I have come to free you from your chains

My offering from last year. Maponos is shown sitting on a tree stump playing a harp, while also wrestling a boar with a razor at its ear. They are surrounded by several animals – an owl, stag, salmon, hound, eagle, and horse.

On the closest New Moon to the Autumn Equinox, which is tomorrow, I begin a devotional month to Mabon/Maponos. The offerings during this month are typically more involved than the rest of the year. My focus is placed on contemplating and distilling what he’s taught me, and challenging myself to reciprocate those teachings.

Last Year

Last year, I discovered Maponos’ chthonic and earthly aspects. I contemplated his role in transmigration and rebirth. We worked through some of my traumatic experiences, and he taught me about colour and texture. We journeyed to the underworld, from where I wrote Infernals of Anagantios. I then summed up three things about Maponos I had come to learn (divine youth, transmigration, otherworldly traveler). On the New Moon of October, I held a private ceremony in his honour.

I wondered back then how my relationship to Maponos would evolve. Last October, our relationship intensified drastically. I felt his heavy, smoky presence surround me as I journeyed into Annwfn. I heard the bells of the Tylwyth Teg ringing in my ears. He whispered tales about Jupiter’s moons to me.

A bearded Maponos holding a lyre and blackbird. He wears two boar tusks on his head like horns. Below him is a wildflower garden from which ghostly figures rise.

I spent a lot of time between then and now learning how to navigate the underworld safely. How to not bring andedion back with me. Spiritual hygiene is something I had to take very seriously. The andedion are not evil by nature, but they can conjure feelings of staggering misanthropy. They are always hungry. They want to play, to feed, for you to return with them. After particularly intense journeys, where I would enter the gnosis state focused solely on Maponos, I would sometimes hear them talking in the background. They unnerved me.

Dumnos, the underworld, has a lot to teach – patience, acceptance, coping with disorder.

This Year

This year, Maponos and Cunomaglos brought me out of the deep earth. Now I find myself watching the stars.

Automatic drawing of Maponos among celestial spirits

As I neared the New Moon, I confided in Maponos about my continuous struggle with art. Last year, I made multiple artistic offerings including an 11 x 18″ illustration. Given all the struggles I’ve had with art and his limit on me creating finished pieces, does he have the same expectation this year?

I went on a bit of a journey, reflecting on how my vision of him has evolved. Near the end he answered me, stepped in, and threw an unexpected curveball. I won’t be depicting him this month at all – at least not the in way I had expected to.

Two depictions of Maponos. In the first he sits on a tree stump, wearing a tunic made of leaves and playing a harp.
In the second, he is dressed as a hunter holding a shepherd’s rod, surrounded by lambs.

I once met Mabon at a spring on the outskirts of town.

The first time I saw him he had white clovers for hair, a worker’s tunic made of leaves.

Maponos, you were playing your harp – your entire form is a transient stage.

But it’s been almost two years since then.

Back then, I knew you were Maponos, The Son.

A gentle guardian. A wandering bard. The Child of Light. A distant brother of Apollon.

On the right, Maponos stands as a young man with symbols painted on his face and chest. He wears a cloak and trousers. His hair is drawn to resemble flames. He holds a razor and leans against a tree, surrounded by wildflowers.
On the left, Maponos is seen taking his razor and stripping away bark from the artist’s face.

The next year, you stood next to the wildflowers that grew close to the spring.

You were Maponos, the Son, Mabon, the great hunter – a nobleman.

We met. You had golden hands.

You stripped away my shadows, like bark…

You said,

“You must strip those masks of yours, in order to learn. You must expose the greenest part of you. That which is akin to bone marrow.”

In the left image, Maponos and the artist fall through the grass into an abyss, where he plays his harp as they talk.
In the right image, Maponos and the artist link hands amid the deep earth. He is then shown in his two forms- child and adult, with the artist praying in the foreground.

We fall into the dark green grass.

The type of grass that hides secrets even when it’s cut short.

