The Long Journey Through Night, IV: The Masks of Goddess

I read a mountain of books on mythology. 20 plus years of such reading starts to push some of the symbolism out of the realm of the academic and into the circle of meaningful, personal life metaphors. You reach out your hand for an analogy to describe what’s happening to you and there at hand is a 2000+ year old Irish Goddess, as your own and immediate as that thing that happened to you one summer at camp that you still liken much of your adult life to. It’s a strange process.

I would put the symbol down, every time I pulled my hand back to find it there in my palm again. But it came more often through the middle of the last 8 years.

The Morrigan. An Irish Goddess of death, war and sex. The maligned half of the ancient great goddess of Ireland. When the Irish father God, the Dagda, married a good aspect of the goddess, it’s telling that he nevertheless had a yearly affair with the Morrigan as well. Her name means “The Great Queen” or the “The Spectral Queen”. But again, as I never talk about absolutes and I have no illusion that I’m talking about anything but my own personal metaphor, I’d probably say I have no relationship with THE Morrigan, but I’m finding a way to MY Morrigan.

Sex, death and war. But what I see when I read that trio is a personification of the blood pounding in my temples. Drive, passion, will, a refusal to surrender to hardship, dogged perseverance, a exultation in hardship because it’s a chance to fight on and grow, a love of grief because it gives one a chance to cultivate the bravery of letting yourself experience fear and knowing that the fear only makes you braver. She’s the feeling of life you get when you strive because you believe you have a right to and because you believe you have the power to. And because you realize life is in the striving.

The animal most associated with the Morrigan is the crow, or raven. And for years I’ve been seeing them. I mean, they’re everywhere, right? So we all do. But I’ve instantly noticed them, watched them—my ears are keyed to hear them first and foremost in a noisy cityscape or in the woods. My head cranes to look when they call, of its own. And I feel like they’re looking back.