Winifred Hodge Rose
This is offered as a reading or meditation for Hallows-Tide, Disablot, Mothers-Night, Yuletide, the holy tides of Frau Holle, Berchta, Fricka and others. It is especially dedicated to the German Goddesses with their Yuletide processions to gather up lost souls, and to the Matronae. The focus of this meditation is on the Soul-Mothers and their care for the souls of all beings; it can be used in whatever way and whatever time one chooses to be mindful of them. If you wish, you can put into the text the name of the holy tide you are celebrating, particularly at the beginning of the last paragraph. For example, instead of “Now, at the turning of the Tides of Time…” you can say “Now at the turning of Hallows-Tide / Yuletide / Mothers-Night / Hollenfahren, etc.”.
At the Turnings of the Year the great Tides of Life and Death, Moon-drawn, inexorable, wash across the quivering Worlds.
The restless souls rush forth from the lost places and the lost songs: a drumming deep within the Earth, curls and lashings of tumbled winds and waters, flowerings of flames, out from the Otherworlds into Midgard and from Midgard forth into Worlds beyond our knowledge. Each soul, each wight, living or dead, is a needle drawing a thread of power, stitching the Worlds together: needles of silver and of stone, of iron, antler, bone…..
And now the great Spirit-Mothers of all beings come, each calling to her own lost ones: Mothers of clan and tribe and solitary folk, Mother Dog and Mother Wolf, Mothers of Whale and Wren, of Oak and Corn, the shining Sow, Audhumla herself calling the souls of cattle and kine. Come home, come home, to kin and hearth, to den and nest, to moonlit meadow and rolling wave, to burrow and branch and starlit pool. Come fleeing out of life, when your time comes, and into other life, come gather might and main with us before returning to the fray.
And so they come, wights and souls of humankind and beasts and all beings: terrified and trembling, stoic and dignified, fulfilled, starved, exhausted, slaughtered, devoured, enraptured they come, stumbling or sure-footed, each to their own Train of Souls, following the Voice they know, each trailing strands that weave the Worlds together, warp and weft of hallowed power. The warp is threaded by the Dead and the weft by the Living, changing places in an endless rhythm of Being, humming across the Worlds.
God and Wight, Human and Beast, Tree and Herb: attuned to one another we pour the passion of our love and need for one another from cup to cup, Well to Well, from life to life and need to need, and the Worlds thunder and quiver with this mighty flow.
Now, at this turning of the Tides of Time, awaken! Listen and remember what your souls already know. Open to the surges of memory and mystery that move through your being. Know your own attunement to the flows of power streaming across these blessed, ever-renewing, all-hallowed Worlds.