Year of the Crone. A look at Barbara Walker’s book, “The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power”
Year of the Crone are short videos are inspired by my studies of Barbara Walker’s book, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power. Her book focuses on Mother Nature, specifically in her Crone form, and it has hugely impacted my life. Here are just a handful of quotes from Walker’s book, to help explain what a Crone is and the message of my work.
“This many-named Goddess [Mother Nature] was the first Holy Trinity. Her three major aspects have been designated Virgin, Mother, and Crone; or, alternatively, Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. The Great Mother was the earth, as well as the sea, the moon, the Milky Way, the elements, mountains, rivers, aniconic, or nonrepresentational, stones, vegetation, women, time, fate, intelligence, birth love, and the death... She was also the destroying Crone, who brought an end to each life... only to prepare a new creation in her next cycle.”
“The Goddess never wasted her substance without recycling. Every living form served as nourishment for other forms. ...This naturalistic world vision was pushed aside by rising patriarchal religions, which were basically antinature, viewing all flesh as sinful and all death punishment rather than a universal recycling process. ...As Destroyer, the Crone approximates what men can understand as real power: the power to destroy. As Death, the Crone forces recognition of biological fact opposed to religious fantasy. Her worshippers long ago believed in the psychic necessity of learning to look upon her ugliness without fear, so as to learn to love and comfort those made ugly by approaching death.”
For centuries, men in power have been systematically been destroying our planet for their own personal gain. “Men have achieved the ultimate power, as they understand power: they have the capability of destroying absolutely everything. ...If the self-seeking powerlust of mature men were made subject to the “intuitive” judgement of mature women, surely human life and society could be improved. The earth might become a safer, kinder, healthier place. People might care more for the welfare of future generations. Instead of trying to escape inevitable death in futile fantasies, they might enrich life by honest work on their legacy to their posterity.”
The crone demands change, not with a women’s touch, but with hard weathered fist. “Since men define power as the capacity to destroy, then the Destroying Mother [Crone] must be the most powerful female image for them, therefore the only one likely to force them in any new direction. As feminists have discovered, men may dislike angry female voices but they will listen to them, whereas the sweet voices are not even heard.”
Long overdue has the planet’s cries for reform been cast aside, the man-made pollution and war will be our ultimate demise. “[We], who have suffered so much at the hands of patriarchal myth makers, need no longer pretend not to understand their motives. God can’t, but [we] can call man to account for his gynocidal, genocidal behavior. We had better do it soon, for he is already counting down to doomsday.” Free yourself from the trap that keeps us isolated from one another and let’s rise together! 2018 is the Year of the Crone.