Sometimes you can really tell that modern Witchcraft and Paganism were largely crafted, interpreted and codified by men.

I’m lookin’ at you, Maiden/Mother/Crone, the good old triple Moon goddess(es), one for each major phase, the fingernail New Moon, the swollen-bellied Full Moon, and the invisible Dark Moon. There are some things that have bugged me about this for a long time, and it’s time to put words to them, and stop pretending it’s some kind of sacred whatever, because really . . . Gerald Gardner probably pulled the idea out of his ass because he didn’t know shit about women’s lives.

Maiden: you reach puberty, so you –

Mother: start having babies until you can’t anymore and when your last one is raised you are a –

Crone.

You know what? Gerald Gardner can fuck all the way off.

This archaic symbol basically defines a woman by her ability to bear children, which is very . . . hmm. Patriarchal. Very dominatey (yes, I meant to spell it that way). Women are so much more than wombs. And some women have no earthly desire to be wombs. And some people are neither women nor men, and some are transitioning from one to the other. And some men long to be mothers. This thing needs a great big update for a whole slew of reasons. At this point in our social journey, the last thing we need is yet another spiritual/religious worldview equating the worth of women with their ability to give birth.

Right now, I’m in a stage of life Gardner apparently had no idea about or interest in. My child is grown and doing his thing, and I’m so far past menopause that I can’t even see it from here – I am, in fact, post-womb – so according to Gardner I should be withering away like a dried up old leaf. But I’m not. I’m an entrepreneur, a writer, a teacher, I’m leading songwriters groups and working with a community choir (virtual now), helping people lead more meaningfully musical lives. I’m using the skills accumulated over my lifetime to make the world a better place. I’m living possibly the most meaningful and intentional time of my life, and I’m finally finding the time to live up to all that potential I had back when I was a so-called Maiden.

(I was never a Maiden; I may have been a girl (at least I had functioning ovaries and a vagina), but I never embodied the receptive, innocent, joyful blossoming of the (ahem) ideal feminine human. I was a sullen, bookish, outspoken tomboy who was more interested in guitars than guys and spent most summers hibernating in a cool basement copping licks off Tony Rice records and writing angsty/angry environmental and weather songs. So not much has changed really.)

My point is, the Maiden, Mother and Crone are not archetypes that most women can really identify with. 

Back when life expectancy was short and people who made it more than 35 years were considered ancient, women were married off like cattle and started having babies at 13. I had my first and only at 27, which would have been “nearly dead” for most of those women, and I felt like that was way too young and I was not even ready. And pregnancy is not easy, and childbirth is certainly not perfectly safe and simple for many of us. My experience having a baby was so awful I never did it again. Fortunately the kid is fantastic and I’m glad he’s here. But seriously, ugh. Not my thing.

And let’s not confine the Maiden aspect to women only. There are plenty of young men that embody Maiden energy a hell of a lot closer than I ever did, and we should appreciate and honor that. I see no reason why the Maiden of Spring couldn’t be Jack as well as Jill. Maybe we can call this archetype The Innocent instead, the one who is awakening to the bounty of their own body, the quickening of curiosity and desire, the joy in taking a few more steps away from the safety of home and hearth. One who hasn’t had their first heartbreak, maybe not even a first kiss.

(And yes, I am well aware that we are talking about fertility rituals, but Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, we’re barely an agrarian society anymore, and we certainly don’t need to be bringing more children into the world to put more burden on our dwindling resources, so the kind of fertility we might be needing to cultivate is creative, spiritual or compassionate and you don’t need to be bothered about who’s got an X-chromosome and who’s got a Y when it comes to any of that.)

There’s a big gap between Maiden and Mother that is unaccounted for in this deceptively not-really-archaic Pagan symbol. And that gap is a treasure trove that actually is way more worthy of celebrating than having kids. Let’s call that gap The Seeker.

The Seeker is young and rampantly curious about what life has to offer. They are discovering who they are, how they want to present themselves to the world, how they fit into the world, what the possibilities are for someone with their talents and interests. They are sometimes so unselfconsciously beautiful and alive that it takes the breath of us veteran grown-ups away. They’re discovering sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and they’re also making friends and losing friends, falling in and out of training-wheel love, hopping jobs, switching majors, and some of them are making a glorious mess out of this insane thing called Life. And that is absolutely as it should be.

Since the current average life-expectancy of women in the US is about 81 years, we can take our time having a life before we even think about whether we might want to bring children into it. A lot of women are waiting until their late 30s and 40s to start having kids. Some are deciding it’s not for them at all. Some would rather adopt. And let’s face it, a lot of gay men adopt kids and are wonderful mothers. A lot of lesbian couples adopt kids and are amazing examples of the ability of women to embody whatever archetype they choose, while also being amazing mothers and dads to their kids.

