"This article is about the Goddess Morrigan, whom archaeological evidence now tells us, dates back beyond the Copper age, and was the dominant Goddess of Europe called the Great Goddess.
When I read the material about Morrigan, I suspected that there was more to her story, and that she was a transporter between life and death; a birth Goddess and a death Goddess in that she moved the soul through these cycles.
Later writing seems to concentrate on her connection to death, but comes to view her, as warrior societies often do, in a way connected to their own needs (power, energy, enchantment and warfare). Some writing of course does not, she is seen as a healer, the protector of the land and the person who brings Arthur to power. I went through literary accounts of her to give a fuller picture of her, one that is I think more meaningful to many people, including myself.
Stone stelae with sculpted breasts have been discovered at Castelucio de Sauri, some with only breasts and a necklace as a marker. They date back to the Copper Age c.3000BC. In Spain, France, Portugal and England statues, menhirs and stone slabs frequently also display her eyes, her beak and sometimes her vulva. Parts of her seem hidden, then appearing, so as one looks at the pottery artefacts there is more and more of her to piece together.
She is a bird goddess, an earth goddess, and her breasts not only nourish the living, they also regenerate the dead. Her breasts were believed to form the hills in County Kerry called Da Chich Annan (the paps of Anu). She is the Irish Morrigan, Goddess of Death and Guardian of the Dead.
She has in these early Celtic representations, a bird’s head (often a crow, raven or vulture) and breasts, and on vessels depicting her there is a symbol for the number three. Sometimes three lines are connected and depict a triple energy that flows from her body, as she is giver and sustainer of life. Very early she is under stood to be a triple goddess, a shape shifter, a three part person. Her names are plentiful and sound like her original name.
In Newgrange, Ireland, is her grand megalithic tomb-shrine. Within it are three stone cells, three stone basins, engravings of triple snake spirals, coils, arcs and brow ridges. Her signs appear on spindle whirls, altars, sacrificial vessels, vases, pebbles, and pendants. She is the chevron and V, the inverted triangle, the earth element.
She is the triple source of power needed to regenerate cycles, to take one from life to death and from death to life. Figurines often pair sprouting seed and vulvas, fish in the ocean, and the female body as a passageway. Vultures and owls are associated with her; spirals, crows and ravens; lunar circles and snake coils.
Female figures lock to form circles, fairy rings, and circles de fees. Her followers do energetic ring dances, dangerous to an intruder who tries to break in. Her circles transmit energy by the increased powers of stone, water, and mound of circling motion. She is the moon’s three phases, maiden, nymph and crone; the moon, new, waxing and old. She is the source of life giving, death and transformation, regeneration and renewing.
Marie Gimbutas, the emeritus professor of European Archaeology - who has written extensively on her artefacts - believes that knowledge of her can lead the world towards a sexually equalitarian, non-violent, and earth-centred future.
Some writers claim that she did not have a consort, others that her consort was the horned god. It seems at least that if there were other gods they did not subordinate her in the beginning.
This changed as the Celtic lands became less agrarian, and more dependent on a warrior class for survival. Robert Graves describes an aspectual division of the goddess into many kinds of females and powers as analogous to the battle of the trees, in which powers divided among the seasons, each one dominant at a certain time. Joseph Campbell and other Jungians might argue that the Copper Age understanding of Morrigan was a form of monotheism.
I think there is another perspective that might also be taken by many Druids, that whatever enters this life to pull us out of Abred is fractured in our vision, and as we are spirits inside spirits, our visions are personal and come with our most meaningful experiences, and slip away when they are generalized too far. So we are polytheists, in this sense (I think both of these approaches are fruitful.)
The female figures into which Morrigan is divided do not seem to be as powerful after the Amairgin invasion, at least in much of the literature which has been preserved. Often she is seen through the eyes of frightened men.
The Celtic Druid’s Years by John King claims that Samhain was the mating time between Dagda ( the great God) and Morrigan. Lugh might also have been a consort, of the Morrigan who shared Bran’s totem animal, but who could also be a bear, so this is one of her aspects. Another is that she was one of the Banshee or Bean Nighe.
There is a saying among the Irish and highland Scots that a woman who dies in childbirth better not leave the laundry unfinished, or she will have to come back and wash it until the day of her natural death. Washers at the Ford, if they are seen by any human, someone is to die soon.
Bean Nighe dresses in green and has red webbed feet (bird feet?), one nostril and one tooth. Very prominent long breasts fall from her chest and if you can grab and suck one, you will be granted any wish. You can ask her three questions and she will answer but then you must answer three from her, and if you lie it is too bad for you.
We know that the banshee were shape shifters, and that they appear in Finnegan’s Wake, washing the laundry of Ireland as it grows dark (the Anna Liva Plurabella section is the Morrigan section). In early Celtic writing Morrigan, and her two war goddess sisters, could appear in the form of crows. Madness and Violence, Badb and Neiman were her sisters. She is tri-part and terrifying in the battle between Fin and Goll. One of Finn’s Captains rides a warhorse named Badb which is grey and black and has wings, so it’s like the hooded Royston or scarecrow, which most often devoured the dead in the British Isles. Its head is hooded like an executioner. Morrigan is defending Ireland, her three parts scream ‘KRAA KRA’, a sky ripping croak. Finn’s army has long horns which sound like calling ravens."
Source
http://www.druidry.org/library/gods-goddesses/morrigan
