Longest Night 2025- Narrative retelling

You walk into a wide room- a borrowed church space made pagan temple for the evening- into a milling crowd of people chatting. Set right up front is a table, where two women wait to greet you and provide your ritual materials. You are given a pouch full of fresh soil and a small, damp stone, as well as a small cup of water. You are also asked to write your name on a tealight, and then are instructed to light your candle from the master candles on the central altar and leave it there for now.

It is only at this prompting that you take your first real look at the space. The area is dim, with black curtains being hung over the glass doors to block out the meager light that lingers on this winter night. A large ring of chairs has been set up around a circular table in the center of the room, and on it sits the ritual altar.

The altar is simple: a tall statue of the Goddess of Night- painted in blacks and blues and golds in a cosmic design- stands central, surrounded by the already lit tealights of your fellows and the three slightly larger white master candles. At the back of the altar there is an old silver chalice and an unopened bottle of local red wine. In a triangular formation at the edge of the table there is also a terrarium in a lantern, with a butterfly inside; an ornate pouring cup made to look like a lustrous shell; and a single, long, pristine flight feather of a migratory goose.

People have begun taking their seats in the chairs around the altar, and you move to join them. You approach the altar and light your candle with a small prayer, leaving it on the table and moving to sit across from it. The pouch and water wait in your lap for later use.

Suddenly, as if casting a spell, two figures enter the circle and approach the altar. They are clad neck-to-toe in black and wear dark veils over their hair. One moves to the back of the altar and begins to arrange material. The other picks up a gold bell from next to the goddess figure and rings it thrice, making all chatter in the room grow silent at once. The veiled figure smiles at the crowd and instructs everyone to take their seats for ritual. A shiver of anticipation moves through the congregation and all of you settle in, waiting.

“Blessed Longest Night, friends,” the priestess says, taking a moment to look at everyone gathered. “It is an honor and a privilege for us to celebrate this holy night with you all, and to facilitate these times together.”

“A word before we begin: this ritual is not intended to be frightening, but it may well frighten you. We have long been conditioned to be afraid in the dark. I encourage you to embrace the spirit of this season and sit with that discomfort and move through it, knowing you are safe in this space. Shortly, you will be asked to close your eyes. Once you do, I ask you to keep them closed for the entire duration of the ritual, until instructed to open them again.”

She smiles wryly, tilting her head with humor. “I promise that there is no trickery going on here, no gimmick that you’ll miss out on. There is no intended visual aspect of tonight’s ritual. Instead, we hope that it will be an opportunity for you to engage your other senses. So, please, no peeking.”

A couple of people shift in their seats, looking somewhat uncertain, but no one leaves their chair.

“To begin,” the priestess says, “we will consecrate this space for our purposes. Nocta Patricia will go about the space and mark it as set aside from time and place- a space for sacred darkness. While she does so, I ask each of you to come up one by one and extinguish the candle you left lit on the altar before we began. As you do this, we will all chant together. Take this opportunity to set aside the self and the ego, self-consciousness and individualism. For right here and right now, sink into that shared, sacred deep darkness from which we all came.”

Then, she moves around the circle. One by one she touches your fellows on the shoulder with a kind, welcoming expression, inviting them to approach the altar. Her voice lifts clear and confident, guiding the congregation in a chant while the other priestess moves about the outer edge of the circle, tracing blessings and drawing in the darkness.

All chant:

“Darkness darkness, recall the darkness

Darkness darkness, reclaim our right

Darkness darkness, it is our Mother

Darkness darkness, we are the Night”

When it come to your turn to go up and extinguish your candle most of the other lights have gone out. It’s so dim now you can’t read your name written on the candle, but you pick up the light from around where you think you placed it and with a shallow sigh of a breath you blow the flame out. Something in you feels like it stills. You return to your seat, and you close your eyes.

When all the lights are out, all eyes are closed, and a true darkness has set in, the priestess speaks again.

“We begin by grounding ourselves in this place and time. With one deep breath… our body is here, and now. Within, we find the darkness that we carry always, in our bones and blood, and behind our eyes. With another breath…” She takes a deep breath, just loud enough to hear, “our mind is focused and clear. We stand in the darkness unshaken, our thoughts open to what we may experience. A third breath, deep and steady… our spirit is centered and steady. We have always been here. The Night is Mother and She holds us in perfect love, there is nothing to fear.”

There is the ringing of a bell, and her voice moves about the space.

“We call to our kin beyond the veil, who move through shadows and dance with us in dreams. Neighbors, Hosts, and honored dead, we call you forth to stand with us in the dark, as we revel in the realm of She Who Embraces Us All. We greet you, with love, Hail and Welcome.”

Again, the bell tolls.

“Spirits on high, of the realm of the sky, carry our prayers spiraling to the heavens. May our breath mingle among stars once more, and tell them our stories. Sylphs of the air, be here now.”

The bell.

“Spirits below, of the realm of the sea, on cold currents winding through time, carry our prayers into the abyss. May the dark waters remember us, who it bore, and call to the ocean in our veins. Undines of the water, be here now.”

Her voice moves, the bell chimes, she speaks again to another spirit.

“Spirits between, of the realm of the earth, braid your roots with our bones and reach your branches beyond our mortal coils, that our prayers may bridge the land, sea, and sky. May the earth whisper to us stories gone by, and teach us that the darkness keeps all things. Sidhe of the land, be here now.”

