The Healing Hand of Nodens
‘In his healing of myself, my family, and of this plague I see the work of his silver hand.‘
Nodens Silver Hand
Nodens, Sovereign with the Silver Hand, we call to you.
Nodens, Hunter of the Silver Woods, we honour you.
Nodens, Shaper of the Silver Clouds, we call to you.
Nodens, Fisher of the Silver Seas, we honour you.
Nodens, Dreamer of our Silver Dreams, we call to you.
Nodens, Healer of our Silver Wounds we honour you.
Nodens, Miner of the Silver Veins we call to you.
Nodens, here in Silver Dale we come to honour you.
- Prayer to Nodens I wrote for a workshop at the Wood Spirit Camp in Silverdale in 2017.
The Temple of Nodens
Nodens ‘the Catcher’, later known as Nudd/Lludd Llaw Eraint ‘Mist Silver Hand’, is a Brythonic god of hunting, fishing, water, the weather, healing, dreams, and mining. He was worshipped across Britain during the Romano-British period and most likely by the ancient Britons, his veneration possibly dating back to the earliest hunter-gatherers who hunted the woodlands and fished the silver rivers.
His veneration is best attested by evidence from his temple at Lydney ‘Lludd’s Isle’, in Gloucestershire. The site, overlooking the Severn estuary, was originally an Iron Age promontory fort, which was later occupied by a Romano-British population who mined iron ore. The temple, along with a guest house and baths, was built and dedicated to Nodens by Titus Flavius Senilis in 364-7 AD.
The iconography from the temple presents a fascinating portrait of Nodens and his attributes. He is depicted on a bronze crown, likely worn by one of his priests, wielding a flail, riding in a sea-chariot pulled by four water-horses. He is flanked by winged wind-spirits and icthyocentaurs (beings with bodies of men, fore-legs of horses, and serpent tails) holding hammers and chisels. Another figure, squat and fish-tailed, is hooking a huge salmon. Fish and a pair of sea-serpents appear on murals in his temple. This imagery speaks of Nodens’ associations with the watery subliminal realm of dream, ‘the Land of Nod’, where identities slip and slide into one another.
Numerous offerings were made to Nodens in his temple, some in a funnel, leading to the chthonic realms. This, along with the mining imagery suggests Nodens was seen as residing in Annwn ‘the Deep’, the source of precious metals, which were gifted back to him as ‘Lord of the Mines’. They include around 320 pins, 300 bracelets, and 8,000 coins along with nine beautifully crafted bronze statuettes of Irish wolf hounds, one of whom has a human face. These show his associations with dogs and wolves (he is known in medieval Welsh poetry as ‘Nudd the superior Wolf Lord’) and perhaps suggest that dogs who licked the wounds of wounded pilgrims were present at the temple.
The layout of the temple shows pilgrims visited for the purpose of receiving healing dreams. They took a ritual bath in the baths, entered the temple to make their offerings, then retreated to the dormitories to sleep. When they awoke in the morning their dreams were interpreted by a dream interpreter. This practice is attested by an inscription mentioning a ‘Victorinus inter(pret)e’.
At Lydney Nodens is identified with Mars, in his healing function, via interpretatio Romano as Mars-Nodens. A similar temple to Nodens may have existed here in Lancashire. On Cockerham Moss, two silver Romano-British statuettes dedicated to him as Mars-Nodontis were found. It has been suggested Cockersand Abbey was built on a Romano-British site, but there is no evidence of this. It is my intuition the Temple of Nodens lay further out to sea and was destroyed by an inundation. The statuettes may have been dropped by priests (or thieves) fleeing the inundated shrine.
The Hand of Nodens
Another artefact of great significance found in the temple of Nodens was a bronze arm. This links to his medieval Welsh name, Lludd Llaw Eraint, and suggests parallels with the Irish Nuada Airgetlám ‘Silver Hand’.
Nuada was the King of the Tuatha Dé Dannan, the Tribe of the Goddess Danu. In The Battle of Moytura we find the story of how he and his people arrived in Ireland ‘in a cloud of mist and a magic shower’ to reclaim their half of the land from their kin, the Fir Bolg, fellow Children of Nemed.
When the Fir Bolg refused to share, Nuada led his people into battle. He is depicted as a powerful warrior, taking on Sreng, the champion of the Fir Bolg. Sreng ‘struck nine blows on the shield of the High-King Nuada, and Nuada dealt him nine wounds.’ In this fearsome combat Nuada lost his hand. ‘Sreng dealt a blow with his sword at Nuada, and, cutting away the rim of his shield, severed his right arm at the shoulder; and the king’s arm with a third of his shield fell to the ground.’