The water is warm and soft like tar, but it does not stick to me.

Instead, I sink deeper.

Until it is too dark to seen the Sun.

We awake in the underworld…

But he is neither of those tonight.

In the first image Maponos stands with his hair askew wearing a deer hide cloak adorned with elk teeth.
In the second image, Maponos is accompanied by celestial spirits represented by stars with eyes in the centre.

You are not wearing your friendly, comforting masks this equinox.

O Maponos, O Mabon,

You once carried the weight on your shoulders, of soldiers and those who had fallen weary.

Those whose only comfort was your holy name engraved close to the heart.

He said, “I have come to free you from your chains,” as the celestials watched.

“Unfortunately, you are still hanging onto your biggest perceivable crutch.”

“Not even my stubborn brother [Cunomaglos] could get you to realise it.”

Maponos holds one hand up with a star in his palm, with his right eye closed. Celestial spirits depicted as stars watch on.

“I won’t hesitate, if it will help you. I will swear an oath upon you: Until I bestow it upon you again, you are unable to draw human forms.”

And before the spoils of Annwfn, bitterly he sang

I am not permitted to draw human forms until he says so.

It only takes a quick go through my space to evaluate that human figures are pretty much all I depict.

Even the animals I draw feel more like props to the anthropomorpized subject.

This year has become increasingly about stripping me of my comforts. Maponos prevents me from doing creative work to make money, while I’m on medical leave with limited income. He took colour from me, my favourite mediums from me, and now he’s taken my favourite subject to draw away.

The artist appearing as a hare and their spirit guide as a hound discuss the situation.

I say, “What Maponos gives, he can take away.”

He gave me the ability to sense colour with my sixth [sense].

Like Krishna to Arjuna, he granted me the divine sight.

He let me see his many masks for the sake of poetry.

How does one repay a God for all that, I wonder.

One rises to their challenges.

I realise that he and Cunomaglos have wanted me to rise to this challenge for awhile.

“Stop anthropomorphizing everything,” is the blunt way to put it.

It is hard for me, who loves figure drawing and portraiture. But it makes me realise how anthropocentric my artwork is, as if I am chained to the Anthropocene. I put myself and my subjects at a distance from nature continually.

The artist as a hare and Maponos as a blackbird discuss the situation.

As I sit in my new space, among mounting expenses, beset with insomnia and increases in seizures, I feel at a loss.

I trust him wholeheartedly, but as a human I have my moments of weakness.

One particularly difficult morning, I angst over it. “What is the point?”, I cry to Maponos.

Maponos says something that sticks with me, and I realise what he really means by masks. There is a second meaning to it – my masks are not just my identities but my attachments.

Colour is a mask. Money* is a mask. Humans are a mask.

Who are you when everything you know is stripped away?

Says Maponos, It is not a time of ease, but rather dissolution [of the ego].

He has come to deliver me, to break my chains.

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* Maponos is referring to excess income, not money required to survive.

The way Maponos worded his instruction was identical to how tyngedau (destinies, geasa) are made in Welsh mythology, hence I’m treating it like one. Until he says so, none of my art will contain human figures. Including those I do of him.

I feel like this entry is a mess. I’ve been adding to it all week and ambivalent to publishing it. But now that the New Moon of September is tomorrow… I will regret it next year if I don’t.

I’ll start the month right, with a praise I wrote earlier today when I was meditating.

Blessed is the one who watches the seasons change and praises Maponos.
Blessed is the one who follows his path through the worlds.
O Maponos, Great God, merciful and compassionate.
You watch winter from the sky, and your shrill call melts ice.
O Maponos, Great Son, steadfast and resolute.
You crawl toward the sunlight and pry through the soil.
Deep within the Earth, Maponos is free from the seed’s prison.
High up in the sky, Maponos is free from the shards of ice.
I follow Maponos’ footsteps:
From the mountains, into the forest, the fields, down the rivers, and into the caves.
And I do not look back.