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Despite a lifetime of atheism, in the summer of 2020, I was called by a prehistoric Irish goddess of war, death, prophecy, and magic named The Morrigan. This is my story of Her contact (and eventually our work together).
You can go back to the last part here.
Or you can go all the way back to where the journey begins in the link here.
In late summer of 2020, I learned the name of the woman who haunted my dreams…or at least what she called herself—Anu. There was only one problem. I didn't know who or what an "Anu" was. I'd never heard that name. (And yes, I've spent the last three years considering that I had somehow heard it and forgotten.) I knew almost nothing about polytheism or pagan deities outside of the Greek myths I studied in middle school, the ones that are very, very popular like Shiva, or the ones that have characters in the MCU.
Google searching Anu leads to a Mesopotamian sky god—sort of a hands-off deity who is mostly there to explain where the other gods came from. I did a day of reading, but just…NOTHING about that fit. Not the imagery I'd witnessed in dreams. Not the months of strange experiences during my waking hours. Not the magical awakening. Not the things that had been said. Not one damn thing.
There was one other reference to Anu. It took a little more digging. I added crows and "big trees" to my search parameters and found an Irish deity that was typically considered to be one of the several aspects of a goddess called The Morrigan. (There's a pair of hills in Ireland called The Paps of Anu.) I had to admit that seemed like a slightly better match. There was something in Celtic lore called the Tree of Life, which seemed to be about as big as the tree I'd been dreaming of, and the crows were a very special animal to Her.
But even though the imagery sort of meshed a little better, it didn't make fucking sense. The Morrigan is a fierce goddess—like way, way epic ass-kicky. A deity of destiny, war, and death. Her purview in Irish mythography is predicting death and delighting in battle. I'm mostly a pacifist—at MOST, a reluctant participant in defensive violence or property damage. I certainly couldn't be said to be at all interested in death. Why would any entity this potentially violent—and distinctly Irish—be interested in a soft, diplomatic, quickly-approaching-middle-age American writer?
It just didn't track.
To understand the mindset I was in when I fell asleep that night, it is important to explain how frustrated I was with my entire woo-woo journey of the past few months. I was frustrated with all the dead ends in my research, frustrated with how tapped out I felt from spelling (that I couldn't seem to laser-focus my intention—"cast a spell" if you prefer that language—without wringing myself out for a day or two after), frustrated at how overwhelming all the changes to my life had been, frustrated that I couldn't sit down to the kind of meals I was used to eat, frustrated with my personal life, and just generally feeling kind of like I was fucking done with this "magic/spiritual fucking awakening," and that I would like my life back, thank you very much.
I didn't ask for what was happening. I didn't ask for any of it.
I was starting to understand how certain things worked. Being open (meditation, energy work, whatever words people want to use) could be made more difficult if I ignored my body. Junk food. Being sedentary. I could kind of "turn down the volume" by deliberately treating myself like crap.
So to really get where this dream was coming from, it's important to understand in that moment just how “Take THAT, Woo!” I was feeling. I sat around all day, didn’t even go for a walk, ate cheese dip, cookies, Cheez-Its, and a couple of hot dogs in some baked beans for dinner that night. I was so sick, but it felt good to kind of rebel against my body.
I had a hard time falling asleep with the indigestion and a bout of restless leg (from sitting still all day), but eventually I drifted off.
In the dream, I was trying to pour out the liquid from a cup, but it wouldn’t stop coming and the Queen of Cups (from Tarot) was watching me with sort of a sad-but-compassionate look on her face. “I’m afraid that’s not how it works. It can't be emptied now."
And so I threw the cup and tried to walk away. “SHE’S not going to like that,” the Queen of Cups said.
Next I ran into Justice (another Tarot character). And one side of Justice’s scales were tipped below the other. “You seem a little out of balance,” Justice said.
"That’s right,” I said, and I started eating a hot dog as I locked eyes with her. And in one of those dream logic moments, even though we were roughly the same size I stepped onto the scale on the heavy side that she was holding. The more hot dog I ate, the more the scales shifted.
