Befriending the Dark Goddess

She Calls is a song about making peace with mortality. The “she” in this song is the Dark Goddess. The song is about listening to her call, and hearing the secrets she whispers about grace and serenity in the “dusk of lifetime”. It’s a quiet little song that came to me with great ease, as a picture in my mind. I saw an older woman outlined against the sky, arms raised to the final rays of sunset, shadows deepening all around her, as she listened for messages from the sacred night. I imagined her developing a close relationship with the Dark Goddess as the years passed and that passage of life grew closer on the horizon. This imagery became the song She Calls.

A person of any age can take the opportunity to raise hands and caress the final rays of sunset. Lingering in the growing darkness, an open heart can catch the echoes of the thoughts of the Dark Goddess. I see her as wise and strong, compelling and compassionate, guiding us gently back into Her womb when our time here is over.

This song is about approaching the liminal with awareness, openness, and spiritual depth. The pivot point from one season to another is liminal. Dusk is liminal. The passage from living to dying is liminal. On all of these thresholds, She is with us, calling. Will you listen?

In the blue of the evening She calls, pause a while and hear…
In the glowing horizon she shines, the first star tells me…

As the last of the setting sunshine bathes my upraised hands
I am filled with a knowing as the darkness gathers the land

In the dusk of my lifetime She calls, more and more, I hear…
As the darkness deepens to black, Blessed Death whispers…

music & lyrics © Alane Susan Brown (ASCAP) 2010, recorded by the Crow Women on Crow Magic

The meaning of the elipses…

I remember when I wrote this, the thing that excited me about the song is the the space I left open. Each of those 4 epipses is there on purpose. The elipses are the point of this song. In the first line, the listener is invited to pause with me a while and hear…what? I don’t say. In the second line, the first star tells me…something, but what, exactly? I don’t tell. In the final section, more and more I hear…a message, but the nature of it isn’t given. And, most of all, in the last line, Blessed Death whispers…and the listener is left to imagine what the whispers were about.

Those elipses leave space for each listener or singer to fill in their own answer. Since many of us avoid thinking about dying, we may not have anything come readily to mind when we imagine what the Dark Lady has to say to us. Working with this song is an invitation to open to that voice. How much easier to face aging, dying and what comes beyond, if we nurture a friendly relationship with the Dark Goddess as we move through life. How comforting for her to already be a friendly presence when we move through death.

Shadow and light in paganism

This is one of the things I love about our neopagan spirituality. We include the shadows side, the darkness and the difficult passages, along with the bright and shiny ones. We celebrate beginnings, such as handfastings and initiations and also endings, such as handpartings and funerals. All of these passages are sacred. Many of the songs on the Crow Women’s second album, Crow Magic, are about rites of passage.

Playing with the Summerland

She Calls is just one of many songs by pagan artists that are about developing a positive relationship with the darker passages of life. Yet some take a decidedly light-hearted approach. One of my favorites of this type is Summerland by Brook. It’s on one of the best compilations of pagan music ever released: Witches’ Brew. It’s one of the many, many gifts that Reclaiming has given to the pagan community.

In Summerland, Brook looks forward playfully to entering the Summerland, a pagan version of the afterlife.

Some folks dream of heaven, some live in fear of hell
you may like dancing with the devil; I believe Nirvana’s swell
But if there’s a life hereafter, I’m making other plans
Kiss goodbye to all my rage, I’m going to Summerland

Gonna live each moment until the break of death.
After I cross over, that’s when I’ll catch my breath.
Rest in peace and reunion with those who’ve gone beforehand.
Going to the Isle of Youth, I’m going to Summerland.

Leave behind my bones, all my resentments, too
I’ll get me another set after I’m renewed
I’m working and I’m learning, I’m reaching for the sun
and like every living thing, I’m as confused as anyone
I’m not ready to surrender the ground on which I stand
but, when it’s time, I’m going to Summerland

Summerland by Brook, from the album Witches’ Brew

Dark Goddess Ritual

What is your relationship with mortality? What would you like it to be? These questions are worth exploring. Perhaps you might like to cast a sacred circle and meditate on this. You could visualize the Dark Goddess and invite her to deepen her relationship with you. Whatever comes to you, you might record it in your journal, or turn it into artwork such as a collage, drawing or scupture. It might even become the inspiration for a song of your own!

If you’re in a pagan group, this is a lovely choice for the theme of a ritual. If the participants are comfortable with it, each person could share their thoughts about mortality and the Dark Goddess. The Crow Women did such a ritual many years ago, and as part of it, we filled out our “Five Wishes Advanced Directives” documents. It was a loving and bonding thing to do together, made more spiritual by doing it in sacred space. If you choose to do ritual around mortality, I hope you will include the songs mentioned in this post.

When death comes

If death has already made its visit and you’re looking for inspiration, I invite you to look at our page on funeral rites of passage. It lists the Crow Women songs that are useful for such a ceremony, links to our blog posts about those songs, and a Spotify playlist of relevant songs by a dozen or so pagan artists.

I’ll leave you with this Rumi quatrain, which was set so beautifully by Libana. To me, it uses night as a metaphor for death, as my song She Calls does. But, the wonder of poetry is that it might suggest something different to you, and that would be valid, too.

Night goes back to where it was.
Everyone returns home sometime.
Night, when you get there,
tell them how I love you.

Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th Century

If you know of additional songs that relate to the themes of this post, or have responses to this article you’d like to share, please leave a comment.

Cover photo of sunset by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

For more information about the Crow Women pagan choir, and access to all the blog posts by Alane and the other 9 crowsingers who have written for Pagan Song, you can visit the Crow Women author page here on Pagan Song.

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