MA S03E06 Is the Morrigan My Mother?
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Speaker: [00:00:00] A chara. This is the Morrigan Academy podcast, and I'm Lora O'Brien. And today we're on whether the Mórrígan is your mother. Something I hear a lot, so we're gonna dip into it a little bit today. Plenty of people come to the Mórrígan looking for a mother goddess, and there's a part of it that I can kinda see where they're coming from, to be perfectly honest.
She does turn up when you're at your lowest often, and she doesn't leave even when you give her every reason to. She'll hold you to something when nobody else around you can even be bothered, and something that steady is going to read as maternal if maternal is the only word anyone ever handed you for it.
She's not a mother goddess,
though, in the classic sense. If the mother you're carrying around in your head is the critical type of a one, and you've cast the Mórrígan in that role, then every judgement that mother ever made about you [00:01:00] gets to come
out of a goddess's mouth instead. I spent 10 years managing Cruachan in County Roscommon, the complex that holds the Mórrígan's cave, and I've been a priest of hers since 2004. And I have seen every single type of person come to that cave seeking the Mórrígan. I was there for over a decade. And almost daily I got a front row seat and got to lend an ear to people who came seeking the Mórrígan.
That's a lot of people. It really is So most of what I teach comes out of standing in that landscape first, being part of the guardianship of those sacred sites, the stewardship, not the ownership, but the stewardship
And then standing in the sources because I'm also a historian. But also the [00:02:00] stories of all of those people. The stories of those people who seek her and the stories of those people who have found her and have had experiences with her. So when I talk about the Mórrígan and who and what she is, all of that is coming together in a pretty unique package to be perfectly honest.
I don't know anybody who has done or lived the experiences that I've had with this goddess on all those levels. That's before my own personal experience even kind of kicks in, right?
The source that I'm going to look at today is Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland, and it's R.A.S. Macalister's translation for the Irish Texts Society. And I'm gonna be reading section 338 for you now Eriu and Fotla and Banba, three daughters of Fiachna, son of Delbaeth, son of Ogma. Ernmas, [00:03:00] daughter of Etarlam, was mother of those women, and she was the mother of Fiachna and Ollom.
Ernmas had three other daughters, Badb, Macha, Morrigu, and Ana, of whom are called the Paps of Ana in Urluachair. The Paps of Ana in Urluachair was her seventh daughter. Badb and Neman were the two wives of Net, son of Indui, ~two daughters of Elomar of the Brú, or Elkmar, actually,~ two daughters of Elcmar of the Brug So in this text, Mórrígan is the daughter and Ernmas is the mother.
So the parentage runs the opposite way around to how people usually arrive expecting it. Ernmas is their mammy, in case anybody was picturing a father there, ~you know, ~when we heard about the daughters of Ernmas. And she's the mother to a good many of them besides. This is a mother goddess. Ernmas is a mother goddess specifically.
~Um,~ she is concerned with farming, fertility, [00:04:00] and a few other bits and pieces. ~Um,~ her lore unfortunately is pretty sketchy in what remains to us. Now, if we count the daughters the way the text counts them, we have Ériu, Fotla, and Banba first, then Badb, Macha, and Morrigu, and Anu or Ana becomes the seventh.
The seam of what we're looking at is in who those first three belong to because the same passage calls them the daughters of Fiachna and then makes Ernmas mother to them and to Fiachna both, which leaves her mother to her own son's daughters. That's what a medieval compilation looks like from the inside, where scribes have stacked one version on top of another and kinda left those seams showing.
And I'd not have anyone correct that seam out for the sake of neatness. There, ~uh,~ when we follow in these seams, these threads in the old lore, there's often quite a rich source that runs [00:05:00] behind them, but it can be really confusing And to add into that, you get a different shape of all of this depending on which copy of this text you're holding, which translation you're holding, which is why the requests for a family tree of the Tuatha Dé Danann always get a firm no from me because there's no definitive answer to all of it, to be perfectly honest.
