Morrigan
See also, War Goddess: The Morrígan and her Germano-Celtic Counterparts, A dissertation by Angelique Gulermovich Epstein
Introductory Note
This paper is about the Goddess Morrigan, whom archeological evidence now tells
us, dates back beyond the Copper age, and was the dominant Goddess of Europe
called the Great Goddess. When I read the material about Morrigan I suspected
that there was more to her story, and that she was a transporter between life
and death., a birth Goddess and a death Goddess in that she moved the soul through
these cycles. Later writing seems to concentrate on her connection to death,
but comes to view her , as warrior
societies often do, in a way connected to their own needs ( power, energy, enchantment
and warfare.) Some writing of course does not, she is seen as a healer, the
protector of the land and the person who brings Arthur to power. I went through
literary accounts of her to give a fuller picture of her, one that is I think
more meaningful to many people, including myself.
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Morrigan |
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Stone stelae with sculpted breasts
have been discovered at Castelucio de Sauri, some with only breasts and a necklace
as a marker. They date back to the Copper Age c.3000BC. In Spain, France, Portugal
and England statues, menhirs and stone slabs frequently also display her eyes,
her beak and sometimes her vulva. Parts of her seem hidden, then appearing so
as one looks at the pottery artifacts there is more and more of her to piece
together. She is a bird goddess, an earth goddess, and her breasts not only
nourish the living they also regenerate the dead. Her breasts were believed
to form the hills in County Kerry called Da Chich Annan. ( the paps of Anu)
She is the Irish Morrigan, Goddess of Death and Guardian of the Dead. She has
in these early Celtic appirations, a bird’s head ( often a crow , raven
or vulture) and breasts, and on the vessels depicting her there is a symbol
for the number three. Sometimes three lines are connected and depict a triple
energy that flows from her body, as she is giver and sustainer of life. Very
early she is under stood to be a triple goddess, a shape shifter, a three part
person. Her names are plentiful and sound like her original name.
In Newgarange Ireland is her grand megalithic
tomb-shrine, in it three stone cells, three stone basins engravings of triple
snake spirals, coils, arcs and brow ridges. Her signs appear on spindle whirls,
altars, sacrificial vessels, vases, pebbles, and pendants. She is the chevron
and V, the inverted triangle, the earth element. She is the triple source of
power needed to regenerate cycles, to take one from life to death and from death
to life. Figurines that pair sprouting seed and vulvas, fish in the ocean, and
the female body as a passageway. Vultures and owls are associated with her..
Spirals, crows and ravens. Lunar circles and snake coils. Female figures lock
to form circles, fairy rings, and circles de fees. Her followers do energetic
ring dances, dangerous to an intruder who tries to break in. Her circles transmit
energy by the increased powers of stone, water, mound of circling motion. She
is the moon’s three phases, maiden, nymph and crone. The moons, new, waxing
and old. She is the source of life giving, death and transformation. regeneration
and renewing. Marie Gimbutas, the emeritus professor of European Archeology.
who has written extensively on her artifacts, believes that knowledge of her
can lead the world towards a sexually equalitarian, non violent, and earth centered
future.
Some writers claim that she did not have a consort,
others that her consort was the horned god. It seems at least that if there
were other gods they did not subordinate her in the beginning. As the Celtic
lands became less agrarian, and more dependent on a warrior class for survival,
and as they became more sophisticated, the area will with gods and goddesses.
Robert Graves describes this aspectual division of the goddess into many kinds
of females and powers as analogous to the battle of the trees, in which powers
divided among the seasons, each one dominant at a certain time. Joseph Campbell
and other Jungians might argue that the Copper Age understanding of Morrigan
was a form of monotheism. I think there is another perspective that might also
be taken by many Druids, that whatever enters this life to pull us out of Abred
is fractured in our vision, and as we are spirits inside spirits our visions
are personal and come with our most meaningful experiences, and slip away when
they are generalized too far. So we are polytheists, in this sense.( I think
both of these approaches are fruitful.) The female figures into which Morrigan
is divided do not seem to be as powerful after the Amairgin invasion, at least
in much of the literature which has been preserved, often she is seem through
the eyes of frightened men.
