Seasons of Death and Life

As Samhain-tide is here, I have been thinking about the two great festivals of the Celtic year, and how different our modern Neopagan interpretation of them is from their origins. This subject came up for me at Beltaine this year, and has been simmering in the back of my mind ever since.

You see, the modern Neopagan conventions around these two festivals are so: Beltaine is understood as the season of life, expressed and celebrated through sexual and fertility imagery. Samhain is understood as the season of death, expressed through ancestor worship, death imagery and offerings to the dead. This is at least true of nearly all modern witchcraft revival traditions. Would any of my readers be startled to learn that for the ancient Pagan Celts, this scheme is nearly backwards?

As in so many other respects, the tendency of modern revivals of Paganism is to suffer from oversimplification of theology and spiritual philosophy. Samhain and Beltaine are a prime example of this effect.

We call Beltaine the "season of life" because the plants are flowering, fruits are swelling, small animals mating, and the sun is growing stronger. So much is true on the surface of things. For the ancient Celts, however, Beltaine (and summer generally) was a season of great risk, and for this reason, was a season for sacrifices - both animal and human. The primary evidence for human sacrifice (apart from the distorted reports of it recorded by contemporary non-Celtic writers) comes from preserved bog burials such as the Lindow man of Wales, and similar remains found on the Continent and Ireland. Remnants of the last meals of these sacrificed people show that in many cases, they were in fact killed in late Spring. Folk culture in these areas preserves many, many references to death and sacrifice in connection to Beltaine; such as Morris dances, scape-goating, effigy sacrifice, etc.

Why should this be? If the season when the natural world visibly comes into contact with death is the onset of winter, why not make that the time of sacrifices, of propitiating death with offerings? Because the timing is wrong for the magick to work, that's why. For people dependent on natural cycles for their survival, when the threshold of winter arrives at Samhain, the time of greatest risk is already past. Whatever harvest the summer gave you has been gathered in, and you only have to hope for the length of the winter to be merciful. At the onset of summer, on the other hand, everything is at stake. What comes in the months between Beltaine and Samhain can make or break your clan. If there is too much summer rain, and the crops rot in the fields - if there isn't enough, and the grain and calves don't fatten - if any of a thousand things go wrong during the growing season, your people may go hungry when the winter comes. Thus the growing season is the time of greatest risk, and the greatest need for sacrifice to propitiate the Gods. The Celts believed that life had to be fed by the sacrifice of life, and so sacrifices were made. Beltaine is thus the season of life, but also the season of death.

We're told that Samhain is religiously celebrated as the season of death because at this time cattle were slaughtered that were not being kept (and fed) through the winter. And because the vegetative life of the land is visibly dying as winter approaches. All this being quite true, Samhain is naturally a season of death. However, if you look at the mythology and religious practice of the Celts, a more nuanced picture emerges. Samhain is everywhere linked in the lore with sexual matings; and in particular the mating of the human realm and Otherworld through sexual unions. For example, the tryst of the Morrigan and the Dagda on the eve of battle occurs at Samhain; following their mating, She prophesies His victory over the Fomoire, and offers Her aid in the coming battle. Cu Chulainn, the great hero of Ulster, makes his tryst with the Faery woman Fand at Samhain; likewise Nera, the warrior of Cruachan, also meets and marries his Faery wife at Samhain. In almost every case, the warrior meets an Otherworldly female on Samhain eve, mates with her sexually, and then is sent into battle on her behalf or under her protection. There are countless examples of these Samhain couplings, often linked to battles: Aine and Ailill Olom; the elopement of Etain and Midir, etc.

