By Blood, Bone, and Blade: A Tribute to the Morrigan

by Nicole Bonvisuto (Editor)

The Morrigan.Phantom Queen. Night Hag. Mistress of Battles. The Great Raven.She is both benevolent mother and righteous wrath. She is creative destruction and destructive creation. She is inspirational, and perplexing, and maddening. She drives us forward in times of defeat, and offers succor in times of pain and hardship. She is loved, and she is feared.Honored across ancient Ireland, she has never been forgotten. In this anthology, her modern-day devotees offer poems, short fiction, rituals, essays, and artwork to The Lady in all her many splendid and terrifying forms.Hail The Morrigan!

Genres: Paganism, Witchcraft

284 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2014

Reviews

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poor anthology took its time to appear and when it did....

Its saving graces and what made me give it 3 stars:

The Morrígan and Cú Chulainn: A More Nuanced View of Their Relationship by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

Macha ~ One Face of the Morrígan by Morgan Daimler

The Morrigan, Allecto, and Lamia: Irish Deities and Interpretatio Hibernica of Classical Myth by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

Musings on the Irish War Goddesses by Saigh Kym Lambert

I would also like to point out that there was some excellent poetry by Morgan Daimler and P. Sufenas Virius Lupus as well as some great prayers and invocations by Morgan Daimler. However, since these are a matter of taste I didn't add them to the "saving grace" list

[Indigo Crow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I was expecting something different somehow. For the most part, though, I'm not impressed with this book.

Much of it is simply poetry and other devotional material for The Morrigan, and that's alright. The essays were good, too, and pretty informative and I found myself wishing the writers of those essays would write full books on the subject because I enjoyed what they had to say. The fiction was... well, I ended up skipping that, and there was a bit of misinformation in the book, too, that I'm sort of surprised made it through. That is, if this book actually had anyone doing editing on it. Given the typographical errors throughout, I'm not sure of that.

The references and bibliographies actually took up a lot of the space in this book so it's truly shorter than it is said to be simply because of those notes and references. That was terribly disappointing!

[Juli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glad to see this finally "hit the shelves" and I've been feeling particularly drawn to read more on Her lately and found "Musings on the Irish War Goddesses" by Saigh Kym Lambert and Morgan Daimler's essay on Macha most interesting of all the offerings in the book. But overall, I enjoyed the entire anthology.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a fan of the fiction but everything else was great.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. Prayers, spells etc. were good but I entirely skipped the fiction. The endnotes took up more than half of the book.

[Fiach Dubh · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an anthology there is a mix of the good, the okay, and the really bad. The good are really good, the bad keeps it from getting all five stars.