Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Dandelionlady

Home
About

Home
Pagan
Worshipping the Daughters of the Night

Worshipping the Daughters of the Night

Last updated on: February 12, 2019 at 10:39 am by Melissa Hill

Worshipping the Daughters of the Night 2019-02-12T10:39:55-04:00 Melissa Hill

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

One of my oldest spiritual experiences was the discovery of what lay between my in-breath and out-breath. It was the summer before high school and I was babysitting 35 hours a week. The kids were never home, so basically I spent the summer trapped in a house not my own, watching MTV and reading books. Eventually MTV gave way to VH1, to cartoons, to Gilligan’s Island reruns. Eventually even reading got boring. Shocking, I know. So I sat in an empty grey house doing nothing at all for hours on end.

Breath in. Breathe out. Breathe in. My breath was all there was.

I was so goddamn bored.

Then I found a thing inside my head. In the moment when my lungs were empty there was a Space, and it was Vast. It was gone in an instant. I sat there shocked for a moment, and had to try again and again to re-find it, but I did. I found a nothingness inside my mind and when I went there I was calm.

Throughout my life I have come back to my breath and to the Void. Eventually I found that the darkness had texture and movement, and sometime after that, I found a Being within it. She was huge and flowing. She seemed to morph as she moved, and her voice has been many voices that become one in my ears. I called her the Void Goddess and I have been her worshipper for a very long time.

An incredibly starry sky with the rising form of a nebula created from both darkness and light.

The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula captured in infrared light by Hubble. The light from young stars being formed pierce the clouds of dust and gas in the infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

As I have traveled through paganism I have sought Her out, honored Her, and come back to Her as a refuge. Once I asked her if she was Eris and she booted my ass out of the Void for months. I assumed that meant the answer was, “Nope.” After many years I settled into Druidic priesthood, and focused on getting my classwork done. I researched the Celt, the Greeks, the Norse, the Balts, and the Slavs. I learned about tripartite ritual structures and read Eliade.

But I never forgot the Void Goddess. I was called to do an annual ritual and offering of my own blood. Just a little bit. A prick. Like sleeping beauty and the heroine from the Grimm story Mother Hulda, I would prick my finger and then magic would happen. I do this ritual every winter, after mid-January, before the last snow disappears. Each year I go into trance and I ask what it is that I need to do in this next year. I call it my “marching orders” Almost every year the advice or task I’m set pushes me. Often I will spend the whole year trying to comprehend what it meant. The Void Goddess is smart.

I often feel like I’m dancing to a very different song this time of year when everyone I know is singing the praises of Brighid and the flame. I feel a little like I’m happily bumping along, staring into the void and waving, “Hi!” to all the people huddled by their hearths. How did this deep well of spirituality fit with the rest? I kept going, giving offerings and building relationships with gods and spirits. I became a devote of the Dawn and the Swan Maidens. I learned to dance with the Star Spirits.

Turns out it’s all connected and I just worship different Sacred Descendants.

The key to the puzzle came from a trance. I had pulled out a part of myself and set it to watch a construct I was building in Otherworld. This part of me appeared as a teenager, and mostly was like that. I had to visit the place I was building on a regular basis because I had put a rather large chunk of me there. One day, I was visiting myself, and I said to me, “Study Eros.” I found it ironic that teenage me wanted me to study sex. But I try to listen to myself, and so back in the meat world I began to study the god Eros.

I knew that Eros was Aphrodite’s son and that there was a younger and older version of him. It was the older version that I was called to study. I discovered in Hesiod’s Theogony that Eros was considered to be one of the oldest creators along with Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus. Chaos reminded me of my beloved Void Goddess and I kept searching. I came across Aristophanes’s comedy Birds, Ovid, and the Orphic tradition of Eros as Phanes and Nyx who birthed him from an egg.

From Aristophanes:

“At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night (Nyx), Darkness (Erebus), and the Abyss (Tartarus). Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest.”

And there She was, and I felt a little less crazy.

I found her in Norse lore and Vedic hymn. I found she had a vast brood of children, many of whom I already worshipped. I have worked with the Fates for more than a decade now. The Moirai (the fates) are her daughters. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Hemera, the goddess of day, passes her mother Nyx as they go through the house; setting them up in opposition very much like the Vedic goddesses of Dawn and Night: Ushas and Ratri.

