Original subtitles

From demonic writings

that have taunted scholars for centuries

to the mysteries of ancient healing cults

to forgotten Gods whose presence

bring dark omens of death,

these enigmas of history could hold the keys

to unlocking our collective faith.

In 17th century Sicily,

a troubled nun is believed by some

to be possessed by the devil.

It sounds like something out of a horror film.

It said that a dark demonic force

overtook this woman's body

as she writes a letter in an indecipherable code.

In ancient Greece,

a cult dedicated to the God of healing,

promises cures, and prophetic visions.

Does the waft of incense.

There are priestly chance that God

of healing would come and visit you.

Anyone can be healed if they show enough faith.

And in ancient Ireland,

as warriors prepare for battle,

they are visited by a terrible portent

of their fate.

She took the form

of a beautiful woman.

She was being seductive.

Warriors who encounter her

on the eve of a battle know

that on her very whims,

they can either succeed or fail.

He realized that he was dealing

with something very dangerous.

1676.

Sicily.

In the quiet hours before dawn,

within the austere stare walls

of the Benedictine convent

in Palma di Montechiaro,

Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione

kneels alone in her dimly lit cell.

Suddenly an invisible force grips her.

She draws a piece of parchment and quill

and begins to write frantically.

The quill scratches feverously

across the parchment,

the sound sharp and grading

in the oppressive silence.

Strange symbols in cryptic characters

flow onto the page,

but these are not words from God.

No.

Sister Maria believes these are words

from the devil himself.

This letter was written almost 400 years ago

and it's absolutely baffled experts until now.

The story of this strange letter

begins in 17th century Sicily,

an age of great religious and social turmoil.

Born as Isabella Tomasi in 1645,

Sister Maria is the daughter

of Prince Julio Tomasi di Lampedusa

making her a member

of the privileged aristocracy.

Isabella was by all accounts,

a deeply religious individual

and at just 15 years of age,

she makes the life altering decision

to enter into a Benedictine convent.

Here she's baptized anew

shedding her former identity

to embrace the name,

Maria Crocifissa della Concezione.

Benedictine convents like the one

that Isabella joined, were incredibly important

to the social fabric of 17th century Sicily.

They also were one of the few avenues of learning

for young women, places where a woman

could actually learn to read and write,

an incredibly rare skill at the time.

Some believe Sister Maria

may have other reasons for joining the convent.

There is some suggestion

that Sister Maria is suffering

from visions of evil spirits that taunt her,

pushing her to commit sin.

This could explain why she,

the daughter of a prince

would become a humble sister.

Maybe she is looking for security

from these dark visions in the house of God.

As Sister Maria's life

in the convent progresses,

her battle with her inner demons

begins to manifest for all to see.

After a few years, it becomes obvious to all

that Sister Maria is different

from the other nuns.

She confides in her sisters

that the devil himself possesses her

relentlessly trying to turn her away from God.

The other nuns witness

inexplicable behaviors from Maria.

One of the most dramatic events happens one day

in the convent's chapel.

As she nears the altar,

she lets out a blood curdling scream.

Eyes wide with terror at unseen horrors.

The other nuns at the convent are terrified

and the question on everyone's mind is,

"Is Sister Maria truly possessed by the devil?"

17th century Sicily

was a deeply religious society

and one of the perennial fears

within that society was devil worship

or the influence of demons in people's lives.

We have elements of ritualized possession,

which are not unsavory or salacious.

The idea of being used in a consensual way

in order to make proclamations to communities,

that's something that takes place in a lot

of contemporary religions all around the world.

So it's not an uncommon thing,

it's not an impossible thing,

but the tendency to make it evil is something

that we really need to be careful of.

When Maria starts exhibiting unusual

and abnormal behavior,

it concerns her fellow nuns

and they ascribe her behavior potentially

to her being in league with the devil.

You're already in this environment

that says that anything

that is not specifically Christian

or Catholic is evil or wrong,

and whatever is going on with this sister

has the potential to be really

quite dangerous for her.

Throughout her 16 years in the convent,

other unsettling events occur.

But nothing could prepare the sisters

of the convent in Palma di Montechiaro

for what happens next.

Maria is found in her chamber.

