Triple Goddess
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In ancient Indo-European mythologies, various goddesses or demi-goddesses appear as a triad, either as three separate beings who always appear as a group (the Greek Moirae, Charites, Erinnyes and the Norse Norns) or as a single deity who is commonly depicted in three aspects (Greek Hecate and the cult image of Latin Diana Nemorensis, of whom Hecate is one part[1]). Often it is ambiguous whether a single being or three are represented, as is the case with the Irish Brighid and her two sisters, also called Brighid, or the Morrígan who is known by at least three or four different names. In most ancient portrayals of triple goddesses, the separate deities perform different yet related functions, and there is no obvious difference in their ages. In Wicca and related Neo-pagan religions, the Triple Goddess is, along with the Horned God, held in particular reverence, and her three aspects are most often portrayed as being of different ages: Maiden, Mother and Crone.
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[edit] Triple goddess in classical Antiquity
At her sacred grove at Aricia, on the shores of Lake Nemi a triplefold Diana was venerated from the late sixth century BCE as Diana Nemorensis. "The Latin Diana was conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess, and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate," Albert Alföldi interpreted the late Republican numismatic image,[2] noting that Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo ("keeper of the mountains and virgin of Nemi") is addressed by Horace as diva triformis ("three-form goddess").[3] Diana is commonly addressed as Trivia by Virgil[4] and Catullus.[5]
[edit] Modern interpretations
The term Triple Goddess was popularised by poet and scholar Robert Graves, in his "work of poetic imagination," The White Goddess (1948). Graves believed that an archetypal goddess triad occurred throughout Indo-European mythology. He was not the originator of this theory; it appears as a recurrent theme in the "Myth and Ritual" school of classical archaeology at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, among scholars concerned with the ritual purposes of myths. The "Myth and Ritual" school is often associated with Cambridge University and with Oxford University in England.
The theme of the goddess trinity can also be found in the works of Jane Ellen Harrison,[6] A.B. Cook, George Thomson, Sir James Frazer, Robert Briffault[7] and Jack Lindsay. The Triple Goddess mytheme was also explored by psychologists involved in the study of archetypes Carl Kerenyi,[8] Erich Neumann, and even Carl Jung.[8] One of the most recent of archaeologists to explore this theme is Professor Marija Gimbutas whose studies on the Chalcolithic period of Old Europe (6500-3500 B.C.E.) have opened up entirely new avenues of research.[9]
The publication of the complete texts of the magical papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt[10] provide exhaustive examples of the imagery usually wrongly ascribed to Graves' imagination. In one hymn, for instance, the "Three-faced Selene" is simultaneously identified as the three Charites, the three Moirae, and the three Erinyes; she is further addressed by the titles of several goddesses:
- ... they call You Hekate,
- Many-named, Mene, cleaving Air just like
- Dart-shooter Artemis, Persephone,
- Shooter of Deer, night shining, triple-sounding,
- Triple-headed, triple-voiced Selene
- Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked,
- And Goddess of the Triple Ways, who hold
- Untiring Flaming Fire in Triple Baskets,
- And You who oft frequent the Triple Way
- And rule the Triple Decades...
She is variously described within the one poem as young, bringing light to mortals ... Child of Morn, as Mother of All, before whom gods tremble, and as Goddess of Dark, Quiet and Frightful One who has her meal amid the graves. She is exalted as the supreme goddess of time and space,
- ...Mother of Gods
- And Men, and Nature, Mother of All Things...
- ...Beginning
- And End are You, and You Alone rule All.
- For All Things are from You, and in You do
- All Things, Eternal One, come to their End.
The Greek Magical Papyri reveal elements of the culture of Greco-Roman Egypt that were drawn not only from Classical and Egyptian tradition but also from earlier cultures such as those of Mesopotamia and the Near East. The triplicity of the Goddess in these texts is one of the most recurrent themes.
This imagery was well-known to those with a Classical education and continued in poetry throughout English history. A case in point is the Garland of Laurell by the English poet, John Skelton (c. 1460 - June 21, 1529):
- Diana in the leavës green,
- Luna that so bright doth sheen,
- Persephone in Hell.
