Triple Goddess (Neopaganism) - Contemporary Beliefs and Practices

Contemporary Beliefs and Practices

While many Neopagans are not Wiccan, and within Neopaganism the practices and theology vary widely, many Wiccans and other neopagans worship the "Triple Goddess" of maiden, mother, and crone, a practice going back to mid-twentieth-century England. In their view, sexuality, pregnancy, breastfeeding — and other female reproductive processes — are ways that women may embody the Goddess, making the physical body sacred.

• The Maiden represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the promise of new beginnings, birth, youth and youthful enthusiasm, represented by the waxing moon.
• The Mother represents ripeness, fertility, sexuality, fulfilment, stability, power and life represented by the full moon.
• The Crone represents wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.

Helen Berger writes that "according to believers, this echoing of women's life stages allowed women to identify with deity in a way that had not been possible since the advent of patriarchal religions." The Church of All Worlds is one example of a neopagan organization which identifies the Triple Goddess as symbolizing a "fertility cycle". This model is also supposed to encompass a personification of all the characteristics and potential of every woman who has ever existed. Other beliefs held by worshippers, such as Wiccan author D. J. Conway, include that reconnection with the Great Goddess is vital to the health of humankind "on all levels". Conway includes the Greek goddesses Demeter, Kore-Persephone, and Hecate, in her discussion of the Maiden-Mother-Crone archetype. For Conway, the Triple Goddess stands for unity, cooperation, and participation with all creation, while in contrast male gods represent dissociation, separation and dominion of nature. These views have been criticized by members of both the neopagan and scholarly communities as re-affirming gender stereotypes and symbolically being unable to adequately face humanity's current ethical and environmental situation.