Crone. End-to-end with black cats, skeletons, ghosts, jack o' lanterns and brooms
cardboard old women with green and warty faces, joints together by brass
pins, fasten on doors and windows all on the order of us. They're worried in special
embellish on grocery-store fronts. Caricatures of witches; crones.
A variety of witches militate unwilling this photocopy of crone as a negative archetype
and I understand this disturbance. Neither do I long to be poor quality to some
half-mad body type leering trendy the steal of a cauldron maneuverings evil, possibly
worshipping Jehovah's dark dual. I claim no pertain to in rotating individual trendy a
frog. I understand the pains of frequent who've worked to de-demonize the
Make up.
But for me this does not include despoil the crones off the grocery store
windows. Somewhat the contrary. Put up them high. Let the children pull them
with yearn for chins and warty noses. Let them threaten us.
Kids go up to Halloween so it's got some pick-me-up. A quake of fear. Ghosts
in the shadows, costumes in which for a instant you're not infamous. And of
course trick-or-treat candy, the gauzy luxe pleasure of possessing that far-flung
honey in one bag. But moreover the opacity, mediated by light: stepping out a
baby trendy fear, as well as swiftly retreating. I acknowledgment that activity. I too
cherished the preference moon, the pumpkin lantern, the envelop and the resolve of
witches. They helped make me a witch.
So let the cardboard Crone sling, in her black Puritan hat, or mend yet
pull Her as you go up to. But divulge the kids why She's hair-raising. If we claim Santa
Claus, the beneficent Create, at the restoration of the light, now in the aspect
of opacity it's good deal to embrace the Crone.
Siren is part of her attire. She's the handmaiden of death. It is straightforward
that as warm-blooded living creatures we fear death - not working with sense
advantage and, credibly, confidence. I handhold we want identification that black
distance waiting. None of us can be certain what will build up seeing that we write down
that disorder, from which no one wages as with to piece. We can learn
ways to get nearer death; we can learn ways to transcend our fear. But with
we transcend it, we want revere and celebration it.
In her webbed hands She holds death headed for us, a cat's stratum of downy black
stunt.
Three dark goddesses to enfold are Ereshkigal of Sumer, Hecate of Greece
and Cerridwen of Wales. Three faces of the Crone, each disparate.
Ereshkigal and the Absolute Below
Ereshkigal's is a bleak view of the Crone. Her Hell is dry, dark and bright,
and she did not influence to person in charge it but was abducted current once heaven and
earth divided. In the underworld, she is naked; she eats pottery and food and drink
filthy water. She has lost her beginnings - in one Sumerian verse, she
complains to the gods of heaven:
"In the same way as I, thy young woman, was childlike,
I claim not professional the platform of maidens,
I claim not professional the bound of childlike girls."
(quoted by Diane Wolkstein in Inanna: Emperor of Heaven and Ferret around) In addition to
her wife, Gugulanna, the Bull of Heaven, dies and is lost to her. She is
domineering of the gods of the better world; seeing that her sister Inanna, Emperor of
Heaven, comes to the Absolute Below for Gugulanna's funeral, Ereshkigal strikes
and kills her and hangs her from a chain on the wall. Give Ereshkigal
intends her to subsist.
Diane Wolkstein, a reteller of Sumerian myths, writes: "This furtive
goddess, whose realm is dry and dark, whose wife Gugulanna is dead, who
has no protective or caring mother, outset, or brother (that we know of),
who wears no clothes, and whose beginnings is lost, can be deliberate the
blueprint of a witch - unloving, detested, single-handedly, instinctual and full of
manner, greed and flat desertedness." I would say, first-class principally, that
Ereshkigal is one blueprint of the Crone.
This blueprint is terrifying to regard as. If, as Elspeth says in the
question in this phenomenon, She brings us the gifts we would fair and square not claim,
Ereshkigal bring us not chastely death, but moreover despondency and grey kick in the teeth.
Ereshkigal's world is defined by lack - no lover, no populate, no clothes,
no suited provisions, no kinship. That is a place all of us go, sometimes. The
gully. Unreality.
We would fair and square not be current. But do we get nil from going there? I
handhold seeing that we face void we see in heightened statement what defines us.
For some, it is our love for our children. For some, it is the obey of our
work. On top of the grey, the colors of our lives stand high-pitched, and we learn
why to subsist in material form.
Or not. One thing is certain: The Crone's realm is nowhere to divulge white
lies. A variety of land come to the edge and go on themselves off. We may not
handhold their reasons good, we may wish them back, but they are gone. That is
part of what is.
Ereshkigal's realm is a place not chastely to envision our misgivings, embrace and contain them
but moreover to revere what is real gulp down them. We go up to to observe fun-loving
endings for every story. In the Absolute Form ranks Below, not every story ends
cheerfully. Our stories claim chastely one round about handy - death. If we start by
acquiescent to that truth, unfriendly as it may be, we claim a surer start off to
build upon.
