Morrigan

By Ravensworth (Lady Nyt)

On the night of November 3rd, 2013, beneath a new moon in Scorpio, the first spark of the Wild Blackthorn Tradition was lit. The Samhain fires had barely cooled, the veil still thin, and we, Lord Onyx and I, stood in sacred space to weave together two lineages, two living rivers of Craft.

From the Jolean Tradition, guided by my first priestess, Lady Teara, came the Celtic-eclectic current rooted in 1734 and the Earth Mother’s Child Church of Wicca. From the Draconian Tradition, under the mentorship of Lady Lionrhod and Lord Ash, came the fierce, wyrd wisdom of Welsh-Celtic and Wysardan paths. These streams joined that night, mingling into something wild, protective, and sovereign. The child born of that union was the Wild Blackthorn.

The Words That Began It All

During that first rite we spoke of vision and creation, of love and freedom, of forging a new social order grounded in the divine feminine’s compassion and the divine masculine’s courage. We invoked the Morrígan, the Phantom Queen, to stand as our patroness, and called upon the Blackthorn tree, symbol of strength, purification, justice, and fate.

“The Blackthorn gives us the authority to banish. It brings with it destiny, fidelity, guidance, independence, influence, and magic… The strong hand of fate and of outside influences that must be obeyed.”

Those words, spoken twelve years ago under that dark Scorpio sky, still echo through every circle we cast.

The Years of Growth and the Turning of the Wheel

Twelve years.
A full cycle of the zodiac, a dozen moons of years, the wholeness before rebirth.

From that single circle have grown many: groves and covens, circles and classrooms, each carrying the essence of that original vow. We’ve walked through seasons of light and shadow, laughter and loss. We have watched seekers become dedicates, and dedicates become initiates. We’ve seen our priesthood rise and our Wysards refine their arts.

The Wild Blackthorn has flourished in Orlando, Tampa, Asheville, Danbury, and in the desert winds of Nevada and Arizona. Our circles have stretched across states and through screens, into new friendships and distant hearths.

Every seeker who has stood in our circles has carried away a spark, and those sparks have kindled new fires in places we have yet to see.

Lessons from the Thorn

The Blackthorn is a teacher of paradox. Its blossoms are soft, its thorns sharp. It protects and it prunes.
Our Tradition has known both blessings and trials, seasons where circles broke, where paths diverged, where trust was tested. Yet from every wound, new shoots have sprung.

The lesson of the Thorn is resilience.
It grows in wild places. It thrives in poor soil. It flowers even after frost.
So too have we.

Every turning of the wheel has deepened our magic and matured our understanding of what it means to be a living tradition. We have learned to teach with patience, to speak with integrity, and to lead with open hands rather than closed fists. We have learned that lineage is not a chain; it is a root system.

The Living Grove

What began as a single vow beneath a new moon has become a living grove of witches, priests, and wysards, united by shared intention and bound by shared experience.

Each year our tradition grows more distinct, more self-aware, and more connected to the mystery that first called us. Our rituals have evolved, our theology refined, our cosmology expanded into a rich synthesis of myth, magic, and metaphysics.

We have built not a community. Specifically, one that values both depth and discovery, reverence and rebellion.

And though faces have changed, the spirit of Blackthorn endures: fierce in protection, wild in freedom, rooted in justice and wisdom.

Looking Toward the Thirteenth Year

The number twelve marks completion, the closing of a cycle. The thirteenth year now approaches, the number of transformation, of witches, of crossing thresholds.

May the year ahead open new paths, forge new friendships, and strengthen old bonds. May our tradition continue to grow as a light in the deep places and a flame at the world’s edge.

We honor the founders, the elders, and every student and seeker who has shared in this journey.
We honor the Morrígan, our guide and patroness, who watches with sharp eyes from the branches of the Blackthorn.

Twelve years beneath the Thorn, and still we rise.
So mote it be!

Beneath the Blackthorn Moon

Great Queen of the Raven’s Wing,
Morrígan of the whispering dark,
You who have watched our steps these twelve long years,
through bloom and thorn, through circle and storm,
We call you once more beneath the new moon’s gaze.

Remember the vows made in your shadow,
when first we set our blades to the briar
and carved our names into the living wood.

We have walked through joy and fracture,
through the flowering of friendship
and the pruning of loss.
Each wound has bled its lesson;
each scar has become a sigil of power.

Bless again the hands that cast the circle,
the hearts that teach, the voices that sing.
Bless the seekers who wander our way,
and the elders whose roots hold us steady.

May the thirteenth turning open new paths.
May they be paths in truth.
May they be paths in wisdom.

Beneath your black wings and the Blackthorn’s crown,
may we continue to grow wild and true,
our faith a flame that endures the frost.

So mote it be.

I was warned.

It began more than twenty-five years ago, in a small living room thick with incense and shadow. The five of us sat cross-legged on the floor, chanting our invocation. My Priestess, Lady Teara, veiled and still, opened herself, and as the breath left her body, the Crone stepped in.

Her voice came low and dry, ancient as dust and bone.

“There will come a time,
of fire, famine, and war.
A time of great unmaking.
And you must be ready.”

