The potent power of portals, and the Goddess that holds them
Well hello, and Happy New Year!
Wherever you are and whatever you’ve been up to, I hope 2024 has started as well as possible for you.
My year started deep in the realms of channelling and Spirit messages as I dived straight into 2024 Soul Readings, and wow did they offer some potent insights. I’ve shared some thoughts on the most common themes over on YouTube, so head over and check out that video if you’d like to know more.
Meanwhile, although I generally try to keep the first month of the year quite a quiet time, I have started to look ahead to the rest of 2024, not least with details of our first Re-Kindling Her Stories session of the year… A story I think has a particular significance at the current time, when we’re experiencing a particularly big transition in the skies…
Portals, crows and the potent power of darkness with The Morrigan
When I started thinking about the first HerStory I wanted to focus on in 2024, one woman positively leapt to mind:
The Morrigan, Irish Goddess of war, prophecy, death and fate.
I know, she doesn’t sound like the cheeriest of figures for our first Rekindling Her Stories session of the year. Yet I think she has so much more to offer us than we realise, and that her wisdom is needed now more than ever.
People mostly know The Morrigan because she's aligned with crows; when you see a crow, it’s said The Morrigan is near.
Yet crows too have had a bad rap over the years and so, quite honestly, a lot of people think she's terrifying.
For the longest time, I thought she was terrifying. But then I started to ask why that was.
The truth is that The Morrigan is considered scary because she can see the future. And not only that, but she’s not afraid to share what she sees.
It’s said she once walked around an Irish battlefield and screamed a prophecy about the end of the world.
People everywhere were terrified. And so she became a figure to be feared.
My journey with The Morrigan
I was frightened of The Morrigan for a long time; I would often know she was there, but I didn’t want to talk to her.
And then almost a full year, I went to the Cave of Cats – Oweynagat – from which she was said to emerge.
When I got there, crows were circling overhead. Already, I knew The Morrigan was there.
I went down into the cave, and I found her waiting for me.
In the days that followed, as I travelled around Ireland and reconnected with myself, it was The Morrigan spoke to me most prominently.
She kept saying: “Who are you? Come into the darkness to remember who you are.”
That's the power of The Morrigan. Just as in the old stories she’s terrifying, because she speaks truth.
And the truth she spoke to me; the one she speaks to all of us? A request to take ourselves right the way back to the absolute pitch black, and the very beginning of it all.
There's a quote by Valarie Kaur that asks:
“Is this the darkness of the womb or the darkness of the tomb?”
The Morrigan takes us into the darkness.
When we follow her, she's asking us to trust her, even though we don't know whether we’re walking into a tomb or a womb.
She reminds us that whichever one it is, she has our backs, will guide us, and be a supporter and friend.
She also knows exactly who we are, and isn’t willing to stand for any shit if we try to claim otherwise.
When we pretend we're something less than we are, The Morrigan pushes us to stand in our power and truth.
When we do that, we stop being afraid of what The Morrigan says to us.
The truth is that she has incredible things to share and is an ally who supports and guides us – we just have to be brave enough to face her.
In my next Re-Kindling Her Stories session we’ll be working with The Morrigan, and I’ll be talking about exactly how we call her in and find the courage to work with her.
Because in doing that, we face up to ourselves and the truth of what we find in the darkness.
If you’re ready to do that then join me on 7th February for my Re-Kindling Her Stories session with The Morrigan/ Morrighan. There are a number of pricing options, meaning you can join us for whatever you can afford, and I’d love to see you there as we step together into the portal of possibility that working with this powerful figure can offer.
The powerful portals we step into
Because let’s be clear: darkness, crows and prophecy aren’t the only things we know about The Morrigan; her story is wide-ranging and complex.
She's been worshipped since the Copper Age, when she was seen as a Goddess of not only death, but the whole of the Soul’s cycle.
She was a figure who held the portal between birth and life, who worked with and supported us through the whole journey of life, and then took her place once again to hold and tend the portal that took us from life to death.
It’s said that women honoured her by dancing in fast circles, mirroring the circles of life and death and, as they did, creating portals just like those that mark the biggest of transitions.
If you’ve ever spun around in circles for a while, you’ll know what I mean by that.
You’ll know the blend of exhilaration and nausea that comes when we move so fast we don’t know which way is up or down, forward or back, in or out.
And if you’ve ever stood on the edge of a portal of transformation… well you might just know that they can be the same.
I’m writing this post just a few days after Pluto moved into Aquarius, a powerful portal of transformation for not just one of us but, potentially, for all us as a collective.
Of course, planets move all the time. But a planet like Pluto? Well that moves slowly, making its transits the kind that define a generation.
Like the Morrigan, Pluto can get a bad rap at times. A planet of the underworld, endings and death, we’re often encouraged only to look at the negative things it may spell when it moves into another realm of the skies.
Yet to focus only on Pluto as a planet of endings is to take away from so much of its real power: A power of transformation, rebirth and the potential for new beginnings.
With Pluto in Aquarius, we’re told that many of the transitions we’re likely to see over the coming 20 years will be linked to innovation, the collective. I won’t go into those too deeply as there are stacks of professional astrologers (Chani Nicholas, David Wells and my friends Gizem Evcin and Allison Scott are amongst my favourites) who could do the subject much more justice than I will!
However, I will invite you to pause for a moment to stand on the edge of the portal this current planetary transition opens, and ask what that raises for you?
I wonder, if we were to step back from the linear ways we’ve been encouraged to see life and instead consider that image of Pluto - planet of transformation - as it comes to settle in Aquarius - sign of innovation for the good of the collective - what might begin to unfold for us?
If, instead of fearing the endings that loom large for us and the potential doom within the prophecies that are being called to us, we took a moment to pause and to look just that little bit further into the portals those things are a part of.
In doing that, I have a sneaking suspicion that we’d start to recognise those things as just one part of the cycle of transformation; to recognise the potential for change, for rebirth, and for a whole new cycle of life that is waiting to be born.
How might that look for you?
How might it look for the whole world?
And if the answer sounds too scary to contemplate then don’t worry. Last year I met just the figure to guide us through those portals of darkness into whatever lies ahead. She’s a woman I’m only too happy to introduce you to next month…
With gratitude to you for being here, and with lots of love this week and beyond.
Ceryn xx
P.S. I recently took part in an interview as part of the Mysticast, that took me deep into my thoughts on stewardship of the land, amongst other things. If you’d like to listen, you can do that here.