Triple Goddess (Neopaganism)
| Triple Goddess | |
|---|---|
Goddess of the Moon, the Earth, and childbirth | |
| Symbol |
|
The Triple Goddess is a
The Triple Goddess was the subject of much of the writing of early and middle 20th-century poet, novelist and mythographer
Origins
Various triune or triple goddesses, or deities who appeared in groupings of three, were known to ancient religion. Well-known examples include the Tridevi (Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvati), Triglav (Slavs), the Charites (Graces), the Horae (Seasons, of which there were three in the ancient Hellenistic reckoning), and the Moirai (Fates). Some deities generally depicted as singular also included triplicate aspects. In Stymphalos, Hera was worshiped as a Girl, a Grown-up, and a Widow.[1]
Hecate
According to Robert Graves, Hecate was the "original" and most predominant ancient triple moon goddess. Hecate was represented in triple form from the early days of her worship. Diana (Artemis) also came to be viewed as a trinity of three goddesses in one, which were viewed as distinct aspects of a single divine being: "Diana as huntress, Diana as the moon, Diana of the underworld."[2] Additional examples of the goddess Hecate viewed as a triple goddess associated with witchcraft include Lucan's tale of a group of witches, written in the 1st century BCE. In Lucan's work (LUC. B.C. 6:700-01), the witches speak of "Persephone, who is the third and lowest aspect of our goddess Hecate".[3] Another example is found in Ovid's Metamorphosis (Met. 7:94–95), in which Jason swears an oath to the witch Medea, saying he would "be true by the sacred rites of the three-fold goddess."[4]
The
The Graces, Seasons, and Fates
The specific character of the modern neopagan Maiden, Mother, and Crone archetype is not found in any ancient sources related directly to Hecate.
According to Jane Ellen Harrison:
The three Horae are the three phases of Selene, the Moon waxing, full, and waning. ... [T]he Moon is the true mother of the triple Horae, who are themselves Moirai, and the Moirai, as Orpheus tells us, are but the three moirai or divisions (μέρη) of the Moon herself, the three divisions of the old year. And these three Moirai or Horae are also Charites."[10]
The syncretism of the predominant triple moon goddess (a united figure of Diana/Hecate/Selene), combined with the Orphic belief that the Seasons and the Fates were divisions of this same divinity, along with the latter representing the three stages of life, ultimately gave rise to the modern conception of a Triple Goddess whose symbol is the moon and whose triplicity can be conceived of both in terms of the moon's phases as the "Maiden, Mother, and Crone". However, it was not until the early 20th century that this fairly obscure ancient connection was developed and popularized.[8]
Modern development
Jane Ellen Harrison
The belief in a singular Triple Moon Goddess was likely brought to modern scholarship, if not originated by,[note 1][note 2] the work of Jane Ellen Harrison.[11][note 3] Harrison asserts the existence of female trinities, and uses Epigenes and other ancient sources to elaborate on the Horae, Fates, and Graces as chronological symbols representing the phases of the Moon and the threefold division of the Hellenistic lunar month.[12][8]
However, Harrison's interpretations and contribution to the development and study of the Triple Goddess were somewhat overshadowed by the more controversial and poorly-supported ideas in her works. Most notably, Harrison used historical sources for the existence of an ancient Triple Moon Goddess to support her belief in an ancient matriarchal civilization, which has not stood up to academic scrutiny. Ronald Hutton writes:
[Harrison's] work, both celebrated and controversial, posited the previous existence of a peaceful and intensely creative woman-centred civilization, in which humans, living in harmony with nature and their own emotions, worshipped a single female deity. The deity was regarded as representing the earth, and as having three aspects, of which the first two were Maiden and Mother; she did not name the third. ... Following her work, the idea of a matristic early Europe which had venerated such a deity was developed in books by amateur scholars such as Robert Briffault's The Mothers (1927) and Robert Graves's The White Goddess (1948).[13]
John Michael Greer writes:
Harrison proclaimed that Europe itself had been the location of an idyllic, goddess-worshipping, matriarchal civilization just before the beginning of recorded history, and spoke bitterly of the disastrous consequences of the
Theosophy.[14]
The "myth and ritual" school or the Cambridge Ritualists, of which Harrison was a key figure, while controversial in its day, is now considered passé in intellectual and academic terms. According to Robert Ackerman, "[T]he reason the Ritualists have fallen into disfavor... is not that their assertions have been controverted by new information... Ritualism has been swept away not by an access of new facts but of new theories."[15]
Ronald Hutton wrote on the decline the "Great Goddess" theory specifically: "The effect upon professional prehistorians was to make most return, quietly and without controversy, to that careful agnosticism as to the nature of ancient religion which most had preserved until the 1940s. There had been no absolute disproof of the veneration of a Great Goddess, only a demonstration that the evidence concerned admitted of alternative explanations."
