In the dream, I'm in Wales, at a reunion of members of the old Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland, the group which, back in the early 70s, gave me my first leg-up into the Old Ways.

(I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Machen's The Secret Glory, with its musical Welsh place-names singing in my head, so I guess it's not surprising that I should dream-journey thence.)

Regretfully, my teacher Tony Kelly wasn't there—he died in 1997—but I'm excited to meet so many folks that I've heard so much about over the years, but never yet met. I'm also excited that the gathering is happening at the old Cymdeithas Selene, the commune in northwestern Dyfed (Carmarthenshire) where the Pagan Movement was based.

(When I wake, it's with the Selene address singing in my head: Cymdeithas Selene, Cân y Lloer (“song of the Moon”), Ffarmers, Llanwrda, Sir Caerfardden, Cymru.)

(Ah, Welsh. I've only dabbled in the Celtic languages, and dallied most with Scots Gaelic, the sexiest of the lot—oh, baby—but some of my people came from along the Welsh Marches in the old days, and it's the Cymraeg that will always feel most like home.)

I'm talking with Greg Hill, whom I've also never met (though we've corresponded) about my gratitude for all the things that the Pagan Movement has given me: how to do ritual, how to think in Pagan, and—gift beyond price—the gods themselves. Children of Mabh are we, our beloved Earth Mother: sweet Mabh, dearest Mabh, with her two husbands: Pahh, the Sun, her right-hand husband, and Dahh, Thunder, husband of her left hand.

(And doesn't every child with two fathers need a name for each?)

A woman going by announces that she's teaching the old chants of the Pagan Movement, and I rise to follow her, eager.

I ask—as I've asked everyone that I've spoken with—if she has any pictures of Tony Kelly. It's a sorrow to me that I have none.

But no, she doesn't. “No one has any,” she tells me.

I wake, my heart feeling very full. I get out of bed and pull my old Welsh dictionary off the shelf.

In Memoriam

Tony Kelly

1943-1997

Reborn to the People