From plastic surgery, up to and including the injection of toxic chemicals into our faces, to the Balkanization, if not outright exile of those over a certain age.
The rendering of people, mostly women over 45 years of age to almost invisibility by the mass media.
It is plain to see that we as a whole are not dealing with the natural progress of aging well.This was not always the case. There was a time when those who had managed to survive a remarkably harsh world were regarded as someone who might actually have something important to contribute.
In Myth, this was expressed by a goddess figure that, along with the Maiden, and the Mother, was the most powerful part of the first of all trinities. The Crone is found in India, among the Greeks, the Celts, as well as single a deity. .
The Crone goddess made sure that everyone remembered that while at the time they may have been alive and vital, winter was still inevitable, and all life would someday have to deal with old age and death. And as hard and ugly as death could be, it was possible to look it in the eye and not be afraid of it.
The Crone was too old to let deceit stand and from her karma, severe or benevolent, fell on those who had created it so they got just what they deserve.
She is the one who sees what needs to be destroyed and is without sentimentality seeing to it’s destruction, in her older forms she was also the one who, as the huntress, knew that life could only come from death.
She was the Goddess who was beyond the giving or restraning of sex as a gift as the Maiden did, or sex as a way to bring about new life as the Mother did, she saw it as either something no longer needed, or as a way to teach a lession, or as simply a thing for pleasure and nothing else.
She was the goddess that became such minor deities as the many different fairies who appeared to men as a beautiful maidens who after a night of preternatural bliss, would in the morning, leave the man to find himself in the arms of the crone, where he, if unable to deal with this transformation was eaten, or if able to accept her, find her beautiful again.
The crone also turned up in the unusual Roman myth of Vertumnus and Pomona. Which, at least according to David Littlefield, shows the Roman mindset turning away from rape and/or servitude as the only forms of adult male and female relationships (for reference see any myth involving Zeus getting his rocks off) and moving toward something more healthy.
The myth, as related by Ovid, tells how Vertumnus, the shape-shifting god of seasonal change, plant growth and gardens, finds himself in love with the nymph Pomona who wants nothing to do with him and so seals herself up in her orchard refusing to even speak with him.
Vertumnus gains entrance to the orchard by changing himself into a crone and telling Pomona stories which, along with giving Ovid a reason to relate other myths, lets her warm to the person telling the tales and later to Vertumnus himself on his revealing his true form.
EMPOWERMENT: Whatever the case, the Crone, in whichever form she was imagined, was the sacred mythic avatar for women who could live their own lives without the need or approval of others, practically men.
Which explains why with the coming of the new male centered philosophies and mind-sets, the image of the Crone Goddess became darker and darker, until with the coming to supremacy of Judeo-Christian, she is kicked completely out of Heaven and left to make do as best she could in the dark recesses of the mind as the wicked witch.
Which brings us to the situation we find ourselve in now.
These myths come from the same Collective Mind we run our our lives with, whether we acknowledge it or not, so for the mental health of society I strongly suggest we once again become comfortable with the various forms of the Crone Goddess.
The Crone’s Manifesto
Are you a Crone? – The Pilrim’s Moon, Growing Older on our Own Terms – a Counterculture Path for Women
Old(er) women everywhere are beginning to reclaim powerful words such as crone, which have been used in demeaning ways for centuries.
Not all older women are Crones. To be a Crone is a deliberate way of living, a badge of honour, not a by-product of longevity. You’re not a Crone if your mind is closed, if your heart is cold, if you’re unaware of what your instincts are telling you.
Below is a (wo)manifesto for all Crones and Crones-in-training:
- I will banish the word ‘should’ from my life
- I will laugh a lot, including gently at myself sometimes
- I will gather my community of loved ones close about me
- I will speak up bravely when I need to
- I will demonstrate that a little eccentricity gives spice to life
- I will live more simply, leaving space for what’s really important to me
- I will treat my body to movement and to delicious, nourishing food
- I will compromise as little as possible
- I will find all kinds of occasions and people to celebrate
- I will live in a profoundly creative way, understanding that the word creative does not always refer to the arts but to a deeper current running through life
- I will, being human, feel fear and regret sometimes; I will not allow those feelings to define me
- I will ask for help when I need it
- I will mark the significant moments of life, large and small
- I will mourn my losses fiercely, in my own way
- I will fall in love when I feel like it
- I will work to heal our beautiful planet home
- I will do and learn things I’ve always wanted to do and learn
- I will forget to worry what people think of me
- I will discover my gifts and offer them freely
- It is entirely likely I will wear purple
- I will live a spiritual life, although not necessarily a religious one
- I will keep an open mind and an open heart
- I will learn to cackle
Menopause, and the changing of her mental maps – the loosening of her need to stay on course – resulted in the tendency to stray into unfamiliar ways and consequently she found herself being “outrageous” at times.
It could happen that one day she will have ceased to notice how she is being. The sense of outrageousness will then have left her.
She will simply “be”.
Still in possession of all her mental abilities, she will no longer be bound by any set ways of responding to anything. She will have opened the door to a higher freedom. ~ Marian Van Eyk McCain, Transformation Through Menopause
Ani DiFranco, Grey – ‘And I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome’.
NAMES: Crone, Cerridwen (Celtic), Hecate or Hekate (Greek), Carravogue (Goddess of winter County Meath Ireland), Mórrígan or Morrigu (Celtic), Nemglan (Irish battle goddess), Ala (Nigerian), Ama No Uzumi (Japanese), Asase Yaa (West African), Annis (Celtic, later turned into various evil fairies or ghosts such as Black Ann and others), Badb (Irish), Baubo (Greek).
Baba Yaga (Russian), Tripura Bhairavi (Tantric), Cailleac Bhuer (Celtic), The Corrigan (from Cornwall to Breton, France), Elli (Nordic), Grandmother Spiderwoman (Native American), The Hyldermoder (Scandinavia), The Leanansidhe (Isle of Man), Oya (Yoruba), The Muireartach (Scottish Highlands), Changing Woman (Navaho), Ereshkigal (Sumerian), Estsanatlehi (Native American), Kalma (Finnish), Lara (Roman), Lilith (Hebrew), Macha (Irish), Mother Holle (German), Nicneven (Celtic), Sedna (Inuit), Xochi Quetzal (Aztec), The Wyrd, Nox or Nyx (Greek), Snow Queen (versions in Sweden & Japan), Queen of Shadows, Nightmare, Hag, the Wicked Witch.
Fluorite can help increase your concentration, and heighten your intuition. It can help you maintain an unbiased impartiality when decisions need to be made by reducing you emotional involvement in a situation. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. Fluorite lets you take a step back and see better.
*It clears the fog of illusion and brings order to chaos thus clearing the way for new things.
*Perfect health and order on every level.
*Purification and harmony.
Why not come out as a Crone by adding a comment to this page?
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