Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The Tao of the Morrighan

The Tao of the Morrighan

     We all have our own Holy Grail adventure. The path of a priest that serves a goddess is by no means an easy one. Getting the calling is only the first step. Those that would be priests or priestess are built and strengthened by being brought to the point of near death or suicide only to be brought back stronger and more powerful. She will break you. It's like the martial artist who wants to learn to break bricks. The first step is to shatter the bones in the hand which is painful and takes time to heal. After it heals it is stronger and able to go through the brick. So in the same manner, those that have the calling to be a priest or priestess of a goddess who encompasses death and war must also be broken. You must be broken and go through a lot of pain and heartache in order to be rebuilt strong in all areas of the mind, body and soul. The stronger you get, the harder the tests get. You get to a point where you try to make a plea to the goddess for help only to be greeted with any even harder lesson. It is not that the Morrighan is unforgiving, cruel or heartless, it is that she wants to strengthen her children as warriors of the mind, body and soul. All in the order that the would be priest or priestess is unshaken in any circumstance, be it physical attack, psychic attack, negative entities, heartache, emotional turmoil, etc. However, at the same time it would make the outsiders view of us look like we are the ones who have become heartless, in truth it is the very opposite. We feel the love of our goddess and it will engulf our entire being and in turn will project outward into our aura. But now we are in control of our emotions and actions so that they do not control us we have control of ALL of our being.
     The work and philosophies that I am to present to you, which is a priesthood curriculum, comes not just from academic and literature research but also from magickal experience and experiments as well as the words and works with the Morrighan herself. Once at a certain level, magick becomes a science. Where you predict a certain outcome from a ritual, test it and see if it works. However, what works for some may not work for all. However still, it doesn't hurt for one to test it out and see before completely dismissing it. As the great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote:

ALWAYS LISTEN WITH AN OPEN HEART AND OPEN MIND.
When we read or listen to a teacher speak, if we agree with them then we nod our head in agreeance and walk away. If we disagree with them then we shake our head in disagreeance and again walk away. In both ways we walk away and have not learned anything. So if we listen with an open heart open, open mind we will stop and try to understand even if we disagree because there must be some bit of truth or it wouldn't be presented and if we agree, listen as though you are a new beginner because you may just catch something new that you overlooked.”


     My work is not law but more guidelines for the readers to experiment with. This is what got 'Myself' to where I am and what I am continuing to work with. However every person I have offered this work to has felt it's benefits. I'm just sharing my own experience.
     You can read all the books in the world on the subject but until that knowledge is tested, what do you really know about it? I'm not speaking of the type of literary knowledge that you're tested on by S.A.T.'s or exams to see how much you remember of another persons writings but true wisdom. You can read up on sword fighting all you want but until you've been in a real sword fight, you really know nothing about it. So the question arises, how much information is genuinely yours? Meaning it's not “borrowed information” you read it or got it from someone else but YOU experienced it and it is now YOUR wisdom, regardless if someone else wrote about it.
     When more people start to do this work and follow the philosophies, a 'tradition' will begin to emerge. So in doing so, we start not an organization or hierarchy but a 'Tradition' that can be handed down to future generations and followers of The Morrighan. Tradition is a very important thing when dealing with spiritual practices. Mainly if a group consciousness is to form. An egregore. This egregore eventually becomes the consciousness of the Morrighan. It is not just something we experience individually outside of ourselves but WE become the consciousness known as the Morrighan. This is when the Microcosm and the Macrocosm merge together. One unified consciousness that is not just focused on the Morrighan but is actually part of the Morrighan. Each of us have a self consciousness of uniqueness until working your consciousness to become harmonious with the Morrighan and then you are able to see her in a much more clear way. This is how the secret, ancient priesthoods of olde operated and this how the coven I work with operates. So I am just passing along what I have learned. 

     This all starts with a deeper more mystical understanding of who the Morrighan is as a deity. In this series we will be examining her both as a Left Hand and Right Hand Path Goddess. I want to first state that your author does not follow either but walks a fine line between both. I am a Taoist at my foundation. The Morrighan herself is the Tao by very nature. The first passage of the Tao Te Ching states:

The Tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal name
The nameless is the boundary of
Heaven and Earth.
The Named is the mother of creation
Freed from desire, you can see
the hidden mystery.”

