> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.moderndruidmagazine.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Through the Ribs, Not the Skull - URL: https://www.moderndruidmagazine.com/through-the-ribs-not-the-skull/ - Published: 2026-09-22T03:54:20.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-23T00:48:12.000Z - Description: On the possibility that the heart may understand what the mind cannot yet fathom - Author: Morgana Brennan - Tags: ANIMUS There comes a point, if you probe nearly any inquiry far enough, when the path simply ends because the capacity of your mind to reason it out runs into its own limitation. I found myself at such a point recently, wondering about the origins of the universe. The origin of our cosmos in its observable form, space expanding, matter forming, stars igniting, galaxies birthing themselves into existence, I can grasp all of that. But what about prior to that? Before the universe we now know expanded, before time began, what was there? And if there was some primordial field, some quantum state, some unfathomable potential out of which everything has become - where did that come from? And so I found myself pondering the most fundamental question of all: > What is the origin of Origin? Of God, the Universe, the Divine, the One, Great Spirit, consciousness, Source. The moniker matters less to me than the mystery behind it. For a long time, I have been believed that the consciousness within me and within you and within all things it the very same thing. I believe that Source is experiencing 'reality' through the consciousness of billions of humans, and through foxes and forests, fungi, stars, whales, beetles, birth, decay, terror and tenderness. Endless expressions of a singular. With no idea where or how or who that singular is. In the contemplation of it, the analytical mind begins building scaffolding. It runs through the processes of logic. There had to be something before it. Something had to give rise to it. Maybe Source arose out of something else. What created that? And what was before that? The further back we go, the less language becomes adequate, since most of our tools for understanding reality are themselves a result of the reality we already know and understand. > That understanding is born out of a physical and dimensional reality. Our eyes teach us dimension. Our body teaches us limitation. Our lives teach us boundaries. Our experience of time teaches us sequencing. The cause precedes the effect. Everything arises from everything else. Things inhabit places. One moment ends and the other starts. Yesterday was before today. All of these frameworks are so intrinsic to being human that we don't question how they came about, they simply are. So we must move beyond that. The universe owes no allegiance to the framework of the human mind. There are profound mysteries that seem impossible merely because of the instruments we use to try to apprehend them. The intellectual mind is quite amazing. It differentiates, measures, analyzes, categorizes, calculates, compares, names things. It enables us to look inside an atom and out beyond our solar system. It allows us to see back through billions of years of cosmic history. In doing so, the mind needs to simplify, to put boundaries on things, to take an overwhelming, roaring infinity of existence and divide it up into this and that in order to make it *comprehensible*. And yet we exist in incomprehensible ways. Which has me thinking that perhaps the intellectual mind is the limit, and that our other guidance system, our emotions, may help provide completely different answers. That possibility is intriguing to me, for we live in a culture that puts reason ahead of emotions. Where the rational is sophisticated, while the emotional is deemed unreliable. Objectivity and lack of emotional response are praised. The analytical mind is supposed to guide the heart. But what if consciousness knew much more than the analytical mind? What if the intellectual mind is mere a coarse instrument designed to take this vast field of experience and turn it into a set of manageable categories: words, objects, causes, measurements, identities, reducing everything to digestible fragments, when our emotional senses seem capable of quite the opposite? Neuroscience can analyze what is going on in the brain. Psychology can describe our behaviors. Evolutionary theory can explain why we react in a particular way. And yet, the sense of awe and enlightenment that the experience of taking in a gorgeous sunset, or the way time warps and our hearts expand when a loved one dies, feels like unanalyzable knowledge that comes in its wholeness before the mind gets to dissecting it. Perhaps this helps explain why mystics of all cultures have such a problem with finding words to talk about mystery, resorting to paradoxes, poetry, metaphors, music, and silence to describe these experiences. They talk about dissolving in and becoming one with, of emptiness and fullness, of losing oneself and finding something much vaster. Maybe experiences shrink when translated through the mind to process into sentences, and maybe feeling through the heart is the expansion that we need in order to perceive it all. If we allow ourselves to be curious about emotion as a tool of perception we may begin to pierce the mysteries of life itself. Of course, we do not need to believe everything our emotions tell us as some holy truth. Fear distorts. Desire persuades. Old hurts disguise themselves as intuitions. We humans are masters of convincing ourselves of virtually anything. Discrimination is needed. But the idea that emotions help us feel our way into expansive 'thought' is worth examining deeply. How does our understanding shift when we feel into Source? When we feel consciousness rather than seek to observe it? What answers come when we seek to feel about where the borders of self reside? Instead of asking what is this unique phenomenon called love, let us invite the curiosity of the heart to experience the question. Maybe mysteries can only be comprehended by entering them. Maybe there are truths too huge to hold in propositions but are accessible experienced through feeling. I encourage you to experiment. Pay attention to what lands in your chest, what makes your skin shiver, what feelings lingers over a photograph, what brings you to unexpected tears. Notice what opens a door for you when you detach your mind and float into the freedom of feeling. The finest breakthroughs have curiosity at the base, followed through multiple entrances. Consciousness is far vaster than the intellect. Maybe the intellect is a wonderful mapmaker, while feelings allow us to enter the territory and explore, without immediately seeking to explain it. To consider the possibility that the deepest questions may need something else besides intelligence. And to find out what happens when curiosity enters through the ribs, not through the skull. --- ***Morgana Brennan, MBA*** *Morgana Brennan is a practicing Druid, Ogham Practitioner and Chief Magic Maker at Modern Druid, the gallery, apothecary, healing space, and event studio she founded at 60 South Broadway in Nyack, New York in 2021\.* *She holds a BSc in Economics and Business, a dual MBA in Management Systems and Information & Communication Systems, and an MIT certificate in Dynamic Work Design, and she brings her professional wizardry to other of her businesses consulting with and supporting independent healthcare practices.* *Raised in Ireland and rooted in the Druid traditions of her homeland, she trained through OBOD and the Irish Pagan School. From that work she created her own Ogham intention oils and Morgana's Window, a divination practice read across a custom Fionn's Window table.* *She gathers community the way an oak gathers birds. She founded DruidFest, hosts a monthly Druid Roundtable, opens Threshold Gatherings alongside fellow practitioners, and co-hosts the Modern Druid Podcast with her husband, Eric. The Modern Druid Promptuarium is her latest act of conjuring: a living periodical of doorways, each opening onto a different corner of the sacred.* *Both lives run on the same magic. She takes what is tangled and complex, whether in the business of healthcare or an ancient tree alphabet, and turns it into something people can use. Every word, in her view, is abracadabra: as it is spoken, so it becomes.* [Modern DruidA purveyor beautiful, mindful, spiritual products and services for the intentional, curious soul. Modern Druid offers spiritual tools to those seeking tangible ways to engage with Spirit, through divination, intention and art. Anchoring our curation is a unique line of Ogham inspired essential oil blends divined to allow for a more tangible way to work with these ancient Irish spiritual symbols.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e1/2b/e12b16e4-d1c4-4075-97bb-b7641c509179/content/images/icon/rs-w-64-h-64-m-b3c8c8d2-d0c3-4ea1-999a-8d980b247476.png)Modern DruidModern Druid![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e1/2b/e12b16e4-d1c4-4075-97bb-b7641c509179/content/images/thumbnail/ModernDruid_Logo_Gold_Rev-d98efe76-c078-42af-a64f-9b4088fda605.png)](https://modern-druid.com/?ref=moderndruidmagazine.com)