MA S03E05: Morrigan Devotion Without Burnout
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[00:00:00] Fáilte and welcome back to the Morrigan Academy Podcast. I'm Lora O'Brien, and each week we take one thing about Ireland's great battle goddess and go to the Irish sources for it and come back out with something that you can practically do Now, somebody asked me during the Mórrígan Intensive Bootcamp this year about burning yourself out to meet the Mórrígan's requests.
She'd read the same thing from other people, and that the work with her had taken a great deal out of them. Her question was whether that's part of what's required when the Mórrígan calls you and you say yes, or whether it was a choice that those people made. So we're gonna deal with that today. We all have trouble with focus, and we all have trouble with stress and burnout, of course.
Well, maybe not all of us. I certainly do. Maybe you do as well. But maybe you're one of the few people in my life who has [00:01:00] escaped it, and I'm delighted for you if that's the case. But it's worth having in your back pocket in case you hit a patch of it later. So I've been in a dedicated relationship with the Mórrígan since 2004, and I've written eight books on Irish tradition so far, another one in the works.
And I've taught thousands of students through the Irish Pagan School and the Mórrígan Academy programs. The way I teach is through the three pillars model, which is we learn, we experience, we integrate. And it's the integrating where people ~kind of ~come unstuck. So that's where we're going today. Now, there's no myth that answers this one clearly, so we're gonna go to the ground instead to a piece of archeology.
A scholar up in Sligo called Marian Dowd, in her book, The Archaeology of Caves in Ireland, was writing about the votive deposits of Glencurrin Cave in County Clare. And here's what she says, quote, " The quality of deposits and [00:02:00] range of radiocarbon dates may indicate that the cave was a focus for votive deposition over a prolonged period, though alternatively, ceremonies may have been infrequent but intense."
End quote. Now, that's typical of a scholar being quite careful about her own material and what it can and can't tell her. And I borrow the two readings she's holding open there, honestly. So either people came back to that cave over and over again across a long stretch of time, or they come rarely and made something enormous of it when they did.
Now, the archeology itself can't settle which of those it was, and Daud is honest enough to say so, which is good scholarship, right? ~But you can sell it-- but ~you can settle it for your own practice, though, because you already know which of the two you've been running. And I [00:03:00] would hazard a guess that only one of those two is still running years from now.
So here's the pattern, and you'll know within just a line or two whether it's yours or not, whether I'm talking out my hole, who knows. You make your own choices. I'm not the boss of you, right? But it is my experience that a lot of people make their devotions far too complicated, and you might make big promises with them, and then you break the promises through overwhelm or just ordinary busyness, and down you go into this spiral of guilt and shame and worry over the whole thing.
And look, please don't do that to yourself. Over at the Irish Pagan School, we just finished a whole Moon Bootcamp and Find Your Way Back program, which is all about, ~like,~ taking that minimum viable practice and making your spiritual, building your spirituality around it. Because it's so important that we don't just decide these big grand gestures that are only going to be [00:04:00] possible on our best days or our best weeks.
What we want to be doing is making spirituality, making spiritual choices, making devotional acts that are suitable for the worst days we're going to have, right? So start instead with what I always call the minimum viable act.
And I do mean the absolute minimum. So it really can be as simple as stopping in front of your altar, if you even have an altar, or just a space that you have dedicated to this work, and taking three deep breaths. That's a minimum viable act. You're lighting a candle and standing with it for one minute.
That's another. Saying her name, literally learning how to pronounce Mórrígan, Great Queen. That's another one, and saying it every single day. You could even take a leaf out of my partner Jon's book and give The Morrigan a finger gun salute on your way past each day. I wish I was joking, honestly. He's a [00:05:00] Dagda man, and that's the sort of carry on you get when you live with a Dagda man.
I don't actually recommend it. But anyway, the trick that makes any of this stick is hooking it onto something that you're already doing every day without thinking about it. So your first cup of tea or coffee in the morning, that's a good one. Most of us would have ... Or a first drink of water, whatever you're having to drink first thing in the morning, you take it over and you drink it by the altar with your attention on one thing that you can see there.
And look, your altar could be as simple as a feather on your window ledge. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be anything expensive. It doesn't have to be elaborate. ~Um, ~I have multiple things about creating altars, both through the Irish Pagan School and here on The Morrigan Academy content. So you take whatever your first drink of the day, and you literally have it there with The Morrigan.
Now, if your executive function is having a hard [00:06:00] month of it, go smaller again. Is there something that you're already doing every single day, however rough things get? Because there is. There's something we all do every single day, and that's having a, a pee. Our first pee, right? So you put a Post-it note on the bathroom mirror or on the back of the toilet door with her name on it, and that's the first visit of the day.
And you say her name, and that's a devotion. That's it. It can literally be that simple. The whole point is to have a minimum viable practice that you're doing every day. Now, every day is ideal, but if you miss a day, don't waste a second worrying over it. Just try not to miss two days in a row ~Um, ~I do take a day off myself, and if I do, ~you know, ~if I'm sick or if I'm busy or whatever, ~um,~ I don't do my devotionals every single day.
Nobody expects perfection, right? But my rule for [00:07:00] myself, and the one that I would communicate to my students and my listeners, if you are of a mind to listen to me, is don't miss two days. You do the one thing, a minute or two of it, and then you do it again tomorrow. And if you miss a day, grand. No guilt, no shame, just get back on it and just don't miss two days, right?
That's what the floor is for. There's a baseline underneath you then, and you can step back onto it however elaborate a practice can get later on. You can absolutely add things onto this, but the point is to try and build this practice. And look, it might never turn into a habit because for those of us of the neurodivergent, ~uh,~ persuasion, habits are quite difficult, right?
