Morrigan Academy Podcast S03E03 - What Do I Call My Relationship With the Morrigan?
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[00:00:00] A cara. Welcome back to The Morrigan Academy podcast, where we explore the myths, magic, and mythology of Ireland's great battle goddess. I'm Lora O'Brien, Irish draoi, priest of The Morrigan for over two decades, and your host here on the podcast and at The Morrigan Academy. Two questions that came up in our boot camp this year that I've been chewing on since.
The first was whether you work with The Morrigan or worship her, whether it's both or neither, and whether there's actually a difference between them. And the second question asked whether a person can be her servant and still research, work with, or revere other gods alongside her my short answer to that one was yes, though I said at the time that I'd be wary of calling myself her servant at all, honestly, and I suggested devotee or [00:01:00] dedicant instead.
That's all these words in circulation then, and they all get used as though they mean the same thing. That confusion can do real damage because people who can't name what they're in tend to freeze rather than commit, and I've watched really capable practitioners over the years stall out over a fecking vocabulary problem.
So we're gonna try and sort that out this episode, okay? I've been a priest of The Morrigan since 2004. I hold a master's in Irish regional history, and I spent more than 10 years, managing Cruachan in County Roscommon, which is the home of The Morrigan's cave. That is Rathcroghan.
What follows here is my own sorting of these words, and it's built out of standing in one of these relationships for decades and teaching thousands of people at this point who [00:02:00] stand in the others. Before the vocabulary, there's a story because Irish tradition already handed us a worked example of what happens when a person doesn't know exactly what relationship they're standing in with The Morrigan.
In the Táin Bó Regamna, one of the pre-tales of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Morrigan is going about her own business with cattle, moving between this world and the other, doing her job, with a man, I think it's the Dagda, but there's no proof. With a man along for company who carries a hazel stick and does a bit of the talking.
Although he defers to her throughout, so he's the man. Her chariot in this story is one of my favorite oddities in the whole of the lore since one red horse with a single leg is pulling it, and the shaft of the chariot goes right through the horse to the front of its forehead, and red, this kind of red in our tradition [00:03:00] signals a connection to the Otherworld before you've noticed anything else about it, right?
Now, in the story, Cú Chulainn, the boy, not a big gorram hero, he comes across all of this, and he inserts himself into it. And notice the direction there because she doesn't appear to him. He appears to her. He sticks his oar in, he hasn't a notion who she is at the start. He doesn't know her in human form at all, and it's only when she shifts into a black bird, that he recognizes her at last.
And then he says this. "If only I had known it was you," said Cú Chulainn, "Not this way would we have separated." Now, she's never named specifically outright in the tale. It's a clarifying note that tells us who she is. So she is The Morrigan, the woman mentioned particularly here. And she goes by The Woman in other stories, too.
Last week we talked about the Cath Maige Tuired and the meeting at the Ford of [00:04:00] Unshin, and she is The Woman until she is specifically named in those stories But Cú Chulainn's half of that naming problem costs him, though. She warns him in the Táin Bó Regamna how she'll come against him later. And she does exactly that across the Táin Bó Cúailnge with the Cattle Raid of Cooley.
She comes as an eel at his feet in the ford, as a she-wolf, and as a red-eared white heifer driving cattle through his fight as he's fighting with some other lad, so his mistake was never that he chose the wrong word for what he was in. He didn't know what he was in. He didn't even know he was in anything at all.
He was just doing his thing and feeling entitled to it all. And by the time he did, the shape of it was already set and he was fucked, so we've had five words and we're going to sort through them. And please note that these are my own [00:05:00] definitions rather than definitions handed down in the sources, since the sources are in Old and Middle Irish and none of them use the English vocabulary of 21st century paganism, unfortunately.
We look at worship as the first, right? So worship is the religious register where you approach her as a goddess, honor and revere her, and often keep prayers and a daily devotional rhythm going. Some people hear that word and feel it takes their sovereignty off them. And I'd say that depends entirely on how you're doing it, honestly, because I know people who worship her daily and haven't handed over an inch of themselves in the process.
But again, some people have Christian trauma and,
understandably of course. But the word worship isn't really gonna work for them, and that's grand, working with her is where most people would start out at least, and it's the loosest of the five [00:06:00] by a long shot. You've made contact, and you're in some sort of ongoing exchange. You're bringing something and receiving something because this is a relationship, and you need to be bringing as much as you're expecting,
and it may or may not deepen from there. So you're doing a bit of work, right? There's work to be done. You're doing a bit of work with her. Grand. A devotee or devotee is someone whose relationship has settled into kind of continuity. You've been at this for a while.
You're not shopping around. She has a fixed place in your life and your practice. You have a developed relationship with her, whether it's new or ongoing. And being her devotee doesn't shut the door on researching, honoring, or working with other gods. And honestly, people torture themselves over that really needlessly.
