The Morrigan as a “Dark Goddess”
A Goddess Re-Imagined Through Therapeutic Self-Narration of Women on Social Media
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.37967Keywords:
Contemporary Paganism, YouTube, Neopaganism, The Morrigan, online religion, social mediaAbstract
This research examines the contemporary worship of an Irish folkloric figure, the Morrigan, as expressed on the new media platform of YouTube, and within the context of the wider concept of the Dark Goddess. While narratives of a “dark”’ Goddess existed in earlier Pagan and Goddess-focused texts, material describing a Dark Goddess archetype who enables women’s healing and empowerment developed from the 1990s alongside third-wave feminism. As the Morrigan is portrayed in the online Pagan community as a “dark goddess,” this folkloric figure is transformed or re-imagined through Dark Goddess discourse. Morrigan devotees reinterpret the Morrigan through self-narration in new media, a therapeutic process through which they recontextualise and give new meaning to autobiographical experiences. The Morrigan is reconfigured by devotees as a force which has brought about, assisted them through, and healed them from personal struggles. This discourse allows practitioners—predominantly women—to reconfigure personal narratives of struggle as transformational rites of passage.
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