I'm Still a Maiden Even When I'm a Crone
the Beltane Effect
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Youth is wasted on the young, so they say. It's taken years for me to understand and fully accept that. This is especially true because I've always been an "old soul," even as a child; I was more perceptive and wise than my years. I never felt I was unaware of or wasting the gift of youth.
It's also true because now, in my sixth decade, I can see that the essential part of who I am is virtually identical to who I was at twenty-five; it is not precisely identical, but the core is the same. It's also interesting to note that I turned twenty-five on my honeymoon. So in a very archetypal way, I went from Maiden to a married woman and very shortly Mother, the stage that would define my life for the next few decades at precisely the age I still feel inside. While motherhood and life changed and deepened me over the years, that Maiden core remained strong and ever the same.
Many women avoid embracing the stage of life associated with the Crone and resist self-identifying as one. I, on the other hand, adopted Crone as an identity early. Honestly, I couldn't wait to be old enough to claim it and everything I perceived it to mean.
She's old certainly and perhaps has lost some of her surface beauty, but so what? She's lived. She is wise, knowledgeable, powerful, experienced, authoritative, confident, and vocal and doesn't suffer fools. She knows her mind and speaks her mind.
Who wouldn't want to be that and possess those qualities?
Who wouldn't want to figuratively (or literally) stomp across the moors and marshes and the rocky landscape, staff in hand, commanding the wolves, ravens, wind, and weather?
Be honest, doesn't at least a part of you want to be the wise woman with wild hair and piercing eyes wrapped in a tattered shawl wearing a necklace of bones sitting at a council meeting before a roaring fire immersed in the swelling of beating drums, pronouncing oracles, meting out judgments and dispensing wisdom to your family and tribe?
To be a crone, you must trust yourself, your lived experience, past struggles, hard-won insights, and your gifts. You must rely on what is inner now that what is outer is beginning to fade and lose its youthful advantage.
It's very crone-ish to ask, "Why should youth be wasted on the young? "
Now that we're in the season of Beltane, we must engage with Maiden energy and what that means for a Crone.
A gentle reminder that May 1st isn't the date of astronomical Beltane. The celebration of Beltane on 1st May is a convenience of the modern calendar. The Beltane cross-quarter day, marking the halfway point between the spring equinox and summer solstice, is Friday, 5th May 2023, on the next full moon.
There has been, in recent years, a move to acknowledge and elevate the "juicy crone." Rather than being seen as "past her prime," as a certain now unemployed newscaster proclaimed, or shriveling up and shrinking from her place in society and business and becoming irrelevant, Crones are claiming power and flexing their vitality and creative juices, contributing, instructing and leading in new ways.
I'm calling this the Beltane Effect, the archetypal energy of "youth" and the invigorating energy of The Maiden, which reasserts itself to create a new type of Crone who draws upon her wisdom and experience infused with the power, clarity, and creative vitality of the Maiden. She is reconnecting with her inner Artemis and Aphrodite. But, ultimately, she is returning to herself. She is reconnecting with The Self before marriage, partnership, career, children, caregiving, and the grief and loss which comes with living to the age of a Crone.
Women like Imelda Alvmquist, an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seidr/Old Norse Traditions, have already been leaning into this shift around Crones.
Alvmquist offers The Teachings of The Pregnant Hag, she writes,
The Pregnant Hag (in-dwelling spirit of the Hagal or Hagalaz Rune) is one of my greatest allies and role models. Her great secret and mystery teaching is that she may be old, but she is pregnant! Her secret is that she knows how to rebirth herself!
The Pregnant Hag is all of those things and more: she is wise, fearless, formidable, and cares deeply about the future of young humans (and also baby animals), about the Earth herself, and a return to following the Original Instructions, humans relearning how to be proper Earth Keepers.
While I can't speak for men with any certainty, I have been married to one for thirty-five years and raised two sons. My observations tell me that a man's life journey is more straightforward. He must move from child to adolescent, answer the call, become The Hero, face his dragons, gain competency, and emerge a confident adult. One of the most unhappy and unhealthy outcomes is that of the puer aeternus, the grown man who never matures emotionally beyond adolescence. Suppose a man does not answer the Hero's Call. In that case, he remains forever disempowered, weak, and stunted, unable to individuate and become his true and highest Self.
On the other hand, women travel a spiraling, circuitous, mysterious journey through life. They can simultaneously embody and live out the stages of Maiden, Mother/Matron, and Crone. Though women also face perils. The spiral path can become a maze of confusion, and she can become trapped in a dead-end remaining forever the damsel in distress, daddy's little girl, or the manipulative femme fatale.
Leaving behind the hesitancy, self-consciousness, and sometimes shallowness and recklessness of the Maiden and soaking in Maiden energy when you're a Crone is a new aspect of Cronehood for our times.
I'm still a Maiden, even when I'm a Crone.
The reinvigoration of Self and life as a Crone drawing upon Maiden energy is a decisive shift in inner and outer life. It's when you realize how amazing it is to be a woman. The sheer complexity of holding all three stages at once within you, the ability to seamlessly shift between them, and the interconnected web of experiences it brings is deeply empowering.
The wise Crone, powered by the vital force of the Maiden, creates a formidable person. We, Crones, are forever renewing ourselves, reinventing our persona, transforming and emerging ever more fearlessly than before.
I am continually aware of retaining my youthful curiosity, my need to question everything, my love of new creative projects, and my sense of freedom and self-expression.
While tramping around my yard in mud-covered clothes, planting a tree, and wearing an old sun hat (and looking ridiculous, no doubt), in my mind, I am the beautiful and glorious Maiden returned from the underworld sleep of winter, greening the land with a trail of sparkling faeries in my wake. I am The Beltane Crone, living out the eternal story of the Winter Hag, who transforms into the Spring Maiden each year.
The great secret, the mystery concealed in Nature, is that a woman's life is a wheel and a hologram. We are Maiden, Mother, Crone, and Maiden once again, all at the same time. Each age and stage contains the others.
Life is amazing, and our inner journeys are our most important work.
I welcome your comments, stories, thoughts, and ideas around Crones, Maidens, Hero's Journeys, and all the rich and complex ways we become who we truly are.
Thank you for reading and being a part of the Hedge Mystic Community. You are valued, appreciated, and loved.
This is so helpful, Jan, to realized that we are Crone and maiden and mother all at the same time. That we can tap into the maiden energy even now softens the sadness that sometimes accompanies the Crone stage of life.
"Maiden, Mother, Crone, and Maiden" indeed. I am in my seventh decade and am very proud to wear the name Crone. Having gone through many health issues these past three-four years, I am now emerging again to show myself. Thank you for the beautiful thoughts.