The Morrigan at Beltane

So before we begin, let us be clear: there is, to my knowledge, no mythological example of The Morrigan being associated with Beltane from the surviving work that is available to us.

This post operates entirely on personal gnosis – that is to say, the relationship I have built up with the Goddess Morrigan over the years.
I am not claiming that this is how ancient people connected to this festival, or any other such notion.

The world is volatile and full of division – it has enough of that, without people wearing it like a personality in the pagan communities. You don’t have to agree, or like this perception.
That I don’t mind… but bullying and viciousness for the sake of attacking women (all women) is an epidemic. Kindly do not contribute to it.

Okay? Okay. Let us begin…

In ritual the scene is set, and the energy begins, it weaves

Betwixt two daughters in a grove of trees

And Morrigan stalks the perimeter

As all the unwanted bonds will feed Her

She took all of the unwanted back

Snapped it til the bones did crack

And in a form of death consumer

Changed the way in which we knew Her.

I have seen the Morrigan consume the decayed rot which infected, became its destroyer and her lips ran red.

She grinned as she stalked like a wild beast in fractured movements around the Beltane circle, a ritualistic frenzy of motion.

She saw all that had been done in shadow, the lies, the fractured cursing, the theft, and swept it up and cracked the bones.

She ate it all.

And in so doing opened the life-gate that is opposite the death-gate.

Rebirth is bloody. And so it is.

– Joey Morris, The Morrigan and Beltane

Above is a description of a ritual from a previous year, conducted for The Morrigan at Beltane.
There are a number of themes which I have expanded upon each year that have come up in channelled meditation over the years, which began as a connection to threads and blood and the concept of “Memento Vivere” (remember to live) at Beltane:

“Those red threads that connect us, invisible stitches woven together by fate, the spider web that shivers in knowing as one like-minded soul reaches out across the spiritual ecosystem to another.

The blood line of life-force in its otherness, not quite tangible and yet felt so deeply in the chambers of our hearts.

The steady beating drum of our ancestors – of blood and spirit – thumping through our veins and bursting unbidden from the recesses of our psyches… dreams made manifest, memories singing from the depths, calling… calling us home.

Beltane is the other gate, standing opposite Samhain, cracking open to let life back in, giving spirits breath and warmth and cherished memories… keeping them alive and thus keeping us alive, stories interlaced with stories, never ending in their infinity…

The stirring of knowing you are connected to others, honouring it, even when it stings, and the looping back around in the weft of the textile, etching into rivers of blood, and time, and life… knowing that fate doesn’t care about your excuses, it bids you come, peek behind the veil, know yourself, right yourself, cry and scream and honour all of life – the beauty and the hideousness all swirled in together – it’s all the same paint after all.

Come back, come back, time and again – remember all of this in the telling, make a choice, re-evaluate, learn, grow, make choices more aligned with your soul bones… Live.”

This was how my personal gnosis began to grow with regards to Beltane, a Sabbat which previously I had felt disconnected from.

Beltane became the life gate, opposite the Death gate (at Samhain.)
At Beltane, life force floods in; the red rivers, blood, the red threads, that which stirs us to life (and battle). I have come to associate this with the Life tree (Bile tree, spirit tree) with the death tree being at Samhain, and considered that all paths began at the tree of life, and all ended at the tree of death.
This may be a highly visual way of conceptualising our walk through our incarnations from a Celtic Hedge Witch… but I like it.

Two years ago this idea grew again, to incorporate the Hawthorn tree which blossoms around Beltane, and is important as part of my Celtic Hedge Witchcraft:

The Hawthorn cycle has begun as the life gate opens at Beltane and life force gushes forth, the red thread about the wrist, the blood drop offered at the thorn of the hedge, the ancient wandering along petal stained paths left in offering at forgotten graves.

Witchcraft initiates the curious, the courageous, the seeker who is hesitant but insistent.
Never quite sure what they know (or how much) as knowledge usually turns out to be a drop in the ocean.

The Morrigan bid us aflame at Beltane and my sister and I bound bones and feathers with red thread, having gotten straight to the heart of the matter, many years meandering the labyrinth behind us.

And it deepens internally as it shallows externally and the sigh of the exhale rattles my rib cage.
Tiredness follows like a shade, restless and ceaseless, an echo of death – and what matters little falls away.

Water is in the weaving, weaving through blood and body, both ripple through the shell as I dance and reveal, dance and reversal.

There is only myself, and Her in this space.
And if the Morrigan has counselled me of silence, then silence I hold. And if the Morrigan has counselled me of speech, then I bleed my lips and scream.

Then there is Beltane this year, amidst all the horror we are seeing in the world.

I do not think this is going to be a typical Beltane.

I didn’t post publicly about the New moon in Taurus because that wasn’t typical either – it was messy, and I think this bloody fiery mess is going to weave its power into Beltane.

I have a feeling that this Beltane is about opening our chest so that all our old wounds tumble out onto the baelfires.

It’s about anger – feminine rage – that has been churning up inside many of us as a result of seeing the oppression that’s happening across the globe. Seeing the politicians trying to turn back the clock to the 1950s and create division and oppression (and the fury that some people support/excuse this.)

It’s the bubbling pot of anger that simmers away from year to year when your voice is ignored or worse, silenced, because other people have the power to do that.

It’s a call back to life – bloody and raw.

Like Macha in Her birthing pains – screaming and gut wrenching, a message to the betrayers, the liars, those who decried Her power and worth.

I can’t get this feeling out of my head/heart, because there’s nothing silly about the energies pouring in like a bloody river from the life-gate that swings fully open at Beltane.

For myself, the Morrigan is present in every one of these themes, reminding us how to live.