Goddess of the Week: The Morrigan, Irish Celtic Goddess of Death, Fate & Magic
The Morrigan. Irish Celtic Goddess of Death, Fate and Magic. Lady of War. Her Irish name is Mór-Ríoghai, which can be translated to Phantom Queen.
The Morrigan is a Goddess of Prophecy, Wisdom, Protection and Sovereignty. Her totem animals are ravens and crows, and she is often depicted with a raven’s head. She was famous for shape-shifting into a raven that would fly over battlefields cawing and, it was believed, casting doom on those who would die in battle.
In the legends she also magically turns into various animals, an old hag and a young woman earning her the moniker The Shapeshifter. Like many other Celtic Goddesses she was a Triple Goddess portrayed most often in her Cailleach or fearful Crone form as The Destroyer - probably because of her association with war - but able to shape-shift and present as alluring fertility Maiden or protective Mother as the situation required. ‘The Morrigan’ name is sometimes considered a triplicate of Goddesses made up of three sisters, Badb, Macha, and Nemain, who are thought to embody the Maiden, Mother, and Crone archetypes, respectively.
THE MORRIGAN IN LEGEND:
She appears in many of her various guises in the legend known as the Tain Bo Regamma belonging to the Ulster Cycle in Irish Celtic legend:
Cu Chulainn, the hero of the new order of the land is about to battle to defend Ulster from the army of Connaught, led by Queen Maeve when the Morrigan appears to him on the battlefield in her guise as alluring Maiden Goddess. She tries to proposition him, offering support for his campaign. Despite her great beauty, Cu fails to recognise who she is and fatally rejects her support sneering at her contemptuously ‘I have not come here for the arse of a woman’ and boasting of his own prowess in battle.
The Morrigan sees his heart is not with the love of the land but more in the blood and battle, the delight of overcoming his enemies. Before he leaves, she prophesies that he will meet his doom in the upcoming cattle raid and that she will be at his death, though he is again contemptuous, stating he’ll not only survive but will be famous for being foremost in battles.
During the raid, the Morrigan is there to sabotage his every effort: first she turns into an eel and trips him up but he crushes the eel into a stone. She then turns into a grey wolf and takes the strength from his hand but he bursts the wolf’s eye with a spear and finally she turns into a white cow with two red ears and leads a hundred cows to trample him in the ford so Cu breaks her foreleg with a sling stone, forcing her to turn aside.
After the battle he goes down to a river where she’s shape-shifted into an old hag washing bloody armour in the river, with the same injuries as he’d inflicted on her animal forms - a cracked rib, blind in one eye and lame. Not recognising her again, he accepts her offer of milk, and with each drink he blesses her and this blessing heals her wounds. Once healed, the woman at last reveals her true nature as the Morrígan. She reminded Cú Chulainn of his previous insults and warned him of his impending death before departing.
During a later battle with Queen Medb’s warriors, the Morrígan’s prophecy at last came true: Cú Chulainn was mortally wounded. He vows to die standing up and lashes himself to a stone with his entrails in the hopes he might continue to terrify his enemies. The tactic worked, and the opposing forces start to retreat. It is only when a single raven, the Morrígan, landed upon Cú Chulainn’s shoulder that his foes realise that he has actually died.
As Claire Hamilton says of The Morrigan in Maiden, Mother, Crone,
“He [Cu] is unable to appreciate that she is also his protector and the agent of Sovereignty who would offer him rule over the land. By ignoring and disrespecting her power, he fails to secure her help and instead, limits her to her darkest role - the guardian of death”.
HOW TO WORK WITH HER:
The Morrigan as a powerful Protector Goddess will often show up when we are up against a battle of some sort and we are in dire need of strength and courage to stand up for ourselves, to activate our warrior within to deal with life’s battles (on whichever field this may play out). It could be a physical battle - if we need to physically battle for survival in some way. It could be a conflict with others, perhaps a legal battle, a battle for rights or sovereignty - the freedom to rule over ourselves and the direction of our lives. Or it could be a physical or mental health battle. A battle between different parts of our psyche or soul that are wanting out, wanting expression and are battling those conditioned parts of ourselves that are trying to keep them shut-down. She can also help us to understand what battles are and aren’t worth fighting.