Nuada was carried from the battlefield and his hand was raised on ‘a fold of stones’ with the blood trickling down. This strange and gory scene is suggestive of beliefs that, even when severed, the sword hand of a king had magical properties and that kingship was bound up with a king’s right hand.
This is demonstrated by Nuada being forced to stand down as king after the Tuatha Dé Dannan had won the battle and made a pact with the Fir Bolg because he was not whole due to his missing hand.
Nuada was replaced by a tyrant called Bres who oppressed the Tuatha Dé Dannan: ‘their knives were not greased by him… their breaths did not smell of ale; and they did not see their poets nor their bards… nor did they see their warriors proving their skill at arms before the king.’ Ogma was forced to carry fire-wood and the great father-god, the Dagda, served as a rampart-builder.
During this period the physician, Dian Cecht, and the brazier, Credne, made Nuada a silver hand ‘that worked as well as any other hand’. Nuada’s epithet, Airgetlám, suggests this became his right hand.
There is an uncanny story about what happened to Nuada’s flesh-and-blood hand. Miach, son of Credne ‘went to the hand’ ‘and said “joint to joint of it, and sinew to sinew”; and he healed it in nine days and nights. The first three days he carried it against his side, and it became covered with skin. The second three days he carried it against his chest. The third three days he would cast white wisps of black bulrushes after they had been blackened in a fire.’ We aren’t told what he did with it.
His missing hand replaced with the silver hand, Nuada Airgetlám, now whole, was reinstated as king. Bres, a descendant of the monstrous Fomorians, who occupied Ireland before the Children of Nemed, was deposed. (‘Fomorian’ comes from fo ‘under’, ‘beneath’, ‘nether’ and mur ‘sea’ or mór ‘big’ and has been translated as ‘undersea giants’. They share parallels with the British monsters of Annwn ‘the Deep’.) He went to the lands of his father and raised an army, led by Balor of the Piercing Eye.
Nuada was defeated and killed by Balor and his death was avenged by a new champion called Lug Lormanslech ‘Long-Handed’ ‘the son of Cian son of Dian Cecht and of Ethne Daughter of Balor’. Lug killed his monstrous grandfather with a sling shot through his piercing eye and replaced Nuada as king. Once again, having a long or skilful hand (Lug is also referred to as Samildanach, ‘many-skilled’ like his Welsh cognate Lleu Llaw Gyfes ‘skilful hand’) is a prerequisite for kingship.
Healer of Plagues
In the story of Lludd and Llefelys, in the Welsh tradition, we find what might be a parallel story. Lludd Llaw Eraint is introduced as the son of Beli Mawr and as a benevolent king of Britain. Pairings of Beli and Anna/Don in the Welsh genealogies suggest Lludd was earlier perceived as the king of the Tribe of Don, cognate with the Tribe of Danu, and was euhemerised as a human-like ruler.
In this story, with the help of Llefelys (cognate with Lug?), Lludd frees the Island of Britain from three plagues which are caused by monstrous forces with Fomorian/Annuvian qualities. The first ‘was the arrival of a certain people called the Coraniaid. And so great was their knowledge that there was no conversation anywhere in the Island that they did not know about, however softly it was spoken, provided the wind carried it. Because of that no harm could be done to them.’
I had previously followed Sioned Davies in interpreting the Coraniaid to be the Cesariaid ‘Romans’. However, since then, I have found an alternative interpretation which I think is stronger. The Coraniaid may be the corrachod ‘dwarves’, which links nicely to Lydney being named ‘Dwarf’s Hill’. It is possible the icthyocentaurs holding picks and axes are Romanised versions of the corrachod who were associated with the iron ore mines and Nodens as ‘Lord of the Mines’.
Lludd managed to rid the Island of the Coraniaid by speaking to Llefelys down a bronze horn so they could not hear. Llefelys sent Lludd some insects to crush into water to create a poison. Lludd summoned the Coraniaid and his people under the false pretext of peace and sprinkled them all with the poisoned water. The Coraniaid were killed and his people are not. This episode may be derived from an older mythos in which Lludd/Nodens gained authority over the Annuvian corrachod.
The second plague was ‘a scream that was heard every May eve above every hearth in the Island of Britain. It pierced people’s hearts and terrified them so much that men lost their colour and their strength, and women miscarried, and young men and maidens lost their senses, and all animals and trees and the earth and the waters were left barren.’