Dagda and the Woman, by Jim Fitzpatrick

These myths tell something deeper about the Celtic view of Samhain than the simple label, "season of death." They tell that the threshold of winter was also understood as a season of sexuality, both human and divine. That the "veil growing thin" which we Neopagans speak of, does not just permit the dead to speak to us, but opens wide the gates for Otherworldly unions of a sexual nature. That these divine or Otherworldly matings presage and are inextricably linked to battle. As it is among the horned and antlered animals: the stag and the bull, worshiped throughout the Celtic world in the form of Gods such as Cernunnos, mate in the fall, accompanied by ritualized "battles" as the males of the species may lock antlers or horns in displays of strength for mating rights. The sexual attentions of Sovereignty Goddesses such as the Morrigan, if they are linked to a season, nearly always occur at Samhain. For many Celts, sovereignty was conferred through ritual marriage of the human sovereign with Sovereignty Herself, the Goddess of the land. Among the Irish, inaugural rites and other acts related to kingship always took place at the great feasts that were held annually at Samhain at royal centers such as Tara, Cruachain and Emain Macha. Thus the entire concept of the sacred marriage among the Celts is inextricably linked to the Samhain season.

These are just a few examples I highlight here for contrast with the prevailing Neopagan conventions about these holidays. In truth both have very complex histories arising from their changing practice across many different tribes and shifting with the tides of history. I suppose what I want to communicate here is not so much that our modern ways of celebrating these holidays are wrong; but rather that I feel something is lost when we simplify them down to equating Beltaine with sex and Samhain with death. There is a deep wisdom embedded in the ancients' understanding that sexuality, fertility, death, sovereignty, and sacrifice were all inextricably linked. That our human work is to understand these linkages, feed them, and find our places within them. There is a potency in celebrating sex and death together, as alternating currents of a single numinous power, perhaps, rather than as separate seasons.

As we like to sing in the Coru: Balu! Maru! Balu! Maru! (Sex! Death! Sex! Death!)

(Of course, it should go without saying that I don't advocate a return to ancient practice as it was; I think it is entirely right that we abandoned human sacrifice and find other forms of sacrifice by which we can participate in these exchanges of life.)

Way of the Spear

I'm freshly returned from my first armored combat event and thinking about the nature of being a Spear.

Some months ago when I undertook a new phase of dedication to the Morrigan, She said this to me: "You are my Spear." This touched off a lot of thinking on my part as to what it means to be a Spear in Her hands. As is my habit with messages from my Gods, I turned to history and source text to try to understand.

The Spear appears earliest in Irish mythology in the hands of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, as written in the Lebor Gabála Eirénn:

From Failias was brought the Lia Fail which is in Temair, and which used to utter a cry under every king that should take Ireland. From Goirias was brought the spear which Lug had : battle would never go against him who had it in hand. From Findias was brought the sword of Nuadu : no man would escape from it ; when it was drawn from its battle-scabbard, there was no resisting it. From Muirias was brought the cauldron of The Dagda ; no company would go from it unsatisfied. 

These, Stone, Spear, Sword, and Cauldron, are known as the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, the old Gods of Ireland. I began to read everything I could find about them. What does it mean to be a Spear? That must tell me something of the work She wants of me. And  if I am a Spear, surely there are other Spear-folk too. And Sword-folk, Cauldron-folk, Stone-folk.

The Stone is the first mentioned, in almost every case where the Treasures are written about. It is the foundation of Sovereignty. Then, we come to the weapons; perhaps arising from the necessity of defending Sovereignty. First the Spear, then the Sword. And after, to feed the hungry company of the warriors, to restore them at the end of the day, comes the Cauldron.

In a battle line (at least, from my beginner's understanding of archaic Celtic weapon use), spears are first out to stop as many adversaries as possible before they come within sword-range. Light spears or javelins are cast through the air (as are arrows; small mechanically assisted spears). Long spears or pikes are thrust before the shield-lines to hold them at bay or impale them as they come. And the warrior's first weapon in the fray might often have been the fighting spear. Thrust and cut with your long weapon first, until it sticks in someone's ribs or too many enemies come in close range; then let go of it and draw your sword.

In ancient times, the common fighter who was not an elite hero and did not possess the wealth of the aristocratic warrior class, might not carry a sword at all. Swords require far greater mastery of metalsmithing to manufacture, and far more expensive high-quality metal, than do spearheads; how many men could be armed with spears from the same metal that would go into the making of a single hero's sword? For this reason, armies were once counted as the number of spears a leader commanded. A man might not be a trained warrior, but hand him a long spear and you can make a soldier of him; he will figure out how to thrust. It is a weapon of instinct. It won't protect him much in a melee, but it weaponizes him. Spears are the expendable resource of an army.

