The following is partly a collection of etymologies based on the
themes that suggest themselves in association to ritual identities.
These two names are the same, one being a reduction of the other.
The name Morgan is said to mean ’sea bright’ in Welsh, but
The Morrigan or Morgana is Irish Scots. Accepting this, the following
origin for the names are offered.
1) Morrigan. Breaking down into three syllables Mor - Rig - An
a) Mor. This word in Gaelic means - Mountain, Hill, Rath, Barrow,
Creachaire, High. b) Rig. This only translates to Righ meaning Royal or King or Queen.
c) An: As in Anu. However as Gan or gang; we have
’going’.
Consequently we have Morrigan as:
Mori a ’Fate’ or fairy and High Queen of Anu, or Queen of the High
Way, as in Queen of Heaven or the Sky, or even, if a latinisation of
Mor has appeared as Mori meaning death, Queen of Death’s way,
meaning perhaps Queen of the Otherworid.
When reduced to Morgana we have Mor-Rig-Anu, High Queen of Anu. With
both spellings, either way we have a High Queen of the Dragon.
Whereas with the Welsh Morgan we might have Morgana as the Sea
Dragoness.
Finally, though the construction would comprise of two linguistic
roots, the Welsh and the Scotic, we could have the Welsh Mor as
Bright or Shining or Sun, and Gan as Gang meaning To Go, Path, Way.
This would give the epithet "The Shining Path", the road to Elphame,
as in "Morgana is the path to Elphame" or as in "The Fairy Way,
Route or Path".
In whatever sense, they all combine, because the Shining Path is the
Sun-dappled bow wave of the Swan Barque, sailing across the Mere to
Avalon at sunset, carrying Morgana the Dragon Queen of the Waters.
Hence Morgana as Sea-Bright.
Concerning the Boggart
C. S. Lewis called dwarves ’The sons of Stone’ whilst in Scandinavia
these were the Trolls. Boggart may have had two spellings. The first
and perhaps the older of the two was Boggard or Bog Ard, meaning the
High God, who was the Dagdha. As the god-king of the Danaan, the
Dagdha would have been the royal arch-druid of the Tuadhe or nation.
With regard to the other spelling, a reduction into two parts gives
Bogg and Art.
The first means God and the second means Stone and hence Godstone or
God’s Stone. In ’Phallic Worship’ by George Riley-Scott, one
particular standing stone in Israel, said to he the God Stone and
thought of as the habitation of the God was named Beth-El or the
Bethel Stone, which is a Boggart. Alternatively the Boggart could
mean God of the Stone, which easily renders itself as the God-King
of the Lia Fail or the Cubic Stone, the Grail. Boggart as the God’s
Stone would be the Lia Fail.
As the Stone that fell to Earth, the jewel in Lucifer’s Crown and so
forth, the trail leads back to Robin Artisson. In which case, the
anointed stone of the Beth-El and the Lia Fail, the cubic stone,
would be female and not male. The female in question would be
related to Astaroth, the forerunner of Sophia, wisdom or the holy
spirit, to which the anointing oil of the Hebrews relates as the dew
of the cup or rosicrucis. Astaroth is Ishtar, who was a draconian
relation of Lilith the dragon queen, the ancestral grandmother of
the Tuadha de Danaan.
A few Victorian amateur anthropologists, wishing to bring a breath
of fresh air into the stufly drawing rooms of the middle classes,
made much of the fertility rituals and beliefs of ancient and
primitive peoples. Given the social climate of the time, this
intention was thoroughly laudable but, in their haste to attribute
Venal meanings to transcendent rituals and artifacts, they seem to
have set in motion a movement devoted to missing the point.
One can imagine the relish with which some must have anticipated the
opportunity afforded them. Here it seemed, was a license to shock
without let or hindrance, presenting itself under the guise of
valuable scientific research. This notwithstanding and despite the
entertainment value, it must be said that any attempt to confront
Victorian sensibilities proved in itself to have been rather
pointless.
In many instances the work was either edited or suppressed by a
society that was the most hypocritical and morally corrupt but
nevertheless, behind closed doors, also the most lascivious and
sexually inventive in western history.
The work of these pioneers was ground breaking and in particular we
remember Sir Richard Burton with respect but even so, the
foundations they laid, seem to have been built upon later by others
whose only thrust appears to have been in proving that everything
they discovered that might be labeled primitive, was in consequence
automatically associated with fertility.