Jungian archetype theory
The Triple Goddess as an
In 1949 Jung and Kerényi theorized that groups of three goddesses found in Greece become quaternities only by association with a male god. They give the example of Diana only becoming three (Daughter, Wife, Mother) through her relationship to Zeus, the male deity. They go on to state that different cultures and groups associate different numbers and cosmological bodies with gender.[21]
The threefold division [of the year] is inextricably bound up with the primitive form of the goddess Demeter, who was also Hecate, and Hecate could claim to be mistress of the three realms. In addition, her relations to the moon, the corn, and the realm of the dead are three fundamental traits in her nature. The goddess's sacred number is the special number of the underworld: '3' dominates the chthonic cults of antiquity."[22]
Kerenyi wrote in 1952 that several Greek goddesses were triple moon goddesses of the Maiden Mother Crone type, including Hera and others. For example, Kerényi writes:
With Hera the correspondences of the mythological and cosmic transformation extended to all three phases in which the Greeks saw the moon: she corresponded to the waxing moon as maiden, to the full moon as fulfilled wife, to the waning moon as abandoned withdrawing women".[23]
He goes on to say that trios of sister goddess in Greek myth refer to the lunar cycle; in the book in question he treats Athene also as a triple moon goddess, noting the statement by Aristotle that Athene was the Moon but not "only" the Moon.[23]
In discussing examples of his Great Mother archetype, Neumann mentions the Fates as "the threefold form of the Great Mother",
Robert Graves
As a poet and mythographer,
Ronald Hutton argues that the concept of the triple moon goddess as Maiden, Mother, and Crone, each facet corresponding to a phase of the moon, is a modern creation of Graves',
While Graves was the originator of the idea of the Triple Goddess as embodying Maiden/Mother/Crone, this was not the only trinity he proposed. In his 1944 historical novel The Golden Fleece, Graves wrote "Maiden, Nymph and Mother are the eternal royal Trinity...and the Goddess, who is worshipped...in each of these aspects, as New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon, is the sovereign deity."[29]
In his best-known work, The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948), Graves described the trinity of the Triple Goddess in several different ways:
- Representing stages of a woman's life:
- Maiden/Nymph/Hag
- Maiden/Mother/Crone
- Representing the women associated with stages of a man's life:
- Mother/Bride/Layer-out
Graves explained, "As Goddess of the Underworld she was concerned with Birth, Procreation and Death. As Goddess of the Earth she was concerned with the three season of Spring, Summer and Winter: she animated trees and plants and ruled all living creatures. As Goddess of the Sky she was the Moon, in her three phases of New Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Moon...As the New Moon or Spring she was a girl; as the Full Moon or Summer she was woman; as the Old Moon or Winter she was hag."[30]
In the 1949 novel
Graves wrote extensively on the subject of the Triple Goddess who he saw as the Muse of all true poetry in both ancient and modern literature.
Graves regarded "true poetry" as inspired by the Triple Goddess, as an example of her continuing influence in English poetry he instances the "Garland of Laurell" by the English poet,
Graves stated that his Triple Goddess is the Great Goddess "in her poetic or incantatory character", and that the goddess in her ancient form took the gods of the waxing and waning year successively as her lovers.[39] Graves believed that the Triple Goddess was an aboriginal deity also of Britain, and that traces of her worship survived in early modern British witchcraft and in various modern British cultural attitudes such as what Graves believed to be a preference for a female sovereign.[40]
In the anthology The Greek Myths (1955), Graves systematically applied his convictions enshrined in The White Goddess to Greek mythology, exposing a large number of readers to his various theories concerning goddess worship in ancient Greece.[41] Graves posited that Greece had been settled by a matriarchal goddess-worshipping people before being invaded by successive waves of patriarchal Indo-European speakers from the north. Much of Greek myth in his view recorded the consequent religious political and social accommodations until the final triumph of patriarchy.
