Archetype - Legend - Woman
I first encountered Morgana Le Fay in my adolescence,
brought to vivid life by Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Mists of Avalon. Of all the characters, I resonated most
deeply with her strength, determination and evolution from a smart, precocious
girl into a Woman of Power, a Priestess.
I escaped into “Morgaine” the Arthurian character and through her felt
the agonies and ecstasies of serving the Goddess. She opened a portal through which I could access Goddess
consciousness like a long-buried story rising from the well of my soul, singing songs of past lives in Britain, serving Goddess. I felt her rage at
the twilight of the Old Ways, when she saw Patriarchal Christianity overwhelm and
send Avalon even further into the mists of time, memory, and eventually,
legend.
Yet the essence of the woman she represents lingers on like
a soft, consistent ripple of magic memory.
Decades have passed since I read the book and still her image permeates
the mists between worlds, small and dark, she mirrors me. Definitely not a
princess to be protected like Gwenhwyfar, she is a different sort of woman, a shape-shifter, warrior and
healer. Of mysterious origins; she is the subject of legend, song and story. She
appears in dreams and thoughts but she also felt in nature, particularly near water. I have felt her breezing through the land on the paths of pilgrimage and drawing near in ceremony, like a whisper. And the
more I focus on her, the more embodied my exchange with her becomes. The more this happens, the more
circumstances seem to conspire to give it expression.
I have been inspired by this essence throughout a lifetime spanning the globe, fifteen years of which were spent based in Brazil. When I brought the Gracious Iemanjá, Lady of the
Seven Seas, to meet the Lady of the Lake at the Glastonbury Goddess Conference of
2016, I loved how their images played off each other - both dreamlike ladies in
flowing robes - chalices, wells, waters, depths & mysteries.
When I set my heart
upon that ancient source of Avalon in 2015, I asked the Goddess to help lead my feet on the path
of my heart‘s dream. Luckily, the
Glastonbury Goddess Conference opened the Mysteries of Avalon to me, and I’ve
never been the same. Every year since 2015, I’ve returned to Avalon and its annual
convergence of Goddess-loving souls.
There, I meet sources of wisdom and inspiration embodied by
powerful Priestesses, Artists and Teachers. I learn from visionaries like Kathy Jones, founder of the
Conference and Avalon Priestess Initiator. I listen to the songs of Heloise Pilkington, whose voice is
my barge across the misty divide between ordinary and extraordinary realms. I meet, dance, pray, sing and celebrate
ritual with kindred spirits from all over the world who gather yearly to
commune in Goddess.
And in what is possibly the most important aspect of
Pilgrimage, I open myself to the inspiration literally emanating throughout the
land – its waters, forests and elementals – the veils between the worlds are
very thin there and the very mists suffuse us in otherworldly frequencies. Inspiration, downloads, sudden visions;
these come with higher force and frequency on those ancient stone pathways.
And Morgana’s call is unmistakeable. In 2017, I returned and surrendered to
a yearning to visit the grave of Dion Fortune, the legendary occultist author.
Arriving at the gravesite, I met a beautiful red-haired lady with whom I fell
into easy conversation. She told
me that as a devotee of Iemanjá, I must read “The Sea Priestess” by Dion
Fortune. So on my way back down to Glastonbury, I stopped and bought it, then
read it within three days.
A “teaching novel”, it tells of a mysterious, seemingly
ageless and very spiritually adept woman landing on the shores of Britain by
boat. She enchants the protagonist
and teaches him rites of power from a well of magical memory going all the way
back to ancient civilizations of the Sea.
“Vivian Le Fay Morgan”, as she is called in the book, is a dark-haired,
petite lady who performs very clearly articulated rituals for purposes like
clairvoyance.
But this character, this “updated” Morgana, had more to
teach me. Through her Dion Fortune
tells a story of magical epistemology.
Scenes where the material and imagined, the legendary and the temporary morph
in and out of each other offer knowledge of magical states. As they walk the
rugged Cornish shoreline, its caves and shadows echo ancient legends while the mists
seem to reveal and conceal simultaneously, we feel the power of sacred landscapes to
shape consciousness. The rituals
led by Vivian Le Fay Morgan suggest liminal states in which the very act of
imagination ignites a magical fire and just the thought of something can make
it so.
Here, on the misty and precipitous pathways between belief and
disbelief, desire and detachment, is magic. Morgana’s hand parts the mist and joins
us to the Goddess. Her legends, her songs, images and her movements are all
part of this call. She is just
legendary enough and just “real” enough to exert a pull on our wildest
imaginings – a timeless Woman of Power who embodies the possibility of a magical
life.
I read the book, then went off for a year to fight my life’s
battles and make radical changes (like leaving Brazil for Ashland, OR).
When I returned to Glastonbury in 2018, the call was even stronger, and
it felt like Morgana was vortexing around me and through me. I decided to embody her in a photograph
along the wooded pathways leading to the Tor. Then, I found myself in a “Nine Morgens” workshop with Kathy
Jones, which focused on role-play as a magickal tool. Soon afterward, Heloise Pilkington
sang “Morgana Le Fay” at the Conference and I surrendered to the song. Haunting
and evocative, it is a call to Sacred Dance that I’ve since choreographed into
a Prayerformance based on the movement language of another great Adept, Isadora
Duncan.
That dance, buoyed by the angelic voice of Heloise, is my
expression of the possibility of a magical life for every woman through the inspiration
of Morgana le Fay. Using the Universal Dance principles of Isadora Duncan, it
depicts a woman in harmony with the forces of nature, heeding the call of the
Goddess and offering herself as a bringer of Grace, Healing and Inspiration.
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| Me embodying Morgana, July 2018. The "Excalibur" sword was borrowed from my friend Pete and his lovely pixie-wife Rowan took the pic. |
Movement has always been my medium and method, which is why
my body of Goddess-work always culminates in dance or movement ritual. When I trace the trajectory of the
force of inspiration in my life, I find that embodiment through movement is
always the chief result. The awe and reverence we feel for the forces of the universe crystallize into archetypes.
The great souls inspired by the archetypes to do great works become
the legends about whom stories are told, paintings painted and songs sung. These works of art then become currents that reach into our souls and spark new expressions of that universal force.
Women of Power have been with us since time immemorial, yet
history often erases them or contaminates their memory like with Morgana. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time
history blamed a woman for a man’s failures and it probably won’t be the last.
Which is why, to me, Morgana is more pertinent than
ever. To read about her, to feel
her in the sacred landscape, to dance her, is to reclaim the birthright of feminine
power in Goddess. It is to celebrate what is uniquely ours and to inscribe our
own magickal story in the perilous times of the here and now. To wield the power of a Priestess/King-Maker/Sorceress/Healer
who went before us, we heal ourselves and in turn offer healing to all womankind encouraged to abdicate its full powers and fade into the mists of
compliance and conformity.
Like I always say, “Enter the myth, and the myth enters
you.” The Dance of Morgana Le Fay
is a portal to a mythic state in which we move with a legendary Woman of Power,
a Priestess of Sea, Lake, Water…. a Chalice of the Goddess whose echoing call
grows stronger every day. It is my
sincere hope, that if you’re reading this, you will one day join me in that
dance, and together we will celebrate Morgana le Fay – Archetype, Legend,
Woman.