Her face smeared with ink,

and in her trembling hand she holds this letter.

The other nuns stare in disbelief

as she emerges from a trance.

Exhausted and frail,

Maria gasps that Satan has possessed her,

forcing her to dictate a series of letters.

She confesses that she has no memory

of what she wrote during this demonic episode,

that it was not her hand

that moved her to write,

but that of the devil himself.

When the letter is pried

from Sister Maria's grasp and examined,

the other sisters are in shock.

The parchment is scrawled with a baffling mix

of archaic glyphs and ancient languages.

Latin, Greek, Arabic,

all intertwined in a strange jumble.

The script is indecipherable

and whispers ripple through the convent.

This is Satan's handwriting.

The convent is enveloped

in this miasma of fear,

and yet the historical records

then go deathly silent.

We don't really know what happened.

Yet, we are certain that Sister Maria stayed

on at the convent executing her religious duties.

The letter is examined by the church,

but no one can make sense of it.

It becomes a curiosity of sorts

and is kept at the convent for centuries

after Sister Maria's death.

It's a puzzle

that seems frustratingly impossible to solve.

For nearly 400 years,

linguists and code breakers have desperately

tried and failed

to decipher Maria Crocifissa's mysterious letter.

So fast forward, it's now 2017

and we have the LUDUM Science Center,

which is this kind of private research facility

in Italy that decides that it wants

to take a crack at decoding this letter.

The researchers at LUDUM led

by Daniele Abate tried conventional

code breaking techniques to decipher the letter,

but nothing really panned out.

They knew that many of the characters

in the letter came

from specific ancient languages,

but they couldn't find any correspondence

to any languages that Sister Maria

would've been fluent in.

To finally crack the code,

the researchers at LUDUM had to turn

to an unlikely and potentially dangerous source.

The dark web.

The dark web can be seen

as almost a black market section of the internet.

It's kind of this underground section

in which a lot of illegal activity occurs.

So not necessarily the part that you and I

might be engaging with.

In this CD cyber realm,

researchers learn that a powerful code breaking

software has been leaked

and it may be the perfect tool

for deciphering this letter.

As the computer screen flickers,

there was a breakthrough.

The 400 year old mystery could be solved.

The software managed to decode

most of the letter, about 70%.

Slowly, the jumbled words

of Sister Maria's letter come

into focus as they are decoded

for the first time.

And as the researchers

read the unveiled words, they were in shock.

"Humans are responsible

for the creation of God.

This system works for no one.

God thinks he can free mortals.

Perhaps now, Styx is certain.

God and Jesus are dead weights."

Such blasphemous thoughts are unthinkable

for a nun to entertain,

let alone commit to writing.

Did Sister Maria write this

or are these words as many believed

written by the devil?

This letter is so antagonistic,

it could be some sort of antagonistic entity.

Christianity has displaced deities

from prior traditions.

A lot of the beings that people are relating

to potentially are beings of ancestral connection

and who have had very long-term relationships

that have now been bastardized,

displaced and just completely torn apart.

So there's anger.

Sister Maria's writing

is very strange.

On one level, it feels almost

like a more modern atheistic

philosophical approach to the world.

It also references ancient Greek mythology

ideas combined in ways

that we would just never expect

from a 17th century nun.

The mention of Styx in the letter

adds another strange layer to the story.

In Greek mythology,

the river Styx separates the land

of the living from the realm of the dead.

Whether that is a callback

to the enduring importance of Greek belief,

Greek mythology, or whether it is some sort

of reference to what the underworld

and what the afterlife actually is,

either way, it's clearly not the prevailing

Abrahamic belief of the time.

Could this imply that Satan

or some other unspeakable entity is poised

to prevail in the eternal struggle

between good and evil?

While dark visions like those experienced

by Sister Maria were once attributed

to demonic possession, modern medicine now

offers a more plausible explanation.

Perhaps the most relevant ailment

would be schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia can cause a dissociation

between sort of imagination and reality.

So someone might hear voices,

and this is a very common one.

We all have voices in our head, right?

We all speak to ourselves all the time

and we hear these voices,

but we think they're our voices.

For the schizophrenic,

it feels like that voice is coming

from some external source

and that is a very powerful feeling.