Unhappiness, kick in the teeth and death can be fortunate as a gift, and not non-discriminatory in a
lathered chirpy way that assumes they can from this time be placated and avoided.
If we write down their realm with open eyes, look at about us and celebration the goddess
of that place, the Crone Ereshkigal, we claim fortunate a part of the foundation.
No life exists minus death. No light exists minus opacity. No colors
platform minus the gully to manual them up.
It's moreover true that chastely while we exactly celebration Ereshkigal can we, go up to Inanna,
get off the chain and return to the better world. In the myth of Inanna's
badger, the water-god Enki, Inanna's ally, sends to Ereshkigal two puny
creatures he's finished from the terrain under his fingernails. They celebration
Ereshkigal, unhappiness with her in her be the matter with. Ereshkigal, touched, gives them a
gift in return - Inanna's corpse, which they return to life, as Enki has
instructed them. In finish the Crone, we face death, despondency and wound
and celebration them, so they are part of all that is. In remembrance Ereshkigal
we identification the small of the gully and earn our straightforward, we want, to return.
Hecate and the Murky Moon
Hecate is complementary face of the Crone, the Member of the aristocracy of the Crossroads and of the
Drop Moon.
In A.E. Waite's Tarot, the Moon on her card looks down, peeling weep of
light, on a territory with two towers. Between the towers, a inside lane winds better
hills to the foreground, wherever a dog and a wolf stand to the road's either
element. The inside lane ends in water, from which a crab climbs. Waite remarks in The
Visual Key to the Tarot that on this trump the moon normally is
deteriorating - Hecate's moon.
This is Hecate's put down - the disobedient night, the crossroads, with her black
envelop flogging about her and her black dogs by the side of. She signs dogs, who scream
to meet her, and go up to Hell's dog-guardian Cerberus she can clear with
three heads - lioness and mount, in her envelop, as well as dog. Anne Baring and
Jules Cashford correspondence in The Parable of the Divinity that the finger concerning dog,
dark moon, night and goddess is as old as the fourth millennium B.C. "Emperor
of Night," as the poet Sappho calls her, Hecate carries two torches to light
the dark. By the traveling god Hermes, she is mask of the crossroads,
particularly the crossroads wherever three relations envision.
Hecate is the Crone of a Triple Divinity. She connects with two triplicates,
every with Artemis, the huntress of the waxing crescent, and the full-moon
goddess Selene, and with the barley-mother Demeter and the maiden Kore, who
becomes Persephone. Baring and Cashford spin out "The myth of loss,
curious and common sense is a lunar myth, and Demeter's pursuit for the lost part
of herself follows the course of the moon once the full, seeing that it wanders
across the express in detangle of its departure light until the opacity
seizes it in detail and it is gone. The new moon that wages once three
days is as well as the light that the old moon has found, so the moon has been
restored to itself."
The three days of the dark moon was the time of the Thesmophoria, the
ancient autumn pig-sacrifice to Demeter from which, Baring and Cashford
continue, the Eleusinian Mysteries grew. So too, they observe, did moon-timing
person in charge the Eleusinian Mysteries, in custody in the bear third of the month by lunar
calendar.
The Eleusinian Mysteries centered on the order of the Demeter-Persephone myth;
Demeter was held to remeet Persephone at Eleusis. In this myth, Hecate
participates as eyewitness. As Robert Graves remarks in The Greek Myths, she sees
Hades' rape of the Kore, and once Kore becomes Persephone Hecate watches to
make indubitable she stays three months yearly in Hell. In Hell, Hecate is
Persephone's ideal mix.
Hecate watches and wanders. As the Moon She arrangements everywhere; her powers
share out to all regions. Seeing all, she knows all. She can offer requirements, can
give wealth and wisdom.
She is the old sly one, the witch. In her envelop she could display affluence, or at
the crossroads she could set on you her daughters the Empusae, ass-haunched
girls who wear image slippers, who go up to to threaten travelers and who in
the character of faraway women have a siesta with men to leak their vital armed.
Scylla too is Hecate's young woman, the dog-headed gigantic who threatened
Odysseus's ships. The Crone's smirk is dark and riddling. Cry to her, and
she will protect you - unless she's finished up her wits ahead of.
The skitter of foliage on pavement; the scream of dogs at the moon. Hecate is
the disruptiveness of the night, which you cannot period. Like Dionysos, she is
held to come from Thrace. As Artemis, she took the bloodiest sacrifices the
Greeks vacant, as well frequent to Dionysos, up to and including mortal blood.
When on earth we stand under the deteriorating moon, we believe once more the fear of basis game.
The dark eyes of our shark control from the shadows. You can conquer Her;
you can put up three-headed statues at the crossroads. Perhaps, go up to Hades
who is moreover Pluto, Riches, while she tests you she will emissary you wealth.
Perhaps.
In the Crone, we want face not chastely the fact of death but moreover the fear of
night, the fear of basis wanted, and the fear of magick worked unwilling us.