From these readings, and from noting the patterns common to myself and to other Spear folk I've connected with, I make an observation about Spears: Commitment. A spear once cast cannot be called back. Thus, to be a Spear is to be cast toward one's destiny. Fully given and committed, risking all with fierce abandon. Or, as some of my friends have said of me recently; a zealot. I take that criticism as worthy. Caution seems not to be the way of the spear. We are beings of instinct tending to sense the moment and thrust ourselves forward, past the safety of shields, crying victory. We throw ourselves into the destiny we sense before us, in ways that sometimes seem reckless or mad to our friends. Perhaps we are. It is a way of risk.

This all came back to me as I was riding home from the war event yesterday. I'm new to armored combat and had only just finished my armor the day I arrived at the war. Thus, I'd had no chance to practice my fighting skills with my teachers while in full armor before going in to the full fray. Little opportunity to even test my armor under another fighter's blows before facing an army of them. I was, truthfully, not ready for war combat - and the marshal who authorized me knew it, and nearly didn't. But I passed, and in spite of significant nerves about not knowing what to do out there, and being smashed to a pulp by hundreds of men three times my body weight, I threw myself into the combat. Trusting, I suppose, that the urging of my Goddess and the sense of destiny that drew me into the fighting arts were not leading me astray. And they didn't: it was one of the most epic experiences of my life.

Showing off my bloody fighting tunic.

I was crushed in shield-walls and knocked to the ground. Hammered by swords, pike thrusts. Took a hard thrust to the faceplate of my helmet that split my chin so I bled all over my armor; paused to get it bandaged, then threw myself right back in. I was fighting with a glaive, a type of long-bladed fighting spear wielded with two hands, which meant I had no shield to protect me, and with my lack of experience, I'm not the best at blocking with the glaive, so I took a lot of hits. I've been told by many fighters I should be starting with sword and shield to save myself bruises... but you see, I'm a Spear, and it's the spear that feels natural in my hands, it's the spear I'm called to fight with. It's the reason I'm there at all. So in I went without a shield, madly, gleefully, fiercely, not minding the pounding and the bruises and the blood. Reveling, glorying in them. Why? Because they were initiatory, overwhelming, ecstatic. Because I am a Spear, and I must immerse myself. Because I am a Spear, and I need the risk and immensity of being thrust wholly, body and soul, into my calling, holding nothing back, pouring myself out on the battlefield.

I am a Spear that cries out for blood

I am the Spear-point that gives battle

(Song of Amergin)

Battlefield Invocation

The topic of the week has been Sovereignty - several people asking questions about it in response to the mention of the Sovereignty rites I and the Coru are planning for Samhain. I'm working on a post delving into Sovereignty more fully, but as it's a very big subject, that post will have to be published another week soon. Instead, I'll respond to another of the questions from readers. I've been asked to share the Gaulish invocation of the Morrigan that I mentioned in my last post. So today I'm sharing that here.

A few words of explanation by way of Caveat Emptor... First, let me be clear that I have no pretense about the accuracy of the Gaulish language used in this invocation. I am not a scholar of the Gaulish language, or any Celtic language. I am an enthusiastic amateur. Further, the language used here is not exactly ancient Gaulish as it would have been spoken in its contemporary period. I have never been able to find a complete reference on the ancient Gaulish language sufficient to be able to translate a text into Gaulish. What I have used is a reconstructed system called Modern Gaulish, which was developed quite recently by a linguist, to fill exactly that gap. As I understand it, Modern Gaulish uses what is known of the ancient Gaulish tongue, extrapolated using linguistic mechanisms known to other Celtic languages to develop a more complete grammar and vocabulary. Since that was what I could find to use, I've used it. (I'm afraid I can't reference it since the website is no longer online; if readers are curious, I've got the contents of it in PDF.)

This is a devotional work, not an academic one; what it seeks to do is to speak to the Battle Goddess in something at least having the poetic sound and feel of the language She may have heard from devotees in the Gaulish period, as an act of devotion and of honoring Her history. If a Gaulish language scholar is reading this and can correct my work, by all means I welcome the assistance.

