“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” - Leonardo da Vinci
Nyx is a goddess who was there from the beginning of time, and is personification of the night was the mother of twins. One twin was named Hypnos. He absolutely adored his mother and lived with her in eternal darkness. He would rise into the sky hanging on to the tail of her cloak. His twin brother was name Thantos, ‘peaceful death’. Hi mother, Nyx is one of the oldest recorded goddesses in Greek mythology and was the mother of many other deities and thus one of the most powerful. Hera, Zeus’ first wife, was always trying to take the throne away from him. She could not do it alone, so she gathered up the child, Hypnos and he put Zeus into a deep sleep but only for a short time. Zeus was raging when he woke and found out Hera had worked behind his back and that Hypnos had helped her. He forgave his wife, Hera, but he turned his anger on to Hypnos, the child. Hypnos ran back to his mother and hid in a cave with her. Nyx was powerful, too, and she told Zeus he had best not other her son, that he was tricked too. Zeus was just a little more than a bit scared of her, because she was older and stronger than he, so he stopped.
You see, Nyx was the daughter of chaos. She was also gorgeous. She, also, lived in the underworld and was a shadowy, mysterious, character of the night and night mists. She has her best self and her NOT best self, of course, as all things do. She, along with her sons could bring sleep or death. He feared her above all. He knew she could bring him torment and suffering but, it must be said, she was no ‘worse’ or ‘better than him or any other god or goddess.
She is the moon and stars and divine mystery of that moment when she pulls night over day. Her stone is the moonstone, of course. Her most powerful time is the full moon. She could be both sensual and haunting as she holds the hands of her twins and a third son, Erebus, who was the god of darkness. She is/was a great protector of her sons, especially her favorite, Hypnos, and gave him the gift of opium, the gift of sleep.
Right at the moment, just before deep sleep and ‘still awake’; the place of dreams, there is that beautiful few moments with her. It, actually, is a heavenly place and space. We seek it like a narcotic. We go mad without it. Just like night follows day, it is a given that we sleep.
When William Shatner went into space and came back safely, he wept out of something between despair and fear of what he had seen. He spoke of it as so dark it was death:
“...it was unbelievable, unbelievable. I mean, you know, the little things, the weightlessness. But to see the blue color go whoop by, and now you’re staring into blackness — that’s the thing! The covering of blue was... the sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us, we think, ‘Oh, that’s blue sky.’ And then suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, as though you whip off a sheet off you when you’re asleep, and you’re looking into blackness, into black ugliness, and you look down, there’s the blue down there, and the black up there and it’s... it’s just... there is Mother Earth and comfort, and there is — is there death? I don’t know, is that death? Is that the way death is? Whoop, and it’s gone. Jesus…”
How dearly we seek Nyx. Every night, we desire that more than anything. We long for it. We, eventually, are received into her very soul. There, for a moment, is the edge of sleep or death. I will never look at night the same again.
©Carol Desjarlais 10.24.21
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