Going with the Flow

I came to The Morrigan the same way I come to all of the most important things in my life – confused fits and starts, half dragged and clinging to barren branches of false identity in a bid to avoid the discomfort of *growth*. Introverted by nature, I’ve always leaned towards solitary practice. The idea of meet ups and pagan festivals brought a vague dread to mind; after all, if I talk to other folks walking this same walk, they might just see me for the “fraud” I am.

But of course, our queen brooks no such silliness. Subtlety is rarely a part of her arsenal.

In my mid twenties, she beckoned me. At first, it was a gentle nudge. And then, when I ignored the waterfall of signs falling down over my head, she seized me like a petulant cub. My ignorant response was to make to strike a deal – something profoundly binding.

It was the sort of thing many experienced practitioners would strongly warn against. But see, I’d been avoiding her, running away, and so I hadn’t read the sorts of dire, fear-based warnings against entanglements with Na Morrigna that are littered like ill omens across the internet.

In my youthful stubbornness, I assumed that she wouldn’t fulfill her end of the bargain, and that would be that. Maybe, I reasoned, I’d go seeking out some sort of mild-mannered goddess of wheat or hearthfire or songbirds. That was more my speed, right?

No doubt anyone acquainted with our lady is chuckling by now.

She gave me what I asked for. In turn, I’m happily under her tutelage, her carefully critical eye. My queen has a propensity for kicking my metaphorical ass whenever I start getting too complacent.

This latest ass kicking led me straight to this newfound flock, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

I’m looking forward to learning, growing, laughing, and listening. To seeing the many kinds of people She calls to her purpose.

In my mind’s eye, I picture all of Her followers as river stones – an endless array of colors, textures, sizes, ages, and origins, but each one of us worn down smooth by the relentless waters of life. We’re still here, aren’t we? Even worn down, I recognize a glimmer of resilience in every follower I meet.

I don’t know where the current is taking us all, but the trip should be interesting.

Corvids are best Vids

Setting our Intentions

This blog will serve as the backbone of our work, the place where the podcast and its contributors offer up their thoughts, purposes, struggles and experiences with becoming more fully themselves, but also more fully engaged in their spiritual calling to serve The Morrigan.

The first episode of the podcast will coincide with the Celtic New Year, known by most as Halloween, but traditionally by the Ancient Celts and most if not all modern Pagans, Witches and Wiccan folk as “Samhain.”

It is the time of year when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest and we are called to remember our ancestors, our fallen and the place that death and loss play in our lives.

It is a time of mourning, celebration, respect, divination, release and devotion. It is also a time of repose, consideration and aligning one with purpose. In that fallow darkness, things are liminal; in flux and preparing for the year a head. An excellent time in which to rededicate oneself, to set one’s intentions for the following year.

To the contributor’s mind, it seemed a perfect time to launch this podcast. The perfect time to offer up the labor contained to their Patron: The Morrigan and begin what they each hope will be empowering to themselves, each other and their fellow members of what this author likes to call the, “Tuatha de Morrigu,” the children/tribe of The Morrigan.

The schedule of episodes after the initial offering, will be monthly, on or in conjunction with the New Moon each month as well as one episode to coincide with the Quarter Days, High Holidays, as well as the Cross Quarter Days.

For those unfamiliar with that terminology we offer this graphic as a basic explanation.

credit: https://www.technicallyadults.com

Along the left side of our home page, you will see a widget for upcoming events, should you chose to subscribe, it will provide a quick guide to follow about our scheduled releases of podcasts.

The authors hope, you will join them on this journey.

The Call and A 3-Fold Purpose

I find it fitting to make my first blog post on the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox. While it is 6 weeks beyond the first of the harvest season, it is also 6 weeks to Samhain. It is, for me, a time to be grateful and give thanks for the blessings in my life but also to look ahead to the coming end of the year and to let go of those things that no longer serve my higher purpose.

Growing up as a “motherless” child, I have always had difficulty connecting with women. Whether that be with friends or sisters, my own absent biological mother or the narcissistic drama that is my stepmother.

The foundation of who I am was built on uneven ground. (which I am sure I will go more in depth on as I continue to work through it.) So it is no wonder that I reached adulthood naive, idealistic and completely ill prepared to regulate myself let alone navigate the world around me. I thought I was ready to take on the world, to finally make the life I want.

And then the mental illness hit. Depression at first, then a diagnosis of Bi Polar II followed closely by Anxiety. And finally – fear. Crippling Fear of rejection. Fear – that all that is not perfected or accepted by others is not worthy at all.

I have never fully accepted myself. As I am. I’ve never been good enough – for myself. I’ve always disapproved of myself in one way or another. I struggled for so many years to be accepted by others – to anticipate what others wanted, looked for in a friend or a lover, a family member and especially a daughter – that every rejection real and imagined reduced me to unworthy.

You wouldn’t think – maybe – that someone so full of self doubt and loathing would be called by The Morrigan. But I was. Early on, still fresh from the home nest, the visions and dreams came. All the signs were there but still I resisted. I was… afraid. I second guessed my worthiness.

A couple of years went by before I came to an understanding that I didn’t have to be a final product. She obviously saw something that – at that time – I didn’t. And She still wanted me. I have heard stories of the Call for others being a sort of “trial by fire”. Where you are dragged along by the scruff of your neck whether you like it or not.

My Call was much more gentle. She bid her time with me – ever present – but letting me feel I earned Her respect so that I felt worthy of Her. It’s the one thing in my life that I have never since doubted. Because every. single. time. I have fallen or I have been knocked down, I have gotten back up to fight again. I have never given up fighting for my mental health, the life I have / want, or my authentic self.

