It’s a wild thing; inspiration. It comes from delightful exploration of beautiful places, or from deep anguish, from the pain of shedding an identity, and from gratitude for a simple meal, from an extraordinary experience, or from a mundane, repetitive reality. In fairytales, it comes as a golden ball, or a golden feather of a goose. In myth, it is personified as the Muses, in Greece, or as Awen: Celtic inspiration that rises from the cauldron of a great goddess.
Muse has no rules. She can come to the most silly events, or sing to us right in the moment we cannot receive her with pen and paper; when we’re driving, when we’re fighting, when we’re fucking. She is fickle and fun and sometimes frustrating. She flows into us when we least expect it. And sometimes she shows up when we call her – but not always. You cannot rely on her to show up on time. You cannot pin her down.
Muse can emerge from the messiest moment, from the dissolution of life as we’ve known it, from the struggles of not quite knowing what’s next. Read this substack piece to explore this idea further. And she can also respond to regularity, and visit the temple we build for her in the cave of the heart.
Awen, which most often translates as Divine Inspiration, is the magic that rises from deep inner churning, the spark of creativity that leaps into your hands when you do the work, when you stir the inner cauldron, when you choose deep inquiry over simple answers.
What Is Awen? Celtic Inspiration Beyond Ideas
Awen is a Celtic word – Welsh, Cornish, Breton. It is the drum beat of an artist’s heart. It refers to the river of creativity flowing through the universe, and the spark of inspiration that arrives like an electrical current. It’s a poet’s dream and their weaving of a fabric of words. Awen connects humanity and the cosmos, art and nature. It is breath. It is liquid. It is fire.
In order to flow, to burn, to beat, to dance, move in and out of lungs and minds, it needs a ground, a soil, a body to anchor into.
Druids define Awen as the creative power of poets and bards, and as the flowing spirit of the universe, divine inspiration, deep inner wisdom and the dance of Muse.
The Celtic concept of Awen was understood and defined in the culture of a specific place. But the heart of the bard – no matter where they’re from – beats with the spark of this inspired, streaming state. Not everyone calls it Awen, but every tradition has its own relationship with the flow of creativity.
Awen as breath, flow, and animating force
In many ways, Awen is Prana; Sanskrit for “life force.” Prana is most often translated as breath. It is the breath of life that moves through you and through everything that exists. When yogis speak about prana, they invoke the spirit of the world. Prana is the animating force of the universe. It’s the goddess – Śakti in Sanskrit – that gives life and sustains it, It’s the energy that pulses through bodies, keeping them alive, breaking things down, rebuilding, composting, digesting, moving, growing, grounding, rising, connecting, and collaborating. Eventually, Prana releases life into itself as the one spirit that breathes us all.
Awen is the breath of life, like Prana, the animating force of the cosmos, the energy of life. Both terms share creativity as a natural force that flows through the universe. What distinguishes Awen from Prana, is that it also pulses as the creative power of an artist, and the wisdom that wanders through the inner world of a poet, extending itself back into the world through their words.
One person is inspired. A vision is sparked. That’s Awen. It’s not just an idea – it feels like truth in your bones, it pours in as the scent of roses or a siren song, as a wild awakening or a storm of enchantments. It can blow you up with a fire that makes mountains. It’s a somatic sensation that you can’t ignore.
A person stricken by Awen burns with desire to create. That’s Awen. Words swirl through the chest. Paint stirs in the belly. The hands move with the current of wisdom and inspiration that flow through the whole body. A sculpture sings itself into existence. A song roars in tingling waves through the feet. That’s Awen.
Creation is on its path.
When that creation is in the world, and others can see it, Awen is the spark between art and its viewers. The crowd at the concert is roaring with Awen, fed by the flowing fire of inspiration charging the musicians on stage. When you cry by yourself in the movie theatre – that’s Awen. When you cannot put the book down – Awen is flickering in you, ignited by the writer who was hit by Awen. When you are high at the end of a yoga class – that’s Awen. Prana is flowing. The teaching is wise. Your body is receptive. Your mind and heart are alive.
Why Awen cannot be forced or manufactured
You cannot bottle truth, life force, inspiration. They belong to freedom. They belong to us all. You cannot sell Awen tips. Awen is a feeling, a sensation. The more you push for it, the further away it goes. For Awen to flow, one needs to be receptive. When you try to replicate something sparked by Awen, it loses its potency and magic.
The meaning of Awen breathes in organic forms.
