Much like how the news has desensitized us to violence, our cable televisions have desensitized us to this seriously unbalanced patriarchal practice. Where’s our modern polyandry? On an episode of Sister Wives, Kody, the husband, and his first wife, Mary, were out to dinner for their twenty-year anniversary. Mary began a conversation about a fourth wife who would soon enter their plural family and the jealousy issues she was dealing with. When she asked him how he would feel if she was giving attention to another guy, Kody was clearly taken aback and responded to her by saying, “Obviously, that’s just not something I’m comfortable with imagining. The vulgarity of the idea of you with two husbands, or another lover, sickens me. It seems wrong to God and nature” (“1st Wife’s 20th Anniversary,” 1-5). Hmm, interesting.
Today, plural marriage—which is the fundamentalist Mormon phrase for polygyny—is practiced among thousands mostly in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (in the United States this is usually the church that people automatically think of when they think about polygamy) says that they totally prohibit plural marriage and have for the past hundred years and “if any of our members are found to be practicing plural marriage, they are excommunicated, the most serious penalty the Church can impose. Not only are those so involved in direct violation of the civil law, they are in violation of the law of this Church.” But church law isn’t the only law broken in polygamist relationships since they are illegal. Yep, I said illegal, not that the thirty to fifty thousand people who participate actually care since they have an extremely small chance of actually being prosecuted. Well, unless there’s evidence of abuse, rape, welfare fraud, or tax evasion.
Though Mormonism prohibits plural marriage, it does acknowledge polygamy. To Mormons, though, it is a divine principle that applies in heaven but is not practiced on earth. Polygamy was first introduced into the faith in the 1830s by Joseph Smith, who was considered God’s authorized servant on earth, appointed to “dispense” the gospel to humanity. Smith believed that ancient principles, like polygamy, must be incorporated with new principles, like monogamy. Not all Mormons jumped on board the polygamy train, but many did see value in the practice. Plural marriage was a way to bring them together and give them a distinct identity, allowing them to raise their children to become “righteous seed”—since being raised with a certain belief makes you more likely to commit to it in adulthood. (There’s no hope of escaping; you’ll definitely turn into your parents.) Plural marriage also ensured that this “righteous seed” would grow into numerous descendants. And for any of you out there who think they do it all for the sex, you’re totally wrong. Some Mormon polygamists marry for eternity only, which means that the wife is only on the man’s rolls in heaven. It also means that the wife is not allowed to have sex on earth. None. Ever.
There’s one modern practice, at least, that’s more fair when it comes to having multiple partners, and that’s polyamory, which is when people are involved in more than one intimate relationship at a time but are totally open about it. This type of relationship is not only based on love, but also honesty, communication, and trust. The important part is that everyone involved in a polyamorous relationship—whether it’s between a man and two (or more) women, a woman and two (or more) men, or any other combination—is okay with it. If so, who are the rest of us to judge?
The House of Night series and Zoey’s juggling act have modernized ancient mythology and the history of our species, reaching back to our matriarchal past and using it as a tool to empower women of all ages. I am not asking you to run around being in relationships with multiple men at the same time, or encouraging anyone else to. I just want women to stop judging each other and stand together. If men can pat themselves on the back, so can we.
KRISTIN CAST is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who teams with her mother to write the House of Night YA series. She has stand-alone stories in several anthologies, as well as editorial credits. Currently Kristin attends college in Oklahoma, where she is focusing on attaining her dream of opening a no-kill dog rescue shelter in midtown Tulsa.
{ She Is Goddess }
GODDESS WORSHIP IN THE HOUSE OF NIGHT SERIES
Yasmine Galenorn
SHE IS Goddess. She is the moon overhead, full and ripe in the sky. She is the ground under our feet, pungent and ripe with promise. She is the huntress in the woods, fleet of foot, and the washerwoman at the stream, washing bloody garments predicting deaths to come. She wears a triple face: Maiden, Mother, Crone. She is gigantic—the 24,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf, and she is lithe—Eos, the goddess of dawn. She is Kali, she is Artemis and Athena and the Morrigan. As Gaia, the planet, she provides the sustenance that keeps us alive. As Hel, she walks us into the Underworld at our death. Eternal and cyclic, she is Goddess, the primal source of life and death.
Throughout history, the divine feminine has been worshipped and loved, reviled and vilified, adored and feared. She has been exalted, and she has been defiled. As the patriarchal religions rose, the Goddess went from being the soul of the world on which we walked to wearing the face of Eve, who fell from grace and brought down mankind. She began as Lilitu, an ancient and powerful goddess, and was disempowered and twisted into Lilith, a demoness devouring children.
She is every color. She is every size. She is every age. She is life, and she is death. She is also vast—so enormous that no single essay can ever hope to encapsulate her history.
The subject of the Goddess and her worship is so large that, in this essay, I’m going to attempt to narrow down the topic to focus on how P.C. and Kristin Cast have used aspects of Goddess-worship studies—both past and current—to create their own vision of Goddess worship within the House of Night series. We will take a look at various aspects of history and myth, and then examine how they play out in Zoey Redbird’s story.