Such a mentality was both an insult to simpler or earlier cultures
and a serious hindrance to their understanding, because it came to
be thought that, if one early culture was based on fertility worship
at a certain period in history, then it followed that all cultures
of that time were based on fertility worship.
This approach didn’t take into consideration the differences in
outlook or perception that existed between castes living side by
side and nor did it appreciate that environment and resources change
from region to region which, as such, has significant ramifications
on the social and spiritual development of a people.
Basically the thinking was, in blunt terms, that an early or
primitive society must inevitably be, in comparison to the christian,
industrial culture of the historian, the missionary or the
anthropologist; thick, brutish and uneducated. So it was thought
that the primitive wouldn’t have understood the process of
conception or birth and would therefore have worshipped it as a
magical act at every given opportunity, basing their entire
spiritual belief system on fertility alone.
That kind of attitude was patronizing, imperialist, arrogant and
ignorant, born of the worst convictions of a society which itself
had been and still is brutalized by its merchant classes and the
greed of their ill-educated divines.
Anthropology in general, if one could call it that, arose as a
discipline at a time when the christian west was conquering the rest
of the known world. No widespread or intrinsic desire to understand
the culture or history of other races existed at that time because
the prime motive in any study was to prove white christian
superiority, prior to or during invasion, colonization, conversion
and exploitation. This meant that indigenous peoples were portrayed
as ignorant, sex mad, cannibalistic savages, having ancestors who
were also ignorant, sex mad, cannibalistic savages.
In the late twentieth century however, a swing towards a more
liberal attitude has meant that societies are now being studied in
greater depth and on their own terms. Nevertheless, to date, the
hangover from our Victorian past means that some scholars still
haven’t quite got the picture and, when confronted with an artifact
or with evidence of ritual that appears to have a seemingly sexual
context, they will often automatically label it accordingly and
stick it in the pigeon hole marked "primitive fertility worship".
A case in point is the Beth-El stone which derives from a period in
Hebraic antiquity when the Jews were polytheistic and worshipped the
goddess. From a patriarchal christian viewpoint, one that had
swallowed the later Jewish concept of the one male god, the Beth-El
Stone was thought to be, as previously mentioned, a phallic emblem
associated with an early manifestation of Jehovah as
Behemoth.
One scholar relating the Beth-El to Jehovah, further associated the
two with a scripture which said "His rocks shall crash together",
which the academic said meant that God’s Behemothic testicles banged
together during the penetration and withdrawal of the Beth-El
phallus which accompanied God’s numerous sex acts.
As Jehovah, via Zeus, became the northern
Thor, one must assume that
thunder storms, euphemistically said to be the god banging away with
his hammer, are in fact the result of his enthusiastic wedding
tackle ricocheting against itself.
Whilst I am prepared to accept that this was a typical Jewish joke,
and part of a colorful and imaginative folk culture of the time, I
am hard pressed to accept it as part of the venal doctrine of a
society, which manifested itself during a phase of fertility
worship.
People haven’t changed a great deal in thousands of years and
humorous euphemisms were as much a part of everyday life then as
they are now. The biggest laugh of all is at our expense if we take
these jokes seriously and are then prepared to waste years of our
lives on our research, and whole rain forests of paper, in compiling
so-called scholarly theses which soberly explain the finer points
of a doctrine that probably started life as a humorous quip in a
Jewish pub and was thought funny enough to put down on clay, stone
or papyrus.
On its own the Beth-El, as an anointed stone, is reminiscent of all
the black monoliths that appeared in mediaeval literature and art as
stones that were, of themselves, anointed or sometimes baptized,
including the 15th century picture "The heart’s search for Love".
There is no reason why any of them couldn’t be a Boga Art, the
Goddess’ Stone and that their genital context thereto, like that of
the Sheelagh Na Gig, has nothing to do with sexual reproduction per
se. Indeed, being part of European Grail Lore which has part of its
history emerged in the Hebrew culture, and further being associated
with the Grail itself which is female and Tantric, the
black stones
probably have a component of their iconography which is, in itself a
symbolic descendant of the Beth-El.
This would then mean that rightly it had absolutely nothing to do
with willies or their progenitive functions, or indeed the
reproductive functions of the female sex organs.
