The Wise Crone Archetype Is Depicted in Long Interviews with Real Women

Interest in the third face of the maiden-mother-crone archetype is spawning books, articles, and even a magazine. One of the best is The Living Spirit of the Crone, fluently written by Sally Palmer Thomason (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, Theology and Sciences series).

The wise crone is emerging as a woman symbol for conscious aging.

Fluently Written and Very Readable

This highly readable book is a serious contemplation on growing old for women. Starting with feminist efforts to reclaim the wise crone archetype as a woman symbol of feminine power, Thomason effectively uses the long interview format to bring into focus the epiphanies of late life for specific women.

This is both the strength and the weakness of The Living Spirit of the Crone. Thomason uses the best practices of ethnographic research by checking back with her sources to comment on whether her interview descriptions capture the essence of what each wanted to express. In one instance, she has even translated the interview into a prose poem.

Interviews Offer Depth Not Glib Anecdotes

I don’t want anyone to think that this means the work is a dreary academic tome fit mostly for researchers. These interviews are deep and rich insights into how women built a new life stage in a society that worships sexual youth and beauty, overlooks the second face of the triple goddess, and denigrates the last stage of the maiden-mother-crone.

The contrast favorably with the anecdotal stories that little popular psychology and often barely scrape the surface of an exemplar’s life story. Such stories often imply that they are somehow universal descriptors of human experience.

To her credit, Thomason avoids this pitfall by pointing out the deficiency of interpreting the case histories as universal. She writes:

Each Interview Story Is Unique


Trying to comprehend the multiple and mysterious facets of aging is like trying to embrace a giant amoeba. When squeeze in one direction, it squirts out and dribbles off in another direction . . . this is not surprising, for the process of aging mirrors . . . [the] changing process of life itself. . . . Extemporaneous stories from other women give profound testimony to the reality that personal meaning is situated in place, time, and culture. . . . We all have a story within. If we listen carefully, we find clues of what we value and who we are becoming” (p. 18).

Walker reviews some well-worn material for the reader who may not have done much previous reading about aging. This includes tracing the history of the crone archetype and etymologies of words such as hag and witch that have origins reverencing older female as sources of wisdom. This is all part of decades-long feminist historical research to bring to completion the maiden-mother-crone triple goddess as a woman symbol of for the wise crone.

Aging Is Not a Disease To Be Treasted


Thomason summarizes the trend of science to identify aging as a medical condition to be treated, rather than as a stage of life to be honored. The book culminates by referencing the work of Carl Jung.

She suggests that successful aging is a time of growth and increased connection with the unconscious.

She proposes the last trimester of life as a time to write a “new script” for our lives. This includes reflecting on what we have learned, being aware that we may choose our conscious responses to the unbidden and often unwanted conditions of our elder years, and to greet the imminence of our own ends as part of the mysterious processes of birth, life, and death. By doing so, the older woman may hope to grow into the role of the wise crone.

Get inspired! Write your unique late-life script.

Source: Thomason, S.P. (2006). The living spirit of the crone: Turning aging inside out. In K. J. Sharpe (ed.) Theology and the Sciences series. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

A Goddess for Our Times: A History of Goddess-Lore from Pre-Historic Times to the Contemporary Era

Gadon, Elinor W. (1989). The Once and Future Goddess. New York: Harper & Row.

Elinor Gadon write fluently about a wealth of goddess-lore research that encompasses archaeology, anthropology, ethnography, arts, and the emerging Gaia ecology. She distills these sources into a highly readable account of the virtues and qualities of feminine knowledge, from the pre-historic roots of humankind to contemporary times. The work is attractively laid-out with a readable font and wide margins that frequently feature photos and art that illustrates the ideas.

Among the well-known writers, artists, and researchers whose work is taken into account by Gadon are:

• Judy Chicago, feminist artist whose best-known work may be The Dinner Party art installation;


• Mary Daly, the scholar and interpret of feminist and feminine studies;


• Mercia Eliade, specifically The Encyclopedia of Religion;


• Robert Graves, The White Goddess;


• Maria Gimbutas, the pioneering archaeological-anthropologist whose work was among the most to foreground a theory of pre-historic matriarchal societies;


• Merlin Stone’s work along similar lines;


• Starkhawk’s updating of the old religions and many, many more.

The most arguable part of the account of matriarchal pre-historic societies is, to my mind, the broadly interpretive speculations of how such societies functioned and worshipped on the basis of a few icons, ruins, and other shards of the past. Late in the work, Gadon admits that such speculations are debatable.

Gadon is truly in her element as she makes sense of the feminine artists’ emergence in the 1970s and beyond. She weaves together the artists’ own accounts of their works, her own and art critics’ interpretations, and photo illustrations in a persuasive account.

The idea of the planet Earth as a living goddess whose body has been tortured by the ecological offenses of humankind is another idea that is appropriate in our times of ecological crisis. Perhaps the softer arts of feminine nurture and collaboration are the healing unguent for a planet that has been contaminated by the masculine emphasis on science and technology.

If you are interested in a comprehensive and fluently written summary of groundbreaking feminist research and a new interpretation of human history, Gadon’s account is an excellent starting place.

Godddesses for Our Times: Jean Shindo Bolen Tells Archetypal Stories to Inspire Aging Women

Bolen, Jean Shinoda. (2001). Goddesses in older women: archetypes in women over 50: becoming a juice crone. New York: HarperCollins.

Bolen casts a cross-cultural net to find goddess stories to inspire and provide templates for aging women in the United States and other Western cultures. She also provides a mature perspective on the stories of Greek goddesses covered in her earlier book, Goddesses in Every Woman.

The parts of the book are about goddesses or icons of wisdom; goddeses of anger, laughter and compassion; the update on familiar Greek goddesses Artemis, Athena, Hestia (who also appears in the wisdom section), Hera, Demeter, Persephone and Aphrodite; and a final section of forming circles of wisewomen. Bolen argues for a cultural renovations of the word crone. The word has long been associated with the Halloween witch with a wart on her nose, a pointed chin, and yellowed baggy skin, like the hags in Shakespeare’s MacBeth.

As a communication scholar, I do not see this term rising like Lazarus from the grave to connote juiciness. Combatting ageism in our youth-worshipping culture is a challenging enough without saddling these efforts with a timeworn word of such negative connotations.

Bolen is an effective story-teller who relates the stories of each archetype through the lens of psychology. She creates mental pictures into which each woman can project images of herself in the broadly-defined roles and qualities of each goddess icon. I found it especially interesting to read her interpretations of the biblical Sophia as a goddess of mystical and spiritual women; of Hindu Kali as a goddess of angry destruction and regeneration (the cycle of life and creation); Baudo as a goddess of bawdy mirth; and Chinese Kuan Yin and the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary as goddesses of compassion. Today’s aging woman needs stories about admirable women whose qualities offer templates for maturity that do not depend on cosmetic surgery and desperate efforts to avoid aging.

In conclusion, I recommend this book to any woman who is looking for models for aging with grace and maturity. These iconic stories tap into timeless energy patterns that Carl Jung called archetypes. Through these mysterious psychological resonances, we may discover blueprints for our future.