Nurturing is not the exclusive trademark of the humans who can, or care to, gestate and give birth.

I’ve known a lot of men who have been far better mothers than the women in their lives could ever be, and it’s wonderful when that is allowed to happen. I once worked with a woman who had a baby and couldn’t stand the maternity leave, so she was on the phone with clients within two weeks, and back on an airplane in three. She adored her son, but needed to do what drove her, and she felt, as I did when my son was growing up, that if she wasn’t being 100% who she was capable of being, then she was cheating her child out of a genuine bond with her. Her husband enjoyed the extra snuggle time with the tinies (they ended up with three kids, I think) and she was able to absolutely relish her time with her brood when she was home, because she wasn’t pretending not to be who she really was.

Maybe instead of The Mother, we could call this archetype The Nurturer. This opens the way for people who don’t identify strongly as women to embrace this way of being without worrying that they don’t fit. Come on in, there’s room for anybody who wants to wipe noses and make sammiches and hand out bandages and maybe even bake the favorite cookies.

So much for the Maiden and the Mother.

The Crone, ah the Crone is the big mystery. She’s looking the opposite direction, away from the Maiden, walking beside Death, becoming pale and papery and wasting away like the dying Moon. And yeah, when I’m in my 90s I will probably be a bit like that. But I’m 56 now, so . . . not Crone. Not for a long time yet. There’s a big damn gap between bringing life and ending life. What do we call that archetype?

I did a massive search for words that might work, words that might express someone who is fully mature, doesn’t really have anything to prove, has spent a bunch of years learning how to do useful and important stuff, and is ready to spend some real time to make the world a better place. That’s a lot to ask of a single word, but I think I found one: Ubuntu, a Nguni Bantu word meaning either humanity  or I am because we are. We are part of a larger community that supports and sustains us, and we must support and sustain that community in return.  Those of us with the great luxury of being somewhere between birthing kids and bucket kicking can deepen our service to that community and become so much more than just another “I.” We can become a part of “We,” which is much richer and far more interesting. This is our Ubuntu phase. We are The Ubuntu.

Again, this doesn’t exclusively apply to women. My dad didn’t figure out how to be a dad until he had grandchildren, who adored him. By the time my son was born, he was just a sucker for a baby. My son and my dad were joined at the hip. I may have been lunch, but Byrn was grampa’s boy. My dad had lived through some shit, stared his ego down, learned to appreciate his emotional side, let go of so much stuff that wasn’t helpful. He was ready to enter the most nurturing phase of his life, and he embraced it.

(Men . . . well, they produce less testosterone as they get older, and honestly, I think that’s a very good thing. We don’t need more aggression. We need cooperation, partnership. We need “We,” not “I.” Testosterone tends to get in the way of that. Let it go, guys. Let it go.)

There’s also a real mentorship component to this phase, which is more rational and logical; less wrapped up in watery, dreamy realms and more grounded in “how do you do that” sensibility. More than mere Adulting 101, it’s “how can I take my passion and turn it into a business?” or “how do I get my message across to more people?” This seems on its surface to be on the masculine side of the equation, but we’ve had so many examples now of women who have founded retail empires, taken over as CEOs of male-dominated businesses, or been sworn in as Vice President of the United States, that we can comfortably observe women performing this mentoring role. The Mentor engages in deep Ubuntu, using the lessons they have learned to help ascending generations craft their new world, idea by idea.

And that brings us back to the Crone, and again, I am casting about for a better word to encapsulate a non-gendered version of “person who is in the last years of a long life, slowing down, making friends with Death, getting ready for the next thing.” Oh, these poor words. I do expect so much.

How about The Reverend? Someone revered, someone comfortable in mystic waters, a navigator of emotional and spiritual realms; a friend and frequent companion to Death, not afraid to sit up all night waiting for the end of a life, and not afraid to do the important and sacred work to prepare the body for burial or pyre. Their eyes may be clouded by years, but their vision is absolutely clear. This revered, beloved person is not held apart, not feared, but welcomed as a sustaining presence in a changing world. Crone is a word fraught with baggage about coldness and withering and distance and being more concerned with the next world than with this one. That may be accurate for some, but it’s certainly not the whole picture. The Reverend is a bridge between this world and the next one, with a foot firmly planted on either side, a comfort to the living and the dying, and a blessing to the dead.

So world, meet The Innocent, The Seeker, The Nurturer, The Ubuntu, and The Reverend.

There are five phases to the Moon, right? New Moon, Half  Moon, Full Moon, Third Quarter Moon (but we can call it the Ubuntu Moon from now on), and the Dark Moon. Isn’t that a much richer picture, which includes the full spectrum of feminine to masculine, and makes room for people to make so many more choices about how they wish to embody each phase of their life? I’d love to hear your thoughts about this idea – and any improvements or ideas you have that can contribute to the richness of this old imagery made new.