Dec '25 • A Dragon's Voice
Mother's Night: A Post from Robin Artisson
To my northern hemisphere friends, and of course to my southernly friends too, who will be entering this old and important dimension of spiritual experience: Glad Yule and Mother Night to you all.
I want to say a few things about this special "season", as I try on most years, but perhaps one day I'll really say what I feel needs to be said in a more accessible place.
Mother Night definitely has a historical precedent, but like all organic and potent realities, it continues to impact people in different ways, if they have the special openness to it. This night, the night before the rising of the sun on the Winter Solstice is called "mother" night because it gives birth to that coming "first sun" of the solar new year.
This carries ancient stories of world-regeneration with it, which are not just perceived astronomical realities from certain positions on Earth, but a spiritual or mythic kind of reality. For me, over these decades, it has become a time to really focus on and remember (and experience) the origin-powers and beings that we all are connected to. And by this, I mean The Mothers, a host of Ancestresses who, if you follow them back far enough, come themselves from The Ancestress- the Earth, or Nature more to the point.
Our common origin in this incredible living body of powers, which we can call "Nature" if we like, is itself the real miracle that binds us all, this incredible thing we have in common. No problems or complications or fantastic, false stories that we become obsessed with or oppressed by can stand up to this kind of vision, this awareness or realization. It simplifies things in a rather marvelous way. It brings us back to who and what we are, before needless complications make us into other things. At least in our minds- but since we have to exist with these minds, what's inside them does matter a woeful lot.
One of the most important practices I came to embrace over the years, with some historical precedents too, is the practice of Peace beginning on Mother Night and extending through the 12 Nights that follow it.
Peace as a practice is just as powerful and as challenging as one can imagine, especially at such a time as this. Until Thirteenth Night, which this year is on January 2, I make a conscious and directed effort to step back from conflicted situations, and to not engage in fights, unpleasantries, and even to avoid the indulgence of mean-spirited humor, venting, or anything that could be construed as ornery or negative.
From Mother Night to the final "settling" of Thirteenth Night, this is a cousin time, metaphysically speaking, to what people call the Hallows or Samhain, a Misrulish time in which the new year is being born, and so it's a transition state, a metaphysical liminality, in which things are metaphysically turbulent.
What we do, feel, say, and think right now has more power, in other words, to set precedents for the coming year. It is to our advantage to not let conflict darken these already dark and strange nights, because what is planted now will grow in the new year. If we keep peace, simplicity, and unite ourselves to the people around us in happiness, that bodes well for the year to come.
Explosions of negativity now are in a sense bad omens for the year to come. I understand (better than most) the challenges that can happen around our so-called "holiday" times. I understand the loneliness some feel, the pains of family traumas, and how those things interface with these older times, these more ancient times of gathering and metaphysical force which speak with a voice older than our culture.
So, the practice of the Mother Peace is not to be taken lightly. It does ask things of most of us. But I still find it to be a critical practice that I spend all year preparing for, and I always try to navigate the Twelve Nights with a mind for peace, peace towards all who cross my path or who are connected to me meaningfully.
It can mean practicing keeping some distance from bad situations, too- a metaphysical boundarying of sorts, if needs be. But not for reasons of scorn; this time is about honoring the Host of the Mothers, and the incredible beauty and ageless, life-originating power of the World itself, our common Mother.
They are important. We keep the peace because they are more obviously metaphysically and perceptually present now than at certain other times; it is a time of origins and remembering origins.
Few of us will make it all the way to Thirteenth Night in a perfect peace, but even one day of peace in this special time will matter. The effort also matters, so ponder this if your heart inclines in this way.
This is a real passage through an Abyss-Time, a dark time from which light emerges and a new world takes shape. Abysses resonate with fear in our cultural language, but they take on new feelings when one recognizes the Abyss as the interior of a creative space that all life came from.
The fearful beings of that Abyss- the spiritual "wolves" of these "Wolf Nights"- they may swim in a kind of Misrule, and cause inversions and strange fluidities in this time, but even they are ultimately the powers of life itself.
It is a privilege to recognize that, for a special season of a dozen potent nights, one's own thoughts and deeds will resonate and echo with even more strength and power, and so one should be extra careful how one goes about being a human person right now, with a measure of strength to influence the coming year. And that is where we find ourselves.
As I said, you can't expect perfection, which doesn't exist at any rate; but just shifting one's mind or perception a bit means the world right now. To care about peace and steadiness, it sets a precedent that can make the world to come better in individual lives and collectively, too, since those things can never truly be separated.
And it's a display of reverence for the real powers of life and our true sources. I feel sorry, in a non-hostile way, for those who believe these cultural stories about our source being some transcendent "god" or "thing" far from the body of Nature, and from all these beautiful and ancient things we can see and feel all around us, and inside us.
The search for the source of our human existence, the search for that 'secret heart', has obsessed our misguided world for a long time, and its quite a shock and a frustration to watch so many people miss how obvious it all is, and to look into some unformed, abstract, unreal, or ultimately unreachable place for their originative meaning and existence.
It was the Earth all this time that gave birth to us, and the vast waters, and the great fire of the world, and the dark sky. It was this all the time, and won't ever be anything but this. And in a real, tangible way, we are all one in this. I do not mean that we are only one being; we are many; but we are united by our common Ancestress and the many Ancestresses that emerged from Her.
Enough strange homily; the sun is literally setting and Mother Night starting exactly as I type these words and it is gentler, more contemplative things, simpler things, that call to my soul and the souls of those closest to me now. And I want some measure of that great peace for every person reading these words.
Safe, safe, safe, and peaceful times to you all, right now, and always.
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Mother's Night: A Post from Robin Artisson
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