saidi is the highest of the 7 Caers or sanctuaries. The number 7 in the ancient mysteries represented time - the measure of the original Saturnian Time. The Bards sought to preserve the mystery of Saturn as an initiation. In the ancient world the most sacred and 7th day of the week was named after Saturn. This was by then an echo of an almost lost knowledge about the primordial sun of Saturn that could be glimpsed at the time of the Winter Solstice when the sun had reached its weakest point and where the influence of other forces might be felt. It was customary at this time to reverse and invert the normal circumstances of life in order to reveal these 'other' forces of the 'time between times' otherwise known as the Otherworld. Customs were also reversed at this time with Masters serving slaves and mock kings called the Lords of Misrule. The key to these customs is that the normal rule and rhythm of life is overturned. The sun stops measuring time during the Winter Solstice - its rule is suspended. A still point in time forms at the Winter Solstice. Through that point of suspension, the hidden force of the original sun – Saturn could be dimly experienced.

The Yew Mysteries

Annwn represents the inverted placental body of the etheric living forces of Saturn and its Great Angels. Annwn is therefore the body of a God(dess) residing within the Earth. The ancient yew trees on earth today are the Great Angels or Elohim standing incarnate 'between the worlds' – divine beings who continue to circulate the etheric forces of Otherworld, Earth and Saturn through their embodied gestures of regeneration, longevity and healing.

The memory of Annwn can be rekindled beneath an ancient yew tree if one knows how to take up the challenge of Taliesin - to live into and directly experience the measure of Annwn - where we, as modern yew-initiates might be 'touched by eternity' to thereby reclaim its memory as a force of healing and transformation. This is the constantly evolving work of the Yew Mysteries.

Footnotes:

1  Hageneder 2007
2  Dronke, 1997
3  Hageneder, 2007
4  Chetan & Breuton, 1994
5  Talbott, 1980
6  Hageneder, 2007
7  Cardona, 2016