The Celtic Druid’s Years by John King claims
that Samhain was the mating time between Dagda ( the great God) and Morrigan.
Lugh might also have been a consort, of the Morringa who shared Bran’s
totem animal, but who could also be a bear, so this is one of her aspects. Another
is that she was one of the Banschee or Bean Nighe. There is a saying among the
Irish and highland Scots that a woman who dies in childbirth better not leave
the laundry unfinished, or she will have to come back and wash it until the
day of her natural death. Washers at the Ford, if they are seen by any human,
someone is to die soon. Bean Nighe dresses in green and has red webbed feet
( bird feet?) one nostril and one tooth. Very prominent long breasts fall from
her chest and if you can grab and suck one, you will be granted any wish. You
can ask her three questions and she will answer but then you must answer three
from her, and if you lie it is too bad for you.
We know that the banschee were shape shifters,
and that they appear in Finnegan’s Wake, washing the laundry of Ireland
as it grows dark. ( the Anna Liva Plurabella section is the Morrigan section.
In early Celtic writing Morringa and her two war goddess sisters could appear
in the forms of crows. Madness and Violence, Badb and Neiman were her sisters.
She is tri-part and terrifying in the battle between Fin and Goll. One of Finn’s
Captains rides a warhorse named Badb which is gray and black and has wings,
so its like the hooded Royston or scarecrow, which most often devoured the dead
in the British Isles. Its head is hooded like an executioners. Morrigan is defending
Ireland her three parts scream KRAA.. KRA.. very loudly, a sky ripping croak.
Finn’s army has long horns which sound like calling ravens.
For the red mouthed Badh will cry around the house
For bodies it will be solicitous
Pale Badbs shall sheik
Badbs will be over the breasts of men.
-from Bruiden Da
Choca.
( the house is a hill fortress with views into Connacht )
Notice this however. Crows do not make people
dead, they eat and transform bodies. Morrigan is not death itself, she is the
keeper of death, and she is frightening. Sometimes enemies ran because of the
fearful and magical appearance of the army.
In Ireland Morrigu ( another name for Morrigan)
and Badbs meld and can both take on the features of a human hag. This is the
old age aspect of the Goddess. It has been theorized by some that it is men
who most fear and sometimes disrespect older women. She represents the loss
of power and finitude of lifespan, a realization not easy even for Finn. She
represents her own power, reincarnation, rebirth and a point of view ( wisdom
in age) which can’t be banished.
Over his head is shrieking
a lean hag, quickly hopping
Over the points of weapons and shields.
She is the gray haired Morrigu
-Annals of Leinster
Dusk gray cloud feathers and the gloss of midnight
awaited Goll’s sunset army as he retreated into the arms of the terrible
mother.
She has been called the Irish Kali, eating and
being eaten. There is some similarity, she is frightening, She and her sisters
can join into a horrible ring through which a warrior might disappear., one
full of teeth and hair . But notice this parallel. Goll has another name, Crom
Dubh. In Ireland Finn ( the light) lives on one side of the Island and Crom
or Goll ( maybe the God of Connan the Barbarian brought up from India or Summer)
lives on the other. He is the dark spirit, the hidden who carried the corn mother
on his shoulders. This has to do with the way of the light, the balance of the
light and dark, and the sinking of the year. Goll sinks like the old sun into
the ocean.
We should also note that the stories of Goll and
Finn are not all alike, that in some Finn does not kill Goll and in others Goll
rescues Finn from the three hags of winter. ( Morrigan again.) And often in
the tales Goll is the more sympathetic figure, sensitive towards his wife, and
tragic, while Finn’s temperamental bent is to great rage. Morrigan, I think
is hidden like Goll. Finn is the bright edge of the sword, reason, and heroism.
Three phantom spirits come out of the Kreshcorran, Devilish, three unsightly mouths, ( long lips down to the knees.) Six unclosing white eyes, six twisting legs under them, Three warlike swords, three shields, three spears.
It goes together with the tooth mother, the devouring
goddess who chases Tailesin and devours him, and then gives birth to him. Being
killed and devoured means entering the life cycle again, transported by a woman.
