Journeys With The Goddess: The Morrigan

It was a time when the land was especially dark and quiet.

A time when the land of the mythical Tua people was being ruled by tyranny and wickedness.

This was the time of the Fomorian rule and a great sickness had spread to those once proud people.

A sickness not of their bodies,

But their spirits.

Indach son of Deodonlan,

The Fomorian king,

He had become greedier and more corrupt as each day under his rule passed,

Taking grain from the hungry,

Sending young men to die for land that was not theirs,

Forbidding gatherings,

Music,

Ritual,

Ceremony.

And so fear had settled over the land like smoke.

People kept their eyes lowered to the ground,

Working harder than ever for even less money,

Forgetting their magic,

Keeping their voices quiet just in case someone they couldn't trust was listening.

There was no place here for dreaming,

For joy,

For song or community,

Story.

And it was that very silence,

That quiet,

Woeful,

Slow and pitiful surrender that was what finally summoned her.

Perhaps you know this already,

But there are powers in this world that don't come to comfort you.

They don't arrive with a quiet knock at the door or through a little niggling,

Nudge,

Fluttering gently like a feather behind your breastbone.

They come in a storm,

A whipping of the wind,

A crashing of the waves,

A shattered mirror,

The raging roar of a forest fire surging forward out of control.

They come when you have nothing left to lose.

One of those powers has a name older than kings,

Than empires,

Than fear itself.

The Phantom Queen.

The fire that clears the darkness that awakens the Morrigan.

And it was for her that evening of Samhain,

The Dagda,

King of the Tua,

Was waiting.

The good god,

The barrel-chested warrior,

His fierceness in battle matched with his love of a good joke or story.

The strength of his arms paired with the deep rolling of his laughter,

His magic staff of Hawthorne able to bring life just as easily as it brought death.

Dagda,

The great god,

His giant form lurking,

Pacing,

Waiting for his lover by the ford on the River Unshin.

He would wait until she was ready,

Until she had bathed herself in the river and sent for him.

And he would come to her,

His heart pulsing in anticipation of seeing her once more after a year apart.

For the Queen of Crows would allow him to come to her only once a year on this sacred night to worship the altar of her body and come together in sacred and blissful union.

And it was only as their bodies surged together in ecstasy on this sacred night that her visions would be clearest and most powerful.

And on this Samhain in particular,

The seer Prophetess moved into trance,

Crying out in bliss and in agony as she flew in her visions over corpses strewn across the land,

The wreckage of war and blood-soaked soil stretching out beneath her.

But as she looked closer,

Her yellow raven eyes narrowing,

She saw past and future spiraling together,

And her visions gave her strength and certainty that for new life to come again,

First,

There would need to be destruction.

And after they had lain together,

She spoke to him.

The time for tenderness was over.

The time for battle was nigh.

King and Queen,

God and Goddess plotted and strategized with great speed deciding their roles in this insurgency,

The Morrigan stressing that they must act this very night while her power was strongest because behind her the powers of the unseen world too could rally.

And so the Dagda set off striding across hill and river to gather his men together and the Morrigan towards the villages.

And so it was that night,

Before the turning of Samhain,

That a cold mist blew over the land,

And a fierce wind began shaking the oak and ash of their dying leaves,

And a frost spread quickly,

Covering the fields in a blanket of white.

And they felt her before they saw her,

A subtle but marked shift,

The thinning of the veil.

But this soft gossamer of dim dusk light that the Goddess draped silently over the village,

This was not just there to separate the world of the living and the dead,

But to separate those who had given in to cowardice,

And those with whom the spark still flickered dimly within,

Those still with a glint of magic and hope in their tired eyes,

And the people looked out from their houses,

Silhouetted by the flames of their fires,

Feeling ill at ease.

And as the wind and the dogs howled woefully in unison,

There came another sound riding atop that woeful chorus.

Far off at first,

A single crow's caw echoing against the hills and through the dark valleys.

Then another caw,

Then many,

Circling,

Spiraling,

Gathering over the land like a block quick moving storm cloud,

Moving together and getting louder and more ominous sounding.

The elders and the druids knew the sign,

And they bowed their heads,

Some dropping to their knees and crying out in fear,

Vash-Katha,

The battle crow,

Had come.

And this meant that war was no longer a matter of choice.

Neither king nor army could stop what was coming.

