Welcome back to Morgan le Fay Week at White Rose of Avalon! I have decided to discuss Morgan as Sorceress for day four of Morgan le Fay Week. The Sorceress is the darker Autumnal witch who is using her magic to plot the downfall of her enemies. She is a witch who does not fear the repercussions of her actions, as she feels all of her deeds are worth it and justified.
The Sorceress is the balancing place of Morgan le Fay’s Springtime Enchantress. Each relates to one Season of the Witch, as I agree with certain other Priestesses (like the incredible Demelza Fox of Rockstar Priestess) in the assertion that there is not one Season of the Witch but two! The first is the season of the Sorceress, the Autumnal magical season between the Autumn Equinox and Samhain. The second is the season of the Enchantress, the Vernal Springtime magical season between the Vernal Equinox and Beltane.
This Sorceress is very much the Crone to the Enchantress’ Maiden. In this way, we can see the Sorceress as the more mature and finely honed magic of the darker aspects. She is more of a grey or dark witch who does not care if she is doing something that others think is morally wrong, as she plays by her own rules. Like all witch figures, Morgan as Sorceress does not play by society’s standards, instead, she breaks with social convention to craft a life she wishes to live on her terms!
Sorcery is one of the things that Morgan is most associated with as a Goddess. She works her magic to get what she desires, even if that desire is the downfall of her brother’s kingdom! Morgan the Sorceress is unafraid to use her magic to manipulate or seduce men into being her lovers. She would use this magic to Glamour Sir Bertilak into the Green Knight, partly because she desired to scare Guinevere to death! It is Morgan as Sorceress that is so feared and reviled by medieval writers who describe her as evil. It is sad that Merlin used much the same magic in his own sorcery, and is even said to have been fathered by a demon, but he is never described as evil like Morgana is! At the end of the day, Sorceress Morgan is both the most well-known and often the least liked of her many faces. I hope you have enjoyed learning a bit about this darker witchy side of Morgana. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Further Reading
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
- Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth
- Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes
- Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
White Rose of Avalon 
I know the post is about Morgana. But the thing about Merlin makes me think. There’s old, I mean wicked old art depicting a possible Merlin archetype in the kinds of cave where some of the Venus art was found.
That said. It would be interesting to see what She would have been like before receiving the Christian treatment.
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I totally agree with that, it’s so hard to determine what these deities of Celtic lands were prior to Christianity since they never wrote anything down. I should stress it was part of their religion to memorize things not because they could not write (which is sometimes stated). As for Merlin, he is a very intriguing figure who can sometimes be linked to pseudo-historical figures, much like Arthur himself. I find him fascinating as well and think that like Morgana he could have been a figure found in cultures around the Celtic world!
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Do you do Ogham? I can’t. I do Runes. But a thought struck me the other day. I think our ancestors were more literate than we think. We know Runes were also put on perishable material like bone and wood. We know that Pagan artefacts are fashionable to destroy, currently, to fill a specific agenda. Just as post-conversion Europeans and others were moved to destroy evidence of pre-Christian past when they could.
I wonder if one could make the same hunch with Ogham. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Rob Graham’s “The Ancient Paths, ” but the Celts were brilliant engineers and I’d bet they must have had at least some writing to efficiently make their infrastructure.
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I have worked with Ogham some. I do agree that it seems that the same conclusion can be drawn with Ogham possibly being used as written language. We know many Ogham were made of wood, as you mentioned with runes, meaning they would eventually deteriorate. We also know that the Celts had two zodiacs, one based on animals and the other on trees (directly related to Ogham) so it would seem the Ogham is more far-reaching than most give it credit for! Plus I have to state that I feel the Celtic zodiacs are a little more fitting in how they portray personality related to the stars (at least for my own zodiac) when compared to the traditional western zodiac. In that way the Celts may have been much more advanced in their knowledge of the stars than we realize as well.
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Well, I mean a Celtic Zodiac would actually be Western. My limited knowledge of all that then tells me the Greeks tooled something from the East to make what becomes the Zodiac. Kinda like tarot.
I think you’re right. One of the things Dieu-le-veut and Markale talk about is how the Henges sync with Cairns, or totems with caves and probably go back to prehistoric fertility cults. But to do that, they would have been sensitive to vibrations, solar alignments and whatnot.
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I totally agree, I just meant the zodiac of the Greeks is always assumed to be western. They absolutely would have had to be sensitive to vibrations and solar alignments!
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Touché, my bad.
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No problem
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