Crone Goddess

Crone Goddess

In common Neopagan usage the three female figures are frequently described as the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, each of which symbolizes both a separate stage in the female life cycle and a phase of the moon.  Many Pagans add in a fourth Dark Goddess, while others mix the Crone and Dark Goddess together. 

The Crone represents wisdom, repose, death and endings represented by the waning moon T.  For male wiccans, the crone would be the sage.  In early cultures, she is often depicted as a grandmother, a wise woman or a midwife. Her own child baring days are past - she is now the wisdom keeper, seer and healer; whose knowledge is sought out to guide others during life's hardships and transitions.  She mediated disputes, she had influence over tribal leaders and she cared for the dying as they took their final breaths.

In today's society, where we worship youth and beauty, this aspect of the Goddess is the most frightening and misunderstood.  In the Middle Ages, the Crone Goddess became the Wicked Witch and Hag of our fairytales.  Her knowledge and wisdom was persecuted by the Church's fear.  The very word implied a wrinkled, hunchbacked old woman, unwanted and unloved.  Women who had reached an advanced age were dismissed as useless hags and there was nothing to celebrate about it at all.

Fortunately, times are changing, and more and more women are welcoming this aspect of their life.  Older women are living longer and they have busy, active social schedules.  More women in their fifties, sixties, and even seventies are far more willing to embrace their sexuality and womanhood.  These women are reclaiming the name of Crone in a positive way and see it as a time to joyfully welcome one's position as an elder within the community.

Her color is black and she is associated with the waning or new moon, autumn and winter. She is the dark moon, the wintertime, old age and knower of mysteries.  The Crone time brings the harvest of experience, when we reap the accumulated benefits of all that we have learned. 

Elli is the Norse Goddess of old age, who overcame the mighty Thor in a wrestling match. This pissed him off quite a lot.  But no one can stand against the mighty power of age, not even the Gods.

 

Invocation of the Crone

Behold the Crone...
Dancer of Time
Completion of the Sacred Cycle

She Who is Wisdom
Beloved, respected and feared
Honored as Grandmother, Ancestress and Hag

In the end, there is beginning,
Death brings Birth, Life renews through Her

Behold the Crone, Dancer of Time
Mother of worlds, Maiden of re-birth,
Child of the next generation

Dancing through Time
She Who cuts the cords…Of life and death,
Grandmother of all

The Crone comes……..
Silently, powerfully, relentlessly
Crossing space and time,
Holding the threads of life and death,
Mistress of endings and beginnings

Speaking through elders
I am the Crone….
The Grandmothers….The Wisdom of Age….

I am Hecate, I am Kali, I am the Eternal One

I cross space and time,
Holding the threads of life and death,
Mistress of endings and beginnings

I am completion of the Cycle
Maiden….. Mother….. Crone.....
I have come as the Goddess,
And in me... all life renews
All things are possible

The Crone comes dancing
Silently, powerfully, relentlessly,
To all

Crone Goddess

Dark Goddess

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