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Finally in the Arthurian vision not everyone, but many Celtic Scholars, trace Morrigan and her two sisters here called Macha and Modron, to Morgan le Fay. She was the most beautiful of nine sisters, living on the Isle of Avalon. She was Fata Morgana.

In the Arthurian Book of the Days on the 13th of December ( a beautiful cycle and weaving of the Arthur tales, Lancelot also suffers at the hands of Morrigan ( Morgain, Morgan?) le Fay in the Valley of No Return, where he must face trials and tests in the shape of dragons and spectral knights, a wall of fire and a gigantic knight with an ax. In the same volume Morrigan plots to murder Arthur, and give his power to Accolon of Gaul, and she almost succeeds in this, since she had given Accolon Excaliber, but during the battle he loses control of it and the sword flies back to Arthur. So in an overview of the tales, Morrigan is a villainess and uses illusion to try to destroy Arthur although she fails. And yet the thirtieth of December according to the same source,

King Arthur awoke from his long sleep in which there were many fevered dreams, and he rose and looked about him. Deep bowered and fair, the green landscape stretched about him on all sides. Sweet apple trees grew by the banks of a shallow stream, and white blossoms was upon them like snow. But though the season should have been winter, the air was balmy and soft, and above, in the sky, the sun and moon shown forth together, and there were stars. Then Arthur knew that he was in Avalon, the region of the Summer Stars, where rain and snow fall not, and where the great ones of the world await a call to arms. Smiling, Arthur stretched his muscles and set off to walk by the stream, listening for the murmur that would tell him that the Round table was met again amid the trees.

Some tales say Arthur was taken to Avalon by Morrigan, and that as a transporter she is neither good nor evil; others that she is a particular corrupt spirit. Arthurian tales are more particular in their characters, than earlier more mythical sagas. I think the guardian-ship of the land by a pure human leader with no moral faults is the theme of Arthur. Natural but non-moral spirits attack him, but they also help him, and it is he (and the knight’s code) that gives them a man of perfect judgment to restore the land. So I am willing to think that Morrigan might have many aspects in these stories which are like her old Queen Role. Yet she no longer controls justice in these stories, even if Morgan the betrayer, Morgan the sister and The Lady of the Lake are one.

Morrigan and her sisters are shape shifters, transporters through the cauldrons that take one from life to death (crows, stomachs, human intestines, going under the ground, madness, degenerative change.) and from death to life (the midwife, the corn goddess, the earth, the moon-change). One should not see her as simply a daemon. Better to think of first female goddess, stronger than battle, and more hidden. She can fly; she can change her shape from old to young; she is kindly and well trained in medicine. She is Arthur’s sister, perhaps his soul sister, perhaps his double (as a doppelganger is a double).