On MotherNight, just before the winter solstice, Northern-Tradition folk often hail all of the various mother goddesses, or at least the ones from the pantheons they most often work with. Or, at least, their favorites. Some Rokkatru-oriented folks have taken to hailing Laufey, Angrboda, and Sigyn as the Mothers of the Rökkr on that night.

Laufey -- the mother of Loki -- is an earthy, mothering goddess associated with graceful trees. She makes soup. She speaks kindly to people. She is gentle even while being firm. Sigyn... well, there are probably plenty of wonderful things said about Sigyn right here in this book. Whether her shy childlike side or her tender nurturing, more and more people are being drawn to her as time goes on. Even folk who don’t much like the Rökkr will sometimes hail Sigyn.

It’s Angrboda who is the difficult one. She is the Hag of the Iron Wood, the Mother of Monsters who birthed rotting Hela and terrifying Fenris and the alien Snake. Those who don’t like the Rökkr refer to her in words that suggest she is simply Loki’s native concubine, and that his “true” wife is Sigyn, whom he loves, as opposed to Angrboda, on whom he merely sired a brood of freaks on before moving on to a “real wife” with, the implication continues, a “real life” with the “important” people in the Nine Worlds. The Hag is seen as an evil that he was fleeing in order to pursue that “real” life with the Aesir, a symbol of those backsliding tribal-giant ways.

It’s true that the Hag is not sweet or gentle. If she thinks you’re a weakling, she will kill you as soon as look at you, and would think nothing of eating your flesh, drinking your blood, and tanning your skinned hide for a garment. She is witch, warrior, werewolf, woman at her most powerful and frightening. She is the chieftess of the Iron Wood, the weird place full of trolls, werewolves, and strangelings. For most people, this is not anyone you’d want to call Mother, unless it were to fill that archetypal slot in people’s heads labeled Bad Mother.

And, of course, she’s the Rökkr goddess who has decided to mother me.

Well, it’s not all that surprising, considering that I belong to her daughter Hela. When I grudgingly allowed that I might be the better for some nurturing and bucking up, it makes sense that She shipped me off to Her own mother for help. I was surprised at how helpful the Hag actually was. I’m the sort who mistrusts “traditional” nurturing -- all that gooshy stuff, I’ve been known to say -- and the Hag never pushed those triggers. For those who tend to be limp, paralyzed and self-loathing -- what my partner refers to as the “whiny sack of shit club” -- she’s been known to turn into a ferocious drill sergeant of the “Get up and get moving, you worm!” variety. For people like me, who have plenty of willpower and for whom the roaring confrontational style makes us bare teeth, growl, and prepare to fight to the death, she simply looks me in the eye like the mother wolf that she is and says, “You’re strong. You can do it.” And I find that I can, regardless of what the obstacle was a moment ago.

Being mothered by Angrboda is like being parented by someone who is one part swordwielding sensei (think Skatha of the Isle of Skye who trained the young Cuchulain), one part barbarian queen who thinks you’d be helped by extensive tattooing and a horn through your nose, one part wicked witch who eats stupid children and makes love philtres out of toads, one part Morticia Addams-like priestess whose mysteries involve a lot of blood, and one part fiercely protective mother wolf. That’s five parts, any of which might be too much for most people ... but I find that they suit me just fine. Like her daughter, the Hag pulls no punches. She is forthright and straightforward, and will tell you bluntly when you’re being stupid, but where Hela does it from a coolly objective standpoint, Angrboda has more heat and sarcasm in her ripping comments.

I’ve seen her through the memories of her children, and I know she’s capable of being tender when they’re young and helpless -- like any mother wolf -- but where she really shines is when they’re older, old enough to talk back and mean it, old enough to hold their ground. I’ve been a parent myself, and I know that there are many forms of parenting, as many as there are different sorts of children in different stages of life. If Laufey and Sigyn are balm and nest for the inner child, Angrboda is coach and teacher for the inner adolescent. I’ve always felt that my inner child, instead of being a wounded or withdrawn or trusting six-year-old, was more like a surly, defiant fourteen-year-old -- and that takes an entirely different kind of mother to handle.

