The Star Goddess of the Feri Tradition, articles, art and inspiration about Quakoralina, Sugmad, Sugma'ad, Sugmati, Dryghtyn, Drychtyn, The Great Infinite Darkness, The Black Virgin of the Outer Dark, Mother Night, The Womb of the Universe

The Star Goddess is the central deity of Feri. Sometimes referred to as "God Herself", She is the androgynous point of all creation, the primal darkness of deep space, the intelligence of the great Void. She can be seen as an ecstatic feminine form of what is called in some theologies "the Absolute" and as such can be seen as cognate with the Star Goddess Nuit of Thelema. In the Bloodrose tradition of Faery she was visualized as having the head of a black lion, her mane containing stars. She has wings that span infinity. She sits on the onyx throne, a silver egg in her lap. A halo of flames surrounds her.

She is also recognized as the Oroboros, a serpent devouring its own tail, the Manifest encompassing Itself.

a completely black lionness-headed woman with great wings, her hair sprinkled with a million stars. She is seated on a throne of onyx with a silver egg in her lap. She is surrounded by a halo of blue flames.

Slow your breathing to a steady and comfortable rhythm and perform your basic relaxation exercise.

You are in a vast cavern, whose walls of polished black stone glow with a bluish radiance, and whose farthest limits are lost in the distance. At the center of the wall you are facing, nine steps carved of the black stone surround a dais. On the dais, carved from the wall, stands a great empty throne.

I invoke Dryghtyn, the ancient providence,
which was from the beginning and is for all time,
one, androgynous, the source of all things:
all-knowing, all-pervading, all-powerful,
changeless, eternal, forever unending.

On it sits the Star Goddess appearing as a lioness-headed woman with great wings. Her whole body is jet black. Her hair is sprinkled with a million stars. On Her lap is a silver egg, and She is surrounded by a halo of black flames.

All around you, great divine figures dance, singing and whirling in eternal ecstasy. Join in their dance and feel yourself filled with the power She radiates.

The Star Goddess is God Herself, the source of everything in the universe. "In one sense, all the other deities are but aspects or reflections of Her. And in one sense, She is not female, but, rather, pansexual." Victor called her "the clitorophallic God Herself."

She is variously known as Quakoralina, Sugmad, Sugma'ad, Sugmati, Dryghtyn, Drychtyn, The Great Infinite Darkness, The Black Virgin of the Outer Dark, Mother Night, The Womb of the Universe. One of the prayers to the Star Goddess is an inheritance from the Gardnerian tradition, originally written by Patricia Crowther: "In the name of Dryghtyn, the Ancient Providence, Who was from the beginning and is for eternity, Male and Female, the Original Source of all things; all-knowing, all-pervading, all-powerful; changeless, eternal." This has been adapted and added to by various Feri writers, but the fragment gives a sense of the mighty power of the Great Goddess, reverence for whom is held in common by almost all traditions of the Craft.

Alone, awesome, complete within Herself, the Goddess, She whose name cannot be spoken, floated in the abyss of the outer darkness, before the beginning of all things. As She looked into the curved mirror of black space, She saw by her own light her radiant reflection, and fell in love with it. She drew it forth by the power that was in Her and made love to Herself, and called Her "Miria, the Wonderful".

Their ecstacy burst forth in the single song of all that is, was, or ever shall be, and with the song came motion, waves that poured outward and became all the spheres and circles of the worlds. The Goddess became filled with love, swollen with love, and She gave birth to a rain of bright spirits that filled the worlds and became all beings.

But in that great movement, Miria was swept away, and as She moved out from the Goddess She became more masculine. First She became the Blue God, the gentle, laughing god of love. Then She became the Green One, vine-covered, rooted in the earth, the spirit of all growing things. At last She became the Horned God, the Hunter whose face is the ruddy sun and yet dark as Death. But always desire draws Him back toward the Goddess, so that He circles Her eternally, seekintg to return in love.

All began in love; all seeks to return to love. Love is the law, the teacher or wisdom, and the great revealer of mysteries.