Graves did not invent this picture but drew from nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship. According to Ronald Hutton, Graves used Jane Ellen Harrison's idea of goddess-worshipping matriarchal early Europe[14][13] and the imagery of three aspects, and related these to the Triple Goddess.[42] This theory has not necessarily been disproved, but modern scholarship has favored other explanations for the evidence used by Graves and Harrison to support their ideas, which are not accepted as a consensus view today.[16] The twentieth century archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (see below) also argued for a triple goddess-worshipping European neolithic modified and eventually overwhelmed by waves of partiarchal invaders although she saw this neolithic civilization as egalitarian and "matristic" rather than "matriarchal" in the sense of gynocratic.[43]
Marija Gimbutas
Scholar
Gimbutas postulated that in "Old Europe", the
- "stiff nudes", birds of prey or poisonous snakes interpreted as "death"
- mother-figures interpreted as symbols of "birth and fertility"
- moths, butterflies or bees, or alternatively a frog, hedgehog or bull's head symbolizing the uterus or fetus, representing "regeneration"[47]
The first and third aspects of the goddess, according to Gimbutas, were frequently conflated to make a goddess of death-and-regeneration represented in folklore by such figures as Baba Yaga. Gimbutas regarded the Eleusinian Mysteries as a survival into classical antiquity of this ancient goddess worship,[48] a suggestion which Georg Luck echoes.[49]
Academic skepticism regarding her goddess-centered Old Europe thesis is widespread.
Academic rejection of her theories has been echoed by some feminist authors, including
Contemporary beliefs and practices
While most Neopagans are not Wiccan, and within Neopaganism the practices and theology vary widely,[58] many Wiccans and other neopagans worship the "Triple Goddess" of maiden, mother, and crone. In their view, sexuality, pregnancy, breastfeeding—and other female reproductive processes—are ways that women may embody the Goddess, making the physical body sacred.[59]
- The Maiden represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the promise of new beginnings, birth, youth and youthful enthusiasm, represented by the waxing moon;
- The Mother represents ripeness, fertility, sexuality, fulfilment, stability, power and life represented by the full moon;
- The Crone represents wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.
Helen Berger writes that "according to believers, this echoing of women's life stages allowed women to identify with deity in a way that had not been possible since the advent of
The
Some neopagans believe that the Triple Goddess is an
Valerie H. Mantecon follows Annis V. Pratt that the Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and Crone is a male invention that both arises from and biases an androcentric view of femininity, and as such the symbolism is often devoid of real meaning or use in depth-psychology for women.[75] Mantecon suggests that a feminist re-visioning of the Crone symbolism away from its usual associations with "death" and towards "wisdom" can be useful in women transitioning to the menopausal phase of life and that the sense of history that comes from working with mythological symbols adds a sense of meaning to the experience.[76]
Fiction, film, and literary criticism
Author
Literary critic Andrew D. Radford, discussing the symbolism of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, in terms of Myth sees the Maiden and Mother as two phases of the female lifecycle through which Tess passes, whilst the Crone phase, Tess adopts as a disguise which prepares her for harrowing experiences .[80]
The concept of the triple goddess has been applied to a feminist reading of
According to scholar Juliette Wood, modern fantasy fiction plays a large part in the conceptual landscape of the neo-pagan world.
Graves's Triple Goddess motif has been used by Norman Holland to explore the female characters in Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo.[89] Roz Kaveney sees the main characters in James Cameron's movie Aliens as: The Alien Queen (Crone), Ripley (Mother) and Newt (Maiden).[90]
American heavy metal band The Sword's song, "Maiden, Mother & Crone", on their album Gods of the Earth, describes an encounter with the Triple Goddess. The video features three aspects of the goddess and a waxing, full, and waning moon.[91]
See also
- Holly King and Oak King – Personifications of winter and summer
- List of lunar deities
- Tripura Sundari – Hindu goddess
- Tritheism – Religious view
- Worship of heavenly bodies – Worship of stars and other heavenly bodies as deities
Notes
- ^ Meskell 1999, p. 87: "It seems clear that the initial recording of Çatalhöyük [1961–1965] was largely influenced by decidedly Greek notions of ritual and magic, especially that of the Triple Goddess — maiden, mother, and crone. These ideas were common to many at that time, but probably originated with Jane Ellen Harrison, Classical archaeologist and member of the famous Cambridge Ritualists (Harrison 1903)."