That feels like you're being spoken to.

If you're a religious being

and if the words are tempting you

or suggesting things

that are against the teachings of the church,

then the natural notion would be Satan.

This is Satan tempting me.

While some speculate that the writing

of this letter was beyond Sister Maria's control,

whether from the influence of the devil

or the effects of schizophrenia,

others have theorized that she knew exactly

what she was doing.

But to create such a complex letter

using various ancient languages

is a difficult undertaking.

Could Sister Maria be capable of this?

Generally speaking, literacy rates

in the 17th century were very low

compared to today.

That being said though,

a woman like Maria

given her aristocratic background

and also given her education she would've

received upon entering into the convent,

would have had the ability

or at least access to learning

many of these languages.

And so it's not beyond the realm of possibility

that she did in fact write this herself.

While Maria may have had the ability

to create this letter,

why would she write it in the first place?

There could have been

rather than Satan, some real

psychological distress she was experiencing

and perhaps this was frustration with the church,

perhaps it was even a feeling

of personal failings around her own spirituality.

At the time in the 17th century we're dealing

with a world that had been divided

by religious ideas in a way

that was profoundly disruptive

to political stability

as well as religious stability.

It raised a lot of questioning

about what constituted truth.

And so perhaps on one level,

this letter is an expression

of that sense of disorder and disruption

to traditional understanding

of the divine order

and the place of people within it.

What's particularly scary is

that if this letter had been decoded

while Sister Maria was alive,

she would've been damned as a heretic.

Here she is rejecting the traditional

assumptions of the power of God.

It's a highly dangerous idea.

At the very least,

she would've faced quite serious punishment

within the convent herself,

but it's also likely

that she might've faced charges of heresy

from the larger church authorities.

Could Sister Maria have employed a code

of her own creation as a safeguard

against the discovery

of these rebellious thoughts?

It was certainly

in Sister Maria's best interest

that this letter remained encoded

throughout her lifetime.

It's almost tailor made for Hollywood, right?

It's a strange confluence of kind

of modern horror meets ancient horror

coming together in a perfect moment.

For now, the matter of the devil's letter

remains open to interpretation.

But whether Sister Maria's internal struggles

drove the creation of these cryptic writings

or that she did in fact have interactions

with unknown forces, we do know

that she was profoundly changed by it.

After the incident where Maria wrote the letter,

she seems to be miraculously cured.

She no longer exhibits any of her strange,

unusual behavior and by all accounts

becomes the perfect nun.

We have this notion in psychology

called catharsis when you can sort

of get that all off.

That's a critical step to healing.

Perhaps this feeling of frustration

with the church and annoyance,

she found a way to release that in ways

that didn't cause negative consequences,

and so she was able to get the release

and then go to a life

that was much more calm, much more peaceful.

It said that when she finally died in 1699,

her last words were, "Holy, holy, holy."

Her final words

perhaps echo her ultimate redemption,

the quiet triumph of a soul

that finally found peace.

While Sister Maria's possible encounter

with spiritual forces has dark undertones,

the same cannot be said

for the spiritual influence

of the ancient Greek God of healing and prophecy.

In ancient Greece,

a blind man named Alcetas of Halieis

makes a pilgrimage to the Oracle of Epidaurus,

hoping to find a cure for his condition.

He is guided into the inner sanctum

of the temple complex and instructed to sleep.

As he sleeps, he is visited in his dreams

by the God of healing who places his hands

on Alcetas' eyes.

Then Alcetas wakes up.

And to his shock,

he can now see cured by the God's healing hands.

We know about this story because it survives

on an inscription in the temple complex

at Epidaurus, along with other such inscriptions

of the healing powers

of this ancient Greek holy site.

The Oracle of Epidaurus located

in the Peloponnese region of Greece

holds significant historical importance

as a major healing sanctuary.

An oracle is a mystical gateway

through which Gods can communicate with people.

This term can refer both to a holy person

like a priest or priestess,

or to the location where that person presides.

The oracles were hugely important

to the ancient Greeks.

Before they embarked on any kind

of major undertaking,

particularly going to war,

they would consult the oracles

to find out what was going to happen.