Maybe the enemy of a hero is female realism, survival, death, devouring, madness,
decline with age. Heroic canons often do not include real moral dilemmas which
no rulebook will settle, guilts that can never be mended, the unconscious parts
and spirits of the mind, enchantment, and survival needs, passage through cauldrons
(stomach and uterus) to make life.
The Anna Liva Plurabella section in Finnegan’s
Wake is a modern reconstruction of Morrigan. It starts with the demand to describe
the river Livey, One overhears a blend of voices, describing the enchanting
effects of human beauty, the nature of women, voices from Celtic Epics, woven
together like threads from the Book of Kells. Irreverent-reverent history, and
at the end at the Ford we hear the Bean Nighe, doing Ireland’s wash as
the images of female archetypes wash, haunted, down into the night.
Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.. Lord help you Maria full of Grease, the load is with me.
They mention Finn MacCool and state that Anne was Liva
is and Plurabella is to be. The washerwomen bring unconsciousness in which stories
fade from person into trees and stones.
My foos won’t move..I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem All Livia’s daughter’ sons Dark hawks hear us, night, Night, My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as younger stone. Tell me of John or Shaun. Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons and daughters of ? Night now. Tell me a tale of stem or stone. beside the rivering waters of , the hithering and thithering waters of Night.
Finally in the Arthurian vision: not everyone, but many
Celtic Scholars trace Morrigan and her two sisters here called Macha and Modron,
to Morgan le Fay. She was the most beautiful of nine sisters, living on the
Isle of Avalon. She was Fata Morgana
In the Arthurian Book of the Days on the 13th
of December ( a beautiful cycle and weaving of the Arthur tales, Lancelot also
suffers at the hands of Morrigan ( Morgain, Morgan?) le Fay in the Valley of
No Return, where he must face trials and tests in the shape of dragons and spectral
knights, a wall of fire and a gigantic knight with an ax. In the same volume
Morrigan plots to murder Arthur, and give his power to Accolon of Gaul, and
she almost succeeds in this, since she had given Accolon Excaliber, but during
the battle he loses control of it and the sword flies back to Arthur. So in
an overview of the tales, Morrigan is a villainess and uses illusion to try
to destroy Arthur although she fails. And yet the thirtieth of December according
to the same source,
King Arthur awoke from his long sleep in which there were many fevered dreams, and he rose and looked about him. Deep bowered and fair, the green landscape stretched about him on all sides. Sweet apple trees grew by the banks of a shallow stream, and white blossoms was upon them like snow. But though the season should have been winter, the air was balmy and soft, and above, in the sky, the sun and moon shown forth together, and there were stars. Then Arthur knew that he was in Avalon, the region of the Summer Stars, where rain and snow fall not, and where the great ones of the world await a call to arms.. Smiling, Arthur stretched his muscles and set off to walk by the stream, listening for the murmur that would tell him that the Round table was met again amid the trees.
Some tales say Arthur was taken to Avalon by Morrigan,
and that as a transporter she is neither good nor evil, others that she is a
particular corrupt spirit. Arthurian tales are more particular in their characters,
than earlier more mythical sagas. I think the guardian-ship of the land by a
pure human leader with no moral faults is the theme of Arthur. Natural but non-moral
spirits attack him, but they also help him, and it is he( and the knight’s
code) that gives them a man of perfect judgment to restore the land. So I am
willing to think that Morrigan might have many aspects in these stories which
are like her old Queen Role. Yet she no longer controls justice in these stories,
even if Morgan the betrayer, Morgan the sister and The Lady of the Lake are
one.