My relationship to The Morrigan has always been one of Teacher/student. She teaches. I learn. She knocks me on my ass and I get back up swinging fists of fury. She’s been with me for 20 years but She will always be my teacher.

My podcast mates each have their own personal journey. I cannot speak to why and how they have come to this place; that is for each of them to reflect on and share as they wish. What I do know is that we each have a story and a perspective worth understanding and learning from. Without a doubt, the Attempting Murder Podcast and blog will be a spiritually deepening experience for me.

Ultimately, I start here with a 3-fold purpose: to connect with myself authentically; to focus my spiritual work with and for The Morrigan; and to reach out to the greater community to not only share of myself but to commune together. Attempting Murder – as it were.

Amazing Crow Science

Rounding Out the Year – Equinox 2019

I thought about posting a brief biography or snapshot of myself as pertains directly to this blog, this podcast and in the end I opted instead to speak on myself in the present tense. I could get into my pagan pedigree, discuss the schools of both pagan worship and even my studies in esoterica and witchcraft, but at the end of the day it is all just so much fluff.

There was a time I cared about those things, probably more deeply that I aught to have, but I did. I was quick in online commentary, connections and conversations to flip out my “cred card,” but at this stage of the game I don’t give a fuck.

This blog and this podcast are not about much of that at all. At least not in function. They’re not why I am doing this, not why I am here. I am here, because I am standing at a very real emotional and spiritual crossroads, one where I was prodded and I believe mystically, divinely coaxed into choosing two companions for the next leg of my journey.

These two companions are my co-authors and editors here as well as my co-hosts for the upcoming podcast that will accompany this site.

It has largely been my experience that Divine interactions are fraught, painful, messy things that come on me like Yahweh tackling Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. I am often left with a screaming existential headache and a sense I have lost my agency.

But the path to this point, meaning the last year or so has been a slow degradation of my emotional state, my financial state and literally my life. But I asked for it.

I conducted the first ritual in nearly a decade last Samhain. And in it I begged, pleaded and sobbed with my Patron – The Morrigan to help me get my ass right with the world, to get my ass right with myself and to just plain get my ass right.

I had fallen off any pretense of religion, any practice or purposeful work at being a being of spirit instead of a being of things and doings. I knew better, but I also didn’t. Trust is an issue I struggle with all the time and as I am coming to realize it is at the crux of my “shamanic illness,” that Karma Drama I was born into this life and I haven’t really figured out even yet, at 51 years of age how to get down that path with resolution or even empowerment in mind.

I always take detours, I always get stuck, I may roll along for a bit, but I will and do eventually fall off the straight and narrow.

Of course I’d argue, that is Her intention.

With the advent of the internet it is easy to imagine that those who find themselves “God Ridden,” by The Morrigan as common. As replete in the pagan community, so much so that she could be arguably considered a “Stock” Goddess of choice for the newly minted witches and neo-pagans.

But I don’t believe that. In the three decades of the Internet and working my way through paganism via that path since its inception I know that isn’t true. There are a good few of us, and maybe more all the time, but I am guessing that too has a spiritual purpose that we collectively – Tuatha de Morrigu have yet to really acknowledge or swallow.

Some of that is the disparity in how we all chose to worship, the disparity in how we tend to view our Patron and the disparity that a life lived both entirely in the public eye and utterly isolated creates.

Online spaces become fighting grounds were all manner of personal gnosis and dogma become bones of contention on which we and plenty of other unrelated pagans argue over. It is in my head, stupid. Fucking dumb really.

It like most everything we deal with on the daily just obscures our view, limits our possibilities and ties us down with prejudice and ignorance.

Look there, I went on a rant… big surprise… not really.

The point is or more honestly, getting back to the topic of this post…

I am fucked up. Right now, my life is a flaming banner on a bloody field. I am bleeding my life away because I am a human. And because I invited my Patron to move me, kicking and screaming if need be, to the place I needed to be.

That movement has seen me enter into some of the most damaging and stupid choices of my life. I am in tax trouble with the IRS and no way out right now. I also quit my job, fucked myself out of my IRA, and owe probs close to a hundred thousand dollars out of pocket to any number of entities in the corporate and governmental spheres.

I am right now living on foodstamps and by the good graces of my parents. As some of you are certainly familiar with – both things come with costs, though they may be hidden ones, emotional ones and traumatic ones, when you paint yourself into the corner I have you are left with choosing trauma over dying… at least for a while.

I quit my job, it was literally making me sicker, as I suffer with fibromyalgia and have not yet, nor plan to seek disability for it. But I knew, my days were numbered at my job. Every day was a fight against chronic pain, anxiety and bone deep exhaustion.

And in the wake of that choice, when for a few days I felt high on life because I wasn’t sobbing myself to work everyday in the 25 mile commute, I got an interesting discord call from a woman I had only been titularly introduced to. She is one of the voices here. That Discord call has blossomed, and it has renewed a sense of connection to the divine that I can’t really explain in terms that don’t make me sound like Marianne Williamson or Miss Cleo.

Our stories will emerge by and by.
You who care to follow us will be slowly introduced, to each of us, to our quirks, our truths, our struggles and our building purpose, which I think it is fairly accurate to say – we’re each trying to figure out in our own way.

My blog posts are probably always going to include music. Music is a universal for me, the only thing that I can turn to consistently for relief from the static, the feedback and the very real struggle that every day presents.

I leave you to mull my post and with the following song to ponder and experience. It says more about me right now than I can.

Sia – Alive