Tag: Death

Asleep and awake

Where have I been? I last wrote something in April this year, I was on a roll getting ideas and generally enjoying writing again and then I disappeared. Did An Mórrígan claim me when I went into Her cave never to return to the apparent world?

Unfortunately, no, nothing that exciting I’m afraid, I flatlined, energetically, physchologically and emotionally. I’ve spent the past few months feeling prone, prostrate and deflated with no inspiration to speak of. There has also been something bubbling along that has taken most of my mental capacity these past months that I won’t talk about right now but may explain soon.

I did however get my visit to Uaibh na gCat, the cave of the cats, the home of An Mórrígan. On the morning of the visit I was jangly, nervous and jittery, my nerves tap dancing in my brain and body. I’ve no idea why I was so strung out by the thought of the day ahead but there we go, the body does what it wants.

I enjoyed the tour of Rathcroghan given by the visitors centre https://www.rathcroghan.ie/ but I was there for the main event, a trip to the Otherworld. It was my pilgrimage for the year. I’ve been dying to go to Oweynagat for a long time but was never well enough to make the journey.

As we approached the cave all my jingle-jangle from earlier just dissolved away

A photo of a small cave entrance. It sits amongst Green trees and bushes.


I looked into the womb-like entrance and could not wait to enter. As I sat there waiting, there was a voice from somewhere deep in that cave, urging me to ‘come in, come in’. An affirmation of finally doing this at the right time, in the right headspace.


In small groups of 4 or 5 we began our descent into the home of An Mórrígan, some people turned back at the entrance, not yet ready to descend. I had an offering in my pocket of a small dram of whiskey (it would be rude to visit without a gift) and soon it was my turn to slide into the entrance. The floor was wet and thick with mud and the walls were glistening with moisture, it had that deep earthy smell that appears after a rainstorm. It got darker and darker as we descended and I got more and more comfortable in the dark, all enveloping environment.

The view of a ridged cave ceiling. It is solid rock and dark apart from the beam of torchlight that lights up the section on the photograph. There is a thick ridge running running along the centre of the ceiling that is almost pointed where it meets.


The metaphor of the cave is not lost on me, it reminded me of my transformation after trauma. I used to be scared of caves, the darkness in them always different to the dark of night. It is more solid and heavy somehow, more likely to have things creeping out of it to touch you on the shoulder. This time however, I had no fear, I have seen true darkness and spent my own recovery in the Hermit’s cave. I have sat in that darkness and embraced it, which enabled me to contain it within. It no longer scares me.

We reached the end (a rock fall prevented us going deeper) and stood in the cool darkness of the entrance to the Irish Otherworld.

This was the time for us all to turn off our torches. There we were for a minute or so, silent, bathed in that deep darkness. I tipped out my whiskey for An Mórrígan and ensured She knew how grateful I was and what a privilege it was to be in Her home.

Did I have a big revelation? Was I spoken to by An Mórrígan? Not that I’m consciously aware of. There was no Great Queen emerging from the darkness, no mystery breeze that blew through the cave. But as always with these things, they work away in the background, they slip through your subconscious and mould into something. Only months later when change has occurred in your life are you able to track it back to a ritual or a pilgrimage or that scrappy bit of throwaway magic you did off the cuff.

What I realise now is that my visit to the cave put me into hibernation again, to prepare me for what is to come. I am just rising again after months of waking sleep. My practice has evolved and become more tangible and consistent, I am getting ready for…something.

on being buried

Content warning: themes of death and dying.

It’s Samhain here in the Northern hemisphere. Everything is dark, cold and damp. The high energy and heat of Summer feels long gone. I love this time of year, the Celtic new year, the beginning of Winter when all is slow and quiet.

I feel in many ways my own life runs parallel to this time of year, the alchemy of trauma catapulted me into my Autumn years much sooner than I anticipated, adding the change of Perimenopause to that just beds it in deeper.

I used to personify Summer, all frantic and full of go go go. A lot of that was masking, trying to avoid staring into myself so I wouldn’t have to be alone and in the stillness with my feelings and thoughts. That was a place I did not want to visit, it was vast and deep and scary.

I was also terrified of death when I was younger, the thought of it used to create a rush of adrenaline up through my body that made me want to run and hide in a place where I could escape it. I couldn’t and wouldn’t entertain it. Combine that with our reluctance in the West to even talk about it or acknowledge it and to pretend that it won’t affect us and it’s a pretty potent mix. So Summer was safe, it was bright, it represented life. The dark half of the year was barely tolerated and I dragged myself through it every year just waiting for the first touch of Spring.

Then Autumn swept in, or rather it cannoned in, exploding the lid off my neatly boxed emotions. Everything shot out and left me breathless and spinning. I was completely shattered, shards of who I was, the walls I’d created and what I thought I ‘should’ be all went pinging off into the aether. My efforts in the early days after my accident to gather it all back in and shut the lid were in vain, there was absolutely no way that person was returning.

Then came the burying,

my first era gone. A ghost of a person floating around the earth, floating around the house. Not in my body, just observing from the in-between. The pain of losing myself so raw and heart wrenching. Everything I was, just lost. The grief of this time was all encompassing, a distressing and harrowing place where I was isolated but also completely at a loss to what was happening and how to stop myself from fracturing more and more into the abyss.

Being so unprepared due to my earlier reluctance to tolerate uncertainty and tolerate myself meant that I could not cope, I could not escape into masking by ‘doing’, my accident had taken my energy, my physicality. All I had left was inertia and wall staring and this meant I was finally facing myself. It was overwhelming. I had no capacity to contain this wild wolf that had been unleashed.

I wanted to die.

After a few gut wrenching, distressing years of this is when my relationship with Death started to change, for a while it was only the death of sleep that gave me comfort. The pause of the coma-like state that helped me endure being alive but not alive. It was around four or five years post accident that the fight I’d been putting up to ‘just get better’ was spent and it was then I started to release my resistance to being ‘ultra-alive’ (to stave off Death and Shadow) and slowly fell into the entombment that the darkness offered.

It was here I began to walk alongside Death, I began to talk to it, to understand it. I realised that honouring the archetype of Death allowed me to accept my second epoch, the new me that was forming from the long arduous labour of rebirth. Death has enabled acceptance of self, ALL of it. My spiritual work now involves Death, I embody the Hermit, the Cailleach in her wild elder self is a teacher. I look to Death when things get tough. Nature is imbued with Death, it is everywhere. I am not love and light, I do not spiritually bypass any longer. Life is gritty and earthy and dirty and has Shadow, we deny ourselves such roundness and richness when we push it away.

I’m lucky because I got to die to myself and I came back. This has given the gift of clarity and a rootedness I never had. You don’t go through the initiation and come back the same person. So welcome Shadow, welcome Death my greatest teachers. Without whom I would not have such strong boundaries or compassion or courage.

Am I still scared of death? Sometimes it can still grip me in the dead of night but what is more scary was my first life where I gave away my power and didn’t honour myself.