- ^ Hutton 2001, pp. 36–37: "In 1903... an influential Cambridge classicist, Jane Ellen Harrison, declared her belief in [a Great Earth Mother] but with a threefold division of aspect. ... [S]he pointed out that the pagan ancient world had sometimes believed in partnerships of three divine women, such as the Fates or the Graces. She argued that the original single one, representing the earth, had likewise been honoured in three roles. The most important of these were the Maiden, ruling the living, and Mother, ruling the underworld; she did not name the third. ... [S]he declared that all male deities had originally been subordinate to the goddess as her lovers and her sons."
- ^ Harrison 1908, pp. 286ff: Excerpts: "... Greek religion has... a number of triple forms, Women-Trinities.... the trinity-form was confined to the women goddesses. ... of a male trinity we find no trace. ... The ancient threefold goddesses...."
- ^ Conway 1995b, p. 230: "Nov. 27: Day of Parvati-Devi, the Triple Goddess who divided herself into Sarasvati, Lakshmi, and Kali, or the Three Mothers."
References
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- ^ a b c Green 2007, p. [page needed]
- ^ Lucan: The Civil War, Harvard University Press, 2006
- ^ Penguin Classics, Ovid Metamorphoses, 2004
- ^ a b Porphyry, On Images. 3rd c. AD
- ^ Hutton 2001, p. [page needed].
- ^ Clement of Alexandria, Stromata: Abel, frg. 253.
- ^ a b c Jones 2005.
- ^ Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid, 4.511
- ^ Harrison 1908, p. 288.
- ^ Harrison 1908; Harrison 1912; Harrison 1913.
- ^ Harrison 1912, pp. 189–192.
- ^ a b Hutton 1997, p. 93.
- ^ a b c Greer 2003, p. 280.
- ^ a b Ackerman 2002, p. 188.
- ^ a b Hutton 1997, p. 97.
- ^ Hutton 2001, pp. 36–37.
- ^ Jung & Kerényi 1949.
- ^ Neumann 1955.
- ^ Jung 1966.
- ^ Jung & Kerényi 1949, p. 25.
- ^ Jung & Kerényi 1949, p. 167.
- ^ a b Kerényi 1978, p. 58.
- ^ Neumann 1955, p. 226.
- ^ Neumann 1955, p. 230.
- ^ Von Hendy 2002, pp. 186–187.
- ^ Hutton 1997.
- ^ Hutton 2001, p. 41.
- ^ Graves 1945, p. [page needed].
- ^ Graves 1948, p. [page needed].
- ^ Graves 1948, ch. 1.
- ^ Graves 1961, p. 368.
- ^ Pausanias, Guide to Greece 8.22.2
- ^ Graves 1961, p. 11.
- ^ Graves 2017.
- ^ Graves 1961, Ch. 27, Postscript 1960.
- ^ Graves 1948, p. 377.
- ^ University of Virginia's "Ovid Illustrated" site, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/ovidillust.html, the lines from Skelton being explicitly sourced from Ovid in a note at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/MetindexBCD.htm, retrieved 18 April 2011.
- ^ Harvey 2004, p. 129.
- ^ Graves 2004, p. 148.
- ^ Von Hendy 2002, p. 354.
- ^ Seymour 2003, p. 307.
- ^ Gimbutas 1991, p. [page needed].
- ^ Gimbutas 1974; Gimbutas 1999.
- ^ a b Gilchrist 1999, p. 25.
- ^ a b Talalay 1999.
- ^ Gimbutas 1991, p. 223.
- ^ Gimbutas 1991, pp. 243, and whole chapter "Religion of the Goddess".
- Magna Mater, among others.
- ^ a b Richard D. Lyons, Dr. Marija Gimbutas Dies at 73; Archaeologist With Feminist View New York Times [1], (1994)
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- ^ Adler 2006.
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- ^ Berger 2006, p. 62.
- ^ Zell, Otter and Morning Glory. "Who on Earth is the Goddess?" Archived 2010-11-17 at the Wayback Machine (accessed 2009-10-03).
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7546-5627-2.