So here's what I've done. I read a lot of ancient Gaulish inscriptions to get a feel for the kinds of things that were written in votive and magickal texts. Then I wrote this invocation to the Battle Goddess, first in English, and then translated into Gaulish. It was written for use in a specific context: it is the invocation and blessing that I use at combat events, to invoke Her and to ask Her blessing on the fighters and the field; accompanied by libations which are offered to Her and then poured out on the battlefield.

Édhi ni in Coru Crúach Cathubodúa
Ávo ni sin iuranoch a no Rígan en brathíon ri in ségiu ródhithu

Guthanu mi in Déuan Morrígu, Cathubodúa, tar nemna in Anthúmon
Guthanu mi in Rígan Cingethed ganth gwalíon in taránu
Morrígan a'n Bodhúed, Morrígan a'n Taránu: Diáiu ni ganth sin supethárion
Áchi nemna in Anthúmon a ch'ánon súó cingethed pí en édhi ér sú
En ór a'n cath a pé diáiui, éran ach diái ani, Déuan Cathu
Rígan Már Cingethed, o pí en canu in caníon cathach, tanu ni ér sú
Inth lathúach ach en sathanoch lúied-ni ávo ni sin iuranoch

Ganth sin briethéron, techolsíu in ledhíam nerthach, techolsíu in criníon lathúach, bí í cathéronthu dineáion ech ni
Ganth sin briethéron, ávo ni briethanoch a'n ségiu
Pí lavarthu é ó ánu, dresíu é gwer in lan-cath
Pí ré ródhithu é ócríd en cúírel, techolsíu é bélu, ach ré bathithu ó calghíon ganth gwalíon taranu
Déuan Cathu, apái nathúech in ségiu a'n cingethed-sin, suo maped ach duthired: Ánéís
Nathúeu mi sú tar nemna in Déuan Cathu

Déuan Cathu, apái nathúech in criníon gwirth nó namanthed, pan ápisu ís in coru bor suo lathued
Ávo ís ledhíam érin, o íuru ni sú in ségiu
Desu ni in iuranoch ri Cathubodúa
Desu ni nó namanthed ri Cathubodúa
Desu ni ís Bodúa
Desu ni ís Bodúa
Desu ni ís Bodúa




And here follow the English verses:


We, the Bloody War Band of the Battle Raven
We make this offering to our Queen in gratitude for victory given

I invoke the Great Queen, the Battle Raven, through the powers of the Otherworld
I invoke the Queen of Warriors with the force of the thunderstorm
Morrigan of the Ravens, Morrigan of the Storm: We come to you with this plea
Bring the powers of the Otherworld to inspire your warriors who are before you
In the hour of battle which approaches, rise and come among us, Battle Goddess
Great Queen of Warriors, who sings the song of battle, we stand before you
Fiercely and in fulfillment of our oaths we make this offering

With this incantation, the weak shall be made strong, the fearful shall become fierce, doubt shall be cast from us
With this incantation, we make the enchantment of victory
He who has spoken Her name shall be lifted over the battlefield
He who has given his heart in loyalty, his arm shall be made mighty and his weapon strike with thunderous force
Battle Goddess, send the charm of victory upon these warriors, your sons and daughters: Protect them
I bless you by the magic of the Battle Goddess

Battle Goddess, send the whisper of fear against our enemies, when they behold the proud host of your heroes
Let them weaken before us, as we offer the victory to you
We prepare the offering for the Battle Raven
We prepare our enemies for the Battle Raven
For the Raven, we prepare them
For the Raven, we prepare them
For the Raven, we prepare them

If readers are inclined to use these invocations in ritual, I am glad to share them, so long as any use or distribution of them includes attribution of their authorship to me: (c) 2012 Morpheus Ravenna.

The Battle Maiden dances

In my last post, I promised I'd write soon on devotional practices, and I hope to get to that soon. Today I just have a quick post to let you know about an upcoming event.