The land had reached its breaking point.

The people would wake.

What had been endured too long would be endured no more.

And then,

From the shadows,

The form of a giant woman could be seen coming down from the hills.

Some that were there described her as monstrous,

Huge,

Old,

Wrinkled,

And hideous.

They could hardly even raise their eyes to look at her.

But in a world that had long since surrendered to lies and shallowness,

I think it more likely that she was only terrible to behold because she was so honest,

So unadorned,

So embodied and whole and true to herself.

And it is said that as she walked down to the throngs of cowering people,

Something passed over them.

It is said that where she walked,

Men and women either rose to courage or they crumbled before her.

She did not strike them down.

She didn't have to.

She simply revealed them to themselves.

And that was enough.

The old stories say that the Morrigan moves before battle not to support one side over another,

But because her allegiance is only to truth.

She cares nothing for the ambitions of kings.

She cares not for the blood and the names that you were born with of the lineage and line.

She will ride in battle only with those who fight for what must not be lost.

For honor.

For freedom.

For justice.

Some say she's a goddess of destruction and of violence and brutality,

But I see her more than anything as a goddess of power.

And power demands responsibility.

And when power is corrupted,

The Morrigan must rise and encourage all others to do the same.

And so the Morrigan rose that night,

Not as a savior,

But as a force of nature,

Of necessity,

Destruction.

Fires were lit signal after signal,

Ignited across the hills,

And those voices long shamed into silence and complicity.

They were now roaring awake.

And so began the second battle of Matora.

The proud Tuat'anan armies finally rising up after centuries of oppression to fight the Fomorian overlords who had forgotten that their power over them only relied on their compliance.

And on this night,

The Morrigan was the frenzy that spread through soldiers' hearts,

Her force twisting and unmaking armies from within.

She moved unseen into the chaos of war,

A shadow in the sky,

A stirring in the earth.

Some say in the form of a black shadow of crows,

Some in the form of showers of sorcery and magic,

Mist and rains of fire,

The screeching cry of crows and ravens so loud that blood fell from the ears of those who heard it.

The warriors,

Gods,

Goddesses,

And common people fought together with the unity that the Morrigan brought to their hearts against the oppression,

The destruction of their lands,

The loneliness and rage that they had felt in being so separate and distracted that they hadn't done something sooner.

But their power united was immense and no match for the king and his few remaining followers who fled in fear back to their lands beneath the sea.

And the land that had been ravaged by the plagues and pestilences of the years before now burned,

Leaving ash and ember that the Tuadadanan people restored through the magic they were beginning again to remember.

Tendrils of green stretched their fingers over the earth,

Restoring it to health and fertility.

Music and song filled the air again,

And the people gathered in ceremony and renewal to honor the land and its protectors.

And once her work was done,

The Morrigan returned to the shadows,

Protecting from a distance,

Watching and waiting until she might be needed again,

To remind us once more of the courage it requires to release what no longer serves.

Reminding us that our power is ours to claim,

Only if we are willing to rise and meet our own face in the flame.

Now,

With the embers of the story still burning within you,

Perhaps you'd like to journey inwards to meet the Morrigan,

For now that you know her,

She wishes to know you.

If you are willing,

Take a deep breath,

Close your eyes if they're not already closed,

And let everything around you fall away for the next 15 minutes or so.

Feel your body grounded into the earth beneath you,

The weight of your bones,

The touch of the air on your skin.

This is your space,

Your threshold,

Your doorway inward.

Now,

Imagine yourself standing on a hill.

The air is cold and whipping around you,

Its bite wakes you from the relaxed state of slumber you've been in until now.

Your eyes open to the sky above,

Gray as slate.

Below you,

Your feet are bare and cold on the earth,

And the land around you is quiet,

Except for the sound of the wind blowing through the bare branches of a nearby tree.

As you look at the scene before you,

You begin to feel a presence above you,

The branch of a nearby tree.

A raven,

As black blue as the night sky in winter,

Is watching you with its bright shining eyes.

And in those eyes,

You sense the presence of a power more ancient than even the land beneath you.

And then you feel a faint stirring of remembrance,

Recognition.

As you watch her,

She watches you.

You feel no fear.

Only her courage reflected in your own.

You stand taller,

You gaze deeply into her eyes,

Unflinching,

Matching that power.

And as she sees you in your warrior form,

She cocks her head to one side.

