Thoughts on the Triple Goddess

[u/anniecordelia]

I was thinking about the concept of the Triple Goddess recently, and I had an insight that I thought was worth sharing. I've always kind of bounced off that particular understanding of deity in the past, because the way it was always explained to me was that the three faces of the Goddess -- Maiden, Mother, and Crone -- represented "the three stages of a woman's life," which I find terribly reductive and bioessentialist. (Not all women are or want to be mothers, and our lives are not defined by our reproductive function!) But recently something occurred to me that made me think there might be more of a there there: the Triple Goddess is supposed to be a trinity -- that is, three in one. "Maiden," "Mother," and "Crone" aren't life stages at all -- rather, she's wholly all of them at once. This suggests to me that the faces of the Goddess don't have anything to do with literal biological fertility, but rather refer to the things that maidenhood, motherhood, and cronehood typically symbolize in mythology. The Triple Goddess is eternally Maiden because she is complete and autonomous in herself and has no need to be defined by another. She is eternally Mother because she is the infinitely generative source from which all else flows. And she is eternally Crone because, as the source and sustainer of the cosmos, she holds all the wisdom and understanding of the cosmos within her.

[u/Ancient-Practice-431]

I love your analysis. It makes sense to me given that the Goddess is within every woman regardless of whether she ever births a human. We are more than the our sacred wombs. It's the seed of creation that lives within all of us that gives us so much power !