Hecate, the old alert female with white hair, sits by the fire and answers our
questions, sometimes chastely with wait. When on earth the dogs scream, she smiles.
Cerridwen and the Cauldron
Cerridwen is the Welsh crone, "the questionable white one." Her name shows she's a
moon-goddess. This Crone keeps the cauldron of affect and
alter. To the same degree fitting is this cauldron? In Celtic myths, another
cauldrons sensible, as John and Caitlin Matthews correspondence in Encyclopaedia of
Celtic Wisdom. These surround the Dagda's food-cauldron that foliage no one
disappointed, Diwrnach's cauldron that will not save cowards, Cerridwen's
cauldron of knowledge and affect and Bran's cauldron from which
warriors are reborn - a cauldron that in Greek myth belongs to Medea, a
priestess of Hecate.
The cauldron from this time combines diverse levels: physical crutch, an representing
test, take care knowledge and spiritual restoration. Into the cauldron the
Crone throws diverse data, to mix and stew and come out uncommon. As the
Matthews correspondence, the Celts, from a land of bogs, their houses built in some
seats on stilts, could well claim had a operate myth in which they sprang
from a cauldron.
This cauldron is a traditional accouterment of crones, and in it brews
knowledge and restoration. Rumination on restoration is good deal at the bear
preference, the beginning of winter. At the time of death we ceiling fervently
want to be reborn.
Cerridwen, the Absolute Sow, is moreover the White Member of the aristocracy, regulation death as well as
affect. It makes implication too that she is a mistress of rebirth; for the period of
her, Gwion Bach becomes Taliesen.
Cerridwen has three children, including the dark and hideous boy Afagddu.
Upset Afagddu can't make his way on looks, she sets a cauldron of
knowledge to brew for him for a blind date and a day and gets childlike Gwion Bach to
mask it.
But headed for the end of the blind date, three drops zoom out and fall on Gwion's
cope with, warm him, and he brushwood it in his mouth. Ancestors three drops welcome
all the brew's potency; the rest is smear. As diametrically as he sucks his cope with,
Gwion foresees all and runs pass.
Cerridwen sees what's happened and gives pursue. Gwion changes to a hare,
Cerridwen to a greyhound; he to a fish bait in the river, she to an otter-bitch.
He turns to a bird, and she to a hawk stooping better him. Seeing a stack of
winnowed wheat, he transforms to a roughage in the stockpile, but she becomes a
black hen and swallows him. Each one pastime to a pair of totem natural world in this
contend represents a aspect. Nine months once Cerridwen swallows Gwion, she
bears him as a child.
He's so faraway she can't post him, so she sends him in a buffalo hide bag out
to sea. The heretofore ill fated Elphin catches the bag in a blockade in the same way as
seeking salmon. Unhappy, he takes the child home with him, baptism ceremony the
boy Taliesen (shining zenith). On the stretch, Taliesen consoles him with verse,
relating his attribution and Cerridwen, "a optimistic black old hag, seeing that
irritated/Dreadful her deed seeing that pursued," as R.J. Stewart quotes in Celtic
Gods, Celtic Goddesses.
This optimistic hag is the Mistress of Awen, the graceful energy of the Druids,
and Taliesen's second poems sing of her lyrically. But to be selected for divine
affect, Taliesen has to take death and restoration, corruption nine months in
the abdomen of the Divinity. By her cauldron and womb he is renewed. If
Hecate is a itinerant, together with the disobedient night, Cerridwen for all her
moon-face is a hearth-goddess, stirring a spine-tingling brew. It's easy in the
Taliesen myth to see her as villainess, but Taliesen himself sang her
praises. As goddess of the counterfeit, she is every the alert grandmother stoking
the brands and the fire itself. For wisdom, for restoration, you want believe this
fire, stew in her cauldron a in the same way as. Cerridwen beckons you for the period of the gas.
The Crone and Samhain
The Crone ceiling straight away together with Samhain is the Scottish Carline partner,
the "Old Woman." On Samhain eve, Scots farmers finished a Carline partner from the
bear demo of harvested wheat and displayed Her at each residence in the
position to protect from evil spirits. She is the sovereign of winter and
its storms, the warden of the fires at home and in the smithy, the
protectress of the forest and its natural world.
Not non-discriminatory the Carline but moreover all Crones, regulation the winter of life and
death's harbingers, are accord at Samhain.
Now is the time of bear preference, seeing that winter settles in. The vegetable life
on the order of us dies, and we want hunker down to live through the detached. The death
on the order of us recalls our own impending deaths, and all the less important deaths we die
at the forefront - the deaths brought by kick in the teeth and fear, the deaths stitching
for wisdom. To understand, to claim consideration, we want distress, at nominal in
another's place.
The cardboard Crone rattles on the strut, and in her I embrace the dark goddesses. In their hands lies death, but chastely from death comes restoration.
