Triple Goddess (Neopaganism) - Fiction, Film and Literary Criticism

Fiction, Film and Literary Criticism

Author Margaret Atwood recalls reading Graves's The White Goddess at the age of 19. Atwood describes Graves' concept of the Triple Goddess as employing violent and misandric imagery, and says the restrictive role this model places on creative women. Atwood says that it put her off from being a writer. Atwood's work has been noted as containing Triple Goddess motifs who sometimes appear failed and parodic. Atwood's Lady Oracle has been cited as a deliberate parody of the Triple Goddess, which subverts the figure and ultimately liberates the lead female character from the oppressive model of feminine creativity that Graves constructed.

Literary critic Andrew D. Radford, discussing the symbolism of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, in terms of Myth sees the Maiden and Mother as two phases of the female lifecycle through which Tess passes, whilst the Crone phase, Tess adopts as a disguise which prepares her for harrowing experiences .

The concept of the triple goddess has been applied to a feminist reading of Shakespeare.

Thomas DeQuincey developed a female trinity, Our Lady of Tears, the Lady of Sighs and Our Lady of Darkness, in Suspiria De Profundis, which has been likened to Graves's Triple Goddess but stamped with DeQuincey's own melancholy sensibility.

The triple goddess is referenced in Marion Zimmer Bradley's book "The Mists of Avalon."

According to scholar Juliette Wood, modern fantasy fiction plays a large part in the conceptual landscape of the neo-pagan world. 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 comic books by Neil Gaiman, merge the figures of the Fates and the Maiden-Mother-Crone goddess. In Alan Garner's The Owl Service, based on the fourth branch of the Mabinogion and influenced by Robert Graves, clearly delineates the character of the Triple Goddess. Garner goes further, in his other novels making every female character intentionally represent an aspect of the Triple Goddess. In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, the Maid, the Mother, and the Crone are three aspects of the septune deity in the Faith of the Seven.

The figure of the Triple Goddess has also been used in film criticism. Norman Holland has used Jungian criticism to explore the female characters in Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo using Graves's Triple Goddess motif as a reference. Roz Kaveney sees the main characters in James Cameron's movie Aliens as reflecting aspects of the triple goddess: The Alien Queen (Crone), Ripley (Mother) and Newt (Maiden).

One of the most popular songs performed by the American heavy metal band The Sword is, "Maiden, Mother & Crone", with lyrics describing an encounter with the Triple Goddess. It was featured on their album Gods of the Earth. The official video prominently features the three aspects of the goddess and a waxing, full, and waning moon.

A book written by Michael J Scott called The Alchemyst features a character known as Hekate. She is personified as a woman who changes age through the cycle of the day, starting in the morning as a girl, then ageing to an adult woman, and finally becoming an old woman as the day draws to a close before dying and being reborn at the beginning of the next day. Each day she would start the cycle anew.

In the Discworld series by Terry Prachett, the three Lancre witches often refer to the members of their covenant as "The Maiden, the Mother, and... the Other One".

In the Pandora English series by Tara Moss, Pandora's great aunt Celia is a witch who pays tribute to the triple goddess.