Reclaiming the Word "Maiden." What does it Mean to Us Crones or "Apprentice Crones"?

Joan of Arc as a maiden warrior

What does it mean to be a "maiden" nowadays?
The focus of my work is with women in the crone years or apprentice crones at least. So how to talk about the Maiden part of the Maiden Mother Crone archetypes of a woman's life? I have been giving this a lot of thought lately, as we are focusing on the Maiden this month in an on-line course I am facilitating. To that end, I have come across some interesting writings on the subject.

A maiden is pure in that she is true to herself and her vision
One is the writing of Christine Valters Paintner, of the wonderful Abbey of the Arts. In discussing the maiden she mentions another antiquated-seeming concept, that of the virgin. Not in the old sense of the word, as someone who has never had sex, but instead as a woman who answers only to herself in her life. Someone who has a purity and single-mindedness of focus that has nothing to do with who she sleeps with but instead to do with how she leads her life. In the course I am teaching, we are re-visiting the stories of some maiden goddess archetypes. We are reclaiming their true stories from how they had been diluted and manipulated by history. And in this way, we are rediscovering our own true maiden fiery true selves. ​It is the passion within the maiden that motivates her and it is this passion of the maiden within the crone, that motivates us still, though we may be in our later years. 

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Joan of Arc, a maiden warrior and mystic
In the Maiden Mother Crone Death class, we are talking about Joan of Arc as an example of a maiden archetype. Her story is a tragic one and yet she stands out as an example of one who fought passionately for her ideas. In our times we have our Greta Thunbergs and Mala Yousafsais. fighting for the environment and for girls rights to study at school respectively. In the image above, Joan of Arc showed up in an intuitive painting in a 1950's Science book I have been working into progressively. Here she is in her warrior form, though in a way in this image it looks more like the two figures are dancing rather than fighting. 

How can we as older women or crones, tap into our own fiery inner maidens?
I believe that we, like nesting dolls, contain all our younger selves within us. If however, some of those younger selves have felt shut down, belittled or ignored, it can be difficult to access them in our later years. Carl Jung said that the work of our later years is to begin to integrate all of our selves, with a goal of finding wholeness. So, even if we have spent our lives in forward motion, not looking back at who we were before, it can still be important to revisit and if necessary befriend and tend those younger selves. Personally, always having been an inward looking person, I have always looked back, but perhaps to the detriment of times in my life when it would have served me better to look ahead. But, yes, it feels important to me to revisit these earlier selves, not to wallow in past sadness and losses but instead to reclaim the best of who we were then and to allow these younger selves to animate our beings as older women. To inspire us to be fully alive. Ursula Le Guin is a great example of how to do this....

Inspired by the great Ursula Le Guin, who never lost the spirit and energy of her younger self
I've been thinking a lot lately about the wonderful and celebrated author, Ursula Le Guin. She was described as a writer of "speculative fiction, including science fiction." I’ve been reading her wonderful book, Space Crone, and marveling at the way her young energetic self shines through, no matter what her chronological age is, and even now, though she is no longer with us.  In these photos above, showing a young and old Ursula Le Guin,  you can vividly see the way in which her young self lived through her older self.

​The young and the old Ursula Le Guin in conversation with each other
In these two photos, the older Ursula seems slyly to be looking at us, challenging us to meet her gaze. The older self looks more confident and forceful. the younger self more shy. It is almost as if the younger self looks to the older self for reassurance. And it is this way with all women who have aged well, never allowing their younger selves to leave them, but instead being able to tap into all the ages they have been, making them the complex beings they are now in all their wisdom. I hope that I can be even a bit as strong, creative and full of life in my later years as Ursula Le Guin was in hers.

Being willing to revise old ideas and even throw them out, in light of wisdom gained in later years
One of the things I love about reading these essays in Space Crone is that Le Guin is very willing to revisit all of her earlier thoughts and beliefs. She includes talks and essays from all the phases of her life in this book and in some of them, she greatly revises earlier versions of her essays. She doesn't rest on the laurels of earlier successes but is always willing to revisit them in the light of what she has learned in later years. And in this way she, as an older woman, has the best of both worlds, the freshness of vision of her younger self along with the wisdom of her older self. In looking back at her earlier essays she grows in her understanding of what it means to be a feminist. For instance, one of her essays, written in 1988 "Is Gender Necessary (Redux)," she almost completely revises an earlier essay of the same title from 1976, in light of what she had since learned about the reality of being a woman in a man's world.

The mark of a true crone enlivened by her inner maiden
To me, this is a mark of a true crone enlivened by her inner maiden, someone who is willing to revisit all of her earlier ideas, to bring a freshness and new eye to them, even if this means questioning herself and making herself vulnerable. We can bring this same freshness to our lives and to our relationships, though it is not always easy. As older parents, we have to be able and willing to listen to our young daughters and allow their new visions refresh and enliven our older ones. I am grateful for this reason to have a young adult daughter who challenges me at times and helps me to see where I have become old and stale. Not always easy but helpful if I want to stay as fully alive and awake as I can be.