Wisdom is not something that can be generated in a factory. It needs to burn, to be churned, to be earned – not always by hard work, or by having all the information, but always by deep listening. Always through a creative vessel that has the capacity to turn knowledge into a lived experience. AI cannot be wise. It may have the capacity to fake wisdom. But wisdom has to live as a body. It has to be able to breathe.
Awen, after all, is the breath of creativity itself.
Awen and the Cauldron: Inspiration Born from Darkness
In the story of Celtic goddess Cerridwen, Gwion Bach – a peasant boy who helps the goddess stir her most important brew in her cauldron of transformation – ends up with the three drops of this precious potion in his mouth. The potion leaps out of the cauldron and lands on his thumb. It is so hot, and without thinking, out of sheer instinct, Gwion Bach puts his thumb in his mouth to cool it down.
Read more about what leads up to that moment, and what happens next in this essay about Cerridwen’s Cauldron of Transformation, and in this essay about Cerridwen as the energy of shapeshifting. Both essays are written as spells, as doorways into the deep contemplation and reflection, as journeys into a personal and collective alchemy.
In this story of Awen and Cerridwen, we follow the birth of Awen from the deep desire to dispel darkness, to the revelation that darkness cannot be dispelled, through the gathering of herbs – rooted in the wisdom of the land and the goddess who knows it so well. We follow the thread of Awen’s cultivation into the cauldron – into the womb – where darkness embraces all that is needed for this most powerful spell. Through muttering incantations that call for inspiration, through stirring and churning and brewing transformation. To the surprising moment when transformation is served in an unexpected way, when Awen rises from the depth of dedication, from hard work, from a year and a day of churning, from deep in the cauldron, and finds its way into the mouth of Gwion Bach.
Creation That Comes From Pressure, Not Light
After the goddess chases Gwion Bach, both of them shapeshifting and transmuting, Cerridwen finally swallows him. She turns herself into a hen, and swallows him as a seed, as a tiny little humble grain. It is in her belly that he goes through another round of deep transformation. It is when he moves from her digestive system and into her womb that she spirals into deeper alchemy than ever before.
The cauldron is now her womb.
The transformative process is intense. The ferocity of the chase, of his fear, of her rage, of the shapeshifting journey that ends with Gwion Bach as a seed in the belly of the beasty goddess, gives us another round of churning. Sometimes we think we’ve done the work and are ready to claim our transformation, to rise from the ashes, only to find ourselves spiraling in, deeper into hotter fire, further into fierce alchemy. It’s not what we asked for, and it’s not how we wanted things to be, and we’re grieving. We’re angry and scared and sad. We feel lost.
This is the soil of inspiration. This is the soul journey of creativity. This is Awen’s birth.
The Rebirth of Awen: Taliesin and the Cauldron Womb
And when he’s born, he’s no longer Gwion Bach – he is Taliesin; the great bard of the Celtic tradition, carrying the spark of Awen in his body and soul. The goddess Cerridwen, who swore to kill him upon his rebirth, sees his shining, sweet, radiant face, and falls into the ocean of love within her own heart. Awen and the goddess are interwoven, and this baby glows with Awen. She cannot kill him, but she also cannot keep him.
He looks at her with eyes that radiate innocence and wisdom. She wraps him in warm blankets, and places him in a basket she’s padding with fur. She wraps the basket with water resistant skin and sews him in. She carries him to the sea, and places him on the water, offering him to the currents. His innocence stares into her soul, shimmering with the flowing spirit of the universe. Salty tears from Cerridwen’s eyes meet the salty waters of the sea.
The sea is now the womb.
For the third time, Awen is in the cauldron. In the cauldron of regeneration we’re not sure we will survive. Are we really going through another round of transformation? Incubation is when we’re not sure if we’ll sprout. We’re in the dark. Waiting. Listening. Tired of everything we’re already gone through. Will the baby drown? Will he survive? Are we going to make it?
How to Listen for Awen (Without Forcing It)
The baby drifts on the waves for three days and three nights. The waters carry him to the north of Wales, where the son of the king, Prince Elphin, finds the basket, and discovers the little baby with the shining, bright face hidden in it, staring at him with radiant innocence and glowing wisdom.
Soft Attention, Not Willpower
All life begins in water. All life begins in the dark. Sometimes, the hard times – when we’re not sure if we will find our way out of the darkness, when we’ve been through cycles upon cycles of intensity, when we keep spiraling deeper into the underworld – call for a softening.
