Nyx in the House of Night
Page 1
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“Night in the House of Good and Evil” Copyright © 2011 by Karen Mahoney
“The Dangerous Dead” Copyright © 2011 by John Edgar Browning
“By Their Marks You Shall Know Them” Copyright © 2011 by Jana Oliver
“The Divine Cat” Copyright © 2011 by Ellen Steiber
“Reimagining ‘Magic City’” Copyright © 2011 by Amy H. Sturgis
“The Magic of Being Cherokee” Copyright © 2011 by Jordan Dane
“Freedom of Choice” Copyright © 2011 by Jeri Smith-Ready
“The Otherworld Is Greek to Me” Copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Feagan
“The Elements of Life” Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Lankford
“Misunderstood” Copyright © 2011 by Kristin Cast
“She Is Goddess” Copyright © 2011 by Yasmine Galenorn
“Worshipping the Female Deity” Copyright © 2011 by Christine Zika
Introduction and “Cruithne Mythology and the House of Night” Copyright © 2011 by P.C. Cast
“Behind the House of Night Names” and other materials Copyright © 2011 by BenBella Books, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
All illustrations copyright © 2011 by Alan Torrance
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{ Introduction }
P.C. Cast
EVEN BEFORE I hit national bestseller lists, the two questions readers asked me more than any other were: 1) Where do you get your ideas? And 2) How much research do you do?
Okay, the two answers go hand in hand. Research has always been the foundation of my ideas. I actually enjoy researching, and I like doing it old style—paging through giant history and humanities textbooks in a musty research section of a library. As I go through tomes on history and sociology and mythology, my mind starts creating stories and pictures: changing, shifting, modernizing, rewriting. This process has always seemed totally normal to me. Ancient mythological tragedy? Bah! Everyone dies tragically with no happily ever after in history? No way! For as long as I can remember I’ve revised mythology, created worlds based on history, and then made the stories read the way I wanted them to read—quite often giving unexpected characters happily every afters and turning patriarchy and misogyny upside down.
That’s usually how I begin my writing process, with research. But from my very first book I realized that I created better, more believable worlds if I mixed textbook research with legwork. That’s one of the reasons so many of my novels are set in Oklahoma. When I describe the Centaur Plains in my fictional world of Partholon, it’s really Oklahoma’s Tall Grass Prairie. I’ve been there—walked its paths—gotten lost in its majesty. As I’m there I create worlds of my own and populate them with unusual characters. I tell their stories first in my mind, and then on paper.
Now, enter the House of Night and bestsellerdom. There are lots of awesome things about being a bestselling novelist. Meeting my literary heroes, like Pat Conroy and Sue Monk Kidd, is one big plus (but that’s a different kind of essay!). Another plus is that being successful has provided me the means to expand my research legwork. So when I made the Vampyre High Council’s headquarters on San Clemente Island just off the coast of Venice, I did so because I’d been there and become enchanted by that tiny island within view of Venice’s Saint Mark’s Basilica.
I decided to incorporate Capri into the history of the House of Night world, and to make the site of the ancient home of the High Council there, after visiting that fabulous blue island and being mesmerized by its beauty. In the same research trip I walked the streets of Pompeii and knew immediately that I had to add its tragic history into my House of Night mythology, as well.
So you can see that when the fabulous editor Leah Wilson, head of BenBella Books’ Smart Pop series, approached me for permission to create a nonfiction anthology based on what was basically the research roots of the House of Night, not only was I excited about the idea—I also wanted to join the group of authors! That’s how my essay, “Cruithne Mythology and the House of Night,” was born. I loved writing it and being able to show my readers exactly how I weave history and mythology into my own fictional tapestry.
I also loved taking on the role of pseudo-editor (make no mistake, readers, Leah Wilson is the real editor of this collection—I’m just the cheerleader). By playing editor I got to invite some of my favorite people and authors to join our team and chime in with their own perspectives regarding the House of Night’s mythology. It was especially fun to put the ex-editor of my Goddess Summoning series, and longtime friend, Christine Zika, in the position of author-to-my-editing by asking her to write for me! And what a great essay she created. Her take on worshipping the female deity was especially cool for me to read, because I’ve known her for more than a decade and have appreciated her strength and guidance as my personal writing mentor. After all, my nickname for her has long been Goddess Editor!
It was a pleasure to be able to include Bryan Lankford, who is the “real” Dragon Lankford and a well-respected author in his own right. I thoroughly enjoyed his play on being a House of Night professor and I loved the experience and insights into Wicca he brought to this collection, as well as his reflections on how I have lovingly adapted pieces of his belief system within my fictional worship of Nyx.