A FEW DISCLAIMERS
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I come at this subject not from an academic standpoint, but from that of a modern Pagan, a priestess, and a shamanic witch. I’m a bestselling author—yes. I also love technology and adhere to a good deal of modern scientific teachings—but in my faith, I’m a shamanic witch. I’m not Wiccan, and I believe in multiple gods/goddesses (most Pagan religions do not view any god as omniscient or omnipotent).
I started as a solitary witch over thirty years ago. I’m self-taught, and eventually went on to lead and work with groups of people. But my personal path has evolved over the years to a very specific focus and, as I did earlier in life, I now prefer a solitary path for most of my workings/rituals, except for certain holidays.
This is the way I choose to practice, but it is not the way all Pagans practice. Among modern Pagans, worship and belief is as variable and flexible as the number of adherents, for most Pagans practice reconstructed versions of what the older rites must have been like—we can never truly know what went on back then.
While it’s been suggested in some academic circles that there may have been a single worldwide matriarchal Goddess cult, there isn’t enough solid evidence to prove this. Thousands of goddesses existed, and even though they often overlapped because of cultural assimilation, each was worshipped and viewed in her own way. However, much of that worship and ritual has been lost through time, and there are so many academic arguments as to the nature of what certain Goddess symbology means that it’s an exercise in futility to hope that we can arrive at a clear picture of just how many of the temples/shrines worked, especially those from oral traditions. So we do our best to create new versions of ancient worship for the modern world.
Ask ten different Pagans for a definition of the Goddess and you will get ten different answers. Still, there are a few things that the majority of Pagans believe, and we’ll touch on some of those in the following pages.
First, a little background on Goddess worship in general.
WHEN GODS WERE BORN
As humankind evolved, our survival depended on
the ability to read the weather, to follow the herds, and to learn the difference between poisonous and safe plants to eat. Rain, snow, lightning, fire, windstorms—all elements became both adversaries and allies. Without the knowledge of how they worked on a scientific level, we explored them energetically. Our ancestors divined the magical side of the elements—wind, water, fire, and earth—seeing these elements as being sent by the gods or—in some cases—as gods themselves.
As religion began to evolve, our ancestors came to believe that our ability to thrive and to survive was dependent on our ability to assuage the whims of these deities and elements. History credits our ancestors with having created the gods to fit the world around them, but a number of other Pagans—as do I—take a different view: that our ancestors observed the natural world around them and discovered the divinity inherent within that natural order.
And so, the Earth became the Mother, giving birth to animals and plants. Through her nurturing the people survived. When she was angry and turned her breast away, the people starved. Sacrifices were made to her in hopes for her lenience, and celebrations were held to rejoice and thank her during the bountiful times. Holidays arose, correlating with the equinoxes, solstices, and, eventually, the cross-quarter days. Between the Sun (male) and the Earth (female), the circular Wheel of the Year evolved—which modern Pagans still celebrate. Life was seen as a circle—from birth to life to death to birth again, and as the wheel of the year turned, so did the wheel of life, ever upward in a spiral.
The Spiral Path in the House of Night
In the House of Night series, we see the spiral on the uniforms of the Third Formers at the House of Night, where it represents following the path of night to learn the ways of the goddess Nyx. The symbolism of the spiral can be seen in many forms within Paganism and Goddess worship in the real world, as well. In addition to representing Triple Goddess worship, it can represent the path to the inner self, the spiral of life, the helix of DNA, and the concept of reaching from the inner core to the outer universe, and is also linked to the womb and fertility rites.
The concept of the living earth as a goddess is more than just a concept to those of us who actively follow Paganism as a spiritual path. This belief celebrates life and acknowledges the place of death in the cycle. Light and shadow are balanced—without one, the other cannot survive. These beliefs combine the carnal and the cerebral and the spiritual.
For a time, the Goddess was forced underground, though she remained very much alive. For centuries, Pagans were forced to sublimate their beliefs, hiding them in the guises of monotheistic holidays and as superstitions. For any religion that is patriarchal in nature has no place for the divine feminine if she is given an equal stature to the God. But in most Neo-Pagan circles today, Paganism and Goddess-worship revere the divine feminine on an equal level with the divine masculine. In most cases, one gender does not subjugate the other. And so we come to the role of the priest and the priestess.
THE PRIESTESS AS SERVANT
The Goddess worship within the House of Night Series is a matriarchal sort. There are priestesses, but no priests, although there are special roles for male vampyres, as with the Sons of Erebus. In this, as well as the rituals we see performed by high priestesses (and high priestesses in training) in the series, including Zoey and Neferet, the Casts’ series mirrors modern Pagan roles and rites more than it mirrors the past duties of priestesshood.
Historically, priests were as important to their gods and goddesses as were priestesses and, in most Pagan circles, are equally honored today. But what did these ancient priests and priestesses do in their positions? And how did the modern role of the priestess evolve?