You're only guessing ~at,~ at some of it, parts of it. But then we get to the last line that we looked at. Badb, who has just been given to you as the daughter of Ernmas, turns up again as one of the two wives of Net and a daughter of Elcmar of the Brug, which Macalister prints as Elemar, but Elcmar is the usual version
The other versions of that line, ~uh,~ also translated by Macalister, give Fea and Neman as Net's wives and Elcmar's daughters. So in this one, Badb has taken Fea's place. Macalister noticed the tangle himself. In his notes on [00:06:00] the text, he theorises from the genealogies that the older pairing was Badb and Anand on their own, with Macha added as a third later on, since Macha had her own centre at Armagh before any of this got written down.
So that's a scholar looking at the seams the way I'm asking you to read them, to try and kind of tease them out, tease them apart. So you're in good company if the family tree won't sit still for you because it's shifting and changing all the time, no matter what source you're looking at. That's normal, and it's normal for everybody right up to the top scholars that have ever looked at this.
And then there's Ana or Anu in the same line. So the Paps of Anu are a small mountain range in County Kerry shaped like breasts, which is what pap means, and they carry this goddess's name on the landscape itself. I've been there, and I've met her. ~She is a sovereignty goddess for certain, um, an ancestral goddess.~
~She has very strong Cailleach energy, and she came to me in the form and function of the Cailleach~ She's a sovereignty goddess for certain. She came to me in the form and function of the Cailleach. She [00:07:00] has huge ancestral energy, and she's tied very tightly to that one place in my experience. This is not from a source.
This is my own personal lived experience. ~She's not the Mórrígan that I'm dedi-dedicated to, definitely.~ She's not the Mórrígan that I'm dedicated to, definitely, as I understand it and as she presented herself to me that day. Now, I've been back since and had the same experience. So take that as you will.
Everybody's experience might be different. She might present different faces or different forms. I don't know. I do work with the Cailleach, so maybe that's who just showed up that day. But she was calling herself Anu as well
So again, take it as you find it because now you've got the same information that I have. And with all of this stuff, you have to make your own decisions because elsewhere Anu is named as the Mórrígan. But my understanding is that in that context, the Mórrígan is the [00:08:00] title the Mórrígan, the Great Queen, not the name Mórrígan.
So Mórrígan and Anu sit side by side in that line as two separate daughters, and Macalister's own note says perhaps that's by inadvertence since, as I mentioned, elsewhere in the same work, the Morrigu or Mórrígan's name was Anand. He prints what the manuscripts say rather than choosing or deleting or neatening for you.
And an editor who tidies it takes that evidence away with the mess. Any teacher who presents you with a clear family line or a clear definitive answer on this is talking shite, honestly. Because the mess is the part that tells you that the scribes disagreed. It tells you that this is an ancient text that was copied, not just the version that we have that has survived to this day, this manuscript, which is ancient in its own right, but that it was copied from older sources, whether [00:09:00] that's oral tradition and storytelling lore, probably originally it was, and then into various manuscripts which have been copied by copy by copy by copy, right?
So the Mórrígan does have children in the lore, mind you, and I'm not going to pretend that she doesn't. One version of this same text makes her the mother of her own father's sons. We have that coming in again. So Brian, Iucharba, and Iuchair. And her son Méiche is killed by Dian Cécht over the serpents in his three hearts.
So you could say she has a rake of kids, honestly. But none of them puts her in a mother goddess role. ~It's like her being, you know, styled as a, as...~ It's like her being styled as a sex goddess when she actually has sex with her husband once, and then there's a whole sovereignty ritual thing going on where she offers sex to somebody else who was refused, who she knew would refuse.
Anyway, that's a diversion. Definitely check out other podcasts for more on that, and, ~uh,~ comment below if you'd like to hear more [00:10:00] on that, ~um,~ in the future. But anyway, Macha is the sister that scholarship keeps casting as a mother goddess with the twins she bears at the end of that race. And I believe Macha to be very much the queen, a great queen, in the same way Medb is.