One of the ways that I channel the Morrigan is through devotional dance. (OK, so this does relate to devotional practice, after all.) I perform a kind of ecstatic devotional dance with a large set of wings, in what I've taken to calling my "Battle Maiden" dance. I call it that because the form of Her energy that comes through this dance is a Valkyrie-like epiphany, the Battle Maiden who comes in raven or vulture form, dancing over the spearheads, reveling in the blood and chaos of battle, and who gathers the souls of the slain heroes and carries them to the realms of the mighty. I've been developing this dance form in my work with Her for several years now, but opportunities to perform this dance come only infrequently. The photo here is from one of my first performances of it. Each time I perform the dance it changes, as it's partly invocatory ritual and partly performing art.

I will be performing the newest version of this Battle Maiden dance piece at the upcoming Hexenfest, a festival of magick-inspired music and arts next Friday March 9th in Oakland. Hexenfest is a new event that we hope will grow to be an annual festival in support of Pagan and magickal arts and music. It's being produced by the band Pandemonaeon, the leaders of which are dear friends of mine, powerful ritualists in their own right on top of being very inspiring musicians. Pandemonaeon plays at Hexenfest, along with another band, plus Gothic bellydance by the inimitable Anaar (from whom I've learned much about ritual dance), Jason Pitzl-Waters of the Wild Hunt as DJ, and a Tombo Studio fashion show.

Details, tickets, and VIP options are here. Even if you can't make the show, you can donate the ticket price and get a downloadable audio recording of the live show, and you'll be supporting a great thing too.

On the horizon much further out, I am also thrilled to say I've been invited to come lead a Morrigan devotional ritual at the 2013 Witches Ball in New Orleans. It is a huge honor to be invited, and even though that's still a long way off, I just had to share because it's damned exciting.

The Queen has lately been making it clear to me and some of my close kin in Her service, that She wants us to be traveling to other places, seeking power spots and sacred sites as places to do ritual with Her and feed Her presence and power in our world. This invitation supports that path perfectly and I'll be looking for other opportunities to move about the land more and bring Her work and presence to more people.

That's all for now. I hope to see many of you soon at Hexenfest and share my devotional performance with you.

Answering the Call

This is a quick post to announce the upcoming intensive I will be offering this fall along with my beloved co-priestesses T. Thorn Coyle and Sharon Knight.

We are calling this intensive Answering the Call: Battle Goddesses in Times of Change. It represents the next stage of the work the three of us have been called to by our Gods. Those who have been reading this blog or were present with us at the Morrigan devotional last PantheaCon will be aware that my work with the Morrigan, as with many of you, has been taken "up a notch" in the past year or two. We three, as with many of you, have been hearing an urgent call to rise up, prepare ourselves for times of change, help our communities become strong and resilient.

Two years ago, during our collaboration on the Stone City Samhain rituals and intensive work with the Morrigan, we talked about the strong call we had each felt from both the Morrigan and Freyja in our devotional work. At that Samhain, the Battle Goddess workshops were conceived, which Thorn began offering last Samhain along with her partner Robert, and has continued throughout the year, providing short workshops for self-defense and empowerment training.

We came together again for the great Morrigan devotional at PantheaCon, and as I have written here, that ritual was like the unleashing of a dike - it was a call to battle, opening the door for a great force of inspiration and empowerment that many of us in Her service continue to feel.

This fall's weekend intensive is the next stage in this work. We each feel a strong calling to help mobilize and prepare our people for the challenges of our times, through the guidance and urging of our devotional relationships with these Battle Goddesses. So this is the purpose for this gathering.

It will necessarily be smaller than the massing of the PantheaCon ritual - our focus here will be on in-depth work and practice with those who feel strongly called to join with us in this work. Attendance at this gathering will be limited to 30. It will be held at Stone City, where my work on the Morrigan statue and shrine are underway, and will provide an opportunity for participants to help with that project.

Initial details are up on a FaceBook event page, as well as on my website. Registration will be through Thorn's Solar Cross organization.

I look forward to meeting you in Her service.

Resistance

This blog has been quiet lately, in part because my work on the Morrigan statue project slowed this spring while other responsibilities came to the fore. The other reason is that I've been struggling with what to say. I started this blog to share my process with the Morrigan statue, and along with that my observations, thoughts, philosophies arising from my work as Her priestess.

