The overarching messages I've received, and the ones that are consistent with the greatest number of others I've heard from, are essentially these:
A storm is coming
Gather your kin
Get ready to fight and to survive
There have been many more messages, of course, and much more nuance, but these are the ones that come up consistently from many different people contacting me, and often in nearly the exact words.
I have tended to think about this as a message of warning for something that is to come; about the many signals of our decaying empire and the possibility of some form of societal collapse. I have tended to think about this as something we were meant to gather in preparation for, almost in waiting.
Today in my morning communion with Her I found my mind wandering, and asking a new question. What if the storm isn't coming. What if it is here, now?
We are in the midst of a failing empire. I know so many people who cannot find regular employment, who find themselves slipping down the economic ladder. Most people I know cannot see a doctor for their health care. All around us the social fabric is unraveling, while the elites who rule can seem to concern themselves with nothing but political advantage and wars of conquest. It has begun to seem to me that collapse is here - it's just a slow decaying collapse rather than the kind of cinematic catastrophe that the entertainment industry has taught us to look for.
And then I wonder, if the storm is here - if what we are feeling now are already its first lashings - how to make sense of these messages about preparation for something?
A couple of months ago, I was at a spiritual retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains. I found myself sitting up late in the hot tub with a fellow priest of the Morrigan, staring up at the stars between the towering redwoods and talking speculatively about our Queen's urgings and what they might mean. Asking each other that same question: What is She up to? What is the big picture? My friend asked me, "What do you think Her endgame is?"
I started talking without really listening to myself. Rambling speculatively. Then thought that what I was saying was starting to sound grandiose and mad, and I said, "But really, I sometimes think She's more concerned with specific issues, like restoring proper respect for the war dead. I don't know if She's really out to fix what's wrong with our civilization as a whole." I didn't finish the sentence though. In the midst of it, I found myself speaking into a sudden and overwhelming silence as the entire forest went dead silent on an instant: the million frogs and soft crickets and little night noises that had been all around us, all dead instantly. My friend and I stared at each other, and stared around, unnerved. Then, into that silence and stillness a vast wind came marching, sweeping down between the towering trees, as though the majesty of the sky itself was marching toward us. It approached down the contour of the land and swept over us and I felt Her presence overwhelmingly, the tall, haunting might of Her, vast and mighty as the sky itself, bearing down on us as that wind stalked through.
After it passed, the crickets and frogs found their voices before we did. Finally I turned to my friend and said, "I stand corrected. I'm pretty sure we just got told, DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE ME."
Today I'm wondering if perhaps, what She's stirring us to prepare for isn't the storm itself, isn't collapse, but a new society She's seeking to build within the decaying shell of the old one. That perhaps the urgings toward kinship and tribalism, toward self-sufficiency and autonomy, toward fighting ability and survival, are all directed toward making of us the kind of people who can form the kinship units at the core of a more tribal and localized civilization. The one that we all know must come after us. The one in which we hold our sovereignty in our own hands again and live within the capacity of the land to sustain us.
My friend who I hiked with last night said at one point that the Morrigan seems like a patron deity of our times, and maybe this is so. The great challenges we face are those of sovereignty and survival, of facing down a massive, corrupt, and war-hungry empire in order to restore the sovereignty of the people and of the land. Who better to arm us for this struggle?
What messages has She given you? What do you think Her endgame is?
