THE ARCHETYPE OF THE CRONE originates in 30,000 – 10,000 B.C.E., when she was revered in ancient cultures as the Great Mother who ruled over birth, death, and rebirth. With the rise of patriarchy, her archetypal and mystical primacy was overridden by male deities. Impossible to quash, the goddess figure reemerged split into three roles: Maiden, Mother, and Crone, the elder woman wisdom figure. Until recent times, the Crone has been the least acknowledged of the archetypes in the world because of her innate power and unwillingness to capitulate into patriarchal norms and social expectations. Hence, older women have been envisaged as ugly and troublesome, and pejoratively called crone, witch, hag, harpy, harridan, battle-axe, scold, bitch, shrew, etc.
In Behold, the character of Lilith, “the all-Seeing, all-Knowing Spirit of the Cosmos,” reclaims the original nomenclature of Crone to give the name the kudos and respect that elder wise women (and all women) so rightly deserve, and in doing so, offer a new way of Being in the World.
“The Crone in a woman is that part of her psyche that is not identified with any relationship nor confined by any bond. She infuses an intrinsic sense of self-worth, of autonomy, into the role of virgin and mother and gives women the strength to stand in their own creative experience.”