They wanted to know exactly what the chances

of success were and the only way they could do it

was via the priests at the oracles.

Established around the 6th century BCE,

the temple's purpose is to provide healing

through a combination of divine intervention

and practical medical treatments.

It's one of the closest things to a hospital

that we'll find in the ancient world.

It is said that the God of healing resides there

and will heal anyone who comes

and shows enough faith.

The kind of conditions that people would look

to get cured in these healing temples

would've been arthritis,

you might get infertility,

even baldness, believe it or not,

was something that people sought cures

for from the gods.

The gods are imagined as participants

in the everyday lives of people.

Rituals, sacrifices, ceremonies,

all these ways of acknowledging the gods

and being in a kind of communion

with them is really important

to ancient Greek life.

This marriage of the spiritual

and practical worked

to create a holistic healing environment

that has a long history in this region.

The Oracle of Epidaurus is associated

with a site

that had been an active site of devotion,

dating back at least to the [indistinct] period.

Over time, the presiding deities

assimilated into the God Apollo

and by the 6th century BCE,

the site became associated

with his son Asclepius, the God of healing.

Thought to have begun as a mortal man,

Asclepius became highly skilled as a healer,

surpassing his teachers and is believed

to have had the extraordinary ability

to bring people back from the dead.

Asclepius was known

as a particularly prolific healer

who had such an incredible track record

that he became a threat to the Olympians.

According to Greek mythology,

Asclepius's resurrection abilities led

to a population boom,

prompting Zeus the chief deity

of the Greek pantheon to kill him

in order to maintain balance.

Yet still from the 5th century BC,

his alleged healing powers promoted

by a loyal cult of followers,

beckons herds of pilgrims across the Greek world

to temples named in his honor.

Healing was such an important function

of divinity in the ancient world

that it's not surprising

there are many temples dedicated

to this God in particular,

including one in Pergamum.

We know a little bit

about the internal operations of this temple

as a healing facility from the later writings

of a Greco-Roman order named Aristides

who came and visited.

And what he describes here is a place

with dedicated rooms for sleep therapy.

We have the use of sound therapy.

Diet and exercise was also of a concern,

treatments that not only would be familiar today

but were quite sophisticated.

Within the temple complex

at the Oracle of Epidaurus,

a dedicated group of priests and physicians

work collaboratively to bridge the gap

between the divine and the practical,

ensuring that visitors

receive comprehensive care.

Getting ill in the ancient world

was a pretty grim business.

I mean, you didn't have the healthcare

that we have today or the knowledge.

So you in desperation would go to one

of these healing temples.

The Oracle of Epidaurus really is a site

that draws together multiple different ways

of attending to people's health,

a kind of multi-pronged approach

or a holistic approach to the process of healing.

It is surrounded by these mineral rich springs

that are renowned

for their own healing properties.

You have also the element of spiritual belief

and so you're also tapping

into people's ability to appeal

to a higher realm as a way of attending

to their physical health.

The priests oversee religious ceremonies

and interpret the divine messages

received by the visitors.

Physicians and healers

apply practical medical knowledge

such as improving diet and exercise

and administer herbal remedies.

Records of this practice still remain etched

into the walls of the sanctuary.

If you go to Epidaurus, in the temple,

you'll find these things called,

cure inscriptions, which are basically records

of the work that was being done at the temple.

It was very organized

and approached very seriously.

One of the most effective tools

used by the priests and healers

at Epidaurus is the power of sleep.

That is your most vulnerable state

is when you're asleep

and it is sometimes the only time

where your consciousness gets out of the way.

And just that allows you to release

enough of your guard to maybe open up.

The healing would occur through a kind

of dream work which may have a resonance

with modern forms of psychotherapy working

through the power of suggestion,

tapping into the abilities

of the brain and the body

when the subconscious is brought into play.

So the dreaming allows you

to have new information

which often leads you to healing.

And then you wake up in the morning

and maybe you are convinced you feel a whole

lot better and you exit believing

that you have been cured.

It's so important

to remember the context of this time.

Medicine is not in any way, shape or form

what it is today,

so the idea of people being able

to go and get essentially a diagnosis

through a dream for whatever ailment it is

that they're suffering from

is something that gives an immense place of hope

because it's like, "Okay, wait, there's a way

that I can seek some form of alleviation

from whatever it is that's impacting my life."

