Discovering Anu—The Second of the Great Dreams

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Despite a life­time of athe­ism, in the sum­mer of 2020, I was called by a pre­his­toric Irish god­dess of war, death, prophe­cy, and mag­ic named The Mor­ri­g­an. This is my sto­ry of Her con­tact (and even­tu­al­ly our work togeth­er).

You can go back to the last part, First Con­tact, here. 

Or you can go all the way back to where the Jour­ney Begins. 

In late sum­mer of 2020, I learned the name of the woman who haunt­ed my dreams…or at least what she called herself—Anu. There was only one prob­lem. I did­n’t know who or what an “Anu” was. I’d nev­er heard that name. (And yes, I’ve spent the last three years con­sid­er­ing that I had some­how heard it and for­got­ten.) I knew almost noth­ing about poly­the­ism or pagan deities out­side of the Greek myths I stud­ied in mid­dle school, the ones that are very, very pop­u­lar like Shi­va, or the ones that have char­ac­ters in the MCU.

Google search­ing Anu leads to a Mesopotami­an sky god—sort of a hands-off deity who is most­ly there to explain where the oth­er gods came from. I did a day of read­ing, but just…NOTHING about that fit. Not the imagery I’d wit­nessed in dreams. Not the months of strange expe­ri­ences dur­ing my wak­ing hours. Not the mag­i­cal awak­en­ing. Not the things that had been said. Not one damn thing. 

There was one oth­er ref­er­ence to Anu. It took a lit­tle more dig­ging. I added crows and “big trees” to my search para­me­ters and found an Irish deity that was typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered to be one of the sev­er­al aspects of a god­dess called The Mor­ri­g­an. (There’s a pair of hills in Ire­land called The Paps of Anu.) I had to admit that seemed like a slight­ly bet­ter match. There was some­thing in Celtic lore called the Tree of Life, which seemed to be about as big as the tree I’d been dream­ing of, and the crows were a very spe­cial ani­mal to Her.

But even though the imagery sort of meshed a lit­tle bet­ter, it did­n’t make fuck­ing sense. The Mor­ri­g­an is a fierce goddess—like way, way epic ass-kicky. A deity of des­tiny, war, and death. Her purview in Irish mythog­ra­phy is pre­dict­ing death and delight­ing in bat­tle. I’m most­ly a pacifist—at MOST, a reluc­tant par­tic­i­pant in defen­sive vio­lence or prop­er­ty dam­age. I cer­tain­ly could­n’t be said to be at all inter­est­ed in death. Why would any enti­ty this poten­tial­ly violent—and dis­tinct­ly Irish—be inter­est­ed in a soft, diplo­mat­ic, quick­ly-approach­ing-mid­dle-age Amer­i­can writer?

It just did­n’t track.

To under­stand the mind­set I was in when I fell asleep that night, it is impor­tant to explain how frus­trat­ed I was with my entire woo-woo jour­ney of the past few months. I was frus­trat­ed with all the dead ends in my research, frus­trat­ed with how tapped out I felt from spelling (that I could­n’t seem to laser-focus my intention—“cast a spell” if you pre­fer that language—without wring­ing myself out for a day or two after), frus­trat­ed at how over­whelm­ing all the changes to my life had been, frus­trat­ed that I could­n’t sit down to the kind of meals I was used to eat, frus­trat­ed with my per­son­al life, and just gen­er­al­ly feel­ing kind of like I was fuck­ing done with this “magic/spiritual fuck­ing awak­en­ing,” and that I would like my life back, thank you very much.

I did­n’t ask for what was hap­pen­ing. I did­n’t ask for any of it. 

I was start­ing to under­stand how cer­tain things worked. Being open (med­i­ta­tion, ener­gy work, what­ev­er words peo­ple want to use) could be made more dif­fi­cult if I ignored my body. Junk food. Being seden­tary. I could kind of “turn down the vol­ume” by delib­er­ate­ly treat­ing myself like crap. Some­thing about attune­ment required me to be phys­i­cal­ly sharp­er.

So to real­ly get where this dream was com­ing from, it’s impor­tant to under­stand in that moment just how “Take THAT, Woo!” I was feel­ing. I sat around all day, didn’t even go for a walk, ate cheese dip, cook­ies, Cheez-Its, and a cou­ple of hot dogs in some baked beans for din­ner that night. I was so sick, but it felt good to kind of rebel against my body.

I had a hard time falling asleep with the indi­ges­tion and a bout of rest­less leg (from sit­ting still all day), but even­tu­al­ly I drift­ed off.

In the dream, I was try­ing to pour out the liq­uid from a cup, but it wouldn’t stop com­ing and the Queen of Cups (from Tarot) was watch­ing me with sort of a sad-but-com­pas­sion­ate look on her face. “I’m afraid that’s not how it works. It can’t be emp­tied now.”

And so I threw the cup and tried to walk away. “SHE’S not going to like that,” the Queen of Cups said.

Next I ran into Jus­tice (anoth­er Tarot char­ac­ter). And one side of Justice’s scales were tipped below the oth­er. “You seem a lit­tle out of bal­ance,” Jus­tice said. 