It takes one who won’t let you get away with anything, but who inspires you to go it alone, without her aid. One who skillfully manipulates the power of “I’ll show you!” to get you to achieve things you never thought possible. One who responds to your phobia of spiders by going out with you to gather specimens, spike their little bodies on pins and display them, watch them wrap and eat little flies, until one day your fear is entirely gone. (And you’ll go along with it, or she’ll drop them live and squiggling in your bed. She knows what’s good for you.) One who won’t take any lip, and will keep you in line when it’s needed. A mother who isn’t interested in healing your monstrousness, because if you’re this far along and you’re still a monster, that’s not going to change. You just need some discipline, some self-control, and some skills to make something of yourself. Which is the best thing about the Mother of Monsters, after all. If she decides to love you, she will love you no matter how horrible you are. Unless you’ve taken leave of all logic, you can’t convince yourself that you are too awful for her to love, because she’ll tartly inform you that you don’t hold a candle to her own brood. And she’s right. She specializes in loving monsters.

We in the Northern Tradition are still feeling around to see what our Gods are about, what they specialize in, and there are few who definitively have “Will Work With Adolescents -- Outer And Inner” on their cards, so far as we know. Mordgud and Heimdall, the guardians of gates below and above, stepped forward once as initiatory deities when I was doing a prayer for a child’s coming-of-age, and we know that Gefjon likes teen girls, but Angrboda the Mother specializes not only in teens, but in problem teens. She’ll take the sullen, the mouthy, the misunderstood, the violent, even the ones who beat up their peers and pull the legs off of bugs ... and she’ll Make Something Of Them. She is the tough-love mother, who puts real love behind that, even when she’s scaring the shit out of her little monsters. Because, sometimes, we need that.

The Mother of Monsters can also be remarkably supportive of people who are disabled and otherwise physically imperfect, so long as they keep doggedly trying in the face of their problems. She gives strength to the struggle, and good advice about managing the day-to-day problems, but the point is to keep you going, not to pat you on the head. The only folk that she seems to reject entirely are the weak of will; she seems to feel that they should be exposed, or made thralls, or at the very least turned over to the gentler Mothers rather than have them wash out of the Hag’s rigorous regime. Yes, that’s part of her dark side; she dislikes the weak-willed the same way that Skadi dislikes the weak of body. But as she wears her dark side in full view, it’s not like you didn’t have warning.

Unlike most people’s experience of Laufey, Sigyn, Frigga, and most of the other mother goddesses of this cosmology (with the exception of Nerthus), Angrboda is the Mother who is perfectly willing to Talk About Sex. In fact, if you ask for it and she decides it’s appropriate, she’ll do the initiating, regardless of gender. She’ll also initiate you into other, darker, mysteries, the sort that leave scars. Initiation in general is part of her job of mothering. She is very strong on ritual markings (I’m getting a series of nine tattoos across my back at her behest) and magical body modification. It allows one to see what Loki saw -- and still sees -- in her. I’ve always thought that if a deity had an astrological chart, and I was allowed a look at Loki’s -- which would never happen in a million years -- his sun would be in Gemini, and the two-wife thing just shores that up. Two women for the different parts of his personality; the mysterious and passionate older woman and the adoring, nurturing younger woman. It’s a Loki thing. To write off either of them is to misunderstand half of him.

The Hag also teaches leadership, especially of motley and non-homogenous groups who are likely to quarrel. She knows old shamanic mysteries, and as a skin-shifter herself she can teach that as well. She’s not raising children, she’s raising adults—strong, confident, self-sufficient, creepy, powerful, proud, knowledgeable, self-controlled, intimidating, stubborn, competent, sexual, magical adults. With a little blood on their hands and a lot of grim wisdom behind their eyes.

Hail to you, Grandmother. You have my gratitude, and my loyalty. I am one of your pack, Sacred Alpha Bitch, forever.

(First picture of Angrboda by R. N. Laing, found at rnlaing.com.  Illustration of Loki, Sigyn, and Angrboda from The Giants' Tarot. Artwork by Grace Palmer. Feeding The Flame is available at Asphodel Press.)