- ^ Conway 1995, p. 54.
- ^ Conway 1995, p. [page needed].
- ^ Berger 2006, p. 61.
- ^ a b Barrett 2004.
- ^ Netburn 2021.
- ^ Barrett 2007, p. xviii.
- ^ http://wicca.dianic-wicca.com/ Archived 2009-08-30 at the Wayback Machine (accessed 2009-10-03)."
- ^ Barrett 2007, p. 123.
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- ^ Hanegraaff 1996, p. 90.
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- ISBN 978-90-420-2235-5. p.127-128.
- ^ Roberts, Jeanne Addison (1987–1988). "Shades of the Triple Hecate". Proceedings of the PMR Conference 12–13: 47–66.
- ISBN 9780824066970.
- ISBN 978-0-8032-8950-5.
- JSTOR 2871177.
- ISBN 978-0-271-00870-7.
- ISBN 9780415197892. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
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- ISBN 978-1-85043-806-9.
- ^ "Radio Exile | Video Hook-Up: The Sword – "Maiden, Mother & Crone"". Archived from the original on 2010-08-24. Retrieved 2010-08-22.
Works cited
- Ackerman, Robert (2002). The Myth and Ritual School: J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-93963-8.
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- Barrett, Ruth (May 7, 2004). "The Dianic Wiccan Tradition". WitchVOX. Archived from the original on 2005-11-11.
- Barrett, Ruth (2007). Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual Creation. Llewellyn. ISBN 978-0-7387-0924-6.
- Berger, Helen A. (2006). Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1971-5.
- Conway, Deanna J. (1995). Maiden, Mother, Crone: the Myth and Reality of the Triple Goddess. Llewellyn. ISBN 978-0-87542-171-1.
- Conway, Deanna J. (1995b). Moon Magick: Myth & Magick, Crafts & Recipes, Rituals & Spells. Llewellyn. ISBN 978-1-56718-167-8.
- Gilchrist, Roberta (1999). Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-21599-2.
- ISBN 978-0-500-05014-9.
- Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 978-0-06-250368-8.
- Gimbutas, Marija (1999). The Living Goddesses. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21393-7.
- Graves, Robert (1945). Hercules, My Shipmate: A Novel. United States: Creative Age Press, Incorporated.
- Graves, Robert (1948). The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. London: Faber & Faber.
- Graves, Robert (1961). The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (Amended & enl. [i.e. 4th] ed.). London: Faber & Faber.
- Graves, Robert (2004). "The Triple Muse". In Clifton, Chas; Harvey, Graham (eds.). The Paganism Reader. Routledge. pp. 128–52. ISBN 978-0-415-30352-1.
- Graves, Robert (2017). ISBN 978-0241982358.
- Green, C. M. C. (2007). Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521851589.
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- Harrison, Jane Ellen (1912). Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Cambridge: University Press.
- Harrison, Jane Ellen (1913). Ancient Art and Ritual. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 9780837119816.
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- Hutton, Ronald (2001). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-285449-0.
- Jones, P. (2005). "A Goddess Arrives: Nineteenth Century Sources of the New Age Triple Moon Goddess". Culture and Cosmos. 19 (1): 45–70 – via Academia.edu.
- Jung, Carl Gustav (1966) [1942]. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity". Psychology and Religion: West and East. Collected Works. Vol. 11 (2nd ed.). Pantheon Books.
- Jung, C. G.; Kerényi, C. (1949). Essays on a Science of Mythology: the Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. Pantheon Books.
- Kerényi, C. (1978) [1952]. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. Zurich: Spring Publications.
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- Meskell, Lynn (1999). "Feminism, Paganism, Pluralism". In Gazin-Schwartz, Amy; Holtorf, Cornelius (eds.). Archaeology and Folklore. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-20144-5.
- Netburn, Deborah (September 18, 2021). "This feminist witch introduced California to Goddess worship". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
- Neumann, Erich (1955). The Great Mother: an Analysis of the Archetype. Pantheon Books.
- Seymour, Miranda (2003). Robert Graves: Life on the Edge. Scribner. ISBN 978-0743232197.
- Talalay, Lauren E. (5 October 1999). "(Review of) The Living Goddesses". Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - Von Hendy, Andrew (2002). The Modern Construction of Myth (2nd ed.). Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-33996-6.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-415-30352-1.