Jana Oliver, Jeri Smith-Ready, Yasmine Galenorn, and Jordan Dane are longtime author friends of mine. I’m so glad that when I put out the call for House of Night essays they answered with imagination and enthusiasm. Jana’s piece on tattoos gets an especially big thumbs-up from me. Not just because tattoos play a major role in the House of Night, but also because I have several pieces of body art myself!
Jeri first caught my attention when I read her amazing novel Requiem for the Devil, in which she sets up the ultimate freedom-of-choice scenario—glad to see she used that unique insight when she discussed freedom of choice in the House of Night mythos, too. I have long appreciated the strength of Yasmine’s dedication to the Divine Feminine, and her essay on the Goddess is both empowering and thought provoking. With Jordan’s piece it was great to have a fellow Oklahoman weigh in on the Native American magick that runs through our great state and how I borrow from it to create a foundation for Zoey and Grandma Redbird.
And, of course, I love it when Kristin gets a chance to write something on her own; her insights into the House of Night world and the complexities of giving the ancient matriarchal freedoms—as in Zoey being able to choose more than one boyfriend—voice in a modern world are fascinating. As usual, she makes her mom proud.
Though I don’t know Karen Mahoney, John Edgar Browning, Ellen Steiber, Amy Sturgis, or Trinity Faegen, their essays delighted me. Who doesn’t want to know more about the Otherworld or the House of Night cats, historical vampires or Nyx herself? And I have to tell you, my favorite of the entire collection might just be Amy’s amazing piece on Tulsa. I do heart me some T-Town.
A particular point of pleasure I found in putting together this collection was when BenBella agreed to include illustrations by a good friend of mine, Alan Torrance. I was introduced to Alan when I began my research in Scotland for the seventh House of Night book, Burned. I recognized his talent then, and am so pleased to be able to show his unique artistic eye in the exquisite pieces he created for Nyx in the House of Night.
I hope you enjoy this collection as much as Leah and I enjoyed putting it together. From the heart of the House of Night, I wish you all the brightest of blessings and the magick of mythology to add to your own personal dreams and wishes and stories!
{ Night in the House of Good and Evil }
NYX’S PORTRAYAL IN THE HOUSE OF NIGHT SERIES
Karen Mahoney
There also stands the gloomy house of Night;
ghastly clouds shroud it in darkness.
Before it Atlas stands erect and on his head
and unwearying arms firmly supports the broad sky,
where Night and Day cross a bronze threshold
and then come close and greet each other.
SO BEGINS the House of Night series, with a quotation taken from Hesiod’s Theogony. From the very beginning, the reader of P.C. and Kristin Cast’s popular series is clued into the fact that Nyx—who is known as Night personified both in the books and in our world’s mythology—is at the very center of events. It all comes back to her, as we see time and time again throughout the series.
Nyx, Greek goddess of night, is traditionally known as a primordial god, one of the creators of the world. Before there could be Night—and, therefore, also Day—there was only Chaos, and it was Chaos who conceived a daughter and named her Nyx. In turn, Nyx gave birth to a daughter, Hemera (Day). As we can see from Hesiod’s version of events in the epigraph that opens the entire series, Night and Day “come close and greet each other” as they fulfill their designated roles. When you find the full passage from which the extract is taken, however, it becomes clear that the reference is literal,
[1] rather than just metaphorical. Nyx does indeed share a “house” (or a cave, in some versions) with Hemera, but they can’t spend quality time together. “When one comes home through the back door,” Judika Illes says, in her Encyclopedia of Spirits, “the other leaves through the front.” As Hugh G. Evelyn-White translates it:
And the house never holds them both within; but always one is without the house passing over the earth, while the other stays at home and waits until the time for her journeying to come.
We haven’t yet heard anything significant about Hemera—or Day—in the House of Night series, apart from a slight nod to her in the very first book (right after Zoey is Marked, a dorky kid who witnesses the event runs off “to Mrs. Day’s room.” I can’t help but smile at that pairing of Night and Day on the same page, although Mrs. Day herself isn’t significant). But perhaps Day’s absence is appropriate considering how the two goddesses must live such separate lives.
As with all mythologies, there are other versions of how Nyx came into being. One of the Orphic myths (writings ascribed to Orpheus) even says that Nyx, rather than being brought forth as the eldest child of Chaos, existed from the very beginning of time. She appeared in the guise of a great black-winged bird, hovering eternally in darkness—perhaps as though she were the night sky itself. (I find this image to be remarkably evocative of the Raven Mockers from later books in the series, though those great black-winged “bird men” are creatures of darkness, rather than creatures belonging to the personification of Night—a difference we’ll be looking at later on.)