A shadow,

Like dark mist,

Begins to sweep around the tree until she stands before you in the form of a woman.

Emerging from that haze,

She is beautiful.

She is wise and strong,

Tall,

With skin like the bark of a willow tree,

Old and lined with the lessons of thousands of years she has lived.

She speaks to you,

Her voice powerful and ringing out,

Telling you to look carefully at the landscape before you.

You turn and you notice what you didn't see before.

Before you,

On the hill below,

Lies the remnants of a battlefield.

The battlefield of your life before this moment.

Your challenges,

Your fears,

Your limitations.

You look at it not one pain or obstacle at a time,

But in its full entirety.

All those dark nights and difficulties that you have passed through as they stretch out over the landscape,

Heavy,

Dusty,

Gray,

And worn.

And then,

Swiftly and gracefully,

You watch as the woman moves away from you.

Instead of getting smaller as she moves towards the horizon,

She gets even larger.

She sweeps across the land in a billow of black smoke,

And with each thundering step she takes through it,

It begins to shake and crumble.

Each step she takes like an earthquake,

Shaking loose what has held you back,

What has held you back,

What has silenced your voice.

Old patterns,

Old beliefs,

And delusions that begin to fall away.

And as you see it crumble and collapse into itself to be swallowed up by the earth,

You feel a lightness,

Like a layer of skin that's just fallen from you.

And in the wake of each thundering footstep,

The land begins to burn and smolder.

Clouds of dust and smoke folding around her like a cape,

Until it lifts her up from the land and she shapeshifts into a giant cloud of crows,

Black,

Crying out,

Screeching louder and louder,

Angrier and more full of rage.

And as the sound gets louder,

You don't feel fear from this sound,

But excitement,

Your own rage stirring within you,

This energy surging forth,

Tearing from your heart up into your throat,

Into a bellow,

Into a battle cry,

A scream of primal rage and all the frustration,

All the anger,

Everything you've never expressed when you wanted to,

Your own power being whipped up in the frenzy of it all.

And as you scream out,

Your own power rises triumphantly within you.

You welcome it in like an old friend,

An ally,

You allow it to burn away fears and doubts and anything that is still holding you back,

Anything that hasn't yet been cleared from the battlefield of your life.

And that scream,

It turns to dust.

Imagine it within you,

Clearing that space,

Setting your heart aflame as it makes room for courage now,

For clarity and for action.

The cloud of crows above has quietened now,

Begins to slowly circle over you.

You feel the brush of the wings,

The stirring of the wind.

You smell the sharp scent of rain and burning earth.

She circles you almost like she is blessing you and preparing you,

Preparing your inner warrior for the next battle that you are now ready to fight.

You hear her voice asking only that you face yourself honestly,

That you recognize the parts of yourself that you have hidden,

That have submitted,

That have made themselves smaller and accepted less than truth.

Now she invites you to action,

To make a vow to yourself,

To clear away one thing that is no longer working,

To make room for something that will.

Give yourself a moment to listen to what that is and to make that vow to yourself.

And to seal your oath together,

You and the goddess,

The Morrigan,

You pull your powers up together and inward and out into two bolts of lightning that sear into the earth.

Black and crimson like fire and shadow intertwined,

Dark and light braided together,

This energy now flowing towards you,

Through your body,

Into your feet and down into the earth.

This power,

It carries the courage to resist,

The strength to rise,

The power to act with truth.

Take it in,

Let it fill your body,

Your mind,

Your heart,

As she blesses you and says any final words you need to hear.

And when she has said her final farewells,

She moves away,

Circling high above,

Getting smaller and smaller.

Let the vision settle.

You do not need to follow her.

You don't need to chase her for her power,

For it is now within you.

Take a moment here.

Breathe.

Turn your focus inward and feel the fire she leaves in your chest.

The visions she leaves in your mind.

The courage and strength she leaves in your limbs.

For this is the Morrigan's gift.

Truth,

Liberation,

And the call to resist what diminishes life.

Bring your awareness back to your own body now.

Feel the room around you.

Stretch slowly.

Wiggle your fingers and toes.

And when you are ready,

You can open your eyes,

Come back to the space.

And as the veil thins this evening,

May you honor your endings.

May you trust your truth.

And may you choose your path now with courage.

And the gift of the goddess in your own fierce heart.