“You know what you’re doing?” Justice asked.
I shoved in the last quarter of hot dog in a single bite while I stared straight at her.
“Okay,” Justice said. “But SHE’S not going to be happy.”
Next I saw the Hermit. (Yes, another Tarot archetype).
"I don't think you should go that way," he said gesturing to an easy and downhill path. "This one is your way." He shone the light of his lantern up a difficult and overgrown path bristling with craigy rock formations and thick with treacherous switchbacks.
"Fuck you," I said, and headed down the hill along the easy path.
"SHE'S not going to like that," he said.
A regal looking woman in a thin but plush white robe sat on a throne between two pillars. However, her throne was affixed to the ceiling and she sat upon it upside down. Behind her there was a path through thick foliage that stretched for miles. Standing lamps glittered magnificently with crystals that somehow hovered, suspended in the air swaying and spinning above the lights themselves, and I was lit from below by glowing tiles in the floor.
Even upside down, she looked exalted, majestic, and her eyes glittered with a fearsome intensity. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.
“The High Priestess?” I asked, recognizing yet another Tarot character. "But more…"
“I am called many things,” she said. “But you already knew that. You’ve seen how many names I have….WE have.”
At this point I can’t remember what was said. There was a conversation (or was there?) but I don’t remember what it was. The next thing I remember was the sudden dream realization that she was upside down because she was reversed. (Like in a tarot read.) I can’t remember if I said something or she could somehow hear my thoughts, but she was aware of my realization.
“Am I reversed?” She asked. “Am I really?”
And then I realized the lit floor panels were skylights and the standing glittery lamps were not standing from the floor but were chandeliers––the floating crystals simply hanging from thin threads. The land stretched out above me and the sky was below.
Because I was standing on the ceiling. And everything was upside down.
“Or are YOU?” she finished.
Realizing I was the upside down one led to a moment of climbing “back to the floor” that made dream sense (but not gravity physics sense) at the time.
From my new vantage with my feet on the floor, I could see that the two pillars were two other “versions” of the Empress, standing still and tall to mimic pillars. They now looked like the trio I had so often seen, the left wearing black and the right grey.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I've answered that question," she said.
“But there's more to it. You’re so often three,” I said. "But sometimes five…and sometimes one. And sisters sometimes…but not always."
"To understand me is to be comfortable in ambiguity."
"And sometimes it's like it's all names of one thing…"
“You’re so close,” she said.
And then, in the altered consciousness of my dream, I experienced one of those “flashback collages” that you see in movies when they’re going through the information they got through the movie that makes them realize that thing that they should have noticed all along—tallying up the clues that were there the whole time. I remember I flashed back to a dream where there were triplets in the restaurant and another where a giant crow was talking to me in the woman’s voice as the smaller crows filled my hands with rocks while I balanced on a giant tree. I remembered the dreams I've written about here where there were five crows and one transformed. I remember seeing her alone, as three, as five, and sometimes more. I remember seeing her transform, shifting between visages as easily as some people change expressions. I remembered seeing her as sisters, but usually simply…ASPECTS.
And then I got it. Not the online research "WTF" moment, but really really GOT it.
“No….” I said.
“There it is,” she said, standing from the throne she sat in. And as she stood, the scintillating colors of her robe and those of the two flanking her to the left and right began to grow darker and darker until they were black. But like Anish-Kapoor black. Like suck-in-the-light black.
“That's not possible,” I said. “You can't be......"
"It is your choice to accept me, but I will NOT be ignored."
"I don't…"
“Let me divest you of a few assumptions you seem to be laboring under. The first is that you wouldn't be interesting to me. The second is that I am capable of being thwarted by a FUCKING HOTDOG.”
And that is when I woke up. Fully. Refreshed after 8 hours. I almost never wake straight up. There's always drifting upwards. But that day I snapped awake instantly, completely rejuvenated despite the previous night's exhaustion and indulgences.
I would discover and learn more over the coming months, but now I understood at least this one thing. Anu was a single aspect of what was trying to contact me.
I was being called by The Morrigan.
More to come….