Since PantheaCon, I've been in a queer state of ambivalence. To those of you who were present for the huge Morrigan devotional ritual we held at the Con, it might sound strange to hear that what I came away with was ambivalence. But it's true.

The ritual work leading up to and in the ritual itself triggered something very big in my relationship with the Morrigan. I think most participants would agree that the ritual tapped into an enormous current of desire and something that I can only describe as urgency. There is a tide rising in our communities, a sense of readiness for a call that we all somehow know is coming, and that we yearn for. The ritual felt galvanizing, transformative. A massing of forces on the eve of some battle. People took oaths. Thresholds were crossed.

Afterwards, I came home continuing to think about where those thresholds are taking us now. What exactly DID we tap into? What now?

For what purpose are these forces massing?

I came home carrying the sword, the one upon which all those oaths had been sworn. It held a force and vibratory power in it that was clear to the senses of everyone who touched it, and impossible to ignore. For a few days, we had it on the altar in our bedroom (oops). My husband described it thus: "There is a sword, and I have a house around it." Shortly afterward, I took it up to the Morrigan's shrine site, planted it in the ground there with prayers to Her, and left it there for a night and a day to let the power of the oaths pour out of it and be earthed in Her shrine. While I was up there, I prayed and sat and listened and She, still overshadowing me in the aftermath of the big ritual, whispered to me. "Yes. You have brought me the sword. Soon, you will bring me warriors. The time is coming."

That message left me shaken, and hence my ambivalence. I continue to feel a great urgency from Her, a sense of pressure as if someone were literally leaning against me, or the way you feel when someone is staring hard at the back of your head. I realized then that the big ritual was not the culmination of a process, but the start of one, and I have an obligation to Her to see it through. But I still do not fully understand what "it" is. The hints and whispers I receive from Her continue to point toward mobilizing our people, our communities, in preparation for something. Mobilization, preparation, massing and honing of forces. That's what She keeps whispering. I remain ambivalent about this because whenever I talk about what it is I sense She wants from us, I begin to think I'm sounding delusional, militaristic, or at best naive. And because I can't yet figure out how it is that I, without even any genuine fighting skills to my credit, am going to bring warriors to the Morrigan. Not alone, that's for sure.

This has been my state for the past few months. Waiting, listening, looking for further insight. Talking to friends and companions. In the meantime, the signs keep coming. I've had messages from both friends and strangers that She has been speaking to others, appearing in their dreams, sending warnings, delivering the call to action. Meanwhile, I continue to watch the distress signals flickering on in the world around us.

Yesterday I spent a little time working on the statue, preparing Her for the next stage of the sculptural process. While I worked, I asked Her again for guidance, and I listened. The word RESISTANCE sounded in my head.

Today, this article caught my eye. And this one. Those are just examples - I've seen many of these signs, too many to enumerate. They remind me of that word, resistance.

Am I saying that I want to form a militia? I don't think so. I think the forces of authoritarian control would have us hopelessly outgunned, and I think as soon as we limit our thinking about resistance to the level of guns, we have already lost. But I think we need something. We need resilient networks of community that are decentralized, that provide real, manifest support for their members - not just mental support, but survival skills and material necessities that will allow us the real-life autonomy from which to resist. We need these networks to be in place and vibrant before they become a survival necessity. And yes, I do think fighting skills are among those survival skills we need to cultivate. A person who has the ability to protect themselves and their loved ones, and the means and resources to live autonomously if needed, is a person who cannot as easily be cowed or seduced into toeing the line - or buying the line. It takes a warrior to resist, even if that resistance is not in the form of conventional armed resistance.

I still don't really know where to begin, and I suppose that is why I'm writing this. Nervously, at that. I want to hear from you. Have you heard the Morrigan's call? What are your Gods urging you toward? What do you sense we are being called upon to do?

In the meantime, my co-priestesses from the Morrigan ritual, T. Thorn Coyle, Sharon Knight, and I are planning to hold a weekend workshop intensive focused on this work, in November of this year. It's a place to start. I'll have details to post soon, I hope.