But what if the priests

of the Oracle of Epidaurus were able

to control the very dreams of their patients?

Some proposed that the priests

and physicians were able

to use the amazing acoustics

of the temple complex to implant ideas

into the minds of their sleeping patients.

The picture that's painted is a picture

of extreme suggestibility

from a psychological perspective.

When people believe that they can go somewhere

and be healed, their consciousness

is already set up for healing.

That belief alone is the first step.

We know through placebo effects

and other things how powerful the brain can be

to even combat physical ailments.

One notion is called

the activation synthesis model,

which says things are activated

in our brains, concepts,

and then those things are woven into a story.

We do know that the content of our dreams

can be affected by the context

in which we're dreaming,

so if they could in the right way manage

to activate certain concepts

in the person's mind without waking them,

there is the potential that those concepts

could then become integrated in the dream.

The Oracle of Epidaurus served the people

of the ancient world for hundreds of years.

Is the source of its healing power

its direct connection to the gods?

Or, was it the generational knowledge

of the priests and physicians

who called the sanctuary their home?

A good analogy for understanding

what it would've been like at these temples

is our modern day spas.

For the average visitor there,

this had to be a context of peace and stability

and security and safety and support

that was probably unlike anything

that they had experienced and therefore,

that opens you up to suggestions.

You would've been pampered

by the temple attendants.

They were treated like royalty.

What wasn't to like?

The Oracle of Epidaurus leaves a legacy

that can be seen in modern medicine

highlighting the integration

of physical and spiritual wellbeing.

To this day,

we associate the God Asclepius with healing.

The rod of Asclepius is still used today

in many nations across the globe

as a symbol for the medical profession.

Whether by divine intervention

or other means, the Oracle of Epidaurus

would be a popular healing destination well

into the second century CE.

But the temple's reign

as the premier healing center

of the ancient world would not last forever.

Eventually, the temple falls into decline

and this is accelerated

by the rise of Christianity

and the political takeover of the region.

In the 4th century,

emperor Theodosius passes an edict

that bans all traditional Greco-Roman religions

and their practices, and this leads

to a closing of temples across the region,

including the temple of Epidaurus.

After it's closed, it falls into disuse,

it's abandoned, and eventually it's destroyed

by an earthquake.

When you ban a religion,

when you ban a spirituality,

you're saying that it is wrong

and it is not of the way of the people,

and so the only thing that happens there

is all of the healing goes away.

For me, it's sad to hear

that this was happening way back then

because I know this so intimately.

I mean, up until the seventies,

if you had more than three indigenous people

together at any moment in time in North America,

you were considered as inciting a riot.

We were told that the only way

of life we've ever known was wrong.

I wonder what would happen in the world

if that hadn't taken place,

like from the very beginning

if we were just allowed to heal

and to practice what cared for our community

and not what separated

and controlled our communities.

The prosperity brought

by the healing center allowed Epidaurus

to construct other buildings,

including the theater renowned

for its exceptional acoustics,

which continues to host performances today,

bridging the past with the present.

The Oracle of Epidaurus

is now a UNESCO World heritage site

attracting archeologists, historians,

and tourists who seek to understand

ancient Greek religion and healing practices.

The Oracle's legacy endures as a symbol

of humanity's quest for health, knowledge

and a connection with the divine.

The Oracle of Epidaurus is an example

of the healing power of the ancient gods.

But not all Gods worked

to the benefit of mankind.

Some gods were portents

of death and destruction.

In the mist shrouded hills of ancient Ireland,

a tense hush falls over the land as hundreds

of warriors prepare for imminent battle.

On one side,

an entire army marches forward to attack.

On the other side, one man stands defiant.

His name is Cú Chulainn,

the legendary hero of Ulster.

As he readies for battle,

a spectral figure appears before him,

a goddess whose presence

is both a prophecy and a peril.

This is the Morrígan.

Prior to the conquest of the Roman Empire,

most of Europe was dominated

by Celtic culture.

From Spain and Portugal in the south

to England and Wales in the north,

everywhere was dominated by the Celts.