“Nyx and Hemera draw near and greet one another as they pass the great threshold of bronze: and while the one is about to go down into the house, the other comes out at the door.”

I even found my beloved bird women, in many forms. Nyx herself, as a black bird, her daughters the Keres, who are about as Valkyrie like as one can get, and Nemesis, who is connected to swans through the myth Leda and the Swan, which led to the birth of Helen of Troy. Helen herself is sometimes said to have been hatched from an egg that Nemesis gave to Leda. I have to admit, I really wasn’t expecting the swan connection. Eris is also her child, and maybe that was the reason that She was so irritated when I asked if that was who the She was.

I learned about the Norse goddess of night: Nott as well. How she had many children with many husbands. She too gave birth to the Day, She is known as the darkness, the masker, unlight, the-joy-of-sleep, and the dream goddess. In the Sigrdrífumál, The valkyrie Sigrdrífa calls on Day and Night, specifically to the Sons of Day and the Daughters of Night. I work with the Fates and the Stars, the Sun and the Dawn. These are the places I align.

There was never much of a cult to any of these gods, in the north or the south of Europe, though I admit I’m hot on their trail in the Northeast. The Aesir and the Olympians caught the eye and the offerings of the folk. Even now within the threads of Norse worship there are the Asatru who worship the Aesir, the Vanatru who worship the Vanic gods, and some who align as Rokkatru, who worship the chthonic deities and jotuns like Hela and her father Loki.

What is the name for those who honor the vast starry darkness and her descendants?

I feel weird about it. I’m not a goth and I don’t think of myself as particularly dark. I raise kids, I grow food. I worship the Sacred Earth and I try to make the world more sustainable. But all of that swirls out of vast silence for me. In my Wiccan days I told the story of the Void Goddess and how she created all things out of herself when the big bang occurred. Then I became a Druid and sought for my sacred things amongst the lore of the ancients. I thought I would have to leave my beloved Void Goddess behind. But I’ve found her in the breadth of the lore, threaded through. In Nyx, and Nott and Ratri.

I keep seeking her forms and her tales. I finally built an altar for her, and it filled it quickly with all the things I had. One of the lessons she taught me is that the dark and the light are the same, a flipping coin of paradox. I give offering on the snow with the sun above because it is the whitest thing. This year I’ve done my rites and given my offering on snow. It was so much easier than it used to be. This year I was given a vision of a second rite. I will be doing a summer ritual as well, exploring the darkest black. I know it will happen after Midsummer somewhere around Lughnassadh. I know it will be under a starlit sky. Other than that, it may take some years of experimentation to discover what will need to happen for me to honor Night and her Children.

I leave you with a poem I wrote to her some years ago. May you find the beauty of the Night as well.

An image of stars with the text of the Nott invocation that follows written on the stars. Below the text is a single person, lit by light, looking upward at the stars.

By Rev. Hill, via Adobe Spark Post.

Nott, I call to you
The smell patchouli and fragrant resins rises within me.
Heady is the thought of you.
Intoxicating.
The peace of not-ness beyond my heavy flesh. I ride the edge. Longing like a song calling me home.
The desire to fly, human pressures to fade.
I am a human child and I may not walk away, though I hear the fairy reel and beyond: the vast and satiating silence. Hand in hand we could dance, led away from this weeping world. And yet I stay.
And yet I stay.

If you might be interested in funding my research into this topic and others, consider stopping over by my Patreon and signing up. As always, thank you for reading.

Previous Post

January 8, 2019

Eight Methods of Purification That Aren't Burning Sage

Next Post

February 19, 2019 Convocation Schedule and Some Thoughts on "Drama" and Racism

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category animism Cermony and Liturgy Columns Community Dandelion Seeds Health and Wellness History Holidays Magic Nature pagan parenting plant animism Politics Ritual and Practice symbolism and science Theology, Ethics, Philosophy Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 January 2014 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 February 2013 January 2013 July 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did Jesus give to Judas at the Last Supper?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A cup of wine A robe A piece of bread A scroll