She, Macha is a queen of Ulster. Medb is a queen of Connacht. And in my experience, those goddesses are more alike than either of them have a relationship with Na Mórrígna, ~the,~ the great queens that we would know as the Mórrígna
~Now, the name that you give ... ~Now, the name that you give a relationship decides which sentences you're gonna accept inside it, and how it looks, and shapes that relationship, to be perfectly honest. Because as humans, we have a tendency towards bias. We have ~a, ~a tendency towards confirmation bias. We have a tendency towards observational bias.
We have a whole brain [00:11:00] shortcut system called heuristics. We have all of these things going on. We project a lot of our stuff, to be perfectly honest. This is why it's so important to me that I have that experience of being able to double check experiences that I was having ~with ... check them~ against the experiences of so many people from all over the world, from all different races, walks of life, cultures, communities, levels of interest, you know, all of these things, ~um,~ as they showed up at the cave.
But if you have cast the Mórrígan as your mother, then you've handed her a script, and she doesn't always follow that script, in fairness. But you're going to see what you want to see, honestly. And it's a script that you learned somewhere else. So you get the sentence that says she's disappointed in you.
You get the one that says you're doing it wrong, or that you were never the one she wanted, or that she's gone quiet because [00:12:00] you're not worth the bother. Now, some of us had very loving mothers, and you know, more power to your elbow for that. But some of us never felt we were enough for our mothers. So from what I can see, and it's one of the reasons that I kind of push back on this, the Mórrígan is your mother, because that is so fraught for so many people.
And I think the Mórrígan deserves better. I think she deserves a clear path and a clear run that's not all tied up with your mother issues. Now, those are the issues that your mother caused you, by the way, not anything that you did wrong. Let me just be very clear on that.
~Let me just be very clear on that. ~My students, and I have had thousands of students over the years now at this point, but my students tell me that they can't separate her voice from their own thoughts. And when we go looking together, we often find a third voice, the one that got installed a very long time ago, and the goddess is only the newest thing it's found to speak through.
And that's the voice of [00:13:00] your mother. ~She does see clearly. Clear sight and condemnation. ~She does see clearly, but clear sight and condemnation are two entirely separate operations, however alike the two of them can feel from the inside. So when you are hearing the voice of the Mórrígan or having an experience with the Mórrígan, run it up against this idea of the Mórrígan as your mother
~run it up against this idea of the Mórrígan as your mother~ because something that comes from her gives you something to do about it. Where a sentence that comes from the mother in your head gives you a verdict and leaves you standing there holding it. And that has been the clearest differentiation and delineation for me.
The Mórrígan gives you work to do. And it's such a true test. It's not always, not 100%, but the vast, vast majority of true communication from the Mórrígan that I have seen, that I have observed, that I have tested and queried over [00:14:00] decades of working with this goddess is the work that she's giving you. So run any communication or any feelings you're getting about the Mórrígan against that test.
Is it a verdict on you or a piece of work for you to do? ~Now sometimes, I'm gonna be clear about this as well.~
~Now ~I'm gonna be clear about this as well. Sometimes she will give you ~a,~ a judgement. She is a Brehon. She's a satirist. She does make judgements. I'm not saying she doesn't. But it never comes on its own. It points you in the direction of, you know, if there is something that you have been failing at. And this is honestly kind of next level.
This is not beginner stuff with the Mórrígan. This is where your relationship is so well established, it's almost like shorthand, okay? Because she will actually give you ... If there is a judgement, she will give you a piece of work that you need to do [00:15:00] to fix that shit. And I don't know how much clearer to say it.
Is it work or is it fear? Is it projection? Is it that little voice in your head ~that's not actually the Mórrígan's? Okay. So~
That's not actually the Mórrígan's because some of the worst crap that I've seen people carry in her name turned out on inspection to be a parent's voice with a fucking crow on its shoulder. Now, I'd be the last one in this world or any other to sell you the Mórrígan as a soft goddess, to sell you on that idea.
She has better things to be doing than following you around narrating your inadequacies. That's not her job. She has no interest in that. You are not important enough. I'm not important enough for her to be some kind of nagging mother. And when you hand her that job, she can't get on with the work with you because you're too busy defending yourself against something that she never [00:16:00] said.