Resistance is necessary at times. Creating strong boundaries around certain tendencies, and shifting (shapeshifting) our ways is necessary sometimes. There are times for hard work and fierce churning. There are periods that demand deep inquiry and intentional stirring. There is time for willpower and dedication.
And there are times when we need to let ourselves be cradled, and drift on the waves of life, not knowing where we’ll end up, not sure if we will make it.
Awen awakens through receptivity – if we don’t allow it, it doesn’t spark. Awen awakens through friction – it doesn’t always come through the cradling light. Awen awakens through softness. Awen awakens through struggle. Awen awakens through devotion. Awen awakens through gentle surrender. Awen awakens through ferocious journeys of transformation.
Listening Through the Body and the Breath
When prince Elphin discovers the baby, his eyes are so bright, his face so filled with light, he names him Taliesin, which translates into “radiant brow.”
As soon as his name is bestowed upon him, the little baby begins to sing, and weave together words into poems and ballads so exquisite, he becomes known in all the land. And from that moment on, he is known as the greatest bard of all.
Awen is Bardic inspiration. And Taliesin is known as the one who brought this spark to life through a deep and complex journey with Celtic goddess Cerridwen. A journey through cauldrons and wombs, through darkness and gloom, through fear and wrath, through creativity and love.
Our bodies are the cauldron. Our breath is Awen.
It isn’t always easy to listen for the wisdom we need most. Life in this day and age is noisy, fast, and disconnected from the wisdom of nature. But our bodies are vessels of creativity and breath. Our breath carries the wisdom of our interconnectedness – we are woven in with the web of life.
Sometimes all it takes is for our attention to turn toward the breath, and the wisdom of nature is right there, singing with us as it plays through our pipes, singing with us as we release into the flow of spirit.
The breath can tell us so much about where we are, about the state of our mind, about how we feel, about the way our nervous system is functioning. To listen to the breath is to begin the process of listening to our whole body, to our whole being, and to our beingness being a part of something greater.
I’m not gonna suggest that we always trust the messages that come through when we’re attuned to our breath. In reality, life is more complex than that. However, our instincts and our intuition are delicately interwoven, and turning to our breath, to what our bodies are saying, can help us navigate the not knowing, because our bodies are vessels of wisdom and breath. Our breath carries the creativity of life itself.
Awen as a Practice, Not a Promise
This is really personal for me; my relationship with Muse is my guidance through this life. I am not a religious person. I am not faith based. I resist even calling myself spiritual, but I can go with “spiritual atheist.” Muse is what I call “my guide.” I don’t believe in something – I am inspired by it (or not – and if I’m not, it’s so hard for me to develop a relationship of depth with it).
Nothing guarantees that following my inspiration will produce the results that I want in this life. I trust Muse not because I think she’ll lead me to where I want to go, but because Awen is the flow of life! Where else is there to go?
Awen is a practice, because it doesn’t promise anything. It turns and twists, it churns and burns. You stir the cauldron to generate it. You are the vessel that receives it. It goes through cycles and journeys of disappearance and re-emergence. It is the sun on the solstices, the moon and its phases, the earth and her spinning, your heart and its singing.
Are you listening for Awen?
Devotion Without Guarantees
To devote oneself to Muse is not the guarantee. Nothing is guaranteed. Look at Cerridwen; She is a goddess! And still… she churns and stirs and devotes herself – and it’s not even for her, it’s for her son! (again, read these essays; The Cauldron and The Shapeshifter to get a deeper dive into that part of the myth). And who ends up getting the three drops of Awen? Not the goddess.
Yet even though her plans blow up in her face, Awen sends the goddess into profound transformation.
Your Muse might not lead you where you think you ought to go. But it sure will churn you into a potion of regeneration and alchemy.
Winter will come. Darkness will descend. The natural world will go into hibernation. Seeds will gestate within the soil. Your dreams will germinate in the cave of your soul. Some will flourish. Others will never rise. And still your muse cries out; Awen… Awen… Awen…
Are you listening?
To turn Awen into a practice, I made a free series of videos for you, exploring the cauldron of transformation, the power of inspiration, and the fire of regeneration through conversation, contemplation, movement, and breathwork. Here’s the link.
If you want to craft your own ceremony to invoke Awen, I made a free ritual guide for the secular soul, filled with ideas and guidance for mapping your own relationship with the sacred. Download it here.
On my substack, I share Muse Medicine every Monday, and it’s a mythical, magical journey that sparks your inspiration every week, guiding you into your own creativity through archetypal alchemy. Subscribe here.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope this has inspired something in you. Share with a loved one if it has.
Much love,
Hagar