As a Goddess of Prophecy and Wisdom she can also support us in understanding what is - and isn’t - destined for us. She can help us to find insight and clarity in any situation and to see clearly where the veil of illusion may have been clouding our perception of something or someone…
She can bestow powerful visions and dreams and send messages and signs to guide us and rediscover the enchantment we had as children along our path. Just as in the legends she would send ravens as messengers to deliver prophetic warnings or omens, she can help us to direct our own destiny, to avoid ill-fated events and to accept certain things in our lives. She helps us see (usually only with the benefit of hindsight!) that even misfortune can turn out to be a blessing in disguise and how we perceive an experience - and what we decide it means about ourselves - can determine our fate.
Her medicine brings to mind the The Serenity Prayer made famous by AA: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.” The Morrigan will provide you that wisdom and that call to action - she’s not about passively sitting around waiting for another fate to be delivered to you if you don’t like your current circumstances! This is one fiercely loving and powerful Goddess so expect some serious shape-shifting, change, metamorphosis in your life when the Morrigan shows up.
As the ‘Phantom Queen’, the much-feared Harbinger of Death, she has a lot of power over the concept of death - physically certainly, but also metaphorically. She is able to accompany souls to the afterlife but she also has the power to bring about change - a metaphorical death and rebirth - through the completion of a cycle. She will usually show up in our lives when a big cycle is finishing. She will signal us with her crow’s call, the death knell, marking when it is time for a particular cycle - something we have outgrown, something not destined to move forward with us - to die, to be released to make way for a new cycle.
This could be a career path, a home, a relationship, a friendship, a habit, a way of being. Often it is something within our own selves - a certain identity, persona or mask we’ve assumed. Something that we think is keeping us safe when in reality it’s keeping us small and not allowing us to step into our full sovereignty. If we’re avoiding our destiny, she will come for us to ‘die to’ our old constructed & heavily-conditioned egoic ‘self’ so we can go through a transformation, a rebirth - into our most courageous and authentic soul self. This is the initiation into being a Warrior - a Spiritual Warrior.
It’s that scene in the final episode of Top of the Lake when the enigmatic prophet GJ, (Holly Hunter), says to Robin (Elisabeth Moss), the brave detective when she’s made a bunch of harrowing discoveries about her own family history and doesn’t know what to do with the information that’s left her reeling : "Are you on your knees?" she asks. "Now die to yourself, to your idea of yourself. What's left? Find out."
GJ, played by Holly Hunter, in BBC series Top of the Lake
That’s the Morrigan right there. So in this she is a Goddess who presides over the proverbial ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ which usually precedes or is part of any great spiritual awakening. Before we can be aware of who we really are at our core, before we can expand into all our gifts, before we can truly realise our potential we have to die to our old limiting ideas of ourselves.
FURTHER RITUALS/WAYS TO CONNECT TO THE MORRIGAN:
Create an altar to the Morrigan with something symbolising fire (candles or a cauldron if you have one), something symbolic of scavenger birds - such as feathers or figurines/ images of crows/ravens, black protective crystals such as black obsidian & onyx, red crystals such as carnelian and bloodstone, also amethyst and clear quartz (associated with divination, magic and clarity) and crystal skulls.
Create a Mugwort tea ritual - this herb is frequently associated with the Morrigan due to its connection to magic, divination and protection. Herbs and spices such as clove, sage, and black peppercorns are also correspondences of the Morrígan so creating food or teas by intentionally adding any of these ingredients can help to connect with her power.
Recognise her in:
When Women Were Dragons - subversive feminist book by Kelly Barnhill in which persecuted women in 1950s America spontaneously transform into dragons
The song Red & Black from Les Miserables (red and black being colours of the Morrigan) the call for revolution - the battle for the right for freedom and sovereignty by the republicans during the anti-monarchy insurrection in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me7DMpMaKI0
The Cailleach figure appearing by the lake marking the deaths in the village in recent film The Banshees of Inisherin
Resources / Citations:
Maiden, Mother, Crone: Voices of the Goddess by Claire Hamilton, Moon Books, 2005