Archetypes of the Feminine

Explorations into the Maiden, Mother, Wild Woman & Crone

Welcome to this edition of Liminal Walker Musings!

Thank you for reading and supporting my writing, you are deeply appreciated.

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Dear Ones,

I am coming to the end of year long course with Sharon Blackie based on her current book, Hagitude. She is also the author of If Women Rose Rooted. It has been quite a wondrous journey in so many ways, including the many new friends I have made! We dove into the archetypes, dreaming, menopause, telling stories, eldering, death, and much more! As I personally am moving into the time of the Crone, this post is a quick reflection on the four archetypes of the feminine and how they have moved in my life.

The Archetypes

When I was in the Mother phase of life is when I first started learning about these archetypes. At that time, I only knew of three; the Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Yet what I have discovered, as others have as well, is that there is a missing archetype between the Mother and Crone. So now I recognize four archetypes as I have listed below. Each one associated with a phase of the moon, part of the menstrual cycle, and a season.

Walking through these archetypes as our lived life seems linear, a time of unfurling maturation. However, time also has a multidimensional aspect to it. No matter one’s age, we have access to all these archetypes at any point in our life. Through dreams and working with the subconscious. Even as an experience with ourselves through crystalline time…

This is when two time periods overlap. For example, I have had times when I look back and do more than just contemplate my past self. There is a meeting in the liminal, where two edges of time intermingle. Where life in the past is changed by this joining. New memories added. This is conversely true like when my younger self reached across time to my older self. Then reaching that older age and reliving that encounter of being contacted by this younger self. Crazy time! Yet, healing and deeper understanding happens in these ways!

Yet in the aging process we physically move through these archetypes. Where we corporeally and predominantly live in a certain stage for period of time. What I have found as I move into a particular archetype, I take the prior one with me, along with all the woundings, traumas, gifts and wisdom.

Reflections on the Archetypes

If I had a title for my Maiden years, it would be, “Wild Times”. This phase is typically based in innocence, curiosity, and experimentation. Emphasis on the last one for me. I explored this world. I was daring, experiencing many aspects of life, both exciting and scary. And I was living from trauma I did not know I had. My main coping mechanism was food. I literally saw both sides of the scale, yoyoing from being overweight to being anorexic.

In my later years as the Maiden I did find help in a twelve step program, which utterly saved my life! And I was spiritually waking up too, I left the Christian church and found meaning in finding God/Spirit within instead of some wrathful presence up in the sky. During these years my menstrual cycle was a struggle. It was completely irregular, difficult, and debilitating. It was if my body was fighting the hormones.

Turning towards and embodying the Mother, the Maiden came with me. We were two, now as one. Sharing both the wonders as well as the woundings. If I had a title for this stage, it would be, “The Practical Years”. I got married, became a house holder, worked and had children. Outwardly I was living the life I was expected to, but also wanted to. And it was during this phase that I became more consciously aware of the toxic patriarchal conditioning that controls, demeans and sexualizes the feminine. I started diving into this shadow work, yet this was challenging for I was heavily focused on working and being a parent.

However, my menstruation cycle became regular and more bearable. But both my pregnancies brought severe morning sickness. I could barely keep anything down, lost a lot of weight and had to be intravenously fed many times. Again, my body and my hormones were not getting along.

Next came the archetype of the Wild Woman. My title for this time is, “The Deepening Years”. My children were grown and I was entering the perimenopausal time of life. Taking the Maiden and the Mother with me, we were three, now as one. As my cycles started to slow down, become irregular and lighten, I would have loved to have had a family elder to talk to. But both my mom and my aunt had hysterectomies due to fibroids. Instead, I read books on how to deal with all these crazy hot flashes and emotional swings, in a natural way. Eventually menopause (considered one year without bleeding) came.

This period (forgive the pun) of the Wild Woman, felt like an initiation. Something opened up inside me that had been dormant. With the hormones losing their influence I felt more alive in my body than I had ever been before. Growing more into my belly and womb space than was possible when I was menstruating.

I became more deeply rooted in life, feeling this power coursing through all of my body. Devoted to Divine Feminine, I dug deep into the patriarchal conditionings, like the Madonna and whore split and how this lived in me. I looked at my fears of persecution. Ancestorial patterning woven into my body from the many women that had been burned and tortured for being midwives, healers and herbalists. I learned the power of sacred rage!

This was and has been a time of wild imaginings and coming home to the true nature of the sacred feminine as what is needed for our world right now. Consecrated in the Innana story as her journey into the underworld and her returning resurrection. As well as the ways of love and perseverance taught by Mary Magdalene.

Today I feel the margins of both the Wild Woman and the Crone/Wise Woman. The later calling to me more and more. As I lean towards the Crone I feel all the archetypes in me. The Maiden, Mother and Wild Woman. They reside together in me, as this beautiful synergy. A wisdom both wide and deep living in my womb space which I give birth to in every moment. Giving voice to birth and death. Right now, my working title for this coming time is, “Eldering”.

In a future post I plan to write more about the Crone archetype. She is powerhouse and a woman unto herself. Think An Cailleach and Sheila Na Gig. Being closer to the edges of death brings an initiation full of many gifts if one is open to that.

And it is very vulnerable to be a woman aging in this culture. There are still many toxic patriarchal structures that are not friendly to older women. I believe purposely designed this way, for women are in their fullest, wisest and truest power at this time of life.

Archetypes as Cycles

Within life’s rhythms dance 
the harmonies of many seasons.
Synergistic forces
calling to each other.
Winter beckoning summer,
so the shoots of spring arise!
Summer beckoning winter 
so the withering of autumn begins.
A perpetual momentum, 
of creational energies. 

In this way, birth summons death, 
life matures through the years. 
An ongoing waxing and waning of the moon, 
the continuous descending and rising of Venus.
My bodies blood and wombs fertility
following this innate dance 
as I journey this exquisite life. 
I am maiden, 
I am mother, 
I am wild woman, 
I am crone.
I am all of them...

These ebbing and flowing 
waves arrive upon the
shores of my being.
Pulling me inward, 
then outward.
Tides residing outside of time. 
Each day, a year of cycles.
Every moment a dying birth.
Am I a chrysalis, a caterpillar,
a butterfly?
Or imaginal cells, unformed
yet to be. 

Would love to know your thoughts and feelings. How have these archetypes shown up in your life? What have been your challenges? What have been the gifts? Let’s have a conversation…

All images in this post were collages I created.

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