1 BARBARA MOR, “Amazing Rage” (1990) ---published in The Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary American Women (Boston: Beacon Press 1996, pp. 199-202) In this post-everything-real decade (postpolitics, postfeminism, postconsciousness: I see a row of fence posts along the road graffitied with careerist suits and mousse) there is a correspondingly decadent compunction to Look Good. Spiritually, physically, culturally: pose pretty. Even our goddesses. New Age spiritual guides, even we spiritual feminists, urge ourselves to image “positively”: smiling, wise, benevolent, graciously nonconfrontational Ladies. Those who succor, shelter, soothe. Goddesses of therapy rather than bitches of politics; goddesses of personal well-being rather than witches of global change. Because we are all, as the whole doomed world is, alone, scared, in pain, stressed-out, terminally obstructed, overdosed, and confused. Naturally it follows we seek the Mother of Peace and Quiet, not an Amazonian Battle-Ax hounding us Out To Fight Again. In the midst of patriarchy’s metallic noise and violent self - pollution, we consume tapes of our mother’s last, lost waterfalls, forest winds, sweet silence. For our Goddess, we’d prefer the love ly and aerobic nurturer, Ms. Holistic Healing Sunshine---not that same old Bitch wrapped in stinking fragments of bloody moon. 2 But the primal power is Hers. In my mirror, cracked by time and strange choice, the face I most favor is the Morrigan . She is “le Faye,” the fate of Ireland, my people’s Black Goddess. In pre -Indo-European sym bology, “black” is the color of female power. (In those myths, as well as in African and Asian myths, the color of death was white.) The power of Earth, of Night, of the womb: a stern power, often, but wholly real. “Blackness,” to the Irish, is the mood of necessity, be it grim, glorious, or otherwise. It is the eventual doom of all things, the inevitable flowering of each thing, as we follow our natures utterly to the end: endless transformation on the wheel of change. The Gaelic “black mood” is akin to the Spanish duende , the black voice, black sound present in all true song. The Irish love this grave darkness of the Morrigan, her fatal necessity, because it has been with us so much, and for so long. It is our pagan face, indeed, our oldest face. Imagine a moon Goddess when almost all the lunations are dark ones. One learns to see, to believe in, the mothering dark. The black, uterine Cave of the Mind. A triple Goddess, the Morrigan has three names: Ana , Badb , and Macha . Ana, “plenty,” is the Mother, both good and awful. She gives abundance and blight, lush weather and foulness, laughter and loud screams. Her body is the land, all the happy and suffering creatures on it her chi ldren. We know this Mother well: she is everyone’s Mother. Badb is more specific, terrible. She is met at river fords, crouched and smeared with gore, washing the weapons and armor of those about to die in battle. With 3 a downturn of her hand, she can flood a land with blood; a finger-lift, the river goes dry, for easy crossing. Badb means “boiling,” like a cauldron; also “crow.” An badb Catha is “the battle crow.” Brains and belly stewing and bubbling always with blood heat, with the circling cries of black birds: life and death, cooking female energy, the natural magic. In Ireland and Gaelic Scotland still, the word badb is used to target “an unpleasant woman,” a hag, a troublemaker. So you think you’re badb, huh? A glorious name! Macha is “the raven,” Badb’s big sister, goddess of prophetic warfare. This means she is a mind-zapper, rather than a physical participant in battles. With psychic energy alone, mental mojo, she can influence a fight, destroy an enemy, or win a war. She was invoked in ancient Irish battles by an imitation of a raven’s croaking, on war horns. The sound alone, supposedly , could traumatize men’s minds. Terror of her invisible always presence. Morrigan means “Great Queen,” but you can see: this is not anyone’s idea of a legal, regal lady. The Irish chose wildness as their metaphor, particularly vis-à-vis the linear Anglo conquerors. They also chose female power over female beauty. In all descriptions, the Morrigan is a pugnacious sight. A big-mouthed black swift sooty woman, lame and squinting with her left eye. She wore a threadbare dingy cloak. Dark as the back of a stag beetle was every joint of her, from the top of her head to the ground. 4 Her long gray hair falls back over her shoulder. A big, bony shoulder. Cruel and kind mother, warrior, virgin, hag, goddess of sex and fertility, the one who makes the land fruitful or barren, mother of seasons, the one who protects the flocks and seeds: the Morrigan shares all these classic attributes of Great Goddesses everywhere. But she has this Gaelic twist. Smoky, lame, and cockeyed. Barefoot and filthy-fingered. A supernatural hagbag, a screeching cailleach , like her Welsh twin, Cerridwen . Solitary, she roams mountains with wild deer herds, haunts alleys of hard cities. A face often distraught, pissed, poor, swollen with anger or the planetary passion of ultimatums about to be explosively uttered. Mantic words spewed out like crazy crows against the world’s official wind. She is called “big - mouthed.” She is called “ugly and utterly abnormal.” She is called mad. Mean. Nasty. Out of style. She is. So be it! You see my bias. I love this Hag. One good leg, one eye, one tooth: the Stubborn One. Fist in the chest that clenches, opens, clenches again as the world’s relentless pulse goes through it. Politics is not pretty. Earth today is not altogether serene. Nor is the Morrigan. Feisty; but she is frustrated. For this reason: she is the Earth. She cannot sell out, exploit herself. Take dishonest shortcuts to survival. Source of all wealth, power, work, real value, she cannot therefore turn herself into quick cash, properties, paper assets, profitable junk, or bombs. She is not a necrophiliac dealer, a stockbroker, a land developer, a sharky hustler of trends and 5 markets. She cannot pimp her own flesh: her home, her body. Nor her children: animals, trees, humanity. Nor her imaginative power: her dreams. She pays herself lousy wages, indeed. She can only boil in her belly, turning from day to night through all weathers, while the rage for poetry and justice flies out of her, continuously, circling and cawing in a mood of black wings. And hope that we are Her Daughters: to see, and listen, and do the same. When they say anger is not spiritual, they lie. When they say spirituality and politics don’t mix, they lie again. Politics can be a dream of the body. And the body of Earth is definitely spiritual. And definitely has a right to rage. Her righteous rage. Earth can be made sick, beat up, enslaved, can die: she has a right to defend herself. She is not obligated to be nice, negotiable, nonargumentative, nonthreatening. She does not need to Look Good: she is Real. All the moods are Hers, as are all the weathers of this planet. This is a model for Female Politics, 1990s (recalling that brief but fine feminist holism of the 1960s): no justifiable separation between “being spiritual” and “being political.” No choice between personal well - being and global change. One signifies/necessitates the other, and She will kick shit if necessary. Anything less is a lie. I like the way the Morrigan fights. A war goddess, her weapon is the female mind. She was responsible for this ultimate power to decide, to will the fate of Her people; it was recognized by male warriors as mightier than any weapon or stratagem. Celtic women engaged in battle, and fought in 6 the Morrigan’s name. In her m ode. Rushing among the enemy ranks, they swirled blazing bundles of wood. Cursing, chanting, screaming. Enchanted, rooted, right: they totally confused the mind of the opponent, draining his muscles of strength, his heart of courage. This is guerrilla theater! Guerrilla warfare. Is it not? To short-circuit all opposing certitudes; eclipse the Moon, the mind. The Hag whose thoughts are black wings can do it. The Badb had a special posture, the stance of magicians. Approached by any hostile entity, scheming to take Her world, She: stood on one leg, shut one eye, and chanted. And the world remained Hers. To this day. Try it. ***