It’s easy to imagine Avalon as this eden-like paradise full of peace and golden light and spiritual perfection… and forget that it is the home of the Underworld Priestesses too.
One of the big reasons we work with Morgan le Fay here at the Morgan le Fay Mystery School is that she holds the balance between the bright and the dark.
Morgana is known as a Dark Goddess. She is confronting, truth telling, sorcerous and, like her Irish sister goddess the Morrighan, associated with crows and death.
As Queen she reminds us that Avalon isn’t just the spiritual land of peace and bliss.
It’s also well known as the isle of the dead.
The sacred Lake of Avalon is the mirror of this world that reflects what is, helping you see the parts of yourself that you would rather pretend didn’t exist.
This is really clearly felt in the modern day physical Avalon. The small town of Glastonbury in the south-west of the UK is widely considered to be the modern-day portal to Avalon and it holds very strong Avalon energy…
…which goes one of two ways. It is said that when you visit fairyland you return either as a poet or a madman, and that is never so true as in Glastonbury, where people look in the mirror and either grow in widsom, or retreat further into a fantasy far away from reality.
Glastonbury throws up you shadow in your face so you will alchemise it.
Same as Avalon.
Same as any legit spiritual pathway.
Some of us are really drawn to the death-and-darkness side of spirituality. We are really engaged in the journey of facing and alchemising our shadow, or perhaps our life has just confronted us with a lot of shit to alchemise – from mental health to unfortunate circumstance to trauma to illness and everything in between. A lot of us walk the shadow path and are repulsed by any spiritual ideology that wants to bypass the fact that life isn’t just puppies and rainbows… and that anything other than constant bliss is a personal failing.
In Avalon, our girl Morgana is the one who guides us in and out of the underworld. Like the High Priestess in a tarot deck she’s a liminal goddess of the twilight and she can be in both worlds – which is so important for anyone drawn to the darkness, because we can get stuck in the underworld simply because we are comfortable there.
Morgana shows us how to relate to the underworld as a place where pop in and out to retrieve wisdom, not as the place where we snuggle down and build a home.
She teaches us underworld priestesses how to venture out of the shadows and get comfy being in the bright light once more.
(It’s hilarious that we need rehabilitating to the lighter side of life, but it’s so often true!)
Morgan really keeps us grounded and helps us see what is real – both the bright and the dark.
When we step up a little further and dedicate ourselves to being a Priestess of Avalon, we need to be able to help folks honour the darkness, alchemise the treasure and teachings of the underworld and be a wayshower back to the light.
We need to be comfortable with our own darkness too and be able to priestess ourselves through it.
Being a Priestess of Avalon is about tending life – real life, in all it’s ups and downs. It’s not about escaping into a spiritual fantasy of blue cloaks and immaculate sisterhood: it’s about rooting into reality and tending the divine as it buds through all things.
It’s about holding sacred space through the dark times… and for underworld priestesses of Avalon, this is our special and much needed skill.
That’s why in our Priestess of Avalon programme here at the Morgan le Fay Mystery School we have a whole training section on the Rites of the Underworld, learning how to serve people through their most difficult moments, hold alchemical space for painful change and create ceremonies of integration.
Is your path to be one of the Underworld Priestesses of Avalon?
Do you need Morgan le Fay to guide you through the shadows?