The Celts had a rich cultural history

and a large pantheon of gods,

one of which was the Morrígan.

The Morrígan is a Celtic goddess

that can sometimes appear

as a beautiful young woman

or can be a very, very old gnarled lady.

Originating from a culture

of oral history, many details of this powerful

deity have been lost to time.

The traces of the Morrígan to survive

have been documented in ancient Latin manuscripts

and Irish medieval texts like the "Ulster Cycle",

preserving the legendary folk tales of the Celts.

The Morrígan appears in a number of tales

across the British Isles.

In England, she's known as the washer at the ford

who is washing bloody armor in a river.

And in a lot of the stories,

she's even said to be a kind of shapeshifter

who can shift from human form into bird form.

We're talking about a culture

in which the supernatural world

is directly involved in the human world.

And the gods, the many gods are direct actors

including in battles.

And the figure of the Morrígan

was one of the most feared.

The Morrígan is no ordinary deity.

She's the very embodiment of war.

The dark prophetic power

of this goddess is highlighted

in the most famous tale involving her

where she clashes with the mythical hero

of Irish legend, Cú Chulainn.

Cú Chulainn is one of the great

mythic figures in Celtic literature.

He is the Irish Samson,

the Irish Hercules,

a demi-god, a warrior figure,

but also a kind of tragic figure

in Irish pathology.

This warrior is born

under the name Setanta

to the mythological mother figure, Deichtine,

and in some tales, the God Lug.

As a child, he earns his name

from killing the hound of the smith Culann

in self-defense and then offering

to take the hound's place

until a new one can be reared.

According to legend, he trains

with the warrior women Scáthach in Alba,

which is modern day Scotland,

mastering martial arts and supernatural powers.

His growing reputation

for heroic deeds sets the stage

for his eventual encounter

with the Morrígan.

He is like many heroic figures,

incredibly rash and impetuous.

He's somebody who throws himself

into the heat of a battle,

and so he embarks on one great mission,

the so-called The Cattle Raid of Cooley.

He is defending Ulster by himself

due to the incapacitation of his fellow warriors

because of a curse.

He has to face off against the invading army

of Queen Medb of Connacht,

another rival Irish kingdom.

The stakes are immense.

The fate of his homeland rests on his shoulders.

But before the confrontation,

the Morrígan, the goddess of war and fate

appears to him.

The appearance of the Morrígan

on the battlefield was not a good sign.

Warriors who encounter her know that she holds

and weaves their fate on her very whims.

They can either succeed or fail.

The Morrígan appears to him in the guise

of a beautiful young maiden,

and she attempts basically to seduce him

and he just tells her to go away.

He's not interested in any seduction right now.

The appearance of the Morrígan to Chulainn

was clearly an attempt to gain his attention.

And so to reject this God

was to reject her power.

It was a direct affront to her,

and that is a dangerous game.

While the worship of the Morrígan

is most prominent in Ireland,

elements of the Morrígan's archetype

are evident across Celtic Europe,

such as an ancient Gaul

where deities like Cathubodua

or battle crow share similarities

with the Morrígan,

particularly the association with crows

and ravens as symbols of war and prophecy.

In Britain, Queen Boudica famously

invokes a similar goddess Andraste

when she's about to fight the Romans.

This shows that while the Morrígan

may not be universally worshiped

across Celtic culture,

what she represents is a deep connection

between war and spirituality

and the idea that the outcomes

of warrior's fates is determined by the divine.

According to oral folk tales,

the sight of the Morrígan was one met with fear

for Celtic warriors throughout history,

but it also had the potential for greatness.

She offers a chance

to confront one's destiny to rise

above fear and embrace the role

fate has carved out.

For some like Cú Chulainn,

she's both adversary

and guide testing their courage and resolve.

After rejecting the Morgan's offer

of love and support,

Cú Chulainn faces the repercussions

of spurning the powerful goddess.

You have to imagine that Cú Chulainn

in that moment, once he realized that

that beautiful woman who was trying

to seduce him was in fact the Morrígan,

realized that he was dealing

with something very dangerous.

So while Cú Chulainn is literally

battling an entire army,

the Morrígan is at the same time

trying to take him down.

