Ageing is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose:
the fulfilment and confirmation of one’s character.
- James Hillman
“Life is a farce if a person does not serve truth.”
- Hilma af Klint
“A crone is a woman who has found her voice. She knows that silence is consent. This is a quality that makes older women feared. It is not the innocent voice of a child who says, “the emperor has no clothes,” but the fierce truthfulness of the crone that is the voice of reality. Both the innocent child and the crone are seeing through the illusions, denials, or “spin” to the truth. But the crone knows about the deception and its consequences, and it angers her. Her fierceness springs from the heart, gives her courage, makes her a force to be reckoned with."
— Jean Shinoda Bolen
"Women's most feared power over men is the power to say no. To refuse to take care of men. To refuse to service them sexually. To refuse to buy their products. To refuse to worship their God. To refuse to love them. Every therapist knows that sex can be forced, but no power in the world can force love from any woman who wishes to withhold it."
- Barbara Walker
“The Crone has been missing from our culture for so long that many women, particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage. Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power.
Without the Crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is virtually impossible.”
- Marion Woodman
The CruX: historically, continually, and invisibly stationed by, and on the crosses of, men
women, womxn, womqn, womyn and girls have been both the cross-bearers and the crucified – ever since the unnatural and unholy “conception” of the Roman Catholic Church and all its subsequent patriarchal, misogynist Christian derivatives.
As I sat on the maple floor of my kitchen in Chicago on a Thursday evening in 2017, voluntarily polishing my son’s chukka boots for the weekend — it became a meditation on my own father, who was actually my second father, who would often offer to polish or freshen up my scuffed, dirty shoes
— first, my white Keds-knock-offs from Zayre, Venture or Jupiter — the canvas stiffened bright white, an unnatural brand new/ the scent of that liquid polish and sponge instantly conjured/ me smiling/ did I remember to say thank you? did I know (how) to?
later, when I was in high school, he would clean and polish my beloved and preciously expensive pair of Stan Smith white leather Adidas /or were they leather Tretorns? then, when I was in college and always pressed for time or conversation, I began expectantly asking if he could please polish my black heels or black boots for work – but more importantly for the weekend — he always, obliging me.
”As a symbol, the Crone had to be suppressed by patriarchal religions because her power ‘overruled the will even of Heavenly Father Zeus.’ She controlled the cycles of life and death. She was the Mother of God, the Nurturer of God, and, as a Crone, the Slayer of God. While Christianity retained the feminine as Virgin and Mother, it eliminated her role as Crone.”
-Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames, The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness
she taught me to not like
myself/
especially, my image
— in photographs and in the moments themselves
ingraining a self-consciousness in me
and in the candidness of my real life
in
play
laughter
effort
surprise
exertion
contemplation
fatigue
wonder
sadness
silliness
conversation
worry
unmade
pose, poise, posture, profile, perfect,
control
and because perfection
is unattainable,
in the eye of the beholder and in the eye of the beheld
she was absent from the photos of our lives, and so also was i,
becoming onlooker, background, photographer,
instead of subject
and, so i learned
to make myself invisible
to become invisible
to accept invisibility
there are so many ways to be a thief, mother
I walk bare
out in the open
the Sun, Moon, Rain, Wind, Clouds, Sky and Stars
kiss me at all hours
did you see me open up
this Autumn?
after a Summer spent wailing,
wet, yet fruitless
after a Spring spent wading into lies instead of soft blossoms and new grass
Winter approaches, maybe the frost will kill this disease,
for good
I bathe
nearly naked in sunshine, cold rainstorms, in wetland pools and moonlight
unapologetically
|out in the open|
unabashedly
baptising
my face,
hair,
and eyes,
my breasts
vulva
and legs,
my lips,
throat,
spine,
and my wild heart
ceremonially, first
with wine, like Magdalene, anointing and anointed,
in the name of the Mother, Sun and holy ghosts
|a cabernet henna|
then, with rainwater from the willow’s edge, like Ophelia,
lying in the woodland and meadow, flooded
to cleanse or drown [to live, or not to live]
in the name of the Moon
|I ponder the stone cistern laden with glacial deposits and ruminant bones|
the woodland is abundant with new mushroom, new overnight growth
the hint of ancient circles supplants my judgment with instinct
and overrides decorum with new delights
|and old delights, revisited |
an aged grapevine is rooted deep, climbing, trailing, snaking
hidden in plain sight, everywhere
and I’ve intuited It as Ol’ Scratch,
I take a hatchet to quell Its influence, here
You,
Your windows are not true eyes
Your lamps are not enlightenment
So, bless the dark
of the night
of the country night sky
And the Moonset
of my moon
it’s been decades,
but
this place wants to birth or impregnate me,
and I want that too
i want it to
