The Crone: Three-in-One Goddess of the Witches

Let's pull our vision back even further.  Instead of viewing a mere month or year, there's a whole life-time for a woman here.

She's born as a Maiden, full of enthusiasm and vitality.  She grows into the fertile Mother, from whose womb all life blooms.  Then the menopause hits and She weakens. Her skin wrinkles and Her back stoops. 

This is the Crone and the final act is in death.

But remember that Wiccans believe in reincarnation.  That death eventually ends in rebirth.  She becomes the Maiden again.  Death is not the end.  It passes into the new moon, into spring and, from the Wiccan point of view, a brand new life.

The station of the Crone is not to terrify.  It's just where She happens to be standing.  Change is always scary, and the job of the Crone is to walk us through those changes.

When I think 'war goddess' I think Morrighan.  You may insert your own terrible, battle-hardened deity.

These days, armies tend to go to war under the auspices of male gods - Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh. But that hasn't always been the case.  The Anglo-Saxons and King Arthur have all marched into battle with the Virgin Mary on their banners; at least they did if you believe the medieval chroniclers.

But when my own ancestors, the Celts, were fighting over land and slaves, it was under the curses and signs of Cerridwen and Morrighan.  You can still glimpse Her in the legends as Morgan Le Fey.

Yet look at these terrifying goddesses - screaming as the furious Furies; or hurtling into the bloody fields as defiant, chariot riding warriors - and the first thing that you notice is their youth. They are queens and/or mothers, but they are most definitely the Crone.

Wherever there is blood and destruction (unless it's reproductive in the birthing sense), there is the Crone.  It's not a matter of age. It's a place, an attitude, an action, a circumstance.  It's the dark times and the dangerous times. 

The Phoenicians, fleeing the threat of genocide under the Assyrians, were forced to live as sea-faring traders. They encountered many different markets, counting systems and languages. They needed to take notes, in order to simply survive.

They invented the alphabet.

Mind you, war can really mess up the markets, even if it is good for business with arms deals and people paying over the odds for basic necessities.

As soon as the ancient Persians began their rampage across Asia, the populations in their bloody path started to panic about their wealth.  It was no good having tons of assets, if you were about to be over-run. Something a little more portable was required, though it had to be trustworthy.

Enter the Lydians with their ingenious idea for coinage.  Standard size, all the same value across the land, easy to shove in your pocket.  'Currency' because it's only supposed to be current during war. Then you can go back to trading in rice, like the Sumerians.  Yeah, right.

They invented currency and national stock markets.

Exiled, enslaved and scattered, the ancient Jews were in danger of losing their language, culture and everything else besides. They came up with the ingenious idea of writing it all down.  Not just their stories, legends and history, but their laws and etiquette too.

War created the first religious book in the Torah.  It also gave rise to monotheism, because the person writing down things like 'there is only one God' was the one to preserve that notion.  Radical as it was at the time.

When the sheer scale of carnage, during the First World War, caused a massive shortage of bandages, a paper mill found a solution.  Kimberly-Clark had accidentally soaked wood pulp enough times to realize that it created a brilliantly absorbent mass. They packaged it up as cellucotton and sent it to the front line.

Allied nurses were the first to use them on wounded soldiers; then the first to realize that there was another handy use for such pads.

The sanitary towel and tampon were created.

In a similar vein, all stockings were made from silk, manufactured in Japan, until the Second World War.  The country of origin caused a bit of an issue for ladies in Allied countries, as the Japanese weren't selling to the enemy. 

Nylon was invented in an American laboratory, just to shut the fashionable crowds up!

The microwave oven is only possible because the cavity magnetron was invented for radar during that same war.  The Cold War sent us to the moon.

History is peppered with such innovations.  Stick us in a war and it seems that human beings soon start becoming very resourceful.  Inventions flood the patent offices and some of them really do change the world.

Now can you see why the Crone is a war goddess?  Death and rebirth.  It's Her realm.

Ragnall put Gawain on to the road of chivalry.  Erin awarded the whole of Ireland to Niall of the Nine Hostages (which is still poetically named after Her now).  And so on and so forth.