She first transforms

into an eel wrapping around his legs

as he crosses a river attempting to trip him.

Cú Chulainn strikes her breaking the eel's ribs.

She then takes the form of a wolf

driving a stampede of cattle toward him,

but he wounds her with a sling stone

injuring her eye.

She eventually decides to take on the form

of a heifer, but Cú Chulainn breaks her leg

showing that even the Morrígan,

the goddess of fate can sometimes

be thwarted by it.

Despite her efforts, Cú Chulainn continues

to defend Ulster valiantly

and defeats the army of Connacht.

But while Cú Chulainn has seen victory this day,

the Morrígan will not forget.

Cú Chulainn is successful in many battles

and he gets this well-deserved heroic reputation.

But eventually, like all heroic figures,

he meets the end.

In the end, Cú Chulainn is defeated

by a magical spear commissioned

by the vengeful sons of the men he had killed.

And the sign

that his life is finally ebbing away

is when a crow lands on his shoulder.

It is the Morrígan in one of her many forms,

and she's there enjoying this moment.

While the story of Cú Chulainn is one

of the most famous tales of the Morrígan,

the goddess is a staple

of Irish mythology appearing

to influence the fate of warriors across time.

But whether these battlefields

were truly transformed by her touch

is still a matter of debate.

Scholars believe that the Morrígan

might be part of this kind of human tendency

to see symbols and kind of omens

in different moments.

One such omen might be this natural presence

of crows and ravens on battlefields.

Crows, ravens, it's something

that is seen around the world.

I think it's really interesting

that the Morrígan in this context

is a shapeshifter because ravens

and crows for us as Anishinaabe people

are often shapeshifters as well,

so they do have this connection

to darkness or to spirit.

There's something about the crow

that has given it a reputation

across Europe as a bird of misfortune.

That distinct sound,

that black feathered body, the beak,

the look in its eyes, the crow equals death.

Our brain likes to look

for causal relationships,

and one of the ways it does that

is to begin by looking for associations,

things that connect, that seem

to go together in some way.

We know apparently in battlefields

where there are lots of dead that draws crows

and ravens who are scavengers,

so they're likely there literally

to feed on the corpses,

but that association can be used

to suggest some role beyond that

like a messenger of the dead.

There's also this sense that these birds

are always around before and after,

so human beings enter into these situations

and the birds are there to witness

who lives and who dies.

The perception is the birds are somehow

drawn to this, which makes them overseers of life

and death in a certain way.

For Cú Chulainn, his last moments to be visited

by a crow on a shoulder was the ultimate sign

of the superiority of divine power.

He could not beat a God, and so here again,

he's humbled in his moment of death

by the Morrígan.

While the Morrígan held great sway

in Celtic Ireland,

her influence waned as a new faith took hold.

Over the centuries,

the expansion of Christianity

across Western Europe will slowly erase

so much of this ancient Celtic culture.

Christian churches will replace sacred groves

and other holy Celtic sites.

Yet in some places there's still reminders

of this Celtic past, particularly in Ireland.

Yet the character

of the Morrígan persists in the collective memory

and appears in many forms across stories

through the centuries.

We find her reappearing as Morgan le Fay

in the Arthurian legends as the sister of Arthur,

and here she has many of the same elements

that she had that we saw

in the tales involving Cú Chulainn.

She is unpredictable, she is shapeshifter.

She also is able to communicate and prophecy.

We also see the Morrígan as a kind

of playable character in video games as well

as a villain that is in the "Dr. Strange" series.

So the Morrígan is something

that has captured our imaginations,

this evil female shapeshifting figure.

I'm not a huge fan

of the beautiful goddess coming

with the terrible message,

or she can be an old hag,

that's what they'll say.

So I wonder if that depiction

of the Morrígan would come from the Celts

or if that's just the way

that it has been told to us,

and maybe even they're telling it now

because that's how we see women.

While the Morgan's power

has waned over the centuries,

her grip on our imagination remains

just as the image of the crow,

as a portent for death and fate

remains a powerful symbol to this day.

From these other worldly cries

to the divine visions,

promising health to ancient pilgrims

and the devilish letter left by a tormented nun,

prophecy seems to imbue the battleground

where good and evil wage their eternal war.