Woodspriestess: She is Crone

Crone
Wise woman
Sage woman
Grandmother

Her cloak of many colors
Is woven from the threads
Of a million stories
Part of the fiber of her being

Her righteous anger is carried
In the soles of her feet
No longer apologetic
She walks with purpose

Like water upon rock
Time has made its mark
Left its patterns on her body
Carved her away
To her most essential self

Around her waist she gathers
Her girdle of power
She holds her wise blood
Her cells imprinted
With the memories and potential
Of a thousand generations
Children have written upon her body
And she carries it well

These breasts have fed
The world
These shoulders have borne
Heavy burdens
These hips have cradled infants
Have carried children
And danced with friends and lovers

She who changes
She cannot be pinned down
Her multicolored cloak
Shifts its pattern in the breeze
Carrying the voices
And the wisdom of the years

She wraps her cloak of stories around her
Scoops up dreams with wide arms
Tilts her face to the sky
Whispers a blessing on the wind

She picks up her staff of memory
She sings the song of experience
And she takes another step
In the river of time…

I hoped to have more time to write tonight and to expand my thoughts on the Crone. I’ve been wanting to make a new sculpture ever since a reader posted and asked if I’ve ever made a Crone sculpture for someone going back to school. I’m also on the Crone lesson in my Triple Goddess class at OSC, a class that encourages explorations of the triple goddess archetypes through creative expression rather than more academic discourse (the academic discourse came in the Introduction to Thealogy class—the hardest class I’ve had so far!). Late last night after I had such a sucky day, I picked up a rock off the bookshelf and went to toss it outside because it didn’t belong there. It had been colored on by children and had a little face on it and scales. As I held it though and realized it could be stood on edge, I found one remaining scrap of clay in my almost empty box and I made my Crone. Her cloak is supposed to be a bit like butterfly wings, thinking of the menopause metamorphosis described in Women’s Rites of Passage. I purposely left the child-drawn monster face on the bottom exposed, because, she has been written upon by children, was the first line to come to mind when I saw that. And, it makes me smile, because it is like her little secret.

As I worked on her I kept singing…

 Old and strong

She goes on and on and on…

Then, tonight I got some bad news about my own grandmother and it made me think that perhaps I’d actually been writing and sculpting for her without knowing it yet.

And, finally, in the not-too-understood augurs from the woods, I found these stones lined up just like this went I went down to the woods to take photos of my Crone. Kind of a Triple Goddess right there, right?!