This is me with my recent purchase:

Last week, I strolled into a bookshop and bought a book. Well, I say bought – I had a freebie voucher from work (my work ROCKS) so I waltzed into a bookshop and received a FREE BOOK. Rapture!

Now, I had a peeksee at this one up as I hadn’t seen it before. It’s called Celtic Lore and Spellcraft of the Dark Goddess: Invoking the Morrigan and it’s by Stephanie Woodfield. It’s a book about the Morrigan (surprise!), so instantly I thought that was not for me. Here are my experiences with the Morrigan previously:

  • Silver Ravenwolf’s patron was the Morrigan, and alright as she is, her witchcraft style is way too dry and passionless harmony-driven for me, which in my brain means Morrigan is this things, thus bad image for the Morrigan
  • Further to the above, she seems to be liked by a lot of the over-the-top pagan peeps I don’t get on with, so more bad press for her.
  • Dude I met on a forum was willfully antagonistic and rude to other forum members and always excused his behavior by saying “My patron is the Morrigan, I can be as aggressive as I want”. What a jerk. So, more bad image for the Morrigan.
  • I’ve read lots of places and got the impression that she was a dark dangerous goddess who you should avoid. I’m not really a lightness-and-stars person myself, but when BATTLE GODDESS is screamed at you, I take a hint and take a hike.

So I pick it up, flick through and discover it has information about Faery Queens (!), Irish mythology and Morgan le Fay (!!!) in it, and I get really really excited. Morgan le Fey is my favourite goddess of all time, so the author totally got me sold on that one. It’s got a section on working with patron deities in it too and lots of honouring rituals. I needed this book.

I really, really, love this book. I love learning mythology that isn’t horribly patriarchal and female oppressive (yes, classical Rome and Greece, I am talking about you) where the women are as totally badass as the men. I haven’t experienced Irish mythology before – I tried reading Welsh mythology, and I really wanted to like it but it was still too anti-female and pants (damn you christian monks for your crappy scribing skills). It’s awesome learning about a Goddess who is so many different things and almost a contradiction of herself – she’s a battle and death goddess, and an earth goddess, a crone and a maiden, she helps people, then makes trouble for them. She’s not a easy goddess.

I had no idea how interesting and exciting the Morrigan was, and I really understand now why she is such a firm favourite with so many pagans. She’s a triple goddess of all the stuff I like – ballsiness, action, sovereignty, horses, magic, crows, faeries, rivers – and Morgan le Fay is linked to her as one of her guises. I’m about halfway through it so far, as I stop reading every couple of minutes to tell Superman something awesome from it.

Man I love this book.