I didn’t know it then, but that was the first time I heard the breath of Apophis coiling through the veil.

The warning returned, again and again, over the years. In dreams. In trance. In ritual.

The Crone came to me in different faces, sometimes as the Morrigan, sometimes cloaked and nameless. The only date she ever gave, spoken again through Lady Teara’s voice: “In twenty-five years.”

She never offered comfort. Just the knowing. Just the echo: Prepare.

And the gods of war began to stir.

Ares stood at the edge of my dreams, shield gleaming red. Tyr raised his stump of justice. Sekhmet’s eyes burned with plague and righteous flame. The Morrigan gathered her tribes, feathers blacker than the void between stars.

The war gods are walking again.
And they are not quiet.

We Were Told, But We Forgot

We thought the fire would come all at once. We imagined mushroom clouds, not slow-burn collapse.
But chaos rarely screams.
It whispers, through storm and flood, through smoke-blackened skies, through laws twisted into weapons against the people they once claimed to serve.

We saw the signs.

The Earth cried out, forests burning, oceans warming and rising, storms of untold strength, animals fleeing from lands gone silent. The people fractured, turning on each other, fed lie after lie until truth was drowned beneath spectacle.

Empires teetered.
Masks fell.
And still, we looked away.

But witches, real witches, do not look away.

We listen.
We feel the bones of the world humming underfoot.
And we know.

In 2015, I sat with a beloved friend and oracle. Together, we spoke again with the Morrigan.

She warned us once more, this time, more urgently.

A threat from the Great Bear.
A war that would begin in the early spring.
And something else: the rising of a name barely spoken for centuries, an obscure Egyptian deity suddenly surfacing in books, conversations, and even visions within our own circles.

Then, in late February of 2022, the war in Ukraine began.

The Morrigan had whispered: a time of chaos was at hand.
The time of Apophis had arrived.

Who Is Apophis?

Apophis, Apep, is not the devil.
He is not evil in the moralistic sense.
He is unmaking. He is entropy. He is dissolution.

He is what comes when truth collapses, when order fractures, when the center no longer holds.

In the stories of ancient Kemet, Apophis is the serpent of chaos, rising from the abyss each night to devour the solar barque of Ra.
He is not a creature of one strike, but of endless return.
Even if defeated, he comes again. Always.

He is the force that whispers:

“Nothing is real. Nothing matters. Burn it all down.”

Apophis unravels by lies.
He devours not only the sun, but the mind.
Confusion is his mist.
Division is his weapon.

He rises in propaganda, in conspiracy, in the algorithmic storm of a thousand half-truths.
He does not need to be believed, only to be repeated.
His power lies in erosion.
He wears down faith, coherence, meaning.

He comes when Ma’at, the principle of balance, truth, and justice, is weakened.

And make no mistake: Ma’at is bleeding.

Apophis slithers through every unchecked greed, every broken promise, every law twisted to serve power instead of people.
He delights when the people are too tired to care.
When cynicism replaces vision.
When witches forget their oaths to truth and become influencers instead of initiates.

This is not a bedtime tale.
This is the mirror we must not turn away from.

We are not living in Revelation.
We are living in the age of the Great Unbinding.

And yet, Ra still sails.
The sun still rises.

Not because the serpent is slain once and for all,
but because each night, someone stands to fight.

Let that someone be you.

The Witch’s Role

We were not born into this time by accident.

I believe this with all my soul: witches are not tourists in the age of collapse.
We are the ones who light the way through it.

We are threshold-walkers.
Grief-bearers.
Justice-callers.
And when the world frays, we do not run.
We weave.

We do not worship Apophis.
But we name him.
Not to glorify the serpent, but to understand the shape of the battle.

This is a spiritual war.
But not the kind preached from pulpits.

This is a war of forgetting vs. remembering.
Of greed vs. generosity.
Of silence vs. song.

It is a war for the soul of the Earth.
And it is being fought in courts and forests, kitchens and dreams.

Our ancestors knew how to survive collapse.
Their bones still remember.

So must we.

What You Must Do

Prepare. Truly. Learn to live with less. Store what you need. Know your neighbors.
Build your circles. Magical and mundane. No one survives alone.
Work your shadow. Do not bring your unhealed poison into the world. That is how tyrants are born.
Hone your gifts. Second sight. Word-craft. Protection. Conjuring joy.
Shield the vulnerable. Speak truth, even when your voice shakes.

And remember:

This is not the end.
This is the unraveling before the weave begins again.

This is the death throes of empire and patriarchy,
a last gasping grasp to hold power through fear and force.

But from this collapse, something else may rise.
Not dominion, but balance.
Not hierarchy, but wholeness.
A world where the sacred is not hoarded, but shared.

The Crone does not come only to destroy.
She comes to clear the way for rebirth.

The Mirror and the Flame

When the veil thins and the nights stretch long, I sit in ritual and I remember her words.

I remember the war gods watching.

And I remember: even Apophis cannot stop the sunrise.

I do not fear the dark.
I was made for it.

And if you’re reading this, so were you.

The serpent rises.

Let us rise higher.

Where the Blackthorn Grows Wild