So call the relationship whatever you like in your own head. If mother is the only word you've been given for something that stays, then use it. And I won't be chasing you about the word, but understand what you're doing. And if the version of the Mórrígan that you have feels like some kind of loving, caring, wonderful, I've never had this in my life mother goddess, really sit with that as well because that's the other side of the same coin.
It might not be a disapproving mother's voice in your head. It might be you seeking out the thing that you never had or needed more of or was in your life and has been lost to you for whatever reason. So just be really careful. If there's not work involved, it's probably not the Mórrígan. Now, right relationship cuts both ways on this.
You can test the work that you're given. You can test the sentence. You can test the impression that you get of the Mórrígan against the lore yourself rather than taking anybody's word [00:17:00] for what she said, and that includes mine. ~Um, a teacher's say so~
~And that includes mine because ~any teacher say so is a place to ~start reading and to~ start reading and practicing for yourself rather than a place to stop. Please don't ever stop at anything that I tell you. Really test this for yourself. So the practice this week is to catch one judgement that you've put in her mouth and then find out where it actually came from.
So this is not therapy. Please see a therapist if you need one. Please seek professional support if you need that. But the practice that I do regularly, which I'm gonna share with you right now, which is very, very helpful, is pick a day, any day this week, and carry something that you can write on. ~Uh,~ the notes app on your phone will do, a little notebook, back of a receipt, whatever it is, but just carry it with you for the day.
And through that day, listen for any sentence in your own head that begins with she wants, or she thinks, or she's disappointed, or she's gone. And when you catch one, write it [00:18:00] down in the exact words that it arrived in. Don't tidy it. The tidy version,
the
Speaker: qualified version is a different sentence, and it won't test the same.
So I want the raw version, even if it's difficult to write down. Then that evening, take the page and go through it one line at a time with two questions. First, where have I heard this sentence before, and whose voice is it in when I say it out loud? And second, is there anything in the lore I've actually read that has her saying this about anybody or acting in this way about anybody?
And then you sort them. The sentences that survive both questions stay, but I would even question that because it could be just something that you're, you know, not consciously aware of. Always run it through the work test as well, but it's a starting place at least, right? The ones that come in from somewhere else, though, get a line drawn through them, scribble them out.
Have at it, rip up the paper, whatever it is. And [00:19:00] say her name once when you're finished. Clarify that communication with her. Reopen that channel now that it's clearer So sorting through them honestly is plenty for the week. If you catch seven lines in a day, take the one that stings the most and leave the rest for another time.
Don't be putting too much pressure on yourself, right? ~You ~With this work, it's really important that you take your time and you process it fully. So we have a little journal prompt as usual. Here's one to write on this week. If the harshest thing I believe she said about me was never said by her, who did say it?
And what have I been getting out of keeping it? And obviously this is whether she speaks to you specifically or, you know, ~you,~ you get an impression or this is just communication that you have received from her, divination, anything like that. So to recap, the Mórrígan is a daughter of Ernmas in the lore, and she's [00:20:00] not a mother goddess.
Whatever children the scribes give her, there's, again, there's work involved in that. And the judgements that you've been attributing to her belong to whoever actually made them. So go to morrigan.academy/guide for your free guide, Is the Morrigan Calling You? And it'll walk you through the signs of how to open up that communication with her fresh.
~Um,~ but before you go, ~um,~ I'd love you to have a little think about my book, The Morrigan: Ireland's Goddess. It's out with Llewellyn. ~And if you've read it and~
If you've read it already, I'd love to get a review off you, please. If you haven't reviewed it, please, please, please review it. It really, really helps an author when you review their books. Even two or three lines of one, because that's how the next person sifting through the nonsense online finds something solid to stand on.
Please read it. Please review it. Please recommend it. All of those things. ~Um,~ and if you haven't read it, you can get it wherever you get your books. Go online, go [00:21:00] into your local bookshop. I'm actually getting pictures from all over the country here in Ireland. It seems to have finally hit the Irish shelves as something that is popular and worth carrying, which is great.
So I love seeing pictures. Send me pictures on Instagram, ~um,~ of you with the Mórrígan book. So until next time, honour the lore, respect the Mórrígan, and Slán go fóill.