Rising up

Then the Morrigan the daughter of Ernmas came, and she was strengthening the Tuatha De to fight the battle resolutely and fiercely. She then chanted the following poem:

"Kings arise to the battle! . . . "

 Immediately afterwards the battle broke, and the Fomoire were driven to the sea.
--from the Second Battle of Mag Tuired


On sunday night I had the privilege of working with a kickass team of ritualists to create the Morrigan devotional ritual at PantheaCon. I came away sore from pushing myself to the limits of my stamina, with a voice a little hoarse from screaming. And feeling gratitude for the courage of the many individuals who chose to join us in answering Her call.

In the dreamlike flashes of my memories of the ritual, a few images and sensations stand forth. I remember being profoundly overshadowed even before the invocation began. I remember being able to acutely feel the pounding of the myriad hearts as a sensation in my own body, something like the way a great pounding sound too deep to be audible is sensed as a massive vibration in one's bones. I remember feeling the massing of armies in the movement of the many bodies round the space. I remember when the taking of oaths began, feeling Her devouring them as a starving creature might swallow meat, as though I could taste the life force contained in each one.

I saw the Hero's Light shuddering round the faces and brows of some there who were moved by Her spirit, saw their souls rise up within them, answering the call.

This ritual represented a new threshold in my relationship with the Morrigan. The first decade of my devotion to Her was observed almost exclusively in intimate coven rituals or private practice. It has only been in the last five years or so that I began working as Her priestess in a broader public context, but until now the largest group in which I had channeled Her had been around 40 people at an open Samhain ritual. So to bring Her to an overflowing convention ballroom of 500 people was unprecedented for me. I will admit that I felt some hesitation about letting Her fully come through in the chaotic, zany environment of the convention. I did it in spite of that because I sensed a particular urgency, a tugging in Her presence during the recent months that said this needed to happen. As we went through the final planning and preparation for this ritual, I felt Her hungering for the big energy of the host. I sense that in these later days, there are few enough moments when human beings gather in the hundreds to chant Her name, let alone the thousands who perhaps once did.

I cannot help musing on the timing of this working. While we were massed in that ballroom raging and chanting, "RISE UP! RISE!" folk all across the Middle East and North Africa were, and still are, rising up to fight for their liberation. This is not to imply that our little ritual has any causal connection to the uprisings. I think rather what I am sensing is that the insistence with which the Morrigan has been pushing me to share my devotional work with Her beyond the sphere of private practice and into a broader public venue, is in some way connected to the urgency of the times in which we live. Perhaps She feels that the world needs Her especially now.

I have since found myself thinking on the taking of oaths - there is something very powerful about the act. An oath takes the continuous gradual path of the spiritual life and sets into it a gateway, a threshold separating the road ahead from all that has come before. We challenge ourselves to dare the threshold. We speak our oath in the presence of our Gods and our companions so that there can be no turning back; the gate closes on what has gone before. Once spoken, an oath cannot be undone. It binds us to our own will and to the future we have committed to. We now must rise up and find the power within ourselves to fulfill that oath.

The keeping of an oath grants strength. An oath is much like that thing known in Celtic lore as a geis, generally translated as 'taboo' or 'prohibition'. A geis is an obligation which is laid on a person, to which they must adhere. The heroic stories teach us that the keeping of a geis grants power; that its protection may be so great as to make the hero undefeatable. To break a geis engenders loss of power and protection, weakness, downfall. The deaths of the great heroes are brought about through clever means of forcing them to break a geis and thus render them merely human, vulnerable to wounding and defeat. The hidden truth here is that, conversely, a geis intact renders one more than human, for it is a magickal bond with the Otherworld, and while it is kept, it wraps one in a mantle of Otherworldly power. And what is an oath but a geis taken under free will? In oath-taking, we rise to meet the destiny that is laid on us; and in return, as we keep the oath we rise up in greater strength and power.

So to those who took the oath: you have taken a geis from the Morrigan. Guard it well and your honorable name in the Otherworld will make you great in all the worlds. The strength of the kept oath will sustain you. In the words of Cáilte: "I am persuaded that these three things will sustain me in my life: the truth always maintained in my heart, strength of my arms for the honor of my deeds, and in always keeping my word."