The ancient Deer Mother of old once flew through winter’s longest darkest night with the life-giving light of the sun in her horns. Unlike the male reindeer who sheds his antlers in winter, it is the doe who retains her antlers. It is she who leads the herds in winter. Ever since the early Neolithic, when the earth was much colder and reindeer more widespread, the female reindeer was venerated by northern people. She was the “life-giving mother”, the leader of the herds upon which they depended for survival, and they followed the reindeer migrations for milk, food, clothing and shelter.

Throughout the British Isles, Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, across the land bridge of the Bering Strait, she was a revered spiritual figure associated with fertility, motherhood, regeneration and the rebirth of the sun (the theme of winter solstice). Her antlers were frequently depicted as the tree of life, carrying birds, the sun, moon and stars. They adorned shrines and altars, were buried in ceremonial graves and were worn as shamanic headdresses. Her image was etched in standing stones, woven into ceremonial cloth and clothing, cast in jewelry, painted on drums, and tattooed onto skin.

Across the northern world, it was the Deer Mother who took flight from the dark of the old year to bring light and life to the new. So this solstice, take a moment to look out from your warm cozy home into the cold of the darkening eve. And on the sacred night when the sun is reborn, look for the Deer Mother flying across starry skies, carrying the tree of life in her horns.