I’m about to start writ­ing about The Mor­ri­g­an again, as we tick up our con­tent here at The Cook­ie Crum­bles. And I need to add a very spe­cial word about Unver­i­fied Per­son­al Gno­sis.

In pagan­ism, there’s an impor­tant con­cept: unver­i­fied per­son­al gno­sis. It is the idea that every human expe­ri­ences things dif­fer­ent­ly, high­ly sub­jec­tive­ly, and often in deeply per­son­al ways. And so, by their very nature, every human expe­ri­ences gods, god­dess­es, guides, guardians, and spir­its dif­fer­ent­ly, high­ly sub­jec­tive­ly, and often in deeply per­son­al ways. This idea plays a vital part in our spir­i­tu­al inter­ac­tions with our prac­tice. We can have con­ver­sa­tions with our gods that are just as real as any­one else’s—and some­times may even con­tra­dict anoth­er practitioner’s conversation—and not trig­ger a blood feud over ortho­doxy. Are we sure it wasn’t wish ful­fill­ment? No. Are we sure it wasn’t our imag­i­na­tion? No. But we don’t pro­ceed off the assump­tion that we know defin­i­tive­ly and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly how each deity will approach each per­son.

This doesn’t mean that the lore of a deity isn’t a sol­id foun­da­tion to which to return. It doesn’t mean that any­one can say any­thing about the deity and it will nec­es­sar­i­ly make sense in the con­text of that deity’s roles or his­to­ry. Peo­ple might want The Mor­ri­g­an to be a sex god­dess, and she may even like sex (a lot), AND they may even have UPG that all she wants to do is fuck and encour­age them to fuck to take back their pow­er, but She isn’t a sex god­dess. That’s not Her role. There’s noth­ing in the lore of The Mor­ri­g­an that sup­ports such a claim, and there’s noth­ing in her his­to­ry that would change her role to be that of a sex god­dess. She uses sex­u­al­i­ty from time to time, but she does so in the ser­vice of roles (like sov­er­eign­ty) that are very dif­fer­ent. In this case, the indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence is not going to super­sede the lore, the his­to­ry, and the schol­ar­ship. No one’s going to tell some­one that they didn’t expe­ri­ence Her in the way they said they did, but they’re not going to let that per­son rede­fine Her either. Their expe­ri­ence of Her becomes theirs, per­son­al, indi­vid­ual, and only for them.

And so there is a kind of “con­ver­sa­tion” that hap­pens in pagan­ism. Both of these sources of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty are impor­tant. The blend of lore and his­to­ry of a deity cre­ates a foun­da­tion that can be returned to as a foun­tain­head but from which a deep­er under­stand­ing can launch. You check your expe­ri­ences against what you know. You do your best. And you pur­sue a rela­tion­ship that is at once com­pat­i­ble with lore and his­to­ry but also a type of com­mu­nion. You learn. You expe­ri­ence. You inte­grate. And in that way, you move towards a more right rela­tion­ship with the deity. 

So if some­one comes along and calls The Mor­ri­g­an a “moth­er god­dess,” that’s not accu­rate. But if they say, “Hey, it’s my UPG that I expe­ri­ence Her as matron­ly,” you might won­der, but we can’t speak to how a deity might approach every sin­gle person—everyone is dif­fer­ent, and a god or god­dess might meet them where they are. And we’re ALL here rec­og­niz­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wish ful­fill­ment, super­sti­tion, ran­dom neu­ron fir­ing, or undi­gest­ed bits of beef in ALL of us. Every­one is dif­fer­ent, and even priests and schol­ars rec­og­nize it’s not their place to say, “That’s wrong. You’re full of shit. She would nev­er do that.” At most, they might say, “Well, that’s not how She usu­al­ly shows up in the lore or his­to­ry, so this might be some­thing par­tic­u­lar to you.” 

And so there is a push-pull rela­tion­ship with lore and per­son­al expe­ri­ence. One per­son isn’t going to out­right change the lore, but broad trends and pat­terns may help to inform and alter it over time. (This is called group gno­sis.) And in these prac­tices, these are LIVING deities. They didn’t drop their immutable word three thou­sand years ago and expect that human­i­ty would nev­er change. So if sud­den­ly a mil­lion fol­low­ers start­ed expe­ri­enc­ing The Mor­ri­g­an as matron­ly, that would be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The lore and the group gno­sis and a person’s per­son­al gno­sis all have impor­tant parts in how a per­son inter­acts with a deity.

[Actu­al­ly, I would argue this idea exists pret­ty solid­ly with­in monothe­ism as well. They just don’t like to admit or talk about it, and many would deny that it’s the case, but VERY few Jews or Chris­tians or Mus­lims are prac­tic­ing the same reli­gion as it exist­ed at their found­ing, and they don’t even have the same basic view of what “God” is as their prog­en­i­tors. And as many reli­gions try to place the priest­hood as a required inter­ces­sor between the prac­ti­tion­er and the divine (Catholi­cism is prob­a­bly the most rec­og­niz­able exam­ple), even with­in these sects, many expe­ri­ence “God” as lov­ing and per­son­al. The lore (the Bible) mat­ters, but so does a mod­ern soci­o­log­i­cal con­text. So it might still sound pret­ty ridicu­lous if a Chris­t­ian tries to call empa­thy a sin, but most Chris­tians aren’t demand­ing women sub­mit to their hus­bands as they do the lord or writ­ing scar­let let­ters on them any­more. (And I do mean MOST in this con­text because you know…) The main dif­fer­ence is that pagan­ism acknowl­edges what’s going on and most monothe­is­tic reli­gions strug­gle with whose author­i­ty-dick is big­ger and gets to arbi­trate what’s real and who’s a heretic.]

But all of this is just to say that this blog and my expe­ri­ences are MINE. They are UNVERIFIED PERSONAL GNOSIS. They often line up with the lore, and they prob­a­bly jive even bet­ter with the mod­ern his­tor­i­cal group gno­sis and much of it is famil­iar to oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers, but I speak with no author­i­ty or fiat. My expe­ri­ences are often pro­found and pow­er­ful, and (UPG) SHE HAS TOLD ME TO WRITE THEM DOWN, but I con­sid­er them mean­ing­less with­out under­stand­ing both The Morrigan’s Irish lore and Celtic his­to­ry. I write these expe­ri­ences explic­it­ly as MY expe­ri­ences. I write them with the humil­i­ty of some­one very much aware of their own capac­i­ty for being mis­guid­ed, self-delud­ed, and con­fused. I write as some­one who could mis­un­der­stand what I’m expe­ri­enc­ing, and who wouldn’t know where “rev­e­la­tion” (such as it is—I’m not a prophet) ends and my own flawed inter­pre­ta­tions begin. I write as some­one who may have just been hav­ing a high-as-fuck­ing-balls LSD trip and the only thing I did was dis­solved my ego. I might nail the lore. Might be on par with the group gno­sis most of the time, but I’m still just a per­son. I make mis­takes. I’m flawed. I’m nei­ther an aca­d­e­m­ic nor a schol­ar. And my expe­ri­ences are to share and maybe gain insight from, but they do not take the place of under­stand­ing the lore or learn­ing the his­to­ry.