Nyx in the House of Night

than either the Maiden or the Mother with her sexuality. If she is outside of a monogamous relationship, she can pick and choose her lovers as she will.
    The Crone is firmly established in her career and her life path. She is a force to be reckoned with. Spiritually, the Crone embodies the Dark Mother. She is closer to death than her two companions, and she rules over the Underworld in many of her guises. As we saw earlier, she is the Fate who cuts the life-thread for each mortal.
    The Crone is close to her magic. She has had longer to practice—she’s learned her strengths and built upon them. She works under the Dark Moon, and her magic is that of stars and the deep woodland and the veil that separates the worlds of life from the worlds of spirit.
    The Crone cleanses the land, she is the wildfire that clears the scrub, she is the avalanche that sheds unbalanced snow banks, she peels away the scab to expose the new, healthy skin. And she also reveals hidden secrets and ugly truths so that spiritual cleansing can take place.
    As she moves toward the veil, the Crone begins to shed her ties to the world; she walks the path to the Underworld, knowing that it is simply another transformation. In Paganism this journey is known as the Eternal Return—death leads to life leads to death leads to life again, and on and on.
    THE FACE OF THE TRIPLE GODDESS WITHIN THE HOUSE OF NIGHT SERIES
    While the Triple Goddess is referenced only indirectly in the House of Night series, we can still find clear expressions of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone aspects within the books.
    Zoey Redbird is the Maiden—young, learning her place in the vampyre world, discovering her new abilities and potentials. She dates, but she isn’t tied down to any one man yet. She is in training, someday looking at being High Priestess, but for now, she’s got a long way to go and has questions, doubts. She makes the wrong choices at times and is beginning to learn through her mistakes.
    At least at first, Neferet serves as a mother figure for Zoey and for the rest of the House of Night, as she ostensibly is there to guide and nurture the fledglings as they learn to live their new lives. In her role as High Priestess, Neferet also serves as spiritual advisor, as the voice of Nyx, and as the guardian of the gates of death for the fledglings who don’t make it through the Change.
    Sylvia Redbird—Zoey’s grandmother—can be seen as the Crone. She is the fount of wisdom, the elder who has seen great dangers before in her life. She is both resource and support, and yet she can also employ tough love when necessary: she turns her own daughter away when she sees her head down the wrong path, and supports her granddaughter instead.
    But the powers of each life phase can corrupt. Neferet lets her desire for power overwhelm her duty to use that power responsibly and commits what could conceivably be the one “sin” common to most belief systems: overstepping the boundaries of her position and assuming she can challenge the Goddess to which she was bound. In essence, she perverts the words of her Goddess in order to strengthen her own position. She twists Nyx’s power and, therefore, Nyx chooses someone else—in this case Zoey—to be her mouthpiece. But as of this point in the series, Zoey, still in her Maiden phase, has not gained enough power to challenge Neferet.
    Aphrodite was the Maiden, but she also abused her power as leader of the Dark Daughters and was cast out. Nyx does not turn her away fully, but instead presents her with new struggles as Aphrodite seeks to relearn her place within the order. As she discovers more of her compassionate self and grows into her role as Nyx’s prophet, Aphrodite begins to enter the Mother phase—now human, but still a mirror of the Goddess. As her character develops a conscience and she begins to know what it’s like to actually care for others, she enters her nurturing phase.
    OTHER FACES OF THE GODDESS IN THE HOUSE OF NIGHT SERIES
    While the Triple Goddess is one of the best-known facets of the Goddess, they are not the only way of envisioning her, and we can also find other aspects of her within the series. First, there is the Bright Mother/Dark Mother duality. Here, bright and dark do not necessarily represent good and evil (just as light and dark do not in the House of Night series), but what essentially equates to the Shadow Self and the Outer Self. The Bright Mother is compassionate, nurturing, and looks