by Salvatore Shyam Garfi
There is a very minor, winding road that passes through an idyllic part of rural Carmarthenshire. It is very narrow, with few passing places, and only two or three farms and houses along the way. The landscape is hilly (this is Wales after all) and the road can be a bit of a roller-coaster for some, and when on it, it’s hard to be certain where you’re going, and where you’re going to end up. But if you do take the road, you’ll probably be doing it for a very specific purpose, and that is to get to Skanda Vale.
Skanda Vale is a community, and even a landscape, nestled in and around a deep and secluded valley, just a few miles north of Carmarthen, and it is the home of the non-denominational ‘Community of the Many Names of God’ who, for just over fifty years, have created a unique South Asian wooded temple complex. Its location is stunning, and it is made up of 300 acres of mixed woodland, meadow and bog, and pasture, and as to be expected from such a forested Indian ashram, there are numerous shrines within the landscape along with a number of temples.
I would describe my own spirituality as ‘polydox’, I am eclectic and with beliefs from different traditions. In fact, I feel that I am not so much on a spiritual path, but in a spiritual landscape, and Druidry to me, is just one feature of many in that landscape. However, when I visited Skanda Vale for the very first time in 2023, I was literally thunderstruck with the notion that here was a sacred landscape where contemporary druids could find resonances and adjacencies, making them feel utterly at home, and this occurred when I ventured into my very first temple puja.
It was a quiet Wednesday in June, and I was mainly going to Skanda Vale out of a sense of interested curiosity. I arrived in time for the 9:30 puja at the Sri Ranganatha Vishnu, Temple. When I walked to the temple from the car park, the atmosphere within the ashram’s wooded valley was filled with incense – I was surprised, I presumed that such scents should have dissipated in the open air – I liked it, so I happily walked on. I passed a shrine dedicated to the elephant headed Ganesh, adjacent to the Lord Murugan Temple, which from the outside is very nondescript, but with numerous accretions that make it hard to believe that it started life as a simple Welsh farm house. I then followed a path up a grassy slope to the Vishnu Temple itself, and I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting what I saw.
The temple is set in a slightly steep hillside and is semi-circular. There is covered seating, while in the centre there is a pool of water, open to the sky and fed by a small waterfall which debouches over a built escarpment of large boulders surmounted by lush trees and bushes, in front of which is a series of murthis (statues) of Hindu gods and goddesses, plus a Buddha and an Ichthys, or Jesus Fish. In the centre of the pool, a murthi of Vishnu lies on a multi-headed snake that represents the eternal cycle of the universe resting in a primordial sea – an ocean of milk. He is accompanied by his consort Lakshmi and two other deities. Birds fly in and out of the sanctuary, and the singing of blackbirds filled the June air.
I sat for a brief while, taking in the scene and contemplating its relevance to what I think of, in my own way, as Druidry, and then when I wasn’t expecting it, chanting from an unseen quarter started. It touched me viscerally. It was in Sanskrit, and it was to Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. Everyone stood up, and this was arthi, the offering of chants and fire to the different deities in the temple which culminated with the pujari, the celebrant, chanting and honouring, and making offerings to the reclining Vishnu and his divine attendants in the centre of the pool, in a ceremony that was utterly transporting. Music on a harmonium was played throughout, accompanied by drumming and the singing of bahjans (devotional songs and chants), with tambourines, hand held bells, and the blowing of a conch shell. A break then occurred and the pujari led the congregants to further shrines outside, including one to St Francis, and then into another temple – dedicated to a Hindu-Sufi saint, Shirdi Sai Baba – for a brief ceremony. We then progressed to a pool of water lilies beneath the Vishnu Temple, in the middle of which was a murthi of the Goddess Durgha, where further offerings were presented.
We returned to the Vishnu temple and a final arthi was offered to the murthis, and then the pujari went to all the congregants offering each one of us arthi, along with flower petals, red kumkum powder and white ash vibhuti to make forehead marks, along with some sweet prasada (food that was offered in the puja) to be eaten. I could attempt to go into further detail about the puja, but it has to be experienced to be truly appreciated, and I probably wouldn’t do it any justice. But what really struck me was that the sacred space of the temple – and the puja itself – embraced the natural environment and the elements of fire, earth, water and air, added to by the numerous birds that would fly in and out of the temple space, and linger over the pool and its foliage, with the whole ensemble emplaced within the sacred landscape that is Skanda Vale. I thought so much at the time (and I continue to do so) that here, in Wales – the last place of the ancient Druids in Britain – there was a sacred space where modern Druids could link, or understand more fully, Druidry’s similarities with the Dharmic religions of South Asia, and their Proto-Indo-European antecedents.
The founder of the ashram was Guru Sri Subramanium (1929-2007), who came to Britain from Sri Lanka just after the Second World War. He came from a well to do family, and as with many Sri Lankans, the family’s spirituality was influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Catholicism (and probably, I’d warrant, with a good dose of Sufism thrown in for good measure). This was especially so with his mother – who had her own syncretic shrine for worship in the garden of the family home – was something of a folk-healer and seer, and would often visit the large Buddhist, Hindu, Vedda (an indigenous Sri Lankan animistic religion), and Muslim, ashram complex at Kataragama in southern Sri Lanka. It was here that Guru was inspired to bring bhakti (devotional) yoga – mainly focused on the South Indian, Hindu, Lord Murugan, also known as Skanda and Subramanium (a son of Shiva and brother of Ganesh) – to the West.