The meaning being this, it is life's experiences and emotions that make us who we are. The emotions you project are who you are, not your name or title but the energy you project from yourself. How do you know you're truly happy unless at one time you've been sad and depressed? And when you are sad it is a guarantee that you will laugh and be happy again or how do you know it is light outside unless who've been in darkness? You can not be inside unless there is an outside etc. What is it like to go to sleep and never wake up? Which is death and to go even deeper what is like to wake after never having been asleep? Which is birth. Upon the spoken name, we name things in order to communicate with each other but names are just nouns and sounds we make, it is not what they are. The world is not names it is a series of emotions that we perceive to our consciousness and interact with. You are as much of your environment as it is you. If we all communicated telepathically we would have no names which is why most deities and spirit guides show us images instead of words. The moment things have names they become part of this physical world.
     To expand on this, this is another reason why most of the Morrighan's children are empaths. She communicates to us through emotions which bring us to a deeper level with her. When you feel what seems like a panic attack or a gripping of the heart or anxiety it is her telling you to speak to her and to take moment and be in the here and now, that is the case most of the time.
      In order to keep oneself balanced one must identify with both a Masculine deity and a Feminine deity equally. When the masculine and feminine are looked at from a energy point of view it becomes more clear.
     Masculine is considered positive while feminine is considered negative. Now negative is by no means meaning bad or evil but the flow of energy. Positive energy flows outward while negative energy flows inward. Now for a male this means your masculine energy flows outward and when you are only dealing with the masculine and positive energy you will often feel drained and worn out at the end of the day and tend to forget things more often from constantly projecting out energy. This is also why males love to work on things with their hands and be good at math by projecting their energy.
For females constantly working with negative energy, (the drawing in of energy) this is why they may feel more emotional at times and seem to bring up arguments from some time ago from holding in this energy and not letting it flow out. This is also why women tend to be more psychic than men and keep a better memory.
So when one works with these energies equally you will be able to constantly draw in energy and then release it and also have a fresh new energy coming in and being released so it doesn't sit and get stagnate or being projected without being replaced.
     How this relates to the Morrighan is, for a Goddess a lot of her aspects are very masculine, such as her role as a War Goddess. The majority of most other pantheons the role of War is normally given to a male deity and usually associated with the masculine. With the Celtic pantheon it is the Morrighan.
This can symbolized many things but in this case it is balance. So with the Tao, within every female presence a male occurs and in every male the presence of female occurs. For how would you know you were female if there were no males and the other way around. 