“That’s right,” I said, and I start­ed eat­ing a hot dog as I locked eyes with her. And in one of those dream log­ic moments, even though we were rough­ly the same size I stepped onto the scale on the heavy side that she was hold­ing. The more hot dog I ate, the more the scales shift­ed.

“You know what you’re doing?” Jus­tice asked. 

I shoved in the last quar­ter of hot dog in a sin­gle bite while I stared straight at her.

“Okay,” Jus­tice said. “But SHE’S not going to be hap­py.”

Next I saw the Her­mit. (Yes, anoth­er Tarot arche­type).

“I don’t think you should go that way,” he said ges­tur­ing to an easy and down­hill path. “This one is your way.” He shone the light of his lantern up a dif­fi­cult and over­grown path bristling with craigy rock for­ma­tions and thick with treach­er­ous switch­backs.

“Fuck you,” I said, and head­ed down the hill along the easy path.

“SHE’S not going to like that,” he said.

A regal look­ing woman in a thin but plush white robe sat on a throne between two pil­lars. How­ev­er, her throne was affixed to the ceil­ing and she sat upon it upside down. Behind her there was a path through thick foliage that stretched for miles. Stand­ing lamps glit­tered mag­nif­i­cent­ly with crys­tals that some­how hov­ered, sus­pend­ed in the air sway­ing and spin­ning above the lights them­selves, and I was lit from below by glow­ing tiles in the floor.

Even upside down, she looked exalt­ed, majes­tic, and her eyes glit­tered with a fear­some inten­si­ty. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“The High Priest­ess?” I asked, rec­og­niz­ing yet anoth­er Tarot char­ac­ter. “But more…”

“I am called many things,” she said. “But you already knew that. You’ve seen how many names I have….WE have.”

At this point I can’t remem­ber what was said. There was a con­ver­sa­tion (or was there?) but I don’t remem­ber what it was. The next thing I remem­ber was the sud­den dream real­iza­tion that she was upside down because she was reversed. (Like in a tarot read.) I can’t remem­ber if I said some­thing or she could some­how hear my thoughts, but she was aware of my real­iza­tion.

“Am I reversed?” She asked. “Am I real­ly?”

And then I real­ized the lit floor pan­els were sky­lights and the stand­ing glit­tery lamps were not stand­ing from the floor but were chandeliers––the float­ing crys­tals sim­ply hang­ing from thin threads. The land stretched out above me and the sky was below. 

Because I was stand­ing on the ceil­ing. And every­thing was upside down.

“Or are YOU?” she fin­ished.

Real­iz­ing I was the upside down one led to a moment of climb­ing “back to the floor” that made dream sense (but not grav­i­ty physics sense) at the time.

From my new van­tage with my feet on the floor, I could see that the two pil­lars were two oth­er “ver­sions” of the Empress, stand­ing still and tall to mim­ic pil­lars. They now looked like the trio I had so often seen, the left wear­ing black and the right grey.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’ve answered that ques­tion,” she said.

“But there’s more to it. You’re three,” I said. “But some­times five…and some­times one. And sisters…but not always.”

“Be com­fort­able in ambi­gu­i­ty.”

“And some­times it’s like it’s all names of one thing…”

“You’re so close,” she said.

And then, in the altered con­scious­ness of my dream, I expe­ri­enced one of those “flash­back col­lages” that you see in movies when they’re going through the infor­ma­tion they got through the movie that makes them real­ize that thing that they should have noticed all along—tallying up the clues that were there the whole time. I remem­ber I flashed back to a dream where there were triplets in the restau­rant and anoth­er where a giant crow was talk­ing to me in the woman’s voice as the small­er crows filled my hands with rocks while I bal­anced on a giant tree. I remem­bered the dreams I’ve writ­ten about here where there were five crows and one trans­formed. I remem­ber see­ing her alone, as three, as five, and some­times more. I remem­ber see­ing her trans­form, shift­ing between vis­ages as eas­i­ly as some peo­ple change expres­sions. I remem­bered see­ing her as sis­ters, but usu­al­ly simply…ASPECTS. 

And then I got it. Not the online research “WTF” moment, but real­ly real­ly GOT it.

“No….” I said.

“There it is,” she said, stand­ing from the throne she sat in. And as she stood, the scin­til­lat­ing col­ors of her robe and those of the two flank­ing her to the left and right began to grow dark­er and dark­er until they were black. But like Anish-Kapoor black. Like suck-in-the-light black. 

“That’s not pos­si­ble,” I said. “You can’t be.…..”

“It is your choice to accept me, but I will NOT be ignored.”

“I don’t…”

“Let me divest you of a few assump­tions you seem to be labor­ing under. The first is that you would­n’t be inter­est­ing to me. The sec­ond is that I am capa­ble of being thwart­ed by a hot dog.”

And that is when I woke up. Ful­ly. Refreshed after 8 hours. I almost nev­er wake straight up. There’s always drift­ing upwards. But that day I snapped awake instant­ly, com­plete­ly reju­ve­nat­ed despite the pre­vi­ous night’s exhaus­tion and indul­gences.

I would dis­cov­er and learn more over the com­ing months, but now I under­stood at least this one thing. Anu was a sin­gle aspect of what was try­ing to con­tact me.

I was being called by The Mor­ri­g­an.

Next: Flash­back to Addic­tion

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