In these tales, the wise, old lady tends to have more than a dash of divinity.  They shape-shift and they know the future.  Their wisdom comes from a source beyond the reach of the young questers themselves.

But the passing on of knowledge, advice and history doesn't have to be that grand; nor does it have to be supernatural.

One of my proudest moments was when my mother, in utter shock and surprise, commented that my bread pudding was nicer than her own.  This would stun just about everyone we know, because my mother is a tremendous cook and she is particularly known for her cakes.  I, on the other hand, am not.

So how did I do it?  Easy!  I by-passed her and asked my great-auntie for her recipe.  I then followed it faithfully and produced a pudding similar to that eaten by my mother as a child. 

The Crone had passed on Her knowledge to the Maiden.  Happy days!

The elders, of whatever gender, are the ones who have been there, done that and got the t-shirt. They are the ones with the time and patience to pass that experience on to those who will listen.

History has a habit of repeating itself, but those listening to the Crone are forewarned.  Especially if that Crone is represented by their own elderly relatives.

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The Crone is all about tough love.  She makes us face up to ourselves without any of the justifications that we normally smear over our actions.

But She's also about giving us time out to muse over things.  It's practically a cliche that old people take their grandchildren off for fishing trips, picnics or provide a space for a quiet afternoon chilling out.

As we think over our lives, She might be there with a word or two of guidance and warning. But ultimately it's our decision which way we jump.  There's no taking away of free will here.  Just the often heavy responsibility exercising it, with a little help from our elders.

But if it was their time, then nothing could change that.  The worldly Crone, of whatever age, would hold their hand as they passed into the arms of the divine Dark Mother.

Only it doesn't always go that smoothly.  There wouldn't be so many ghost stories, if everyone who gasped their last breath then moved swiftly onto the Otherworld.

This is the more mysterious of the Women's Mysteries.  Helping the dead to cross the Veil.  But it still goes on, as I know from personal experience.  For some it was taking a Shamanic journey into the astral plane, to lead the bewildered newly dead into the light.  For others, it was summoning the local priest and handing all spiritual matters over to him.

In terms of many myths and legends, the person coming for the dead was a woman. There were the Ladies of the Lake ready with a boat to Avalon; or Bast-Hathor, guarding the gates between life and death, deciding what to create from the destruction. 

Or the dead might go to Her, as with Persephone, waiting to strike down souls in Hades with the curses of the living, or Hel, providing an afterlife home for those Vikings denied entrance to Valhalla.

It's quite pleasing to see this tradition continued in the modern day stories of Sandman.  In Neil Gaiman's graphic novels, Death is a young, vibrant woman, enjoying Goth chic and Mary Poppins movies.

I'd certainly be glad to go, if someone that much fun was waiting on the other side!

In Norse mythology, via Scotland, that would be called following your 'wyrd'.  We get the word 'weird' meaning destined or fated from the same source.

When MacBeth met with the Weird Sisters on the blasted heath, he was at a pivotal moment in his life.  He was moving out of one stage (ordinary soldier with strong moral values) into another (usurper of kings and a bit mad). 

In many ways, his consultation with his destiny was as profound, in context, as St Paul's road to Damascus vision.  Only MacBeth was more blatantly meeting the Crone.

Where they would end up is not the point.  They were changing. They were moving into another period of their lives.  Something ended and thus was destroyed.  Something was born anew.  This is the province of the Crone.

Again, real life doesn't have to be that dramatic.  Whenever a woman menstruates, the Egyptian Crone Sekhmet may be around.  It may seem like this is the realm of the Mother, but it's not.  The presence of blood means that the lady ovulated and did not conceive. The egg just died.

Wherever there is an ending, expect the Crone.  She will be there to guide you through to the next level - the rebirth or the Sorting Out of This Bloody Mess.  It's never pleasant when She arrives, but you'll be glad that She did.

It might be tough love or destiny that She brings, but it could equally be a quiet space in which to sort out your own mind.

At the end of the battle, the Goddess Morrighan reports back to the Gods.  Her words have now been Christianized, but the essence still rings true.  She says,

"Peace up to Heaven,
Heaven down to Earth;
The Earth under Heaven
Strength to every one."

Then She hands back over to the Maiden to build the world anew.