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Triple Goddess (Neopaganism)

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A Triple Goddess symbol (probably originating from Classical Greek lunar symbolism), representing the three aspects of the moon (waxing crescent, full moon, waning crescent) and womankind (maiden, mother, crone).
The Celtic triple spiral symbol, adopted by some neo-pagans as a symbol of the Triple Goddess.
The three crescents emblem of Diane de Poitiers is another, less common, symbol adopted by neo-pagans to represent the Triple Goddess.
The Triple Goddess symbol, used by Wiccans, in symbolic colors

In ancient Indo-European mythologies, it is common for goddesses or demi-goddesses to appear as a trinity or triad, either as three separate beings who always appear as a group (the Greek Moirae, Charites, Erinnyes and the Norse Norns) or as a single deity who is commonly depicted in three aspects (The Greek Hecate). Often it is ambiguous whether a single being or three are represented, as is the case with the Irish Brighid and her two sisters, also called Brighid.

The term Triple Goddess was popularised by poet and scholar Robert Graves who noted that an archetypal goddess triad occurred throughout Indo-European mythology. He was not the originator of this concept and it appears as a recurrent theme in the "Myth and Ritual" school of classical archaeology at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The "Myth and Ritual" school is often associated with Cambridge University and with Oxford University in England.

The theme of the goddess trinity can be found in the works of Jane Ellen Harrison,[1][2][3] A.B. Cook, George Thomson, Sir James Frazer, Robert Briffault[4] and Jack Lindsay to name a few. The Triple Goddess mytheme was also explored by psychologists involved in the study of archetypes Carl Kerenyi,[5] Erich Neumann, and even Carl Jung.[5] One of the most recent of archaeologists to explore this theme is Professor Marija Gimbutas whose studies on the Chalcolithic period of Old Europe (6500-3500 B.C.E.) have opened up entirely new avenues of research.[6][7]

Many who are unacquainted with the primary sources for his research, consider Graves' statements to be highly speculative. The publication of the complete texts of the magical papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt[8] provide exhaustive examples of the imagery usually wrongly attributed to Graves. In one hymn, for instance, the "Three-faced Selene" is simultaneously identified as the three Charites, the three Moirae, and the three Erinnyes; she is further addressed by the titles of several goddesses:

... they call You Hekate,
Many-named, Mene, cleaving Air just like
Dart-shooter Artemis, Persephone,
Shooter of Deer, night shining, triple-sounding,
Triple-headed, triple-voiced Selene
Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked,
And Goddess of the Triple Ways, who hold
Untiring Flaming Fire in Triple Baskets,
And You who oft frequent the Triple Way
And rule the Triple Decades...

She variously described within the one poem as young, bringing light to mortals ... Child of Morn, as Mother of All, before whom gods tremble, and as Goddess of Dark, Quiet and Frightful One who has her meal amid the graves. She is exalted as the supreme goddess of time and space,

...Mother of Gods
And Men, and Nature, Mother of All Things...
...Beginning
And End are You, and You Alone rule All.
For All Things are from You, and in You do
All Things, Eternal One, come to their End.

What the Greek Magical Papyri reveal is the magic of Graeco-Roman Egypt included elements drawn not only from Classical and Egyptian tradition but also those of earlier cultures such as those of Mesopotamia and the Near East. The triplicity of the Goddess in these texts is one of the most recurrent themes.

This imagery was well-known to those with a Classical education and continued in poetry throughout English history. A case in point is the Garland of Laurell by the English poet, John Skelton (c. 1460 - June 21, 1529):

Diana in the leavës green,
Luna that so bright doth sheen,
Persephone in Hell.

The Goddess triad is as essential feature of the Shakti forms of Hinduism and a distinction is made between the separate goddesses Sarasvati, Lakshmi and Kali and their manifestation as three aspects of MahaDevi ("The Great Goddess") when they are named MahaSarasvati, MahaLaksmi, and MahaKali. In the annual festival of Navaratri images of the Triple Goddess are carried in procession throughout India and in Hindu communities worldwide.

It should be noted that the archetypal Goddess triad is not limited to Indo-European cultures as it can also be found in the mythologies of Africa and Asia. The triadic theme also found its expression in medieval Christian folk traditions, e.g. the three Marys and preceded (and indeed, may have influenced) the official Church doctrine of the Trinity.