     The Morrighan as a Left Hand Path or Right Hand Goddess? The truth is she is both. Let us examine both sides. Again, from a Taoist point of view you must experience one in order to understand the other. We'll start with the R.H.P. The end result of the R.H.P. Is complete oneness with the universe. It is also said it is to serve the gods and worship them like kings and queens. The R.H.P. Is associated with the white light energy and all that is good and selflessness. It is a means to have compassion for your fellow man and all sentient beings. However where there is light there will always be a bit of darkness, for when one 'worships' one puts the universe (or gods) above the self and tends to forget that they are already a part of it and automatically start to become separated from it. The term 'worship' usually implies to serve, thus is the role of The Great Queen, the translation of the name 'The Mor'rigan' which is why there is always a 'The' in front of her name. As I stated in my last blog, her name is a title. We serve queens as their disciples. I know there are a few different translations of her name but for now we will focus on 'The Great Queen.' This is also another reason why one should not address her as Anu until she gives you permission to. For example, it would be rude and out of etiquette to go up to the queen of England and greet her as Elizabeth, especially if you are one who honors her.
The L.H.P. and it's end result is to become separate from the universe and to become your own god head. To become your own light in the darkness and to be completely self sufficient. Now I want to start off saying that this is NOT the case with LaVey's Church of Satan, which is more of atheist form of self worship. Not that there is anything wrong with that if that is your path, it just doesn't happen to be mine. Now the very ideal of the L.H.P. is to become the same thing as your deity. Which you must go through darkness and chaos in order to achieve this. Many of us who ventured out to become witches, mystics and wizards had to start with Satanism which was our break away from Christian Programming which every one of us in this society falls into weather we like it or not but the deeper we get into our path the more we learn to separate it from our daily pagan practice.
Now on the surface the Morrighan does seem to appear as a L.H.P. Goddess being her title as 'Dark Goddess' and 'Goddess of Death' however to those that she has come to there is nothing dark about the energy felt from her. That is of course unless you cross her. I will speak briefly about her dark nature from my own experiences. She as my mother has always acted very protective over me. For example, there was one instance where I was in a very destructive relationship and The Morrighan began to haunt the poor girl as a black shadow scaring her away. It wasn't until I met a psychic woman who had also seen the shadow figure following me that I confirmed it. It wasn't long before the girl who I was dating told me she was seeing it more often as our relationship got passed due of seperation. She showed me one of the Morrighan pictures I have and said it resembled her and pretty much scared her away. And there have been other times in which she has told me to get what I need to out of a relationship and leave them. Now being that I have took several Buddhist classes, mainly to help develop my meditation skills, you can't help but also learn compassion for your fellow beings from those practices. This of course made things hard for me because if I didn't do it The Morrighan would do it for me. I try to see the best in people and in the world, I acknowledge that there is a dark side to everything but I don't focus on it because then I would be in world full of anger and confusion. However, in all cases when she has shown her dark side in this manner I would find out later that it has always been a good thing and for the best. As they say “mother knows best” and she has always shown me that, even if I didn't agree with it at the time. But don't get me wrong, I am no pacifist. It's just I am at a point where I chose my battles I do not let the world or any one person do it for me. I have not spent more than a decade learning the way of the sword just to not be able to use it if need be.
So with all that, that is just some of her dark nature that I myself have witnessed. Back to the the mystical side of things, While studying the Old Irish language I came across a word that had a big significance within the Morrighan. Púca. (pronounced: poo-ka) Which from older texts describes it as the shadow side or shape-shifting of the personality, which can be a dangerous aspect to become aware of at the wrong time. The Púca is itself a divine part of a person but also a terrifying aspect of a divinity. It can be an alternate persona often used for magical or martial purposes. It was equated as part of the individual soul in Celtic lore. Modern texts have equated it with an actual creature with the same attributes. They were known to shape-shift and were much like the the Fae. They were bringers of either good or bad fortune. But just like with Goetic Demons they are not only the objectivity of the universe but are also part of the subjectivity of the personality and of the soul. Which bring us back to the Microcosm. That miniature self that represents the universe as an individual consciousness. It isn't until we connect with our Great Mother or any deity for that matter that we begin to be a part of the Macrocosm or for a better term 'become awaken to realize it'
So the entire ideal of 'darkness' is more mundane then spiritual. Death is a natural part of the universe as much as is the sun that brings life to our planet. Most are afraid that consciousness will blink out and we will be locked in some dark box forever. You can't have an experience of nothingness. Even after death nothing truly ceases to exist. So after you die you'll have the same sort of experience as when you were born. Man will always be driven by war and the will to compete in order to be better. We all have different points of view of things as we all start out as individuals and there for we as humans will always have conflict of interests. But it's the abilty to accept our differences that make us civilized and to be a greater individual for the benefit the all. We have all seen life through different eyes and our choices and experiences have shape who we are and how we determine our judgements. A whole lot of people in the world are very happy living their entire lives with just experiencing the universe with the sensations that come through their five senses and what they project. However when one is spiritual you move beyond all that. We eventually realize that we are the Morrighan expressing herself through us and our emotions. That is the collective whole of what being a priest really is.
So I leave you with this: Not even the gods can please everyone in the world, so why would you think you could? Don't worry about pleasing the world because when you please yourself the world in itself will be pleased.



     On a personal side note I must mention, While I will continue to keep writing on this blog as frequently as I can, this will be the last one that I advertise on any of the social media sites. I'm not doing this for a popularity contest nor do I care about having everyone know who I am. I like to keep my magick life private. I am part of coven in which we utilize the techniques I have and will be presenting. Our coven is devoted to our great mother The Morrighan. We are structured in the ways of the ancient priesthoods and practice in secret. We are by no means wiccan which usually accompanies the term coven but we operate in a more ceremonial magick fashion. While our name is out there, as we do a lot of work for our local pagan community, we do not advertise or try to recruit members but we can be found by those who seek hard enough. We are very selective on who joins our coven and members have to have had a calling from the Morrighan. The Morrighan has requested that I put out this becon for myself and for the coven for those that seek the knowledge.

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