The voice returns to the center of the room. “Please repeat after me,” she instructs.

 “Blessed be the Goddess Who is Dreaming, Blessed be the fire in the Night. From the embers of the Awen we are kindled, and from our burning the Dream is given Life.”

Everyone in the room echoes the words.

There is a long, pregnant pause, and when the priestess speaks again there is a soft smile in her voice.

“Welcome Home, burning embers of star fire, sunfire, cradled in the endless embrace of the vacuum of our Mother’s vastness. O’ living dust, breaths of Awen, Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home child of the Cambrian Sea, red flashing light cradled at crush depth, welcome home to the cold sea which bore us all. Welcome home, dancing carbon, living ancestor, walking temple. Within the cathedral of your bones you shelter sacred darkness, treasured fragment of She Who is Night. Instruments of flesh and spirit, allow your bodies to grow full and heavy with the dark inside and around you. Let it drape over you like a blanket, close and comforting. The blackness before your eyes grows deep and velveteen. Feel it in every inch, every crevice, every cell. The darkness in you is the darkness between stars, the darkness that dwells always in sleeping minds, quiet tombs, and waiting tomorrows. This is the darkness before and after, and it is ever present. Greet Her, welcome Her. Welcome your home.”

“We gather together, in the long dark, to find ourselves again in the quiet between dreams. This is the time for rest and reflection, to carefully tend our fire that it may last through the deep cold. We feed it with prayer, with song to fill the quiet. We bring it to the altar and ask the Great Mother to breathe the embers bright. We sweeten the air and pour libations, we share the food from our tables in thanks for being sustained. We make wishes and give them to the dark and cold, with hope that like sleeping seeds they make take root and grow in the Spring.”

“Often, we come to the Longest Night with candles and artificial lights, to hold the darkness at a distance. We have been taught to identify light with safety, and darkness with danger. But friends, surely these recent days have shown all well enough that true evil and cruelty is at home in the full daylight, that it does not wait for nightfall to harm our neighbors and our kin. No, instead we are reminded that the darkness of Night is ally to the refugee and the oppressed, shielding them in Her embrace. The downtrodden are sheltered by shadows, where the glaring light of day would make them vulnerable.”

She clicks her tongue. “I say none of this to disparage light- that divine gift of the Mother. Instead, I mean only to remind those here of the blessings of Night, that we may all go into the season of the Long Dark with gratitude.”

“In the spirit of that gratitude, I invite you all to connect to your senses, and experience how they interact with the darkness. Without sight, how different is the experience? This will form the base of our offering to the Goddess this night.”

When you arrived, you were given touchstones for each of your senses. Touch, smell, taste…and you hear me now. The first of these is water, source of life. Hold this water to your lips, just to feel the sensation of it on your skin. A source of nourishment, a balm in the heat of day. What is it like now, in the dark? Feel the sensation, consider it, hold that feeling in your mind and heart. When you drink the water, feel the way it moves through the darkness in your body, like an underground stream.”

As she speaks you sip the water slowly, feeling it flow down your throat. The sound of waves fills the dark room from some unknown source.

“Next you were given a bit of soil. Sun baked and warm soil is a comforting and familiar scent, to be sure. How is it different in darkness? Cooler, quieter, richer? Breathe deeply and take in the scent. Catalog it and hold that sense in your mind and heart.”

You lift the pouch of soil to your nose and take a deep breath. The soil smells rich and cool and fertile. The sound of birdsong fills the air.

“Lastly is touch, for which you have been provided a stone. Hold it in your hand, run your fingers across it. Experience the sensation of physical touch without the distraction of sight. Hold this feeling in your mind and heart.”

The small stone in your hand is still cool and damp from the outside, covered in a thin film of soil. It feels like stillness and sleep and waiting things.

Again, there is the ringing of a bell.

“Now, with those sensation held clear in your heart and mind, begin to hum, and in this way lend your energy to our offerings”

As you hum, low and quiet in your throat while others find their own pitches around you, the priestess begins to handle something on the central altar. You hear the sound of wine being poured, and the other priestess speaks up.

“Goddess, see us children of your Dream gathered in gratitude on this Longest Night. Accept our offerings in the spirit in which they are given: with love and reverence of You, and Your gifts. Bless those of us here, gathered in Your embrace, that we make take your blessings with us and share them with all children of the Night.”

“Friends, silently now we encourage you to take a moment in prayer. Pray in gratitude, in hope for the new year, and with compassion for all souls with you in the dark and the cold.”

In the silence you think of all the things you are grateful for, and all the things you have taken for granted. You pray for comforts you have barely acknowledged until now, and you think of what you hope for in the future.

The closing of the ritual is a simple and humble thing. The spirits that were called are given gratitude for their presence and dismissed to go or linger as they please. The Goddess is given final thanks, and the participants are given leave of the circle to partake of the deserts in the back room. You linger in the ritual room, which is kept dark. The only light is a single candle left alight on the altar, illuminating the form of the painted Goddess. You close your eyes, and bask in the Night.

goddess statue painted in black and deep blue, with a starry sash and holding two vases. She sits atop a starry altar and there is a circle of chairs behind her in a church room