Awen

[3] The first recorded attestation of the word occurs in Nennius's Historia Brittonum, a Latin text of c. 796, based in part on earlier writings by the monk, Gildas.

[8] A poem in The Black Book of Carmarthen by an unidentified bard, but addressed to Cuhelyn Fardd (1100-1130) asks God to allow the awen to flow so that ‘inspired song from Ceridwen will shape diverse and well-crafted verse’.

[9] This anticipates much poetry from identified bards of the Welsh princes between circa 1100-1300 which juggles the competing claims of the Celtic Church with the source of the awen in the Cauldron of Ceridwen.

[14] The 15th century bard Sion Cent argued that God is the only source and dismissed the “lying awen” of bards who thought otherwise as in his dismissive lines A claimant false this awen is found Born of hell’s furnace underground[15] Such a focus on an unmediated source was picked up by the eighteenth century Unitarian Iolo Morgannwg (Edward Williams, 1747-1826) who was able to invent the awen symbol /|\, suggesting that it was an ancient druidic sign of “the ineffable name of God, being the rays of the rising sun at the equinoxes and solstices, conveying into focus the eye of light”.

[16] Giraldus Cambrensis referred to those inspired by the awen as "awenyddion" in his Description of Wales (1194): (Chapter XVI: Concerning the soothsayers of this nation, and persons as it were possessed)[17] In 1694, the Welsh poet Henry Vaughan wrote to his cousin, the antiquary John Aubrey, in response to a request for some information about the remnants of Druidry in existence in Wales at that time, saying … the antient Bards … communicated nothing of their knowledge, butt by way of tradition: which I suppose to be the reason that we have no account left nor any sort of remains, or other monuments of their learning of way of living.

This vein of poetrie they called Awen, which in their language signifies rapture, or a poetic furore & (in truth) as many of them as I have conversed with are (as I may say) gifted or inspired with it.

There in Summer time following the sheep & looking to their lambs, he fell into a deep sleep in which he dreamt, that he saw a beautiful young man with a garland of green leafs upon his head, & an hawk upon his fist: with a quiver full of Arrows att his back, coming towards him (whistling several measures or tunes all the way) att last lett the hawk fly att him, which (he dreamt) gott into his mouth & inward parts, & suddenly awaked in a great fear & consternation: butt possessed with such a vein, or gift of poetrie, that he left the sheep & went about the Countrey, making songs upon all occasions, and came to be the most famous Bard in all the Countrey in his time.In some forms of modern Druidism, the term is symbolized by an emblem showing three straight lines that spread apart as they move downward, drawn within a circle or a series of circles of varying thickness, often with a dot, or point, atop each line.

[20] Morganwg, whose own beliefs were, according to Marcus Tanner, "a compound of Christianity and Druidism, Philosophy and Mysticism",[21] explained the Awen symbol as follows, "And God vocalizing His Name said /|\, and with the Word all the world sprang into being, singing in ecstasy of joy /|\ and repeating the name of the Deity.