First and foremost, the priestess served her goddess. Again, with so many different temples and gods and beliefs, there can be no single answer as to how priestesses served—no “correct” choice to this multiple choice test.
Among her sacred duties, a priestess might: conduct rituals in worshipping her goddess, see to temple business, act as sacred harlot, go to war, heal the sick, tend to the hungry, or prepare the dead for their journey into the afterlife. One of the most famous rituals (which stretched across several cultures but came into play heavily with Celtic legend and lore) was that of the heiros gamos.
In numerous Pagan religions—though perhaps best known in the Celtic realms—the heiros gamos (a Greek term meaning sacred marriage of a god and goddess) was mirrored in the marriage of the king to the land. The land was personified as a goddess of sovereignty—a goddess who held power over a certain area or people. The would-be king underwent a series of exhausting physical trials to test if he was fit to be king, but once decreed suitable, the aspirant king would then undergo ritual sex with a priestess representing the local goddess of sovereignty in order to finalize his marriage to the land. This would solidify the king’s loyalty to his people and the land over which he ruled and was a binding oath.
In modern Paganism, the priestess (and/or priest) facilitates rites during celebrations and rituals. She keeps the energy flowing smoothly, focuses the magic being raised, takes care of anyone disrupting the Circle, and basically leads the rituals—much of what we see in the House of Night series. In some traditions, the priestess will channel the goddess being served, and together with the priest will at times reenact the heiros gamos ritually, using a blade (representing the phallus of the god) and chalice (representing the womb of the goddess). During the ritual, the blade is lowered into the chalice as a representation of sexual union.
Not all priestesses today follow a single goddess or even a named goddess. A number—especially within the Wiccan tradition—follow what might be termed the generic “Earth Mother” or “Moon Goddess.” And then there are many priestesses—like myself—who are pledged to either a specific god or goddess, or group of gods. But modern Pagans almost always work out a personal connection with the gods: what they want us to do and what we need to do for them.
In the House of Night series, we explore the concept of Goddess worship through the eyes of Zoey Redbird. Her path follows a traditional modern high priestess’s path: she is chosen by her Goddess, undergoes her first ritual, and begins her training toward the goal of becoming high priestess. As with priests and priestesses of old, she is her Goddess’ agent in the world, acting on her behalf and communicating her wishes. But that is not the only role Zoey can be seen as playing within the House of Night series. And it is here that we move into an examination of one of the more prevalent perceptions of the Goddess, the Triple Goddess, and how the three faces of the Goddess are reflected by characters within the series.
THE TRIPLE FACE OF THE GODDESS
One common motif in the history of Goddess worship shows the Goddess as having three faces—Maiden, Mother, and Crone. She rules all aspects of women’s lives, and many goddesses around the world were seen as having a triple face (Brighid from Celtic mythology, Hecate from Greek mythology, and the Morrigan from Irish mythology, for example).
Probably the best-known example of the Triple Goddess is the Fates—three sisters spinning out the destiny of humans. The Moirae—three Greek goddesses—were said to spin out each mortal’s web of life on a loom. Their parents were thought to be either the Goddess Nyx (the primal goddess of night), or Zeus (the leader of the Greek gods) and Themis (one of the Titans).
The Maiden Goddess spins the life-thread, the Mother measures it out, and the Crone cuts it: Clothos, Lachesis, and Atropos, respectively, in the Greek tradition. And so we see the powers of the Triple Goddess encapsulated by the Fates—youth, the prime of life, and age.
The Fates in the House of Night
In a nod to the Triple Goddess, P.C. and Kristin include a silver silhouette of the Fates on the Sixth Formers’ uniforms. The symbol even includes Atropos’ scissors, to signify the end of the students’ time at the House of Night—or the end of their life, if they don’t complete the Change.
The three faces of the Goddess also correspond to the life cycle of w
omankind, which acts as a mirror of the divine feminine within mortal woman.
The Maiden
In her Maiden aspect, the Goddess is the fleet-footed nymph of the woodland; she is the huntress, unencumbered by children or entanglements. As she explores her life, she discovers her strengths and callings. A woman under the Maiden phase is still free, unclaimed by man. Though she may have a man by her choosing, she will not have a mate yet.
The History of the “Virgin”
The word “virgin” comes from the Greek/Latin word “virgo,” which means “maiden.” Originally, sexuality was not an aspect of the word. Virgin was, in fact, a term of power, applied to women who lived “apart” from men. The definition did not necessarily only include women who hadn’t had sex. It referred to women who were not bound to a brother, father, or husband. Only later did the word “virgin” take on a sexual meaning and, as has happened often in history, reduced a woman’s power to the state of her genitals.
During the Maiden phase, women explore their lives and decide the path upon which they wish to walk. This is an invaluable time, allowing for experimentation and education. Unfettered by children, the Maiden is free to travel, to go to college, to begin building a career, to decide whether she wants to be a mother or not.
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