Both of these have been the subject of common knowledge amongst
mankind for thousands of years, making it highly unlikely that every
sexual symbol ever produced by so-called primitive or ignorant
savages was solely manufactured for the fertility-cult market. With
this and the foregoing in mind it is worth mentioning the ancient
Hindu symbols of the Yoni or Vulva and the
Lingam or Penis, as
another example of simplistic over categorization.
Originally the Lingam was not the phallus. The word Lingam relates
to Lingua or speech and hence the tongue and this means that the
Tantric element of Hinduism and Buddhism relates primarily to the
Beth-El and the Grail, and not to sex. When the
Yoni was entered by
the Lingam, this was an act of transcendence, not of copulation; and
the union intended was with the gods who resided in, or who could be
joined with by imbibing, the blood of the womb.
It is entirely possible that Beth-El was once Beth-Elohim, meaning
House of the Gods, rather than just the House of God. The
House of
the Gods, the place one would find the Gods as a human being, and
thus by implication attain transcendence, would be the womb. One
would find the Gods by drinking from the Grail; the Womb.
"He who
drinks in one draught will see God and the Magdalene".
The Gods abided in the blood of the Sacred Womb, which is what the
Beth-El would signify, along with all the later cubic stones. With
Beth Elohim we have Beth Lehem or Bethlehem, the
Rath of the Womb of
the Great Mother, which accords with Beth Seathan, a
Rath or Tel
which was a Repha’im temple of Nergal, the god of the Otherworld,
built by the Scythians in Jordan.
The Otherworld is the House of the Gods and hence the
Beth-El or
Beth Lehem. If Jesus was born in a Beth Lehem, then he was born
symbolically in the Otherworld and emerged from the womb of the
Rath
as a god-king.
The story of his being born in a stable which was a cave, has a
great deal to do with this symbolism, as caves and Raths were places
of the dead and, like the Sidhe Mounds of Eire, they were doorways
to Elphame or the Other or Underworld and here we have a link with
Epona, Rhiannon and Slepnir, and with Robin as an equine deity and
thus a Priest King.
Being born in a Beth-El, Jesus - the Christsonday god of the
witches
- was Janus or Little John, the psychopomp, portal guardian and
pontiff or bridge to the Otherworld. His priest kingship has much
that is owed to this Scythian, Dragon symbolism. Here there is also
a Mithraic link with the rite of the cave of the wolf (Jesus ben
Panther, Son of the Eastern Werewolf) and a link with
Apollo or the Sol Invicta.
Jesus would have been a son of the Beth-El, a Son of the Stone.
According to Olga Friedenbourg the Russian writer, these links with
the solar Mithras or Mazda, and hence
Samael and the biblical Satan
are confirmed in his choice of an Ass upon which to ride into
Jerusalem. The Ass is the Egyptian Set who became
Set-Typhon, or
Sataniel-Lucifer the Enlightened and Enlightening One, identifying
Jesus as the Buddha Siddharta of the Levant - A Boggart or
Fairy.
Takla Makan
With regard to the Mummies of the Takla Makan, although the
shamanka’s headdress was shown to be the conical hat of the witches,
the headgear of the Tocharians in general was the conical hat with
the rounded end which, when bent forward, becomes the Phrygian Cap.
This cap is also shown in relation to the Scythians, on a bas relief
stone carving of them presenting gifts to the Persian emperor. The
Tocharians have been in Takia Makan since 1200
BC and academics
believe they came from the Steppes of Greater Scythia, forming part
of an easterly and westerly migration of the Scythian Peoples.
This is the movement of the Danaan Nation at that period, part of
which ended up in Ireland and eventually Scotland where they became
the Picts. It is even more feasible to suggest therefore that
Tocharian ’A’ script is closely related to Pictish and hence
Fairy.
It is now thought that the Scythians of Takla Makan came from
Thrace. This would mean that they had much in common with the
Scythian Fir Bolg.
It also means, if this is the case, that both languages are indeed
Arshi Kantu, Arya-Sidhe Canto, or Aryan Sidhean Chant, and are the
magical-religious singing languages both of the Buddhist priests and
shamanic priestesses of the Tocharians, and of the Pictish and Irish
Druids.
A cursory look at the written script reveals close similarities
between written Tocharian and carved Pictish. It is now thought that
the Tocharians were semi-nomadic, mounted bowmen who operated the
same raid or trade policy as their pictish cousins in northern
Europe.
Living on the edges of Takia Makan they occupied the mountains and
the rich upland pastures to the north of the desert region. In this
they are identical to the Scythian Bands so often confuse with the
Celts in Britain and Eke. They are also probably the ancestral
cousins of the tattooed Scythian Chieftain found buried in perma
frost a few miles north in lower Siberia.
