The Morrighan and Hekate: Musings on Some Parallels

The older I get, the more I do believe that time as a construct has less to do with linear development and more to do with a cyclic or spiraling unfoldment: our spiraling life journeys may bring our ever-evolving consciousness once again into contact with influences we thought we had moved “past,” only to discover we’re at a higher octave of the “present” moment meant to present us with a new awareness, one that could not have been possible at the previous turn of the spiral. Make sense?

As a contemporary multi-trad or -Pantheon Polytheist, I find that my relationships with various Deities echo that pattern. Case in point: The Morrighan first soared into my life quite unexpectedly when I was living in Hawaii in 2004. My spiral dance with Her regained new levels of intensity in 2010 and especially in 2014, when my co-ritualist and I were leading a women’s-only 13-moon initiatory experience into cultic worship of various “Dark” Goddesses. After a peak of devotional activity lasting about a year, I perceived The Morrighan’s obsidian wings to be loosening their grip on my selfhood…until this past Samhain, when She ascended on a higher curve of our spiral dance and She has become quite the Omnipresent Divinity for me lately. She’s vocal/eager to communicate, too, as are the frequent sightings of murders of crows on my property, a welcome and astonishing sight all of a sudden after heartbreaking years of a drastic decrease in their population due to West Nile virus.

I’ve been thinking about how the Morrighan’s energy spectrum or whatever inadequate words one can use here appear to be on a parallel wavelength, if you will, with One of the Other Dark Goddesses Whom I have had a longstanding and steady devotional relationship with, One of the Main Powers I pledged lifelong service to at my Fellowship of Isis Priestess Ordination ceremony exactly 10 years ago: Hekate.

Oak & Aconite Coven May Day 2022 Ritual

This is one of my favorite times of the year! I cheerfully wish those celebrating May Day / Beltane tomorrow in the Northern Hemisphere and All Hallow’s / Samhain in the lands Down Under wonderful festivals! May your Gods and Spirits gladden your hearts and guide you at this powerfully liminal turning o’ the tides (made all the more potent by a Taurus New Moon eclipse!). For me and for my Slavic forebears, early May marks the beginning of Summer (in the Serbian calendar, it’s the fixed date of St. George’s Day, May 6).

It’s a time of honoring the fructifying powers at work in the land; in particular, it’s a time of cultivating right relationship with the Fair Folk / the Fae / the Vile (pronounced VEE-lay) and demonstrating through your ritual actions that you know how to be a courteous and hospitable neighbor to Them. I’m looking forward to doing my solitary Walpurgis Night ritual tonight, where I honor the Lady of Elphame, and I’m giddily looking forward to celebrating May Day tomorrow with my coven that my dear friend Adam and I formed late last summer. After a winter gestational period of figuring out what to call ourselves and detailing our coven’s brand (yes, I have a background in marketing!), the name came quite suddenly last month while meditating on our Divine Patrons, Hekate and Pan: Oak & Aconite Coven!

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2022

Happy New Year! Here we are, trucking into year three of the global pandemic experience, but as Ifá revealed to me years ago, don’t let calamities in the outer world interfere with your Sacred Work of receiving your Ori- and Orisha-given blessings. Ashé! And so I abide by my annual tradition of detailed Tarot divination via my Zodiacal 12 Houses/Wheel of the Year spread. Come join me and peer betwixt those goodly pillars of Boaz and Jachim for some wise insights…

Reflections on Lammas and Text of My 2021 Ritual

The transition from July to August and the first 10 days or so of August are among my most cherished times of the year. The sight of Summertime abundance on display—basketfuls of mulberries from my own front and back yards; and from local markets, piles of ears of golden non-GMO sweet corn from fields within a quarter mile of where I live; honeycombs and cranberries harvested from Wisconsin farms a short drive across the border; a profusion of luscious peaches, varieties of apples; blackberries; and even gooseberries from Michigan—is a welcome treat for the eyes that never fails to lift my spirits and pivot my consciousness into an attitude of gratitude.