Morrigan, and the other two sometimes part of what she
is and what she is not are shape shifters, transporters through the cauldrons
that take one from life to death( crows, stomachs, human intestines, going under
the ground, madness, degenerative change.) and from death to life. ( the midwife,
the corn goddess, the earth, the moon-change.) One should not see her as simply
a daemon. Better to think of first female goddess, stronger than battle, and
more hidden. She can fly, she can change her shape from old to young, she is
kindly and well trained in medicine. She is Arthur’s sister, perhaps his
soul sister, perhaps his double ( as a doppelganger is a double). According
to the New Arthurian Dictionary her reputation gets better in poetry, worse
in prose as the tradition goes on. In Vulgate cycle she envies Guenevere, and
tries to undo her. In the Prose Tristran she gives Arthur’s court a drinking
horn, which no one unfaithful can drink from. She becomes a mortal who has to
hide her age. Perhaps the reason for this parallels the movement of the story
from a dominant female perspective to a dominant male perspective. Guenevere
threatens her anam cara relationship with Arthur, by being the realization of
his desires, but not the same as himself, which makes Arthur dominant. This
dominance is I think reflected in the term pendragon, which might mean the head
dragon or it might mean the dragon’s head. Remember that Druidry is the
white light, having more to do with that than the hidden. And that the hidden
tends to be less cerebral less connected with metal powers and heroism, and
more connected with natural process. (As a parallel if you think it is relevant,
Hinduism also has its natural and its willed. )
Morgan should not be seen as an evil goddess, she is
also birth, the midwife, the healer, and sometimes the moon. If you take the
meaning of the head of the dragon. then Arthur is the white light of the dragon
power, his intuition for justice and druid wisdom makes him able to give the
dragon a head. I like this interpretation. Malory gives Morgan a bad rep, but
I am more willing to believe the first intuition, that she is Arthur’s
sister. Modern women writers sense this I think and are eager to put her in
balance. The belief in her as villain seems to me to be close to masculine fear
of powerful women. To be too heroic is to cross the boundaries of what is natural.
birth, helplessness, lack of power, vulnerability and death. ( I parallel this
to Juliana Kristava’s work on horror, in which she points out that the
intellect seems to be there, not so much for its owner, but to protect the body.)
There are some good hidden questions here:
Why are there apples in the land of Avalon, which is
after all, up in the Summer stars? Snow white is put to sleep by an apple, could
it be then, an equation of apple and sleep. Or is this the place that holds
the principle of apples and the rebirth of plants, self sewn grains, this seems
like a missing part of the puzzle. Apples with their pentagon- star-in -a -circle
mystery. Love and life cycle. Apples which are equated with earth. Another missing
part seems to be a story about possession. Does Morgan want to possess Arthur,
in that her greatest power is to take him away from his judgment, to make him
sleep…
The roles of women at the time depicted in the Arthur
Cycle have become less universal. When men and women defended their land together
as they did earlier, strong survival bands probably existed between men and
women. By the time of courtly Arthur tales only men went to war, sometimes for
years. So those strong bonds formed in war existed only among men. Women are
more likely seen as someone to protect, and admire for innocence and youth.
Arthurian times are idealistic and inward, but they are more Patriarchal.
The Bean Nighe, the Washers at the Ford, along with
the saying about getting the washing done first, sounds as if there might have
been a rhetoric to push young women into menial tasks although I am pretty sure
that Joyce’s intent is that they are the makers of history, the stitchers
of the dream of life, although they do it cursing and gossiping and they clean
the mind and set the soul loose.
Another missing part seems to be a story about possession. Does Morgan want
to possess Arthur, in that her greatest power is to take him away from his judgment,
to make him sleep….These things jump out at me, and yet if they are tied
together too closely the story wilts. But one thing is clear. Rationality and
moral consciousness ( love of justice) count in Druidry and so does the Animistic
perspective. The Great Goddess is still powerful, as well as the Way of the
Light.
Honor Johnson 1998
These book were important to this paper, and are a good source of supplementary reading:
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
The Arthurian Book of Days by Caitlin and John Matthews
The Celtic Druid’s Year by John King
The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom by Caitlin and John Matthews
The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Once and Future Goddess by Elinor W. Gadon
The White Goddess by Robert Graves
Mythic Ireland by Michael Dames
I also want to thank my husband, Wayne Johnson at Cadaobh Press for the illustrations.
And Bill for his help and patience.
In addition I want to thank Donata for her reading of the first draft, and for
her suggestions, the circle and pentagon in the apple with its earth and love
meaning, her questions about the Banschee and the laundry "was death in
childhood a punishment for not finishing the laundry? "which I explored
as best I could, her recommending the Mists of Avalon, and her wonderful support.
Our Online Book Store carries many of these references.