My spiritual journey in India reached its second stage: the Mother, who manifests the potential of the Maiden. The seed growing into a mature tree, the full moon marking the greatest point of lunar influence, the artist bringing forth a masterpiece – the Mother stage of the Goddess embodies fully mature creation.
[I lean on gendered archetypes because they hold such cultural power and offer deep symbolism.]
Encountering the sacred Ganges River, the lifeblood of India, corresponded to the evolution of my journey. Her Mother stage is at its peak in Varanasi, a city where temples speckle the tiny, squiggly, pedestrian-only streets bordering the river. Shrines are carved into the walls, bedecked in paint, flowers, and offerings; and sacred trees squeeze themselves in cracks and between buildings, equally honored. But the Ganges is central to it all, and has been worshipped for thousands of years. To die within the city boundaries means being granted immediate release from the reincarnation cycle: many go there to die, and are cremated at her edge.
Perhaps the words I wrote at the time say it best:
“From the rooftop, the Ganges languishes below us, her expanse immediately overpowering any chaos of Varanasi, her calm gray worshipped belly comforting fears, absorbing prayers, receiving our beloved. […] She is full and dense, in her prime, soaking in the prayers of millions who reach for her rippling holiness in life and in death.”
In Varanasi, the Ganges is at her full moon point, her Mother stage; she blesses both life and death, offering a point of complete integration and manifestation. I witnessed her in awe and reflection, sitting at her edge, remember those I had lost, contemplating the purpose of my travels and the greater life work I was attempting. My thoughts and experiences thus far were galvanizing into a thesis, growing into a workshop series I would facilitate (with a local friend) on gender and sexuality in Delhi. To meet the Ganges again meant marking this shift.
To fully write about engaging the Mother archetype in India, I need to mention two (opposing) incarnations: Mother Theresa and the goddess Kali, both encountered in Kolkata (a.k.a. Calcutta).
The central hub for her charity is called Mother Theresa’s motherhouse. Visit the chapel or climb a staircase to stand at her room’s doorway to gaze at her modest possessions and contemplate her extraordinary work. She is the Mother as caregiver, representative of life and grace as she responded to the city’s severe poverty. Along with feeling awe and gratitude, I notice how active her work was. She literally picked the first person up off the street, and then took in more and more and more. Her work must have flowed from great personal strength and conviction. Her actions, step by step, built a massive movement; not setting out to change the world, just to impact individual lives, one at a time. She was a force of life addressing death, a great well of inspiration and creative action.
The opposing representation was the dark Hindu Mother deity, Kali, goddess of death, who wears a belt of skulls. On that same day, I am in another part of Kolkata circling her temple, unsure of how to approach. There are blood sacrifices here. Every goddess I’ve ever known was soft and benevolent, how do I ethically engage this one? Could I even handle it? After a slow, stealthy circuit, I enter. Inside the inner wall, I move among the crowd of devotees (plus a couple tourists), to gauge how I feel. Eventually, comfortable enough, I sit on some shallow steps and cautiously open myself. In meditation, the fear and concern transforms into clarity as I realize that she is the all-powerful warrior at full manifestation. In contemplation, I realize that Kali cuts your oppressive chains, spilling the blood of your false ideas. She is a Mother goddess: to live, to be born, implies eventual death. She completes the pattern, marking life in death, but most of all, putting us through the symbolic death of our ignorance.
My experiences in India shattered some beliefs, reinforced others, and brought me into greater depths of creativity and manifestation. Mother Theresa marked loving action, Kali broke through my limited beliefs, and the Ganga wove through it all, uniting life and death, experience and insight.
(Photo by the author. Quote from the author’s blog, www.climbingsunward.com.)
Bridget, this is an interesting post to me. I’ll admit I struggle when I see fellow Westerners interpret the spiritual centers of India through Western archetypes like the Maiden, Mother and Crone. In part this is because of my background as an Irish polytheist — we don’t use that framework even in engaging with the European gods — and it also comes from talking with my Hindu friends. But everyone’s spirituality is their own and if that framework works for you, I respect it.
So my question is this. You mentioned that your experiences in India shattered some of your beliefs. I’d love to know more about that. Were these your beliefs about what India is like, or did it also change some of your spiritual beliefs? Which ones, and how?
Drew,
I am delighted that you wrote a comment! Thank you for engaging in dialogue. I apologize for taking so many days to respond, but I have indeed been thinking deeply about your comments.
