Year of the Crone
Year of the Crone is a short film of Earth's wrath of climate change. Inspired by Barbara G. Walker's book, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power. Current work in progress; click through the stills to read from Walker's fascinating work.
(Blog post 1/29/2018)
Year of the Crone, my newest project, was birthed from two things, or really just one thing: Barbara Walker’s book, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power. It found its way to me two years ago at free library.. I read two pages and immediately put the book down. I needed back-up; I needed a book club!
Two years later as a group, we’ve only read a handful of chapters together, but it is has deeply impacted our lives. The crone, a word used synonymously with hag or witch, Walker laments, has been stripped of dignity and place in society ever since Judeo-Christianity (synonymous with capitalist patriarchy) took root. We gather and discuss over backyard fires, expelling the rhetoric in our lives that no longer serves us.
Walker’s research of ancient Goddess worship and radical thinking dissolves present day inherited myths and cultural beliefs. She debates that under the name of God, men have squashed out history that does not secure their lineage of power. One deity that has been struck from present day society’s consciousness is Gaia, or otherwise known as Mother Nature.
Mother Nature, Walker affirms, is a triple goddess which modeled the Christian holy trinity. One difference, besides the obvious male vs female, is Mother Nature performs cyclically, whereas the Christian God is linear. Through Mother Nature's cycle of life and death, all is born, gives fruit, perishes, gives nourishment, and is born again. The cycle continues on and on. The Great Composter of the Great Garden.
Her three parts are called: the maiden, also known as the seed, the mother, the fruit, and the crone, death and inevitable composter. The crone is the most valuable player in Mother Nature’s holy trinity: the nutrient rich destroyer, and she is the wisest.
The crone is the matriarch. Her blood and body provides her family generations of life since beginning of time. Menses was once revered as precious power and a sacred time during each month of menstruation. When the crone’s blood stopped flowing, it was believed that it didn’t “dry up” but instead gathered inside her, giving her superhuman wisdom. The crone: the highest tier of the family, reigns with intuitive intelligence.
I had mentioned two things that inspired Year of the Crone. The second motivation was the 2017 solar eclipse. The moon, astrologically speaking, has feminine energy and the sun, masculine. And as I sat on my lawn in the sepia light staring at the moon taking its time over the sun, it gave me hope. I can’t really explain it, but it drew me out of the fear and anger and hopelessness that lives inside my gut during this political era and transformative time. All the evil cream has risen to the top, and the crones are in the ranks to demolish it, not with gentle touch, but with calloused fist. The crone destroyer, that when she’s done with her work, will also lay down a path, rich for new growth and prosperity for all.