Maiden, Mother, Crone.

Maiden, Mother, Crone.

 There is some resistance to this idea. Some blame Robert Graves, some Gerald Gardener. Mostly it is the idea of Croning.

"I don't feel like a Crone!"

"I am a Queen, not a Crone!

All this comes back to our fear or ageing, and societies idea that you have to "keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved."

Men can age and mature, but a woman who looks her age has "let herself go".

I am not saying that maybe the idea of of virgin/mother/hag or lover/mother/death wasn't placed on women by men. I am not saying that we should feel comfortable about having our labels coming from an external male gaze.
However this symbol was created and by whom is not as important to the meaning, depth and empowerment it brings women and communities. How it helps them embrace their bodies and natural seasons. Allowing them to trust their bodies, their show them respect and love that is lacking. 

What I am saying is that women dance in three cycles. That they wax and wane in these cycles (knowingly or blindly) during their lives. Women, like snakes shed their skins, as they shed their blood. In endless spirals moving in and out, towards and away from a core of self.

The menopause which stops women having children when it is no longer physically safe to do so, but we are one of a few animals to live beyond our ability to reproduce. One theory ( the Grandmother Hypothesis)  about this quirk is that we evolved this way to teach and to add in the birthing process, to look after our children's, children. To pass on skills and knowledge and to care for children who might have lost parents.

Maiden

Without the male gaze idea of "virgin" which is a myth and mistake all on it's own, what does "maiden" mean?

If we remove the "virgin" idea it is about a woman growing into herself. Her Goddesses are often ones of forest, or hunting, wildness and freedom. It is the time when a girl is learning and growing quickly. There is a power and purity in her focus and self belief. (You do remember being a teenager and being so sure about everything?)

Swift as an arrow, fresh and green as spring and just as unpredictable!

Mother 

Some folks hate the whole idea of mother so much they reject this out right. While in certain places in the world the idea that women are cattle still pervades mothering is so much more than that. Mothering is a creative process. Mothers are a doorway to the future and the past. It is both an odd combination of skills and can be a transcendent state of being. It is full of contradictions and  wildness and ferocity. Some women can pop out 8 kids and not have a maternal  bone in her body. Some have no womb and embody mothering. At it's core it is about nurture, space and love. Unconditional, unwavering love. It is teaching someone to tie their shoes, to walk, to sing. It is a doorway to the past (the ovary that became me was formed when my mother was in her mother's womb) and the future (my daughter's potential children were forming inside while inside me).

Even genetically carry children puts their D.N.A  into the mother's body. It changes them on cellular level. 

Crone

The Wise One gets a lot of flack. Culturally they are "non-people". Even medically LOLNP is short hand for Little Old Lady No Pain. 

Yet from the moment we come out of the Mother phase of our lives we are in Crone territory. The narrow band of "acceptable" in who and how women can be tightens more cruelly.

Heaven forbid that they are sexual, powerful, cunning and strong.

I come from some serious Crone women. Hands like iron and faces like coal shovels for the most part. They could wring cotton sheets dry by hand, sing like angels and make grown men's testicles shrink up into their bodies with a look and woe betide you if they had to use "The Voice".

The fear of death and the fear of being rejected or "dumped" into the LOLNP means women keep trying to stay in the Maiden or Mother as long as they can. They do not the see the beauty or grace of one place or another. They find no peace in the between either.

As with all things in nature everything is always in motion and all three have the whisper of each other in them. While biology will play a part, but it is the spinning of the spirit in it's cycles that bring these parts into sharper focus. 

Bright Blessings xx