Your focus is on my transformations, but since you mentioned the Maiden/Mother/Crone framework, I would like to address that first. After some thought, I do recognize it as a charged framework, from two points of contention. First, I have struggled with the ethical challenges that come with writing about another culture. How do I ethically engage this topic? How do I not speak from a place of oppressive authority, but from humble experience? With these short State of Formation articles, I take ages to figure out what to say. I would say that the only reason I do, in fact, write anything at all about India is because of exactly what you wrote: all I can do is speak the story of my direct experiences, not the meaning of Hindu deities or Indian culture as a whole. And the truth is that I meditated in the Kali temple and had a vision of the goddess. I wouldn’t suddenly claim cultural “ownership” of Kali, but I was there and that is what happened. I can only speak to what I witnessed and felt, and hope that I don’t come across as limited and blind.
The second point of contention with the Maiden/Mother/Crone framework is that that combination is strongly associated with Wicca, which is not well-grounded, culturally. I am not, and have not been, Wiccan. I would say independent earth spiritualist, but I cannot deny that I have been informed by Wicca, as that has been the primary frame for much of the information I have had access to, especially in the beginning. And I have found personal meaning in the Maiden/Mother/Crone frame. One of the issues that I am hoping you will think about and address is this: if there are gods and goddesses associated with particular ages and places in life development, long before any modern interpretation, where exactly is the line with the Maiden/Mother/Crone framework? Certainly, no single particular culture invented the mother goddess archetype, for example. The thought I keep coming back to as I think about this is that Wicca, or any other contemporary frame using Maiden/Mother/Crone, didn’t invent the ideas, just arranged them in a particular way. It is a Western perspective, of course, but it isn’t exactly pulling up anything new…please share your thoughts. I will continue to think.
The role of cultural background and ethical engagement leads me directly to my Irish roots, actually. My grandmother was an Irish immigrant, my mother is an excellent Ceili dancer and her closest family are her cousins and aunts/uncles back in Co. Mayo. She identifies as Irish, through and through, although was born on American soil. She transferred that heritage on to her kids (and we got it from our dad as well), along with Irish Catholicism. I will never be properly Irish, though, even though my family has lived in the same area for hundreds of years. And my religious heritage feels quite marred. My name, even, is Bridget — an old reference to a goddess, rewritten with English and Christian flavor. The Irish land itself stirs up goddess and nature-worshipping feelings, I feel deeply connected to the ancient Celtic gods. But the trail is complex, my direct heritage is Catholic, and the Irish identity is even separated (permanently) by the American context. The point: Maiden/Mother/Crone is my American inheritance and the Irish past is in my blood and soul. Where do I truly belong, and how does one have a nature-based spirituality in the culturally-dry American context? Can I ethically engage European gods? Are there some cultures that count as “Other” but aren’t as ethically troublesome to engage?
Epic response to simple comments, I know, but these are such central thoughts in my mind as I navigate contemporary earth spirituality, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss such ideas with someone who can speak to them.
p.s. My India travels affected me deeply, and primarily, on issues of social justice and gender, as well as personal space and community dynamics. I was challenged to maintain my belief in human good despite witnessing and experiencing violence; I am extremely grateful to my Indian friends who guided me through those experiences and contemplations. Of course, the ideas I formed about India in my first weeks of travel were broken down and built up again as the months passed. I am still learning. Spiritually, it was a profound experience to go somewhere with prevalent goddess worship, but my greatest spiritual challenges were to find peace and goodness in the darkest moments.
No worries about the time delay. We’re all busy, and I love getting a thoughtful and detailed reply like this. I’ll do my best to return the favor 🙂
I want to be respectful of your beliefs and use of the Maiden/Mother/Crone framework — even though I personally don’t find that framework helpful (or similar modern frameworks). I think you asked a great question: didn’t ancient European beliefs have maidens, and mothers, and crones, even if they didn’t use that framework? So doesn’t it translate?
(I hope I am getting your point correct and not putting words in your mouth.)
My answer is: no, it doesn’t translate. Because a maiden meant something different then, than it does to us; and because the ancient Irish also had head wives, second wives, concubines, slave girls, foster daughters, foster mothers, 9 kinds of marriage , landed widowers with the same rights as men, sacramental queens, and a price assigned to every woman based on her family status and wealth.
All of these are alien concepts to post-Christian, 21st century Western culture. They don’t translate well to a Maiden/Mother/Crone framework. Especially not one where a single goddess is considered to progress through all three, whereas most ancient goddesses only represented certain aspects of women’s gender role.
Not that the framework can’t be useful. Archetypal frameworks are user-friendly and accessible. My personal preference is to try to study myth on a culture’s own terms. Not very Campbellian of me, but it’s what speaks to me.
But as you said:
“The point: Maiden/Mother/Crone is my American inheritance.”
This. A million times this. I’ve often said that Wicca is the perfect tribal religion for the United States of America; it’s exactly what we are. (Even though you and I, well, aren’t.) An “inheritance” — well said.