We first meet the House of Night series’ Nyx in the opening book, Marked, when Zoey Redbird (previously Zoey Montgomery) is found in school and Marked by a Tracker from the House of Night. As is the custom, she is formally greeted and summoned to take her place as a vampyre fledgling with other “trainee” vampyres. It is on these opening pages that we are shown how significant Nyx is—and will become:
Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!
When Zoey first encounters the Goddess, in one of the most powerful scenes in the opening book, Nyx tells her:
I have Marked you as my own. You will be my first true Daughter of Night in this age . . . Zoey Redbird, Daughter of the Night, I name you my eyes and ears in the world today, a world where good and evil are struggling to find balance.
The reader is immediately made aware that Zoey is special; she has been set apart as something other, something more than just the usual breed of fledgling. She is a Daughter of Night, and just as Nyx has had many children according to myth—children who play hugely important roles in the workings of the world—Zoey finds that she, too, will be forced to become a part of events far greater than she could ever have imagined.
Nyx is an interesting choice of goddess for the vampyres to worship; she is firmly rooted in Greek mythology, and yet large parts of the House of Night world-building are influenced by other cultures and religions—in particular Pagan and Wiccan, along with Native American. It’s a fascinating mix, especially when Christianity (specifically, Catholicism) is added in the form of the Benedictine nuns led by Sister Mary Angela. In the series Nyx is present in many forms throughout the world—as the Goddess says herself when she tells Zoey: “I am known by many names . . . But you . . . may call me by the name by which your world knows me today, Nyx” (Marked). The Greek roots of Nyx are rightly acknowledged, however, when she explains: “In truth, it was the ancient Greeks touched by the Change who first worshipped me as the mother they searched for within their endless Night.”
Just as the ancient Greeks worshipped Nyx as a “mother,” she is often presented as a mother figure in the series. Some ancient sources also refer to her as “Mother Night” and “kindly Night.” There is something profoundly maternal about her during her scenes with Zoey; we see in Marked her early appearance as a beautiful Native American woman who makes Zoey feel loved and cared for, though perhaps Zoey sees Nyx in this way because she is on her way to see her Cherokee Grandma when she collapses and has that very first vision. (I think that Nyx is able to change her form according to who she happens to be dealing with; or perhaps, more correctly, her appearance changes only in the perception of the mortals blessed enough to lay eyes on her. The Goddess is a chameleon, of sorts, which seems somehow fitting for the personification of night’s swift-changing landscape.)
We are also shown a glimpse of a somewhat less compassionate Goddess later on during the ancient scenes where we witness, alongside Zoey, Nyx deal harshly with Kalona. It is certainly true that all deities can be as terrible as they can be kindly; in Homer’s
Iliad, it is revealed that Zeus himself is afraid of angering Nyx. Perhaps it is fair to say that Nyx—whether the night goddess presented in mythology or the version we see in the House of Night books—is, in some ways, no different from the mothers many of us know and love. There’s no rule that says being a mother automatically makes you soft and nurturing or, in more general terms, “good.” Most people simply do the best they can in a very difficult role: motherhood is one of the toughest jobs out there! Add in the responsibilities of a goddess, and it’s no wonder Nyx doesn’t always seem as “nice” as we might like her to be. Take, for example, her treatment of Aphrodite, which could definitely be interpreted as a form of “tough love.” It might not have been nice, but it did seem effective, and Aphrodite was better off for it.
As one of the great maternal forces in the world of mythology, Nyx had many children. The Children of Nyx—also the name sometimes given to fledglings and vampyres at the House of Night—are well documented in any number of common sources. Putting together the information noted by Hesiod, Homer, and others, Nyx seems to have had as many as twenty. Not all of them are as innocuous as Day, however. Love, Friendship, and Gaiety are among her offspring, but so are Misery, Retribution, and Deceit. It’s a fascinating contrast, and one that is thoroughly explored throughout the House of Night series. I don’t mean literally, as we don’t meet these “actual” children of the mythological Nyx. But certainly through the trials that Zoey and her friends have to face we see plenty of love and friendship, retribution and deceit. And when in Marked Nyx speaks to Zoey of the uncertain morals of the world she is about to enter, I can’t help but think of the paradoxical nature of the children Nyx has brought forth. Just as one goddess can give birth to both Misery and Love, so each of the characters carry these same potential polarities within them.
Nyx is described by philosophers and poets (e.g., by Aeschylus) as wearing a dark robe covered in stars—a robe that I imagine would look much like the beautiful black dress covered in metallic silver stars that Erik Night gives Zoey for her first ritual as leader of the Dark Daughters in Betrayed. In ancient Greek art, Nyx is often depicted as travelling across the sky in a horse-drawn carriage, which could explain Zoey’s and the House of Night’s connection to horses.