The Tale of
As winter descends and the light begins to fade, a quiet procession begins —
Between Worlds:
Masking traditions
Masking traditions follow the rhythms of the seasons. Here in the north, masks come out one moon-cycle before the Winter Solstice, when the nights grow ever longer. People disguise themselves to make the world anew, to call back light and life.
Old garments are turned inside out, shapes distorted, the world briefly unmade. Through laughter and fear, order gives way to renewal. At its heart, masking is a sacred inversion — a moment when rules don’t have a hold on us and freedom returns. To wear a mask is to face the unknown, to protect and transform, to invite the chaos from which life begins again.
Both sacred and marginal, the mask stands as a bridge between this world and the other, holding the power to shift time, space, and cosmic order. Beneath every mask lies the memory of ritual and renewal, the human longing to cross the boundaries of the visible world.
As the land began to drift into opening darkness, the land began to open into ever new expressions — in yellow, red and orange. The stars came out and started to tell stories. Like the fog rising over the empty autumn fields, the ones asleep during the summer months also began to rise.
Ones that hold the darkness, tenderly. Ones that cradle new light. Ones that sing and swim, and swing from one into the other, connecting light with the dark.
Each mask opens a passage between the human and the divine. It is a window to another world, a way to meet ancestral spirits, to connect sky and underworld, the living and the departed. Some masks embody animals — the Wolf, the Crane, the Goat — while others mirror the forces of death or fertility. Groups of maskers could all look alike or be entirely different, united by the act of transformation itself.
Through noise and rhythm, through laughter and strangeness, the mask restores balance. To wear a mask is to protect oneself, to renew the thread between people and the unseen.
Photography by Diāna Vaznele, "Latvian Myth"