I believe we can ethically engage with the European (or any) gods. Of course there will be many Catholic Irish or present-day Europeans of other stripes who push back against Americans “reclaiming” ancient heritage. To the degree that we deny or ignore the present-day cultures and their needs and struggles, they have a point. But we also have a right to explore our roots, anyone does.
Going about it respectfully doesn’t guarantee that people will welcome it, and at a certain point we have to decide that unwelcome (by nay-sayers) doesn’t mean unwelcome (by the gods).
If it’s not too personal, I’d love to here more about this:
“I was challenged to maintain my belief in human good despite witnessing and experiencing violence…”
I experienced a great deepening of my faith in humanity as I bicycled down the Mississippi River this summer.
Thank you for your lovely response, which was totally ten days ago. Oh dear.
I think you’ve got a great take on things. One of the major challenges present in my spiritual experience is ethically navigating deities, cultures, and practice. I feel trapped in a contradiction, not satisfied with my family’s religion but at ethical risk engaging anything else. My childhood faith tradition lacked so much of what I need…I cannot be satisfied with my culturally assigned religion, so I am technically without a home. The closest thing I have “a right to” is Wicca, as the American inheritance, but it is struggling with the same risks of cultural appropriation. This doesn’t give me a free pass to abuse and ignore cultural heritage and other religions. But it does feel like an in-between place, hard to grow an earth-based spirituality. [Musing, not concluding.]
I think I have found the reason that I am comfortable with the Maiden/Mother/Crone. As I was reading your description of ancient Irish female social roles, I realized that I didn’t think of the Maiden/Mother/Crone in terms of relationships to men, family, or community. I really see them as human terms for development. Youth, middle-age, late-age. Archetypes, for sure, divested of cultural context (I read Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces before I left for India, so I was very much in that Campbell mode). From this perspective and the varying definitions of family, social identity, community across cultures and across time, it makes so much sense that the much simpler definition of a woman’s role in an American cultural context wouldn’t translate at all to ancient Ireland.
I do need those aging rhythms, I lean on them to navigate my experiences and the experiences of the women I know. [I celebrate the queering of gender, but I am at the moment focused on female-bodied as a particular frame of experience. Much more to say on that, but won’t occupy the space here.] To me, the Maiden/Mother/Crone is one way to explore the beginning, middle, and end of things — and to recast a positive role to a woman aging. However, I do not think that developments necessarily happen separately, or simplistically.
I’ll be writing my final Crone installment of the India series, and the themes are culmination and transcendence. I did experience the Ganga in a shifting way, which is not culturally grounded, but the good news is that I am actually going with visions of the goddess that I had at significant points along the way and not coming entirely from a purely intellectual space. I don’t feel comfortable yet writing directly about visions of deities, although writing about it in the comment section is my new exploratory challenge.
Sadly, violence was a major aspect of my travel experience in India. Although I did not live in a rosy-glasses world before my year in South/Southeast Asia, witnessing and experiencing an unsafe space and directed violence deeply impacted me. In ways, I think that India can be safer than the States, and I am still exploring that in dialogue with Indian friends living in America. I think that violence happens differently in the two countries based on cultural differences. So, seen police beating people, witnessed a friend attacked, general daily aggression/conflict. I traveled alone, and experienced a high level of sexual harassment and even experienced attempts at violation. Of course, I experience street harassment in the States quite a bit (and Paris could compete with Delhi for harassment levels), and know that most sexual violence is experienced from a known person. But the atmosphere was most often threatening.
I am thrilled to be able to say that my ability to still open up to a new male-bodied person endured, to give him a chance to prove himself respectful — I was still able to separate the individual from the masses. I am grateful for every person I met on my way that treated me with respect and grace, and I am humbled by the overwhelming generosity that I encountered.
I went through bouts of despair about the generalized violence, discouraged by the perspectives I was hearing (that it could never change). It has been extraordinary to see the massive response following the publicized gang rape and beating of the young woman on a bus in Delhi. I had taught a critical gender awareness workshop series in Delhi (collaborating with a Delhi-based instructor), and although the students were positive and driven, I had heard so much fear and defeat in older groups.
It has been five months since I left Delhi, and I am still trying to understand. I do think that I have maintained a belief in the good of people, but there is so much to learn about India so that I can best contextualize things, and much to think about in relation to violence.
in peace,
Bridget
Thanks for the reply Bridget. I understand your take on the Maiden/Crone cycle and I appreciate you explaining it.
I’m sad that you experienced so much harassment and violence in India, though not surprised. My Indian friends have talked about those experiences — I’m glad nothing even more serious happened to you.
Thanks for a great conversation. I hope we cross paths more.