Fellowship of Isis Liturgy
By
Olivia Robertson
Athena - Arcadian Awakening
Alchemical Rite
7. Eire: Living in a Virtual World
Part I. The Narration: The Goddess Morrigan
“Magic Finds You Unexpectedly”
Hostess in Eire is Karen Etain
Scene is in a Flat in a Housing Estate Outside Dublin
Visitants:
Path Guide: Aiden Priest of Alchemy
Helper: Elaine, Priestess of Alchemy
Oracle: Deirdre of the Visions
Karen: “I call upon you, as like so many of my generation in this country I have reached the crossroads. I am caught by a longing for the unseen world of Faery, and my unbelief in all superstitions, whether religious or occult. Help me to find my way. We are of Eire, Land of Destiny – Inis Faile. We have lost our ancient past, and are shipwrecked in the present; with no more faith we have no future.”
Elaine: “You are not alone in this mad world! Many people seeing the earth crumbling under them; doubt the reality of any heaven. Some young people in many countries are taking their own lives – even school-children. Parents move heaven and earth to protect them from abuse, yet do not believe in heaven or hell. Only the Goddess can help us, if we believe She exists! In this extremity let us invoke the Oracle. To us who love Her, She holds the Stone of Destiny.
Aiden: (lifts up his Druidic staff) “I invoke the Great Queen of Eire, The Morrigan, Who with Her Divine Consort The Dagda Mor presides over Time.”
Deirdre is in trance and speaks:
ORACLE OF THE MORRIGAN
“You who call upon me are for the most part prisoners in passing time. I watch you with the love of a mother as you start your lives with the sacred Light shining within you. This may be seen by visionaries as a flame over a child’s head. A baby is still in touch with the Eternal Land from which all come. Time is a beautiful pattern of rivers reaching the boundless ocean of space with its myriads of stars. But as a child grows older, those around it try to bring it to their own limited way of being, which is a time line between life and death. So the child, in order to conform and please others, loses essential being, a link with the world beyond.
Radiation from brighter realms can bring fear and hostility from those who have lost this golden key. This was the way of Neanderthal man and many other primitive races. They still exist and have their honoured place as do all, as children of the Mothers, species who have the courage to have physical experiences.
For Homo Sapiens, the time is now when a new race is coming into being. This new humanity will be more heart centred and have spiritual vision. It is for women to calm men’s fear, for women usually long for this coming. No people can endure alien or foreign occupation, however well-meaning! But children are accepted. No man can resist the smile of his own baby!
End of Oracle of the Goddess Morrigan
Elaine: “We give thanks for this inspiring Oracle. Karen, does this help you? Tell us what you feel.”
The Narration
Karen: “It doesn’t help me one bit. Alternative book shops are full of this sort of stuff. And I adore it but don’t believe a word. I suppose it’s part of my background. My father is a Protestant and a very clever surgeon. My mother is a very efficient nurse – they met in a hospital in Dublin, and she is also a very strict Catholic. I was baptised a Catholic. But my father said it was brain-washing! My mother had a Lourdes grotto in the garden, while my father had a large photograph of Charles Darwin in his study. The only sacraments they shared were Easter Day dinner with chocolate eggs for my sake, and a Christmas Dinner with turkey. I was an only child so they both wanted me to take after them. My father thought ‘Karen’ as my first name was sufficiently secular – my mother liked the Romantic ‘Etain’ from “The Immortal Hour”, though she wished there was a Saint Etain. That I might fulfil the role was her secret dream.
No-one can say I didn’t try to please. At first I liked the way of my mother. I read an anthology of Yeats’ poetry. I avidly read about the doings of Women of the Golden Dawn, and for a while in my early teens grew my hair long, and assumed a languorous dreamy expression – though really I was as psychic as an old boot! I did various courses on spiritual development from Arizona – nothing happened. It got rather expensive.
The crisis came when I had to have an operation to remove a melanoma, because I had been lying for hours in the sun, pretending I was in California, and one of my courses recommended the life-giving rays of the sun that healed all ills. Luckily I had avoided hallucinogenic substances of Akhenaton’s Sun, the Aten. I have a Celtic skin and just got freckles.
So I decided to follow the Path of Practical Science. I took my father’s advice and studied medicine. With his help I am now a qualified, first year Doctor. At first it was wonderful. I was Daddy’s girl. He preferred my company to that of my mother’s. He brought me all round Dublin, introducing me as “My only daughter – a medical student.” I got a whole new lot of boy friends. Before I had been taken out by idealists, pacifists like myself, and avid fans of various groups. But I never got deeply involved because I was not attracted by the physical world – in any aspect. Anyway, drugs just made me sick and I prefer classical music.
Both worlds offered to me by my parents were lacking in substance. We had no Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin in housing estates; there was not a miracle in sight. My mother was not happy. She did her duty and obeyed the rules, her marriage and our home were extremely clean and proper, but there was no joy nor laughter. My father would hide in his study, reading abstruse scientific works. And neither could fight the most terrible enemy of all Death.
They tried. But I saw through my mother’s faith in the next world, because of her excessive fear of illness and horror when her friends died. My father had no belief in an after life. Or so he said. But I felt his insistence on the unreality of a soul separate from a body came from some sort of hidden fear, kept at bay by denial.
They say I have a good career ahead of me. The future of Ireland, once land of saints and scholars, is now to cater for useful Doctors and nurses. But I feel I did have a soul once, but now it is starved. Can your Fellowship, your imaginary Goddesses help me? Have I a soul?”
Deirdre: “I am receiving a message from the Morrigan Herself. ‘We can only help you if you help yourself.’”
Please continue to Part 2. Tir Na Nog: The Land of Youth
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