The Goddess triad is an essential feature of the Shakti forms of Hinduism and a distinction is made between the separate goddesses Sarasvati, Lakshmi and Kali and their manifestation as three aspects of MahaDevi ("The Great Goddess") when they are named MahaSarasvati, MahaLaksmi, and MahaKali. In the annual festival of Navaratri images of the Triple Goddess are carried in procession throughout India and in Hindu communities worldwide.[11][12]
An archetypal Goddess triad is not limited to Indo-European cultures, and can also be found in some mythologies of Africa and Asia. The triadic theme also appears in medieval Christian folk traditions — notably with The Three Marys.
Images of Goddess triads are well attested from both inscriptions and sculptural sources from the time of the Upper Palaeolithic. The shrine rooms of Catal Huyuk which dated from 7500 B.C.E. contain bas-relief images of a Goddess in three forms.
While there is no controversy about the fact that a wide variety of ancient cultures worshipped some types of Goddesses who at times were seen as threefold, many scholars consider Graves' statements that they fit a "universal" pattern to be highly speculative, and his lumping together of diverse cultures in the quest for this universal pattern to be inappropriate. Graves attempted to apply his theory of "Maiden, Mother, Crone" to Goddesses who do not fit that pattern, such as the triple goddesses of Celtic Mythology, whose triple aspects are based on function, not age. The Celtic Goddesses also cannot be said to fulfil roles that are static or well-divided. The three aspects of Celtic Triple Goddesses may all be Goddesses of war (such as in the case of the Morrígan) or manifestations of different types of creativity (such as with Brighid). The existence of triple goddesses in a variety of cultures does not mean that those cultures experienced these goddesses in the same way, or that there were universal religious patterns that could be applied to all these diverse cultures.
[edit] Maiden, Mother, and Crone
Some followers of Neopagan religions believe that in ancient Old Europe, the Aegean and the Near East, a great Triple Goddess was worshipped, predating the patriarchal religions imported by nomadic speakers of Indo-European languages (later superseded by patriarchal monotheism). Some identify this goddess with Gaia, the Earth Mother (Roman Magna Mater). That such a Great Goddess existed is disputed by authors such as Cynthia Eller[13] and Philip G. Davis.
Descriptions of the relation between Greek Mythology and the Triple Goddess can be found in many of the myths translated in Robert Graves' anthology The Greek Myths and more cryptically and poetically in his book The White Goddess and his book of essays entitled Mammon and the Black Goddess. In his novel Watch the North Wind Rise (1949) Graves extrapolated this further into a future world where the present Monotheistic religions are discarded and the Triple Goddess once again rules supreme (one of the Goddess' manifestations is called "Mari", implying the Mary of Christianity is a disguised form of the same Goddess) (see [1]).
In his introduction The Sufis, a book he co-wrote with Idries Shah, Graves translates a poem of the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) which illustrates a triple goddess as a theme among medieval Sufis:
- I follow the religion of Love,
- Now I am sometimes called
- A Shepherd of gazelles
- And now a Christian monk,
- And now a Persian sage.
- My beloved is three-
- Three yet only one;
- Many things appear as three,
- Which are no more than one.
- Give Her no name,
- As if to limit one
- At sight of Whom
- All limitation is confounded.
In this book, Robert Graves and Idries Shah explore the influences that medieval Kabbalah and pre-Islamic Sufi beliefs had on surviving pre-Christian folk-traditions in Europe.
In pre-Islamic Arabia and Nabataea the goddess triad were called "the three daughters of Allah": al-Lat ("the Goddess"), Uzza ("Power") the youngest, and Manat ("Fate") the crone, "the third, the other".[14][15] They were known collectively as the three cranes.[15] The name al-Lat is known from the time of the histories of Herodotus in which she is named Alilat, meaning "The Goddess".[16][17] It is these goddesses who were said to have been briefly interpolated into an early version of the Qur'an in the apocryphal Satanic Verses.[15]
Some Wiccans and Neopagans honour their Goddess in the triple aspects of Maiden, Mother and Crone. Some also syncretise goddesses who do not historically fit this pattern. Such goddesses include Hecate, who when in triplicate was historically depicted as three young women, and Celtic goddesses who sometimes appear in triple form, but for whom there are no clear age patterns.
[edit] Maiden
Among Pagans, "The Maiden" represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the promise of new beginnings, birth, youth and youthful enthusiasm.
[edit] Mother
The Mother represents ripeness, fertility, sexuality, nurturance, fulfillment, stability, power and life.
[edit] Crone
The Crone represents wisdom, repose, death, and endings. Like the moon which waxes once again after the new moon and like in the year, where spring always follows winter. The Crone is an end, but she is always followed by the Maiden once more. It is death and rebirth, representing the common pagan belief of reincarnation as well as the renewing cycles of the moon and of the year.