And it doesn't matter if you're doing it for 20 days or 70 days, it's never going to be just a second nature kind of a habit to us. That's grand. ~This, it... Like, ~a mindful chosen practice is just as effective, if not more so, dare I say it, right? [00:08:00] But that's it. That's the discipline. You do the one thing, one minute, two minutes, whatever it is, and then you do it again tomorrow.
~Um, ~and No matter how elaborate your practice actually gets then on top of that, as I said, even if life goes really badly sideways, you can step off the path, you can fall into a hole. Whatever is happening in your life, it's happened to the best of us, right? But you're always only one small act from getting back on the path.
Now, apart from Samhain or maybe the dark of the moon, the Morrigan doesn't seem to have any great requirements beyond consistency with regard to, ~like,~ time and what, ~um,~ or when really things have to happen. So set a schedule that suits the life that you actually have rather than the one you'd have if you were a different person with a different ~n- ~nervous system and different responsibilities, right?
Aspirations are all well and good, but we want to make sure that this is realistic. [00:09:00] So for those of you who are neurodivergent like me, I want to take that one step further. My entire family is neurodivergent, and that's just the way it is. And actually, I read a report recently that the latest ~resea- ~research shows that autism is actually genetic.
So it does run in families. So if you are or if somebody in your family is, maybe have a little think about that for yourself, because I don't think divergence is actually atypical. I am getting to the point where I'm wondering if what was called neuro ... Uh, what even was it called? I don't even know what a neuro- neurotypical.
What was called neurotypical. I'm not even gonna edit that out. What was called neurotypical, is actually typical. ~I, ~I don't believe that. I think that neurodivergence or what we call neurodivergence is actually much more common than anybody has thought, right? Anyway, ~um,~ this is what happens when you're a ~neuro- ~neurodivergent, is, ~uh,~ you go on tangents all [00:10:00] over the place, right?
Anyway, it also happens when you're Irish. But depending on your particular flavor of it, you may never form habits, as I said, the way other people describe forming them. And that's grand, because what we're doing here is choosing this one small act deliberately over and over again as part of an ordinary day.
When you drift off, it's like meditation or journeying. People say that they can't do it because they're neurodivergent because they can't get a blank mind. Bullshit. You don't need a blank mind. All you need is when inevitably you drift off, whether it's your practice or your meditation, you just bring it back.
That is literally the practice. Not the perfection, not the guru sitting on a mountainside ~wh- you know, ~who has all their spirituality all sorted out. I certainly fucking don't, and I've been doing it for thirty years, right? More than thirty years now. I have to stop saying thirty years. It is actually much more than thirty years.
When you start this practice, it kinda should be something of a challenge to start and to keep going, right? As minimum viable as it is, [00:11:00] there has to be some kind of like little offerings. So that's gonna depend entirely on you. So if I'm talking about a ~tiny, ~tiny practice, and you can do it without even blipping on it, and it just becomes second nature to you, and you do happen to have that kind of brain or nature, grand.
Push it up a notch. Make it a little bit harder for yourself, and just get on the edge of that challenge. So it's a tiny bit taxing to do every day, but not enough that you can't do it on your worst day. Okay? So the practice that we're talking about this week is to name your minimum viable devotion and then hold it for seven days.
So first, pick the thing that you already do every day and never skip. Could be going to the kettle, it could be pouring a glass of water, ~um,~ it could be your first coffee, it could be brushing your teeth, it could be feeding the dog or the cat. ~Um, ~be honest about which one it actually is rather than the one you'd like it to be.
~Um, ~and then second, pick one act that takes under [00:12:00] two minutes. And again, ~if,~ if this is gonna be super easy for you, push it a little bit. But I would actually start with these seven days and ~just pick something So ~pick something that takes under two minutes, whether that is saying her name, taking three breaths in front of the altar, lighting a candle and standing beside it, grounding yourself.
Just pick one thing, then write it down as one sentence in the present tense. So when the kettle goes on, I say her name. Then stick that sentence physically to the place that it happens on a Post-it note, however you do that, because your future self at seven in the morning isn't gonna remember a thing that you decided tonight necessarily.
Again, some people do, some people don't. But let's make it super, super easier for yourself. And then you do it for seven days. If you miss one, you pick it straight back up the following day without a word of commentary to yourself about it. You haven't failed. You haven't done anything wrong. These things happen.
Missing one day is nothing at all. ~Missing two day in a t- but ~missing two days in a row because [00:13:00] you're overwhelmed with guilt and shame because you fecked up, that is how a practice might end. Okay? And then after your seven days, this little prompt might help you just to reflect and to integrate. As I said, the integration into your life is actually the important part of this podcast.
So the prompt would be, what did I add to my practice out of doubt rather than out of wanting to, and what would be left standing if I took it back out? So trying to get your practice down to that minimum viable essence, the essential elements of that, of your own spirituality. So we're setting a floor rather than a ceiling because the practice that survives a bad month is the one that you can do on your worst day.
You can keep going, and it won't ever leave you. If you'd sooner not build that floor on your own, you can take the free five-day challenge [00:14:00] over at morrigan.academy/challenge, and it'll walk you through building one. That's five days done out of the seven of this little practice that we're talking about building, this week's work. Now, before you go, the book, The Morrigan, Ireland's Goddess, is out with Llewellyn. At the back of it, there's a bibliography lining up with every footnote. There's a glossary.
There's an index for the names. There's a resources guide pointing you to the manuscripts and the stories inside them. So every source that I've worked from is sitting there for you to go and check yourself. Please do check my work. And you'll get it wherever you get your books. So it's available everywhere.
It's published through Llewellyn, as I said. Please, please, please, please, please leave a review. And until next time, honor the Lore, respect The Morrigan, and slán go fóill.
