Awen

To witness no trace of a step, that has lingered beneath the dewy lush grass. Then to gaze upon greatest glory! While creation unfolds right in front of you. Revealing its treasured secrets, while you stand stunned, eyes wide open as you try to take in the entire sky and landscape about you. As countless eons pass before you in an instant. Suddenly, you have grasped eternity to be but a moment to a greater source. This self-created source gave birth to eternity and all that is and is not, and is to be. Its being is woven in all that it has created, and still, it appears to have vanished! Awen is a neo-Druid symbol whose invention is attributed to an 18th-century Welsh poet named Iolo Morgannwy. About the symbol itself - the 3 rays of light. Awen is a symbol of harmony and balance. Inspiration and creativity. Eternity and time. • The 3 ages of humankind • Knowledge, truth and experience • Love, balance and wisdom • Mind, body and spirit • Earth, sea and sky • Man, woman and the central ray is balance between them. The 3 rings around the rays represent the 3 worlds which the Druid must walk in. Underworld, middle world and upper world. The 3 dots are the mysterious source of all things. Some Druids consider them to be that of the gods. If there exists a higher power to this, then it is because it has felt the need or necessity to create one or more. Thus allowing it to do what it does best... CREATE. All three must be simultaneously in action. To be the Creator, He must create, and be in creation. So I would assign the number three to the creator. ah-oh-en Our Awen does this, Awen is a Welsh, Cornish and Breton word that means (poetic) inspiration, and the three rings around it represent the three worlds the Druid must walk in. Three rays of light. Awen is the wisdom, truth and most of all the inspiration, Awen is Nature, the universal power behind life, yet it is never born and shall never die. For it is ubiquitous. Awen is a force or energy forged from an indivisible source that is the power behind the physical and non-physical or spirit forms Existence, and the distinction between nature and the supernatural becomes meaningless, as both are the personification of Awen. Every link which is a part of nature, be it a man, animal, plant or elemental force, each holds its own little piece and together make up the whole chain which is Awen. Awen is the spirit of Druidry itself, it is knowing, sensing and feeling it in your essence and true being, it is the freedom to accept one's nature. While the concept of Awen and its solar connections are popularly regarded as Revivalist, rather than an ancient Celtic symbol, some Druidesses and Druids do believe that Awen, translated as flowing spirit, may be an ancient concept that was Christianised. They point to such examples as tales of the sixth-century bard Taliesin (although these tales were recorded centuries later) who claimed to have received three drops of Awen that splashed from the Cauldron of Cerridwen and these three drops are depicted in some symbols of Awen, falling from the sky. Of course, if Awen does come from the Cauldron of Cerridwen then this solar power is female-inspired and directed and the solar connection is that it is brewed from herbs and flowers that grow in the sun. It represents a rebirth into light, such as the boy Gwion experienced when he was swallowed in the form of a grain by Cerridwen in the shape of a hen and was reborn from her womb as the bard/magician Taliesin nine months later. Gwion, foster son of Cerridwen, was stirring the cauldron (the owner of the cauldron is called Awen) at the time and claimed that three drops of inspiration splashed on his fingers accidentally, an explanation not accepted by the irate Cerridwen who pursued him in animal different forms in what has become a classic example of shapeshifting. Awen is a complicated concept and hard to understand. Teaching its meaning is often not clear and imprecise. I can only offer my sense of feeling and as sure as the winds drift sand, my own perspective may shift slightly as time moves on. I only know what I feel but only arrogance sets opinions in stone, may I be preserved some such folly. Thank you for your time/|\