Additional Fairy Lore
Though a similar reference can be found in Yeat’s ’Celtic twilight’
I found this reference in an old Irish Fairytale called the ’Potato
Supper’. "Some folk say that the Little People, the Fairies, were
once angels that were cast out of Heaven for their sins". In the
same work there is also a reference to the shining path to Elphame.
In a small children’s book by Robin May called ’Hallowe’en’
there
are two references of particular interest. The first states that it
was once believed that however unlucky the fairies could be in human
affairs, it was even more disastrous if the land lost its fairies
altogether.
I feel sure that this is a folk memory which harks back to the time
when the fertility of the land relied upon the presence of the Fairy
Queen or King, whose contact with the wisdom of the otherworld and
its Sovereignty meant that her or his management of the land, and
her or his guidance of the people in its proper husbanding, was
essential for the survival of the nation, despite the occasional
costs which, in any event, have been largely exaggerated and added
to later stories of predation under adverse circumstances.
The Apple Trees of Avalon
The second reference reiterates previous notes, from another angle
on the Apple symbolism. May states that Apples were once thought to
be a link between men and the gods. What this obviously means is
that they facilitated a link between the two, which means that the
apples had some psychotropic effect, which naturally they don’t, if
they’re ordinary apples.
In Cornwall Hallowe’en or Sanihain is called Allan Day and the
apples involved in the holiday ritual there are called Allan Apples.
To eat them brings good luck apparently, which is a watered down
version of the idea that when one ate an Allan Apple, one would see
the gods. Allan is an abbreviated form of Avallon and so the lucky
apples, the ones that forge the ethereal link and facilitate
transcendence, are the Apples of Avalon.
Avalon, the Isle of Apples is the Isle of the Swan Maidens, the
priestesses who, like Lilith, are the Apple Trees themselves, whose
endocrinal fruit brings wisdom and vision. The foregoing reinforces
the assertion that druidism is Tantric as well as dualistic and that
druids were men "Of the (Apple) Tree".
Zen and the Wild Hunt
Several games which are associated with both Hallowe’en and apples
are particularly interesting. They have ancient roots in ceremonial
druidic and witch pageants which had a teaching role to play within
the Samhain festivals.
The first, Apple Ducking, where one attempts to catch apples,
floating on water, with ones teeth, links two fairy symbols, the
apple of Avalon and the Mere or lake in which the fairy isle is
situated.
The apples bobbing in the water represent Avalon itself. To gain
wisdom from the fruit of Avalon, one must first be immersed in the
water and thereby enter Elphame, in order to win the coveted prize.
The second game involved eating an apple whilst balancing, legs
astride, on a seesaw, in the middle of which, between ones legs,
there was placed a lighted candle. The trick was to make both ends
of the seesaw balance at the same height from the ground. The
meaning of this is discovered firstly in the pentagram of the Goat
of Mendes where the candle, stuck between its horns represents
illumination from the womb of the goddess.
Secondly, this illuminating wisdom, facilitated by the reinforcing
symbol of the participant eating the apple and thus obtaining the
enlightening fluids of the womb, sustains balance within the
individual, represented by the balance of the seesaw. In perfect
balance, positive and negative forces cancel each other out and
produce an equilibrium, which is both everything, and nothing,
stillness, the Nix or Zero. The seesaw, like the Zero, is another
principal symbol in Zen Buddhism. Enlightenment exists in balance
and the candle at the pivotal point also suggests this teaching.
The third game involves taking an Allan Apple to bed on the night of
Hallowe’en. One places it under one’s pillow in order to dream of an
event or of some knowledge one wishes to be appraised of.
The apple is a symbol of the otherworld and the act of taking it to
bed and placing it under the pillow is a substitute for the ancient
practice of sleeping in the tomb chamber or later, of sleeping in a
graveyard overnight, in order to obtain knowledge from the
ancestors.
Mirrorworld
It is interesting to note the amount of lovers games are attached to
Sainhain, a time when all hell was supposed to break loose.
Previously I said that Odin was often called on out of context as a
god of love. It appears that the Starfire hypothesis is correct
because two Hallowe’en divinatory games in particular relate the
symbols of transcendent wisdom to the cause of love.
