Age of the Mothers

The Age of the Mothers is the remote matriarchal world of the Rainmaker narrative, where mothers and grandmothers hold social authority and the village’s continuity depends on inherited knowledge, seasonal rites, and the stewardship of both women and the Rainmaker. Its order is most clearly embodied by the revered tribal mother, whose authority joins family lineage, communal memory, law, and ritual. The period also supplies the setting for the succession of Rainmakers, whose knowledge of the moon and seasons serves the community but does not displace the women’s authority over the first sowing.

Social Order and the Tribal Mother

The narrative places the era many thousands of years in the past and describes a society in which women rule. Mothers and grandmothers are revered and obeyed, and the birth of a girl is treated as more consequential than the birth of a boy. Authority is presented not as an abstract institution but as a lived order carried through generations of women.

A particularly venerated ancestress, remembered as having lived roughly a century before the story’s present, sits before her hut surrounded by kin who attend to her. Village women bring her their affairs, introduce their children, and ask her blessing; pregnant women seek her touch and ask her to name the child they expect. She may answer with a gesture or remain still, but her authority does not depend on frequent speech. As mother of seven daughters and ancestor to many descendants, she is regarded as the vessel of the village’s wisdom, tradition, law, morality, and honor.

When age leaves the ancestress less communicative, her nearly as old daughter takes her place at the hut’s threshold and tells stories or sings spells to the children and adults who gather nearby. The daughter has learned these traditions from her mother and carries them forward in her bearing and speech. The younger listeners know her well, even as the knowledge she preserves reaches back through the older woman. In this way, the village’s memory passes through maternal succession rather than through written records.

Ritual Authority and the Seasonal Cycle

The tribal mother’s authority is also expressed through the agricultural calendar. The Rainmaker studies the moon and determines the proper day for sowing each kind of fruit and plant, combining inherited rules with his own experience. Yet determining the time is distinct from inaugurating the season: the solemn act of scattering the first handful of grain and seeds on communal land belongs to the tribal mother or her oldest female relative. The division of duties places the Rainmaker’s specialized knowledge within, rather than above, the matriarchal order.

The Rainmaker’s role becomes especially important when prolonged drought or persistent cold and damp threaten the fields with famine. He leads rites intended to address the crisis, including sacrifices, exorcisms, and processions. The village tradition also preserves the more extreme belief that, when every other means fails, the Weathermaker himself may be sacrificed. The tribal mother is said to have witnessed such a sacrifice in the age of mothers and grandmothers, linking her authority to the community’s memory of its most consequential ritual precedent.

Transmission and the Legend’s Later Echoes

The Age of the Mothers is presented through a story within the larger book, not as a documented historical period. The Rainmaker narrative gives its social order vivid definition through remembered customs and figures: maternal succession preserves the village’s stories, while the Rainmaker’s practical knowledge is learned and handed on through apprenticeship. These distinct forms of transmission meet in a community whose survival depends on both inherited ritual authority and knowledge of nature.

The embedded legend also makes the age a framework for understanding later events in the Rainmaker’s life. The inherited rule that an unsuccessful Weathermaker may be sacrificed becomes decisive during a later famine, when Knecht offers himself and names his son as successor. The tribal mother accepts the proposal, exercising the authority that the earlier account has established. The remembered matriarchal order thus does more than provide a distant setting: it gives the village’s actions their customary meaning and shapes the terms by which office, succession, and communal crisis are understood.