Llefelys revealed to Lludd that the scream was caused by his dragon fighting the dragon of a foreign people. Following the instructions of Llefelys, Lludd brought their battle and the scream to an end by digging a hole in the centre of Britain (Oxford), filling it with mead, and laying across it a sheet of brocaded silk. Intriguingly the ‘dragons’ shifted into ‘monstrous animals’ before returning to dragon-form, then took the form of ‘two little pigs’ who fell onto the sheet, into the vat, drunk the mead, then fall asleep. Lludd wrapped them in the silk and buried them in a stone chest on Dinas Emrys.
Once again Lludd showed his mastery of Annuvian forces. The shapeshifting of the dragons seems linked with the composite depictions of the corrachod from his temple. They may be the sea serpents.
Finally, Lludd defeated an Annuvian magician, who put his people to sleep in order to steal their food and drink, by keeping himself awake by putting his feet in cold water, and beating him in combat.
In this story Lludd and Llefelys are shown to heal the Island of Britain of three plagues caused by Annuvian beings by wisdom, rather than war, in contrast to how Nuada and Lug won against the Formorians.
His Healing Hand
I first started reaching out to Nodens/Nudd after I dedicated myself to his son, Gwyn ap Nudd, in January 2013. At this time my life was in tumult. I considered myself to be a bard within the druidic tradition and was a member of the Druid Network and wasn’t sure how other members of my grove (who it turned out were supportive) or the network, many of whom who didn’t relate to ‘anthropomorphised’ gods, would respond to me dedicating myself to a King of Annwn. I was also working in a packing job in a saddlery that I was not enjoying, but feared to give up, as I knew, having given up my ambition to become a professional fantasy writer in return for journeying with Gwyn, it would be impossible to make a living from writing about little-known Brythonic myths.
As a result I was suffering from insomnia, something I had struggled with on and off most of my life. I started praying to Nodens as a god of sleep and dreams when I could not sleep at all because I was worried about accompanying the Chair of the Druid Network to a meeting of the Interfaith Network in London. To my surprise the first night I prayed, two nights before the trip, I slept. To my greater surprise, when I prayed again the night before, I slept all the way through and awoke refreshed.
Afterwards I set up an altar to Nodens and began making offerings of mint or camomile tea to thank him for helping me sleep. This has developed into a dream-working practice wherein, every morning, I put my dreams into a ‘dream stone’ on his altar and, again, recite them to him before I sleep.
Since I have venerated Nodens as a god of dream I haven’t suffered from insomnia and tentatively believe myself to be healed of it. The ability to sleep is one of the greatest gifts a god has given to me.
On a different note, the one time I petitioned Nodens for physical healing, he had a laugh with me. Prior to my umbilical hernia repair operation I decided to make a representation of my belly in modelling clay and offer it to Nodens in the marshy area of Well Field (which I associate with him and his consort). I shaped my belly, put it in the oven, and when I took it out it had MELTED!
Even though I realised this was because I had used modelling rather than baking clay I was mortified – stricken with terror that my operation was going to go horribly wrong. When I consulted Nodens he told me the message was that I shouldn’t take it too seriously. I saw the funny side and having a laugh about it helped to calm my anxiety, his sense of humour balancing my humours.
I also prayed to Nodens for healing when my mum had a fall and had to have a hip replacement and my brother had brain surgery, both in the course of a couple of months late last year. In the miracles of these intricate operations and, in my mum and brother’s recoveries, I saw the healing hand of Nodens.
Since the beginning of the plague we face with the global coronavirus pandemic I have been praying to Nodens. In the development of new treatments and the new vaccines I have intuited his healing hand at work. One thing that has struck me, as an awenydd who previously had mixed feelings about the value of modern science, medicine, and technologies, is that it is not our ancient shamanistic arts that have provided us with ways of overcoming this plague but scientific advances. Our knowledge of DNA and RNA – strands of nucleotides intertwining like two dragons or sea serpents.
To me, the double-helix, dragon-like, signals the agency of Nodens working with us to combat the coronavirus, which would have been perceived by our ancestors as an Annuvian monster.
In his healing of myself, my family, and of this plague I see the work of his silver hand.
Praise be to Nodens,
Silver-Handed Healer
whose silver touch
is felt across these lands.
Praise be to Nodens.
Praise be to his Healing Hand.
Lorna Smithers
is a poet, author, awenydd, Brythonic polytheist, and devotee of Gwyn ap Nudd. Her three books: Enchanting the Shadowlands, The Broken Cauldron, and Gatherer of Souls are published by the Ritona imprint of Gods & Radicals Press. Based in Penwortham, Lancashire, North West England, she is a conservation intern and allotmenteer who is learning to grow small green things and listen to the land. She blogs at ‘From Peneverdant’.