It was Guru Subramanium’s conviction, that he was a reincarnation of Swami Brahmananda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century Indian mystic who taught that all spiritual paths lead to the same ultimate reality, and this belief was integral to the founding of Skanda Vale in 1973, where people of any faith or spiritual persuasion were welcome. In fact, Guru was keen to emphasise that a person’s journey to realizing the divine (however one defines it) should be done within a spiritual path that one is most at home with – a person should be attuned to their own spiritual instincts.
To Guru, and to the community at Skanda Vale, the divine is a singularity and a multiplicity all at the same time. This is reflected in the essentially pantheistic belief that prevails at the ashram, that the divine is immanent – it is all around us in nature, and within us. It is perennial, and all we need to do is to open up to it through our thoughts, our sense of devotion, and the very way we live.
I have to admit that I shy away from the word God (there’s too much baggage in it for me), but it is heard often at Skanda Vale, though never in a sermonizing way. Instead, God, the Divine, Shakti and ‘Mother’, can be heard in the same breath as virtually interchangeable. The Divine Feminine, as Shakti, as the Divine Mother, the active and energizing force of nature, of our planet and the universe, is a fulcrum for the lived spirituality at Skanda Vale. And to that end, Kali, the Dark Mother (Kali Ma) is venerated as the Maha Shakti, the Great Shakti, in her own temple, which is dark and womb-like inside – and when attending a Maha Shakti Temple puja, it will often be simply said that one is going to ‘Mother’.
Like the Murugan Temple, in the bottom of the valley, the Maha Shakti Temple is a converted farm house, but it is situated on the high ground above the valley floor, and to get to it, there is a walk through woodland that takes you up a steep valley slope, wherein grazing deer can usually be seen, and this is often the first glimpse to visitors that Skanda vale is also an animal and wildlife sanctuary.
The deer are just some of the many animals that can be found at the ashram, which besides the local fauna, includes donkeys, horses, goats, cattle, pigs, buffalo, and birds, along with three temple elephants that were gifted to the community. This is part of the ethos of the ashram as a guardian of the land and a preserver of its bio-diversity, and with it, a desire to serve the living world through a conviction in the unity of all beings. Many of the domesticated animals come from places where they were unwanted, or maltreated, or simply became redundant as farm animals that would have been sent off to slaughter.
The community that lives at Skanda Vale is monastic, consisting of nuns, monks and swamis (senior monastics), along with lay residents who can visit for any length of time, or stay permanently. The lifestyle of the monastics is essentially Franciscan (Francis of Assisi was an inspiration to Guru Subramanium), and if they are not in work or everyday clothes they can be seen in brown Franciscan habits, but with Hindu prayer beads around their necks. All of the residents have allotted tasks or specialities, and they, along with volunteers maintain the ashram just as traditional monasteries have always been maintained.
The Community also runs a hospice which is based in a nearby village. It offers, free of charge, palliative care for people with life-limiting illnesses, and respite for carers. It is run by a professional team of managers and nurses, along with nursing and non-nursing volunteers.
Skanda Vale is aiming for complete energy self-sufficiency through renewables, and it grows some of its own food. However, the ashram is also dependent on donations, which always includes a large deal of foodstuffs, and since they are offered much more food than they need, what is not consumed by the residents and visitors is donated to charities.
The community of monastics and lay people at the ashram are mainly northern European, but the overwhelming majority of visitors – pilgrims and devotees – are of South Asian origin with a large number hailing from South India. They come from all over Britain, but mainly from England, and they drive many hours and miles to get to the ashram. It is a true pilgrimage for them. But Skanda Vale is open to all, and anyone can visit for a day, or stay and take part in the community’s daily life for a few days or more.
Visitors can stay for a minimum of four nights at no charge. The accommodation is very good, though every room is shared but with en-suite bathrooms. Vegetarian meals are provided (you need to have eaten no meat for three days before attending any puja in the Maha Shakti Temple), and you have to attend at least three of the five pujas each day – in the Murugan temple – and you will need to do seva, or karma yoga, which is helping out with the daily chores that are needed to maintain the ashram, look after the animals, and prepare food for the other pilgrims and visitors, and from my own experience the tasks are not onerous. In fact, it’s through doing seva that you’ll get to meet other pilgrims and devotees, and you’ll learn more about the ashram.
My visits to Skanda Vale have only enriched my own spiritual landscape, and my personal take on Druidry, especially here in Wales where I live. I believe, for example, that modern Druids can encounter, at the ashram, the very things that are fostered by the One Tree Project (https://druidry.org/get-involved/the-one-tree-project), where the affinities of Druidry and the Dharmic cultures of India are explored, and be inspired by the thought that Celtic and Druid culture may share similar Indo-European sources (see: https://druidry.org/druid-way/other-paths/druidry-dharma). And since Skanda Vale is in Britain, and in that part of Wales – Dyfed – where the first branch of the Mabinogi takes place, I wholeheartedly recommend a visit, and perhaps even a stay of a few days. I believe that Druidry and the ‘Community of the many Names of God’ have much in common.
There is much, much more that I could say about Skanda Vale, but I have already exceeded the word count I set myself. So if you want to know more about the ashram, please visit its website (at https://www.skandavale.org/) where you will find out more about its temples and shrines, and the community and its activities, and how you can visit or arrange a stay.
Images – by courtesy of Skanda Vale – have been taken from the Skanda Vale website and Facebook page.