VIGIL - Keeping The Long Night

Deep is the magic of fire-tending through dark hours, of giving a night’s sleep as an offering: a sacrifice for a prayer’s flight. It effects change. Things that were ordinary are no longer so; we commune with a night and its fathomless wisdom, with all its tides, hoots and howls.

Sitting with ancestors and the night, in the rain, Devon 2022.

To vigil is to sit with the shadows of ancestors, stretching back along silvered DNA strands to the beginning: those who watched with loved ones through their dark, dying hours, shivering youths at their long nights crossing the threshold to adulthood, warriors on the eve of battle and medicine men and women tending to the wellbeing of their tribes.

At this time of the year, holding vigils is a big part of my work, whether for groups I work with, for organisations looking to deepen their connection with the Earth or at spiritual or animate events or gatherings. Here in the UK, the summer months with their mild, short nights are by far the kindest time to support others to sit the night out, offering their presence to creation. This year tending the fire has taken on a whole new level of vigilance as the land is so very dry and even a small fire, or even a spark could rage out of control. It's meant adaptation to a fire pit on concrete rather than the more traditional fire pit on a hill. Yet it is a vital focus for this ceremony. It is always a profound honour to hold the fire, for those sitting out the night in darkness, holding the centre, the heart, the hearth for the ceremony. I will never tire of listening to the outpouring of tender responses that tumble as we gather at the end of vigil, to share experience and the wisdom of the night with each other. It is an age-old way of bringing the gifts of the night back to the village, supporting each other to metabolise the becoming, the realisations, the braking and the making of this potent and very ancient ceremony.

The Vigil, by John Pettie, exhibited 1884

The word ‘vigil’ means ‘devotional watching’. It is an ancient human ceremony that probably has its origins in the hunter-gatherer societies of our Mesolithic if not Palaeolithic ancestors – some of whom seemed to spend days alone in dark, flame-lit caves courting the sacred and painting – and perhaps also calling - herds of animals.

By the 1200s it had wended its way into the English language, via Latin and Old French from the Proto Indo-European ‘weg’, meaning to be ‘strong’ and ‘awake’. Spells slumber in the tangled roots of words, and this one conjures how vigil impacts upon us, making us stronger and more awake to ourselves and the miracle of creation.

Flowers to honour our Ancestors for their holding through the night as the Vigil fire dies and the sun rises on a new day.

On vigil, I have watched for the moment the first star appeared in the sky, and known that it was the stag bellowing in the darkness beyond that made it happen. I can no longer think of dusk as I did before. Once, ancestors and departed friends walked from between the trees to sit and listen companionably with me to the dawn chorus. Another night was guarded by a blue flamed hunter who knew the land far better than I ever will, and yet another by flesh and blood badgers treading their ancient paw paths across the land. Too many mysteries to record, too much magic to be bound by words. More than anything, on these nights I have tended the fire or tended the dark within, and known myself part of a long line of humans called to do so. I feel more at home in my humanness because of it.

The beauty of the dawn can feel like creation's gift at the end of sitting out the night an offering our presence. Dawn last Tuesday following a night of keeping the fire for the Feather, Fire, Stone and Bone group, now over halfway through their year and a day-long, initiatory journey.

It is a liminal space that we enter, a waking dream-state in which myth and symbol speak eloquently and the logos of daylight loses its hold, and seems utterly brash and insubstantial by moonlight. In this depth, if we're ready, we sometimes touch truth - maybe only momentarily - about how IT is: the very nature of life, creation, and therefore who and what we human beings are. It is the pool in which poets swim, a space of yielding, of surrender to the awesome, a time when heart-shuddering prayers are born, shattering realisations warm our shoulders as invisible cloaks, and lives transform.

Rarely are we untouched by the dawn.