October 27

 

 

Soon, I was too busy to think much more about Wilson Armitage and Conor ó Cuinn. I had signings to attend, interviews to give, and blog posts to write for friends. There were Halloween haunts to visit, decorations to photograph, and stores to shop in. I have a soft spot for cheap, completely useless Halloween kitsch that makes me laugh. I imagine the laborers at the manufacturing plant in China slaving over miniature Halloween skateboards and goblin finger puppets, and thinking that all Americans must surely be mad.

Then an e-mail arrived, with a generic name from a Gmail account. I almost dismissed it instantly as spam, but the subject heading read “Samhain query.”

Don’t open it, was my first thought.

But of course I did open it.

It was from Conor ó Cuinn. The gmail account suggested he was probably still under suspicion, and had sent this from some public computer. It was a simple message:

 

“Scroll to page 147 in Armitage’s translation. Read the next ten pages. And remember what I said about us being the last Druids.”

 

I wanted to delete it and forget about it. I considered telling o’Cuinn not to contact me again. Maybe I should send it to my new detective friend Bertolucci.

Instead, I opened the Mongfind translation file.

Page 147 started by recounting the moment when the Celts realized their new Catholic friends were actually an invasion force, bent on conquest. The initial attacks took out many in the warrior caste; the survivors were trying to rally their forces. And so they called on Mongfind:

 

I saw our dead, our dying, our wounded. These men had now revealed that they came with no purpose other than to slay us and subjugate us. My people turned to their Arch-Druids—Mog Roith and I—in this hour of need.

I sought out Mog Roith, and yet he was nowhere to be found. Our path was clear: we had to invoke the Dagda and the Morrigan and take them within ourselves. Only they would be powerful enough to lead the opposition.

We searched quickly, but came to believe that Mog Roith must already be dead, although he had not been found among the corpses yet. Finally, we could tarry no longer—we had to hope the Morrigan alone would be enough.

And so, protected by a ring of our strongest remaining warriors, I performed the ritual to call forth the Morrigan. Fortunately, the year was close to Samhain, and the Morrigan was near at this time.

She answered my summons, and filled me. Her power! Her strength, her resolution gave me fresh hope. Sharing your body with a god is one of the most ecstatic experiences for any Druid; it is neither possession nor loss, but is instead a bonding that exceeds anything experienced by ordinary men and women. It is one of the ultimate rewards to the years of training and learning the Druid must undergo. It is among the holiest of our rites, and may be practiced only by the male and female Arch-Druids.

The invocation was accomplished quickly and successfully. The Morrigan, instantly awake and aware within me, began issuing orders to our soldiers. Then she took a spear and shield, and led them to the battlefield.

I felt everything with her, as we cut a bloody swath through the opposing troops. Our speed and skill were unmatched. The first row of enemies went down beneath spear thrusts and a shield wielded as a second weapon. Gore soaked us; we shook it from our eyes and kept going, bloodlust increasing our power. We raged through their ranks, and behind us the Celtic warriors were renewed, screaming their battle cries. The invaders began to panic; many tried to run, only to collide with their comrades behind them. Our shield sprouted arrows like deadly quills, but nothing could harm us. We were invincible. We would win.

Eire would remain ours forever.

But then the enemy forces began to scatter for another reason—something was coming up from behind them, something they wanted to let through. The Morrigan and I sensed an intelligence approaching, familiar and usually welcomed…

The last of their rows parted, and Mog Roith stepped through; Mog is blind, but because he moved among the soldiers easily, I knew that the Dagda had joined him and given him sight.

“Mongfind,” he said—except “Morrigan” impossibly came from his mouth at the same time—“we must cease this fighting.”

I felt the Morrigan’s disbelief surge through me, and I shared it. The Dagda and the Morrigan were the great defenders of Eire; they’d fought against Fomorians and sidh, they were the most valorous warriors of the Tuatha de Danaan. The Dagda would never call for an end to defending our land.

“No,” the Morrigan and I answered, “we must drive them out.”