|I come here and open up|
This feels like an arrow
Made from a tree
That rose from
An acorn
That I gathered and stored
In another life
Scribed with a message continually
piercing my heart
I wasn’t only wounded though,
I was woke
into a clarity
that I was already sighting in my dreams,
writing with words
mortal and eternal
You once said, proclaimed or whispered
Every single thing
that I ever believed
My own truths embarrassed in the shadow of your confidence
My inner voice silenced in your animated persuasion
Believing you so completely – for the better of my years
Becoming like and unlike you because of it,
but not be-coming me,
Un-be-coming me every day
I ain’t even mad
You don’t know this – still,
You don’t want
to hear,
or listen;
Our time is running out
Even this admission
Is sure to haunt me one day,
and guilts me today
But I can’t call you confidant or crone
If you refuse to learn,
to evolve,
From this one archetype
The wide and long view
seems to escape you
You live in the moment in the least way, the worst way
And I don’t worship here or there, any more
The faith in your godliness is gone,
It is unfamiliar
For me to pity you
You, deaf and tone deaf
You had all the answers
In the morning shallows, perhaps
But evaporation revealed even those
Were anchor-less, yet stationary
An algae
Mucking up the colorless perfection of sunlit water
But in the deep, or dark, or quiet pools, you were always so lost
And in the ocean, at night
You drown even in its calm
You have ridden civil swells and storms,
I’ll give you that
But have you ever communed with waves
Allowing them to be part of you
Swallowing and absorbing the mystery
Becoming the colorless perfection of dark water
You seem to stay parched
Your belly’s hollow from impious fasting and pious thirst
You do know that’s where your heart sits?
But let’s agree to come around again, friend
We’ll swap places and next time
I’ll be the mother,
and the son,
and the husband,
and the elder,
and the babe,
and the foreign one,
I’ll become The Other One
because,
I want the chance to know
You
“Lief heim ins Seitelein.” Unitätsarchiv, R.20.E.36.12. Archiv der Brüder-unität, Herrnhut.My life seems long, I know
My body’s mostly worn
Inside, she’s just begun to live, again
A girl gone long ago
There are bottled laughs to voice aloud
New smiles to wear with these old shoes
Time to know the world, and you, and you, and you …
between these walls of peeling, muted hues
Once Herr died
My Self was ready to return
My cadence so shy and slow,
Lamenting the awkward waste of precious years
I find my voice as I write the past,
But in my book, the Tomorrow has no page
Forever winter approaches from within
These years and years upright on hard chairs
Unreal, unseen, unheard, untouched
by the world, by the womb, it may concern, Whom
I speak through and then beyond this pain of bone and life
Before the cold within brings silence of the tomb
You see, to me, my presence still feels warm, and blush
somehow, even new
My life stretched out behind me, no steps ahead
And I forestall Death’s cue, awaiting mere glimpse of you
If you can imagine, child
I love, unsaid,
I feel as just alive, as real, as you.
Lamentation and Exultation
I am spirit
Though not pre-conceived;
I was conceived; and pro-created;
I contained knowledge, and
I was known
I did experience,
and I remembered; but
I was then birthed, and
I became human; so
I was mother’d;
I was mis-guided;
I was injured,
I was mis-judged; and
I was so scarred
I became ignorant;
I became blind
I forgot experience;
I became animal
I fell asleep and
I became unknown;
I too conceived; and
I pro-created
He too was spirit
He too contained knowledge;
I birthed him ignorance
He too was experienced;
He too remembered
I was the witness; but
I was still blind’d
I was still sleeping;
I then mother’d, and
he became human,
I then mis-guided,
I then injured,
I then mis-judged
I then so scarred;
I saw the death of one dear before me;
and then,
I remembered;
I was re-wakened,
I became un-blind’d;
I sought my [lost] knowing
I reclaimed my experience;
I forgave the mis-guidance
I so sought forgiveness;
I forgave the mis-understanding
I so sought forgiveness;
I forgave the injury
I so sought forgiveness;
I understood ignorance, and
I so sought re-knowing:
Those who are born are meant to be born;
Some who are born, though, choose to be born;
Most who are born though, have no choice to be born;
Most who are unborn; are not meant to be born
Not meant for this time; not meant for this World;
Those who have birthed, those who have fathered, have re-pro-created error;
Still there are Those who were sung into exIStence
Those are the Ones who chose to be born;
Now those who were birthed, not sung into existence, must will to re-member,
must choose to re-birth, to become re-known;
I re-membered mySelf, re-birthed mySelf
Now,
I am beginning to become re-Known.
Jesus said: “When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father.” – Gospel of Thomas (15)
Jesus said, “The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.” – Gospel of Thomas (4)
Jesus said, “Take heed of the living one while you are alive, lest you die and seek to see him and be unable to do so.” – Gospel of Thomas (59)
A woman from the crowd said to him, “Blessed are the womb which bore you and the breasts which nourished you.”
He said to her, “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.’ – Gospel of Thomas (79)
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 