Yule Lore and Mother's Night
Rituals, songs, meditations and inquiry for deepening meaning in solstice season.
Dear Community—
Last year in the darkest days of the Northern Hemisphere the Dark Goddess Project began. Participants committed to a year long journey, a rite of passage process to integrate a major life transition. One of the commitments for the year was to not share details about the project online, to craft a strong container for the work, so I can’t share yet what this year has been except to say this experience has changed me. I am changed.
In addition to the Dark Goddess Project, my offering for this past lunisolar year has been the Year of Ceremony, a repository of folklore, practices and rituals for each of my ancestral holy days. This is the final installment in this ceremonial round, returning, again, to the beginning. (If you would like to access the entire Year of Ceremony including Solstice practices for the Southern Hemisphere or additional Holy Days you can find them in past Myth & Moon letters, in the Dark Goddess Classroom at the Wild Soul School and posted on my Patreon…)
It has been an honor—and a lot of work!—to share these sacred days with you all this year. One insight in this process, however, is that I have been so busy working on the sacred days—both providing resources and hosting Dark Goddess and Coven Invisible gatherings—that I have not been able to fulfill one of my primary intentions for the year, which is live, in-person sacred community.
My ancestors remind me that the sacred days, feast days, holy seasons were meant to be shared in living community with our families, friends and companions.
So in this season of Solstice, I hope you will be inspired to share some sacred time with your loved ones, to study the meaning behind your traditions and create new practices of depth and pause.
Here are some resources and practices I will be working with this season. May they bring you joy and increase your love.
Yule Lore and Mōdraniht
The culminating ritual of the dark season in Northern Europe was Mōdraniht, Mother's Night, an Anglo Saxon holiday celebrated on the Eve of the Solstice, or later on what would become Christmas Eve. The details of the ceremony are lost to history. But the potent relationship between the season of sacrifice, offering, celebration and the Mothers, seen as Norns, Dísir, Idisir, Matronae, is well documented.
Each of us begins life in the womb of a mother. Regardless of other delineations or identities, this fact is universal to all humans on this planet. In the Norse myths, we even all have a common ancestor, Heimdall, whose name Maria Kvilhaug translates as "Great World" and who is said to have nine mothers.
As you travel through this season of beginnings or endings, consider a ritual for the mothers of your lineage, those whose wombs carried every ancestor in your lineage to birth.
We come from countless mothers, known and unknown, the processes of fertility, growth and birth are most ancient mysteries, second only to the mystery of death with which they are intimately entwined. If you are seeking guidance, the 13 Day Ritual Practice and Feast of the Dísir classes have instruction for ritual creation and ancestor veneration to nourish your efforts.
In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the ancient Greek initiatory rites of the mother Demeter and her daughter Kore that took place twice a year--like the Dísablot for the Dísir in Northern Europe--the first festival and initiations in the spring were devoted to sacred sexuality, fertility and birth, while the second initiations in the autumn were devoted to the journey of loss, death and resurrection/rebirth.
In our culture we have grown to inflate the celebration of the former at the expense of the latter. There is no one without the both. To truly celebrate the return of a rite of passage we must first visit the underworld. Mythologist Martin Shaw says that in order to receive the gift of passage, something must die in the underworld. In the Eleusinian Mysteries the descent into the underworld and mirrors of initiation are seen as essential for experiencing a full, healthy, joyful life.
Blotmonað, a Moon of Sacrifice
The lunar month of what we roughly call November/December is Blotmonað in Old Anglo Saxon from the words blót, meaning sacrifice and blood, and monað. Coming from the word móna meaning moon, monað is a lunar month.
The concept of sacrifice is twofold: sacrifices must be made to the ancestors and the gods for their aid and support through the winter months.
And sacrifice was a culling of the flocks, an opportunity for feasting and celebration before the limitations of later winter.
In the Anglo Saxon, Celtic and Norse ancestral calendars this moon was a deepening into the winter season which began at the first full moon after the autumn equinox and continues through the Solstice/Yule.
Some Inquiry for the Season
What can you offer up in this season of sacrifice?
What must be cleared and made sacred in the fires?
What do you need as aid in the season ahead?
What does this season mean to you personally?
What does this season mean to your family?
How can you find more depth and peace in this season of transformation?
Ancient Calendars and Ancestral Remembrance
In studying the ancestral calendars I follow a rhythm of language and knowing. Living in the northern hemisphere I find a resonance in the tip toward dark and the echoes of festival felt in remnant holy days. This has helped me navigate a season that can be difficult for me physically and socially, with purpose and a full heart.
Holy Days of the Winter
WinterWinterfilleð: Anglo Saxon Winter Full Moon
OctoberHollantide: Anglo Saxon All Hallows, Celtic Samhain, the beginning of winter at the cross quarter day between the equinox and the solstice
Alfarblot: Norse Feast of the Alfar, the male ancestors
Blotmonað: November/December, month of sacrifice to assure vitality through the winter
Ærra Geola: Before Yule, roughly lunar December
Modranicht/Winter Solstice/Yule: Mother’s Night, longest night
There is a great tradition of ancestral remembrance as a part of wintertime seasonal feasts and family hearthfires. There are many ways to honor our ancestors, our beloved dead, both known and unknown in this season. They live within us, our actions can be devotion:
Tending your family is one sacred way, specifically with attention to elders and children.
Tending the seasons with ritual and intention is one sacred way.
Caring for the earth and animals in the winter weather is one sacred way.
Sharing with those who have less is one sacred way.
Creating an altar—a seat for spirit—to reflect your intentions is one sacred way.
Committing to your authenticity through truth and integrity is one sacred way.
There is no wrong way to do this work of re-membering. What calls to you in your bones, what brings you into the being-ness of life—relationship with the humans around you, the animals and plants, the sacred place where you live and all those who have come before—is a ceremony in and of itself.
There is no wrong way, there is only the way.
Ancestral Solar Solstice Meditation
This meditation is for orientation to the solstice, the potency of the solar energy and its connection to us all.
::Solstice Weaving Song ::
In praise of the divine thread connecting us
Over under over under—
weaving threads of stories old
listen, creatures--free, you’re free now
open heart and wing, be bold.
Over under over under—
solar lady, sacred night
belly womb so full to birthing
from the dark a crowning bright
Over under over under—
tiny seed, ancestral earth
sprouting warming promise waking
from this ancient story birth.
In timeless hours grain is growing,
In peerless hours we harvest great
In prayerful hours one is sowing,
singing praises, spinning fate
Over under over under—
rhythm dancing cosmic bright
tomorrow's promise a mother’s blessing
love and faith reborn this night.
The New Year
Big changes are afoot for me in the year ahead, and I am excited (and terrified) to share these with you!
Here is to the blessing of the journey ahead, to the ending and beginning that is both light and dark, death and rebirth.
By this and every effort may the balance be regained.
With love to your wholeness—Lara
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Thank you for sharing- Mothers Night and Yule have become my favourite celebrations in recent years. We are in England, near the border with Wales. I have loved shaping my family’s rituals for these free from the pressure to do it a certain way that sometimes seems to filter into other such moments.