The Mother Before Creation is walking in the outer darkness. Her steps touch nothing. Her steps touch Herself, who is all things. She uses space as a mirror. This mirror is known as the Mirror of Darkness. In it, the Mother Before Creation is as vast as a starless universe, like sleep without dreams, like sleep in which all dreams reside. She draws the image from the mirror into space and calls her "Miriel", which means "Beautiful One from God". Each is virgin: unspoiled sexuality in all its freshness. Yet old beyond time, each kissing the other with all the ripeness and experience of a dying courtesan. They make love, each desiring the other as much as they desire the Self.

Then Miriel moves away from the Mother Before Creation so dark emptiness lightens to cobalt blue as she becomes Dian-Y-Glas, The Blue God. The Great Mother says to Him, "They shall never take you from me. Whatever from you take, because you are my word, my hammer, and my seal, you shall return to me in your present form. And this our love shall be forever. And through our sexual union all things shall be created and are created, all things which were and are not, and are yet to be.

One mystery revealed in this myth is the true nature of darkness, embodied in the universe as the Mother's mirror. In the Christian creation myth, God looked into the darkness, into the void, and decided to make something to fill it. And henceforth He remained separate from that which He created, outside of nature and humanity. The theological implication is that God is too good to be a part of nature, and thinks the material world evil.

How much more sense it makes that the Goddess saw Herself as that void, that darkness, and from that loving, vital, dark womb all things were created. Instead of condemning the material world, She not only saw it as Herself, but loved and embraced it, just as She embraces us whenever we call on Her. The belief that the Goddess is within us and all of nature is called immanence, and implies that nature is good and sacred

From "Currents in the Ocean: Exploring the Fluid Nature of Divinity"
by Storm Faerywolf

One of the distinguishing marks of the Feri tradition for me has been in the recognition of the ambiguous nature of the Universe. Far from being a system that seeks to impose limits and definitions onto experiential realities, Feri seems to revel in the blurring of boundaries, taking sheer pleasure in the paradoxical, the anomalous, the Weird. The unfathomable power of chaos is at its very core, that primal churning of energy that is the beginning point for everything known, and unknown. The Star Goddess moves outward from Herself, taking several forms, blurring one into the next, taking on new aspects, becoming more focused, yet retaining the essential quality of what has gone before.

All beings flow back into the ultimate source of all things. This implies that the underlying nature is a unified one, however this doesn't mean that any being will be just as useful for a particular purpose as any other. All goddesses are one Goddess, but this doesn't mean that I would find it useful to invoke Kali for a love spell, or Aphrodite for the destruction of an oppressive pattern. We find different points of focus along the spectrum that are aligned to different energies. We "tune into" varying frequencies in the waves of Divinity at different times, as we deem appropriate. I can understand mentally that the Blue God is, in one sense, a manifestation of the Star Goddess, but I also recognize that they feel quite different, and because of this possess different powers.

Recently I had a dream. In this vision I was shown a window into the nature of the Star Goddess, specifically Her relationship to other Deities of the Feri tradition, and by extension to the Universe at large.

In the dreamtime I see a light. The light from a black candle breaking across the darkness of the room, as my teacher and myself sit, breathing in a rhythm, calling down the trance upon ourselves. We breathe, and the white flame becomes surrounded by a rainbow band, a prismatic nimbus that hints at the hidden powers within the light. I inhale, and the power moves outward from that light, becoming now something different; moving into a new form. Where there was one power, there are now two: Nimue and Dian y Glas, birthed from the white fire womb of the Cosmic Mother. It continues, riding on the waves of my breath, these two powers move outward still, changing from these child-like beings and maturing into the Great Mother, and the Harvest Lord, then finally into the Crone, and the Winter King. A point of stillness at the end of my breath, and then it returns on my exhale, these powers collapsing back into that from which they came, flowing backward into that point of light which contains them all: the white fire of the Star Goddess, flickering softly in the darkness of the Void.