Even in the midst of a worrisome drought that’s affected my county since Spring, the Gracious Gods bestow an outpouring of gifts and it’s right and just to give Them thanks and praise. As I smeared organic blackberry preserves on my Lammas ritual leftovers of rosemary-infused bread loves that I sliced and turned into Serbian-style French toast for breakfast this morning for my family, I sighed with contentment. Life is more than good. And every day that I’m above ground is a very good day.

Invocation of Hekate at First Harvest

My ritual partner and I have been co-creating our ritual for the Sabbat of First Harvest, which we’re commemorating this coming Sunday, August 1. We’re Polytheistic Witches, both fervently devoted to Hekate, and I thought I’d share the Invocation to Hekate I’d written. (The full text of the ritual itself will be published to this blog as well, so stay tuned!)

Book Review: Jeff Cullen’s Liber Khthonia (2020; Brujo Bros LLC)

I’m going to state my personal bias up front: This is an astonishing modern grimoire written by a personal friend of mine who is an extraordinarily talented Witch, artist, writer, and devotee of the Goddess Hekate: Jeff Cullen. In 2019, he approached me and announced that he was going to be developing the idea for Liber Khthonia into a book. In addition to consulting me in an editorial capacity to discuss the structure and content of the manuscript (I did copyedit the final draft), Jeff honored me greatly, knowing of my reputation in the Chicago Pagan community as a Priestess of Hekate Khthonia, by asking me to write the book’s Foreword! I was thrilled to do so and saw the entire undertaking of the publication of Liber Khthonia as fulfilling a vital need among the Goddess’ ever-growing number of devotees worldwide who have been yearning for just such a book to deepen what can only be called a devotionally anchored Hekatean Tradition of Witchcraft. The book, hot off the presses, is now available in a handsome hardcover edition that truly belongs on the library shelves of every Witch who adores the Queen of Witches!

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2021

My time-honored tradition of performing divination to foresee the year ahead with my calendrical/zodiacal houses/clock face spread continues unabated. However, due to being very busy working New Year’s Eve and Day and needing yesterday to rest and decompress, I had to wait until today to actually do my Tarot spread. Come join me on this journey of (self-)discovery, won’t you?

In Service to Hekate: Dark Moon Deipnon Ritual and Paupers’ Graveyard Cleanup on Earth Day 2020

I love being a morning person. I’m not one to sleep in past 6 a.m., even on the weekends, so I’m up and walking my dog, L’il T-Man, very early in the morning. Our first destination is the paupers’ graveyard near my home. It’s a treat to witness the dawn of a new day from the vantage point of standing in one of the commemorative concrete circles, each of which bears bronze plaques that honor a different demographic group buried on the premises (e.g., John Doe Civil War dead, John and Jane Doe victims of the 1871 Chicago Fire, Cook County Asylum for the Insane patients and their children, etc., over 38,000 total bodies).

And in the past 7 years of living in this far Northwest side Chicago neighborhood, the paupers’ graveyard has been my focal point of clean-up efforts every Earth Day. With today being the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, and it being the Dark of the Moon at the time of this writing (the New Moon at 3° Taurus will occur tonight at 9:25 CDT), I am dedicating my clean-up efforts in a wider context of spiritual service to one of my Patron Deities, the ancient Anatolian-Greek Goddess, Hekate Khthonia (Hekate “From Inside the Earth”).

Shining a Spotlight on Dark Nights of the Soul

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide wide Sea!

And Christ would take no pity on

My soul in agony.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, In Seven Parts” (1798), Part IV, lines 224-227

In my last post, I wrote about the beauty and the power of prayer and how it forms the core of my contemporary Polytheist devotional practice. But I certainly have had my challenges over the years in sustaining my practice, like any other religious person committed to devotional piety.  Whether the span lasted for weeks or even months on end, the spiritual crisis known as the “dark nights of the soul,” a term first coined by the sixteenth-century Spanish Counter-Reformation mystic known as St. John of the Cross, was a dreadful phenomenon I’ve endured many times.

Pagans and Polytheists as People of Prayer

As long-time readers of this blog will know by now, I did not enter into Polytheistic Paganism with a seething hatred for the Christian denomination (Eastern Orthodoxy) in which I’d been raised.