This short essay was originally published in the Moon Books anthology Naming the Goddess and is republished here with kind permission of the editor and publisher.
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“…the divine is not separate from the beast…” (Lenore Kandel, Hard Core Love).
How should I write of the Night Queen?
She is a fleeting shadow in our dreams, ineffable, touching our world in the darkness, the light of distant stars caught in Her cloak and in Her hair.
How should I write of the Night Queen?
She is a Goddess like no other, and yet She is all Goddesses. She is ecstasy. She is Rapture. She is the creative essence of all that has been, that is, that will be.
How should I write of the Night Queen?
She is.
The Goddess known simply as the Night Queen is at the heart of a little-known method of sex magic called, at least in modern times, Amg Ada. The method was initially developed – reputedly on the foundations of much older material – during the 1960s by Jane Hurley, who was a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine alongside her diverse interests in the occult arts. Others, since, have made a point of stripping away any accretions from Chinese medical practice, and of studying more deeply with the Inner contacts of the Amg Ada system, so that working with it now brings us closer to the original source, to the Night Queen Herself.
Because the Night Queen is Amg Ada. The method uses ritualised sexuality in order to bring the practitioners into direct contact with the Divine, which is manifested through dream and through contact with the Night Queen in the realm of dreams.
Of the Night Queen as a “character”, as an individuated deity, little is written. She may take on many visible forms. It has been said that Her truest form, Her “self” as it were, is as a dark woman with long black hair and jet black eyes. But She is a deity who must be directly experienced, a Goddess who is in a genuine sense a Mystery, and hence She cannot be understood intellectually. Like the experience of sex itself, writing or talking about it, and actually doing and feeling it, are two very different things!
This experiential nature of the Night Queen is reflected in the practice of Amg Ada’s rites, in which the use of normal language is considered a breach of sacred space, and ritual communication must be by way of various chants, physical gestures, the physical senses and the intuition of the participants.
How should I write of the Night Queen?
She is not of the classic trinity of Goddesses, She is not the Maiden, She is not the Mother, She is not the Crone. Yet She is all of them.
How should I write of the Night Queen?
She is the Goddess of desire and lust and pleasure. She knows and nurtures the divine animal that is restless within each and every one of us.
How should I write of the Night Queen?
As a poet, for as with poetry Her innermost truths are hidden and not hidden, in the spaces between the words.
Perhaps the most powerful insights into Her true nature are contained in a lengthy series of poetic verses that have been preserved within the Amg Ada corpus. Attributed to one of the Night Queen’s known, otherworldly and discarnate, attendants, The Songs of Volvizia constitute both praise and wisdom teaching.
They can function as a set of keys, for those whose desire may lead them to the very outermost gates of the Night Queen’s realm. They may work as the seeds of meditation, and as pathways that can be followed in the creative imagination.
Perhaps you have heard my footfall in the forests?
I sing among the alders and the may.
The Chant of Spring!
The Chant of Spring lives within the rocks, the soil.
The murmuring forests of the Dark Age.
Distant abandon!
The cry of a broken mare!
You have heard me, yes?
You understood?
Many men have heard my song but who in his heart
sings the song of Spring as the rocks and soil?
There are inner songs.
Songs from the inside of Being.
Caught in the Rapture of Being!
A thousand years ago a temple stood, or the memory of a temple, a temple of flesh, a temple of light, a temple of dreams, a temple filled with violent sobbing, filled with anguish, filled with ecstasy, purple robes, white robes, scintillating shadows crossing between you and I. A thousand years before a thousand years ago, in a memory, in a hushed whisper in the winds, she stood here, standing naked, crying, making signs of lust and wonder.
There is an ancient path for us to follow,
into the lost worlds,
worlds forgotten,
worlds condemned.
We are together there forever.
In my dreams I meet you there.
On a cliff.
I undress for you.
On the edge of an abyss.
(lines excerpted from The Songs of Volvizia).