Irish-American Witchcraft: Finding the Morrigan in Connecticut

I spent the second weekend of June – more properly from that Thursday through Sunday – at the third annual Morrigan’s Call Retreat in Connecticut. Like each previous year the Retreat was filled with a sense of many people on diverse paths coming together for a common purpose, and like other years it was both a lot of hard work and brought a strong sense of fulfillment. Unlike past years there were some unique challenges this time and some special opportunities for community building.

I may be biased of course, since I have been part of the Retreat since the beginning and am committed to its yearly success, but I think this year we had an exceptional line-up of presenters for workshops. There were the usual suspects which include myself and Stephanie Woodfield, as well as Ed Rickey discussing Men and the Morrigan, Mel Legaspi-Seils teaching basic self defense, Gina Martini who took on both Death Dula and Blood Magic and Cori Burke handling a class on Grounding. For the second year we also had another author of a Morrigan book, Morpheus Ravenna who flew out from California to teach with us. We also had Segomaros Widugeni – who I consider the expert on modern Gaulish paganism – travelling to join us and teach about Gaulish Sovereignty as well as Lora O’Brien who came from Ireland to teach us about Meave of Connacht, the Otherworld, and Cursing in Irish tradition. The Retreat included a panel discussion with many of these speakers on it discussing the Morrigan and answering questions.

There was a community temple, assembled piece by piece from items brought by different people: tapestries, statues, offering bowls, artwork. The temple was blessed in a public ceremony with prayer and offerings to each deity and spirit invited into it. This year we also had a selection of small prayer cards for several of the deities, which were free for people to take if they wanted.

Each of the main days of the Retreat – Friday, Saturday, Sunday – there was also a ritual dedicated to a different one of the Morrigans, beginning with Badb, then Anu, and finally Macha. I look forward to helping however I can with these rituals every year, as I see this as part of my service both to Macha and to the other two who I am not explicitly dedicated to but who I nonetheless feel a strong connection with. This year we had the highest number of attendees we’ve ever had and that bought with it some unanticipated needs to adjust the rituals. When you’re used to planning and executing for 30 to 60 people and you have closer to 100, it really does make a huge difference, but while the first ritual had some complications I think we bounced back and found ways to adjust.

So that’s the basics of what the Retreat was and what it offered to people. I like to think, or at least hope, that it continues to be a place that brings people together across vast chasms of religious and spiritual differences to unite in learning about and honoring a deity we all want to connect with. Ultimately no matter what our differences are, our perspectives, our paths, we do all share at least that much common ground. And we are all seeking to find the Morrigan and related Goddesses known by that title here in America.

In a more personal vein I found the Retreat to be both the amazing experience it always is for me and also exceptionally challenging this year. I reconnected with some friends from past years and made some new ones, as well as getting a chance to meet in real life several people I have been friends with online for a while. I had the opportunity with a fellow priestess to preform a baby blessing, a truly magical ritual to be part of. I met a baby flying squirrel, courtesy of an animal rehabber, as well as a baby possum, experiences which were oddly grounding in the midst of a lot of high energy. And I was blessed with some amazing discussions about the Morrigan, magic, and life.

On the less positive end, a storm system passing through meant I ended up with a migraine on Saturday which had me flat on my back for a big chunk of the day. It caused me to miss one ritual, the panel, and to have to cancel one of my classes; that had never happened before at any event I’d been teaching at and I was very unhappy about it. There was also an unusual amount of Otherworldly shenanigans going on as an undercurrent to the weekend, and a bit of mystery that involved iron nails scattered around one of the ritual sites and nailed into at least one natural ‘fairy door’ that I was made aware of.  Suffice to say I ended up making a lot more offerings to Themselves than I expected.

Ultimately the third Morrigan’s Call Retreat was, in many ways, the culmination of everything we’ve been working for the past few years. I believe we have created a real sense of community, and a place and time for the Morrigan and several other Irish Gods – Macha, Badb, the Dagda, Nuada, Brighid, Aine, Anu, Goibhniu – to be acknowledged and offered to by the gathered people. There were missteps, but I believe we ultimately recovered and learned from them. There were challenges, and in true Morrigan’s follower tradition we met them and faced them. There was magic, both the beautiful and numinous magic of ritual, as well as the simple and equally vital magic of people coming together, sharing, and learning from each other. Good conversations, good workshops, good fellowship, and above all a sense of creating a sacred space for Her – for Them – in a new place.

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