In one of the ironies of religious history, St. Augustine of Hippo, mocked the pagan religions of his time for believing in a goddess who could be both three-and-one at the same time. This was in his second book, "The City of God". By the time he wrote his third book, "On the Trinity", he had become a staunch proponent of the Trinitarian structure of the world and had obviously resolved this conflict within himself or, at the very least, brought his thinking into line with the new orthodoxy.

Images of Goddess triads are well attested from both inscriptions and sculptural sources from the time of the Upper Palaeolithic. The shrine rooms of Catal Huyuk which dated from 7500 B.C.E. contain bas-relief images of the Great Goddess in three forms.

Mother, Daughter and Crone

Certain followers of the Wiccan, Dianic, and Neopagan religions, as well as some archeologists and mythographers, believe that long before the coming of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Triple Goddess embodied the three-fold aspect of the Great Goddess, sometimes, incorrectly, identified with Gaia, the Earth Mother (Roman Magna Mater). The pre-Indo-European Great Goddess, by definition, was the creator, ruler and embodiment of the Three Worlds : heaven, earth and underworld and not simply the Earth-goddess.

The Great Goddess was worshipped under a variety of names not only in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean and Anatolia, but also in pre-Islamic Arabia.

Descriptions of the relation between Greek Mythology and the Triple Goddess can be found in many of the myths translated in Robert Graves' anthology The Greek Myths and more cryptically and poetically in his book The White Goddess and his book of essays entitled Mammon and the Black Goddess. In the introduction to the book he wrote with Idries Shah, entitled, "The Sufis" he translates one of the poems of the Sufi mystic, Ibn Al-Arabi (1165-1240) which illustrates that the triadic concept of the Goddess remained as a theme even among the medieval Sufis:

I follow the religion of Love,
Now I am sometimes called
A Shepherd of gazelles
And now a Christian monk,
And now a Persian sage.
My beloved is three-
Three yet only one;
Many things appear as three,
Which are no more than one.
Give Her no name,
As if to limit one
At sight of Whom
All limitation is confounded.

In this book, Robert Graves and Idries Shah explore the influences that medieval Qabalism and pre-Islamic Sufi beliefs had on surviving pre-Christian folk-traditions in Europe.

In pre-Islamic Arabia and Nabataea the goddess triad were called "the three daughters of Allah": al-Lat ("the Goddess"), Uzza ("Power") the youngest, and Manat ("Fate") the crone, "the third, the other". They were known collectively as the three cranes. The name al-Lat is known from the time of the histories of Herodotus in which she is named Alilat, meaning "The Goddess".

The three aspects of the goddess are the Maiden (Greek Persephone), pure and a representation of new beginnings; the Mother (Greek Demeter), wellspring of life, giving and compassionate; and the Crone (Greek Hecate) wise, knowing, a culmination of a lifetime of experience. These aspects may also represent the cycle of birth, life and death (and rebirth). More than anything, though, Neopagans believe that this goddess is the personification of all women everywhere.

Many Neopagans claim historical antecedent for their beliefs, with some even holding that in Old Europe, in the Aegean world, and in the most ancient Near East, the Triple Goddess preceded the coming of nomadic speakers of Indo-European languages.

Wiccans and Neopagans often work with the Goddess in her triple form and sometimes apply the Maiden, Mother and Crone symbolism to goddesses who do not historically fit this pattern. An example of this would be the goddess Hecate, who could be depicted as three maidens when in triplicate or as an old woman by herself. There are countless examples in Celtic art and mythology, including that of the goddess Morrigan whose name means "The Great Queen".

Maiden

The Maiden represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the female principle, the promise of new beginnings, youth, excitement, and a carefree erotic aura. Maiden goddesses include: Brigid, Nimue, Durga, Verdandi and others.

Mother

The Mother represents ripeness, fertility, fulfillment, stability, and power. Mother goddesses include:Aa, Ambika, Ceres, Astarte, Lakshmi, Urd, and others.

Crone

The Crone represents wisdom, repose, and compassion. Crone goddesses include: Hel, Maman Brigitte, Oya Yansa ("Mother of Nine"), Skuld, Sedna, Kali, and others.