[edit] Triadic imagery
In The White Goddess, Graves said:
- the New Moon is the white goddess of birth and growth;
- the Full Moon, the red goddess of love and battle;
- the Old Moon, the black goddess of death and divination.
This relates the three life-thresholds of birth, procreation and death with phases of the moon. The term "new moon" is used by Graves in its original sense, as the first visible crescent after the luni-solar conjunction (which has traditionally been used as the starting point of lunar calendars), rather than the luni-solar conjunction itself.
[edit] Fates
Another cross-cultural archetype is the three goddesses of fate. In Greek Mythology there are the Moirae; in Norse mythology there are the Norns. The Weird Sisters of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Wyrd Sisters of Terry Pratchett's novel of the same name are most definitely inspired by these deities. (In Pratchett's work, they are referred to as "the maiden, the mother, and... the other one", as everyone is quite afraid of calling Granny Weatherwax a "crone".) 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 graphic novels by Neil Gaiman play self-consciously on both the triple Fates and the Maiden-Mother-Crone goddess archetypes, suggesting that they are, in fact, all the various interpretations of the motif recorded through history. The manifestation of a Fate goddess in multiple forms in also attested from ancient Egypt papyri in which the birth of a child is greeted by the appearance of the Seven (or in some writings Nine) Hathors.
The earthly representatives of the Fates may have been travelling bands of women in the role of priestesses, seers and celebrants, evident from the Norse sagas (cf. Egils Saga) and Indo-European and Egyptian myth and folktale (cf. Sleeping Beauty, The Westcar Papyrus).
[edit] The Ennead
An expansion of the triadic concept is that the triad can expand into an ennead, or a group of nine aspects or nine goddesses, e.g. the Nine Muses, the Nine Maidens.
The manifestation of the Maiden aspect of the Great Goddess, known to archaeologists as The Goddess of Love-and-Battle[citation needed] (such as Inanna/Ishtar of Mesopotamia and Freyja of Scandinavia), is represented pictorially as The Three Graces, The Bull with Three Cranes or the as triad: Athene, Hera and Aphrodite in the Judgement of Paris representing the embodiments of victory in battle, royal dominion, and love. This was a recurrent theme in Bronze Age myth and iconography in both Europe and the Middle East. This was a time before Astarte became Aphrodite, as a separate goddess of love. This was a later, Iron Age development. As Anne Ross noted in her work Pagan Celtic Britain, "there is no Celtic goddess of love".[18]
Each aspect of the goddess could thus appear in triad, for example, the Dea Matrona or Matres ("the Mother goddesses") shown as a triad throughout the Celtic, Gaulish and Romano-Celtic territories. They are still known in Welsh folklore as Y Mamau ("the Mothers").
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Virgil addresses Hecate as tergemina Hecate, tria virginis, ora Dianae (Aeneid, 4.511.
- ^ Alföldi, "Diana Nemorensis", American Journal of Archaeology (1960:137-44) p 141; Alföldi's numismatic evidence shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the lucus of Nemi in 43 BCE; the Lake of Nemi was Triviae lacus for Virgil (Aeneid 7.516).
- ^ Horace, Carmine 3.22.1.
- ^ Aeneid 6.35, 10.537.
- ^ Carmine 35.14 tu potens Trivia...
- ^ Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, London, Cambridge University Press, 1903, revised 1922.; Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, London, Cambridge University Press, 1912; Ancient Art and Ritual , London, Cambridge University Press, 1913.
- ^ Robert Briffault, The Mothers (in three volumes), London and New York, 1927.
- ^ a b C. G. Jung and C. Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology. Bolligen/Princeton University Press, 1967.
- ^ Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974; The Living Goddesses. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
- ^ Betz, Hans Dieter (ed.) (1989). The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation : Including the Demotic Spells : Texts. University of Chicago Press.
- ^ Navaratri - Celebrating the Symbolic Vision of the Goddess
- ^ BBC – Religion & Ethics – Navaratri
- ^ Eller, Cynthia P., The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
- ^ Khalīl, Shawqī Abū (2003) Atlas of the Qurʼān: Places, Nations, Landmarks. Darussalam Press. pp. 196-7.
- ^ a b c Hawting, Gerald R. (1999) The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 130-2.
- ^ Herodotus Histories 1.131; 3.8.
- ^ Healey, John F. (2001) The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 112.
- ^ Anne Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.