In the first game, which is played at night by either sex, the
performer eats an apple and brushes his or her hair whilst looking
in a mirror. The image which, it is said, appears in the glass, is
supposed to be that of one’s future lover or spouse.
Firstly the apple represents fairy wisdom obtained by eating the
fruit of the glands. Secondly mirrors, like Meres or
Lakes are
doorways to Elphame, the land which is the reversed, mirror image of
this world. Thirdly the comb or brush is a symbol of the mermaid and
royalty.
The code translates as an invocation. By brushing the hair one
mimics, and thereby invokes within ones self, the godform of the
mermaid or merman, the fairy inhabitant of the mirror world of the
sacred lake within which lies the Isle of Avalon, the otherworld.
This corrupted act identifies one with the Dragon Blood. The act of
eating an apple shows the ritual intention, being that one desires
to know, by looking into the otherworld behind the mirror, who it is
who will either eats of one’s fruit, or give of their fruit in a
Starfire ritual, not of mortal love, but of transcendent hierogamy.
The person one sees in the mirror is the person with whom one will
be united in the Love that is Death Alternatively the ritual can
serve as a spell to draw that person near, by sending a message
through the mirror and through the subtle energy of the matrix
underlying all form, which is Elphame. By invoking the person in the
mirror, one implies that the person desired will not be human, that
would be no good, but of Fairy or Dragon Blood themselves.
The act here, of staring into the mirror, is a method whereby the
conscious mind can be persuaded to concentrate whilst the
subconscious mind projects the image of the prospective alchemical
lover into the glass.
As such it mixes sympathetic magic, which is basic Hermetics, with
scrying. Pools of ink, Black Mirrors, the still surface of lakes or
ponds have all been used for this type of scrying, which is in
itself a form of hypnosis intended to bypass the conscious mind.
This indicates that the doorway to the otherworld is in fact the
subconscious mind itself, and plenty of archaic symbolism speaks to
that effect, including the tenets of dualism on the personal or
microcosmic level.
In previous notes I have covered the symbolism of the Hazel nut in
some depth. In relation to Hallowe’en, a game exists wherein an
individual, wishing to know whether they will unite with another
successfully or not, throws two hazelnuts into the hearth. if they
burn to ashes, the marriage or affair will be thought of as doomed
to die. No esoteric overtones need apply here.
The symbol of the hazel nut comes from the tale of the ’Well of Nechtan’ and the salmon of knowledge and the symbol itself is
corrupted. Perhaps some sympathetic magical component survives but
it serves nothing to belabor the point.
It is interesting to note however that another fruit, associated
with the rosicrucis and the act of Starfire has been linked to
mortal love, further confirming that originally in the hierogamical
act, there was parasexual physical contact an act ’of love’, as an
intrinsic part of the alchemical process, of which this game is but
a dim folk memory.
Although these games were once an intrinsic Part of Hallowe’en,
especially in the last century, they started out as druidical and
witchcraft practices. Consequently in their purer, older form, they
are part of fairy tradition as magical rituals conducted by The
fairies themselves long ago.
Traditionally, Hallowe’en is the time when, it is said, the gates of
hell or the otherworld are thrown open and the fairies, witches and
ghosts walk the earth creating mayhem. However, this tale arose
because Hallowe’en was the beginning of the lean time of winter and
to the Fairies, whose ancient Scythian ancestors were traditionally
used to raiding, it was the time to stock up for the cold months
ahead.
This is the basis for the identification of Samhain as
Mischief
Night, which has been carried forward to the present day by both the Guisers and the Trick or Treaters who, in their respective times
have dressed up as demons, witches and sprites to knock on people’s
doors and demand food or gifts.
The Fairy would have taken this night as one of the last shopping
opportunities before the snows set in, and would have created havoc
by raiding the surrounding countryside for food and goods.
This then was the time of the Wild Hunt for consumer durables and
comestibles, as well as elf women, whose serum levels at that dark
time of year, would have been naturally high.
It will be remembered that from The Dark Ages onwards, much of their
lands had been cleared and therefore, they were a dwindling,
persecuted and beleaguered people who were hard pushed to support
themselves on less and less resources.
It is no wonder then that stories have come down to us today of the
times when the very demons of hell would visit torment on a
terrified mankind. It seems a just, inevitable and unavoidable
retribution for man’s treachery and betrayal of an ancient,
beautiful and mystical people without whom, man has lost his wisdom
and his sense of balance, and has raped the Earth to his own doom.
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