Triadic imagery

In The White Goddess, Graves said:

the New Moon is the white goddess of birth and growth;
the Full Moon, the red goddess of love and battle;
the Old Moon, the black goddess of death and divination.

This relates the three life-thresholds of birth, procreation and death with phases of the moon. It should be noted that this order is not consistent with that usually cited by the Neopagans and that the triadic structure is not dependent upon the division of the lunar month into three phases.

Another common error in NeoPagan writings which needs to be clarified in this context is the confusion regarding the term "New Moon". The traditional new moon (which is the sighting of the first crescent moon in the western sky at sunset) which was used as the starting point of lunar calendars to this day is not the same as the modern astronomical term "new moon" which refers to the dark of the moon.

Fates

Another cross-cultural archetype is the three goddesses of Fate. In Greek Mythology they are the Moirai; in Norse mythology they are the Norns. The Weird Sisters of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Wyrd Sisters of Terry Pratchett's novel of the same name are most definitely inspired by these Fates. The three supernatural female figures called variously the Ladies, Mother of the Camenae, the Kindly Ones, and a number of other different names in The Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman play self-consciously on both the triple Fates and the Maiden-Mother-Crone goddess archetypes. The manifestation of a Fate goddess in multiple forms in also attested from ancient Egypt papyri in which the birth of a child is greeted by the appearance of the Seven (or in some writings Nine) Hathors.

In traditional Greek folklore, a low table is still prepared on the 6th night following a birth with food and drink so that the Fates may enter the house and bless the child with good fortune. A similar ceremony occurs in India, where the goddess who visits is in single-form and is named Sashthi ("sixth"). This is similar to the Scandanavian tales of the Norns who visit the houses in which a birth has taken place. All of these themes, over the course of time, move from the realm of sacred myth to that of popular folktale and folk-custom. Most of the original cultural undercurrents would have had to be pre-Indo-European to have lasted so long and to have stretched across so wide a cultural and linguistic expanse.

The earthly representatives of the Fates may have been travelling bands of women in the role of priestesses, seers and celebrants, evident from the Norse sagas and European myth and folktale. The celebration of the life-thresholds was from early times in the hands of woman and was repressed comparatively recently. That is why the Three Fates, the Three Graces and the Three Furies were said to be sisters. When the women presided over the blessing of the child at birth and who acted as midwives they served the Fates, when they performed the traditional dances and songs for blessing weddings and acted as bridesmaids they served the Graves and when they fulfilled the role of professional mourners and psychopomp they served the Furies.

The Ennead

An expansion of the triadic concept is that the triad can expand into an ennead, or a group of nine aspects or nine goddesses, e.g. the Nine Muses, the Nine Maidens.

The manifestation of the Daughter (the red or rajasic) aspect of the Great Goddess, known to archaeologists as The Goddess of Love-and-Battle (such as Inanna/Ishtar of Mesopotamia and Freyja of Scandanavia), is represented pictorially as The Three Graces, The Bull with Three Cranes or the as triad: Athene, Hera and Aphrodite in The Judgement of Paris representing the embodiments of victory in battle, royal dominion, and love. This was a recurrent theme in Bronze Age myth and iconography in both Europe and the Middle East. This was a time before Astarte became Aphrodite, as a separate goddess of love. This was a later, Iron Age development. As Anne Ross noted in her work Pagan Celtic Britain, "there is no Celtic goddess of love".[9]

Each aspect of the goddess could thus appear in triad, for example, the Dea Matrona or Matres ("the Mother goddesses") shown as a triad throughout the Celtic, Gaulish and Romano-Celtic territories. They are still known in Welsh folklore as Y Mamau ("the Mothers").

References

  1. ^ Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, London, Cambridge University Press, 1903.
  2. ^ Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, London, Cambridge University Press, 1912.
  3. ^ Jane Ellen Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual , London, Cambridge University Press, 1913.
  4. ^ Robert Briffault, The Mothers (in three volumes), London and New York, 1927.
  5. ^ a b C. G. Jung and C. Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology. Bolligen/Princeton University Press, 1967.
  6. ^ Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.
  7. ^ Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
  8. ^ Betz, Hans Dieter (ed.) (1989). The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation : Including the Demotic Spells : Texts. University of Chicago Press. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  9. ^ Anne Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.

See also

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