This project won’t be able to continue if I lose my home. So you might want to consider a tip:
What is this about and why is it here?
You can find a bit more about me here, if you really wish to, but I have been dedicated to an Morrígan, or likely Badb, Macha and Anann (although there was long confusion as to how many, but that’s okay, confusion is part of dealing with Them), since about 1986 or ’87. This was not something I expected as I considered myself a pacifist at the time, but She/They changed that. They do often change us, although some keep trying to change Them, instead. I quickly realized that I needed to rethink my position on being a warrior and I needed to start training.
For many years I felt it was not appropriate to speak too much of Them, almost as if it were forbidden. A few years ago, however, this changed and I have felt instead compelled to write and network and to speak and write of Them a great deal. Hence this website, as well as the Facebook page, a series of articles in Air n-Aithesc and the essay in By Blood, Bone and Blade: A Tribute to the Morrígan and a manuscript which still has a long way to go. In fact the planned book is largely being written in bits and published in these articles, although I do hope to put it back together and add more in book form in the future.
When I speak of serving the War Goddesses, I am speaking of training on the warrior path on a very physical level. While trance, shape-shifting and seership are all part of the path, as well, the actual physical training is often a neglected topic. For years I’ve been a strong advocate for women walking this path, I have done research on the history of women warriors in Celtic and other cultures, I have done some training in a few forms of martial arts, have studied self-defense and defensive shooting. I am a personal fitness trainer and I hope at some point to also be a firearms instructor, possibly also to teach weaponless self-defense. I’m also a prepper and homesteader, which I also consider part of the path as being prepared is essential to the concept of fénnidecht – the way of the Fíanna.
Essentially, I am attempting to create interest in and rebuild a warrior cult (in the old sense of focus on particular path for particular Deity/ies) for Them. This is not to claim it’s the only way to worship Them, but it is the way am called to as well as the way I believe there is good evidence for. This is also not to claim that such war band cults were only for Them, there are those doing similar work for other Deities.
Since first starting this, I have begun working with a few like minded folk. A sort of loose-knit, wide-spread Cúanairt na Feannóige (“Pack of the Hooded Crow”…I like the canine link with this word that is, indeed, also found used for war bands and “Fíanna” remains a problematic word to adopt given that it has a history within Ireland to this day which makes taking it for ourselves pretentious at best…so we allude, but not use, ymmv). While I may soon take on more formal students, right now I am focusing on writing and getting workshops together. But I do hope that this also inspires others to create their own cúanairt, possibly for other Deities. I want recreate their cults, I’m disinclined to want to lead one.
Note that I am working in a Reconstructionist methodology. This effort shall include both research and mystical seeking and practice as well as training and preparing in practical ways but with an eye ever to the Gaelic culture..and the Outlaw sub-culture that was betwist and between it. These are War Goddesses, for all that They may be far more complex than some want to believe War Deities can be, and we are living in the real world, you are not a warrior because you turned around three times in the shower saying you are. We might get all mystical at times, might even get a bit wolfy, but we also need to keep it real.
