What is Déa Noctism?
The Religion of the Goddess of Night
Before, beneath, and beyond all things there is and has always been Night. Night before stars, or matter, or time. This perfect, endless darkness was and remains to be our Goddess, singular and whole, containing all possibility and creation within Her infinite expanse. At the beginning of all things, our Mother slept, and in Her sleep began to dream. From Her dreams all things that have been and may ever be emerged, filling Her perfect Night with light and life.
As our Mother dreamed Her dreams evolved, transformed. Through these dreams, which took on lives and selves of their own, She was able to experience Herself through a myriad of perspectives. She dreams of Herself as a salmon fighting its way upstream to return to the place of its birth. She experiences Herself as a hurricane, and as those drowned in the storm. She dreams that She is a thousand gods of peoples all over the world- each as living and true and autonomous as you or I- and She knows Herself in Her dreams as students and worshipers of those deities. As She dreams, life after life, Her Self grows. She knows Herself better.
How do we experience our Goddess, from within and as a part of Her dream? We experience Her in all things, and know Her through the many names and faces She has come to inhabit. We recognize that many divine beings have come to exist within the Dream- branches of the great tree of Her Self- and that each is individual and wholly realized. They have their own Selves, their own wills, and we as mortal things oft find them easier to comprehend and connect to than the Whole of our Great Mother, who is infinite and ascendant, and who is primarily an observer of Her Dream and less inclined to interfere. Through relationships of these divine Aspects, the deities and spirits our foremothers came to know before us, we may develop deeper and more complex connections to Eternal Night.
As the children of Her Dream, it is our role to experience the variety of existence, and to share in the divine gift of Awen- inspiration, creativity, imagination- with which She has blessed us. Through this, we add to the vastness of Her being and we draw closer to the Realness of Her whole. Our lives, in all their variety and length, are stories in Her collective, each kept safe in the archive of Her memory.
How does Dea Noctism differ from other Goddess traditions that honor Goddess as the singular and whole creatrix of the universe? In the simplest terms, our devotion is unique in that- while we encourage each individual to grow close to the Great Mother by whichever path opens for them and through whichever Aspect of our Mother they feel called to- we emphasize the reverence of Night (the First Night, the Eternal Night, which is existence before and beyond the Dream) as the primary focus of our devotion, and we reject the idolization of light as a banisher of Night. Light, as is true of all things within the Dream, can only exist within the embrace of darkness. The darkness of Her being as Night contains all possibility and blessings, and it is the most sacred thing. Light- be it sunlight or starlight or the inner light of soul- is but another of the countless blessings delivered from the cauldron of Her Night, and while we honor and love Her gifts, we are careful to never worship these things above Her.
For us, darkness and Night are not things to be feared. They are the embrace of our Great Mother, they are the font of all creation, and they endure beneath and beyond all things. We come into this world first cradled in the darkness of the womb. We share in the divine gift of Dream in the embrace of Night, when we are closest to Her. When the last stars burn out, it will be as it was before they first conflagrated in flame: there will be darkness, there will be Night. Always, always, our Goddess remains. Blessed is the Night, our loving Mother. Blessed is the darkness, the source of the Dream.