Mog Roith smiled, sadly…and then raised the great club he held and brought it down on our head.

When I awakened, a day later, the Morrigan was gone, I was bound and gagged in a dank cell, and I knew the invaders had won.

Eire was theirs.

Mog Roith had betrayed us. He had summoned the Dagda and then used the god’s power against us. I never found out why, I never knew what the Catholics and their God could possibly have offered. I did find out that shortly after he bludgeoned me, he staggered from the battlefield to an oak grove, took a sacred knife and slit his own throat. Or, likely, the furious Dagda took over and repaid Mog Roith’s betrayal. One may partner with the gods, but one cannot betray them and expect the forged bond not to shatter.

 

I’d read this account earlier, but hadn’t really looked at what followed it: Instructions for performing the ritual to invoke the spirit of the Morrigan. It was a comparatively simple procedure, requiring none of the paraphernalia (a rod made of ash, a wand fashioned from an oak twig) of most of the other spells I’d glanced at. Fasting was suggested, but I knew Mongfind had performed it successfully without that; the rest consisted of assuming a posture known as the Heron Stance, and meditating while inciting an invocation. It reiterated that only a female Arch-Druid could successfully invoke the Morrigan.

I had no idea why ó Cuinn wanted me to read this passage. Yes, the account of Mongfind laying into her Catholic enemies while possessed by a goddess was stirring fiction, but what did any of this have to do with me? Did ó Cuinn actually believe that he and I were Arch-Druids?

I tried to focus on writing an article I had promised an online news site, but my thoughts kept circling back to ó Cuinn’s suggestion. It was ludicrous; the thought of me standing in the middle of my living room floor, one foot braced against the opposite knee, trying to keep my balance while reciting words that sounded like a Lewis Carroll poem…I couldn’t foresee that ending with anything but me collapsing onto the carpet, cursing my own innate clumsiness.

Still…what could it hurt? It wasn’t as if this ritual required the sacrifice of a child, or even a blood oath. Fifteen minutes of my time, and it might be an interesting experiment; perhaps it would help me to understand, at least in some small part, how ecstatic states could be reached in shamanistic practices. Maybe I’d feel a little of what Mongfind had felt, nearly two millennia ago. Maybe I’d understand how she could have possibly believed that she’d been in communion with a goddess.

The chant was simple^[14]; it only took me a few seconds to memorize it. I stood, walked to a clear space in my living room, raised one leg, and tried to concentrate.

The first few seconds were disastrous. I wobbled; I lost the pose; I laughed; I almost returned to my desk, thankful that no one had been around to witness my attempt.

But instead I opted to remain as serious as possible; I was, as I mentioned, curious about the state it would theoretically produce in the practitioner.

I held the pose, one leg bent, the foot resting against the other knee, thinking about engravings I’d seen of Celtic warriors in this pose, and Australian aborigines…and after a time of struggling to stay upright, my difficulties seemed to fall away and were replaced with calm steadiness. My eyes closed, the chant continued to flow past my lips, becoming more effortless with each recitation. With every passing second, it became easier to concentrate solely on the words…the invitation…

Awareness seemed to simultaneously fall away and expand. I was calm, focused…open.

Something was in the room with me. I felt it like a blanket, or like a luxurious wrap made of the most exquisite fabric. It was warmth, and strength, and comfort. I didn’t open my eyes, because there was no need; there was nothing in this sensation to alarm me, to cause anxiety or dread.

The chant continued, and so did the presence. It enveloped me; it spoke without words, telling me it—or, rather, she, because there was something quintessentially feminine about this presence—had come at my bidding. The no-words conveyed admiration and love, and surprise, because it had been millennia since she had been thus called.

The Morrigan.

At this point, my skepticism was laid to rest by desire—I wanted nothing more than to join with this power, to feel it within me, infusing me. I wanted nothing so badly as to feel what Mongfind had felt, as she’d strode onto a battlefield without fear, striking down her foes with grace and divine skill.

The warmth was inside me, then, and…