The [00:07:00] Morrigan doesn't love a pick and mix attitude to working with gods, but she's not some kind of jealous god.
That's a bit of a misogynistic reading of her, then maybe a dedicant is a devotee who has made a formal statement of the thing, usually with some kind of dedication, initiation, whether it's a self-initiation or whatever. A few people get together and do a group. Nobody can really initiate you, and that includes me by the way, but nobody can initiate you into a relationship with this goddess.
You can self-initiate or you can have a kind of a spontaneous initiation where it's between you and the goddess, all initiation should be between you and a specific deity. If it's coming from a particular group or a particular person, then you're at naught. And nobody should be between you and your gods, right? But anyway this is dedication, [00:08:00] and it should include terms and a contract that both parties clearly understand.
You get to ask for what you need from a dedication or a contract with The Morrigan just as much as, you agree to do the work that she wants you to do. That's a step up in specificity rather than in some kind of worthiness or hierarchy. Nobody should be reaching for it as a promotion.
It kinda locks you into something. You're entering a contract, basically. Every single person who works with The Morrigan does not have to be in contract with her. But a lot of people do choose it because contract is part of, again, the relationships that we have within the Irish tradition.
It's very common, right? Now, servant or Giolla in Irish is one that I'd be very careful with, and it's why I'd steer [00:09:00] people towards devotee or dedicant instead, there is Irish tradition around gilly or Giolla but it's specifically within the Christian tradition it seems to be,
so again, that's up to you. But the word implies that you've handed over the steering entirely, and there's no sovereignty left on your side of the arrangement, and sovereignty is the ground that this whole tradition stands on, especially with regard to The Morrigan. She's a sovereignty goddess, so a relationship with her that costs you your own sovereignty, I would feel that it's maybe gone wrong somewhere.
Now, everybody's relationship is gonna be different. I'm not trying to make the rules here, but that's my read of it. Whatever name you've put on it, if you are a full servant, then something might be askew, right? There are people who use the word deliberately and precisely and [00:10:00] know exactly what they mean by it, and even in a power exchange context,
and my caution isn't aimed at them . It's aimed at anyone who reached for servant because it sounded like the most committed option on the shelf, right? Rethink that one. The practice this week takes under five minutes, as usual. You can do it standing, waiting for the kettle to boil after you wash your hands when you're going to the bathroom,
if the bathroom is the only place you can get some peace, then you do it in the bathroom, right? But I want you to say one sentence out loud in the present tense, naming where you actually stand today. Roughly, it'll be something like, "Right now I am the Morrigan's blank, and that means I blank."
You can change that. "Right now I am working with the Morrigan, and that means I XYZ," that's the shape of it basically. So fill in the first gap with one of the five words or with a [00:11:00] better word of your own if none of mine will fit. Fill in the second with what that word obliges you to do this week rather than what it obliges you to feel.
I don't wanna base this on your feelings because we kinda get caught up in the importance of it all, which I want to really warn you against. Every single part of working with or for the Morrigan is about responsibility. It's work. None of these titles are supposed to make you feel better about yourself,
so craft your sentence and then listen back to what you've said and check two things. Check whether the word and the obligation actually match each other, because plenty of people will say dedicant and then describe the obligations of somebody who works with her occasionally, and the gap between those two things would be the thing to notice and to correct.[00:12:00]
And then check whether the sentence leaves your own sovereignty standing, and if it doesn't, change the word rather than changing yourself, right? Now, if you're gonna journal about this, here's one prompt for the week. Which of those words did I reach for first, and whose expectation was sitting inside my choice?
These words describe different arrangements rather than five degrees of seriousness or steps on a hierarchical ladder, and the one that you want is whichever one describes what you're actually doing this week. It can change week by week, just choose for this week.
Cú Chulainn's error, one of them, came a long way before any of this. He never worked out that he was standing in a relationship at all, and there's no word that saves you from that particular mistake. So I'm glad you're [00:13:00] here, and I'm glad you're doing this side of the work so you don't do a Cú Chulainn on it, before you go, please have a little think about my book, The Morrigan: Ireland's Goddess. It's out with Llewellyn, and it's fast becoming one of the top-selling books on The Morrigan. There's 12 chapters that take you from the primary sources through to your own practice, and every one of them closes with exercises and journaling prompts, so you're doing something with what you read rather than just reading it.
There's a pronunciation guide, there's a glossary, there's a full bibliography at the back of it. All the source material is there for you to explore at your leisure. And you don't need any previous knowledge of Ireland or Irish mythology or even this goddess to start. I was given one instruction in her cave at Cruachan decades ago, to get real information out there, and that book is the fullest version of it that I've managed yet.
So if you've read it already please [00:14:00] leave a review, even just a few lines because that's how the next person sifting through the nonsense online finds something solid to stand on. You'll find it anywhere books are sold, online, in person, any good bookshop. Until next time, honor the lore, respect The Morrigan, and Slán go Foill.
