The Reclamation of the Sacred Crone: Embracing the Power of Divine Feminine Wisdom

What we need to remember about the power of "growing old"

There exists a dangerous myth, that a woman's worth is diminishes with each passing year. That there's some sort of "expiration date" a woman hits when she’s no longer able to bear children, and if she hasn't been married before then? Well... You know the story all too well, and I know you bristle internally (as do I) at the blatant exploitation, de-humanization, and dismissal of a woman's worth in this world.

I see you wincing (and maybe even internally wrestling with this horrible narrative) as you walk down the beauty aisles of your local pharmacy (or the many advertisements you see on behalf of all those influencers on social media you see every time you enter the warped realm of social media), bombarded with promises to "turn back the clock" and "erase the signs of aging."

Promises that try to lure you in with the idea of value. The ones that say, “You know people won’t like you as much, take you as seriously, or look on you with desire if your face has texture, let alone a wrinkle on your face! I mean, can you imagine looking like an old hag? Can you imagine people thinking you’re not in your twenties anymore!? Why not invest in this McGuffin and remain in a state of adoration by reversing that ridiculous clock? Why not fool people into thinking you’re younger than you actually are? Because, I mean, let’s face it, the second someone knows just how old you are, you’ll no longer be relevant, worthy, or beautiful and life is already hard enough for a woman on these streets, so let’s spend that hard earned money on a way to keep you viable, desirable, and acceptable, shall we?”

Insert big sigh… why have we allowed ourselves to continue down this disempowering path for so long despite the fact that we intellectually know better? (I could give you the answer, but I need to take you deeper into the realm of why and where this all comes from first so bare with me, and let's keep going)

I feel your exhaustion at trying to remain "relevant" in a culture that seems determined to render you invisible once you've crossed some arbitrary threshold of time based on your age and your ability to remain “fertile”. (Because let’s be clear, it’s not so much about the age itself, the number. It’s about what you “mean” to society based on some dis-eased and toxic standard heavily ingrained in our global subconscious for far too long, and which still demands to relegate women to nothing more than objects, chattel, and a means to an end)

I know that deep down, your heart breaks at the knowing that somehow, the lines etching themselves into our faces represent a loss rather than an acquisition.

I know your spirit aches at observing how a life so fully lived, and with so much wisdom infused into every breath has been relegated to nothing more than a gross transformation that only an evil creature form a fairy tale would inflict on someone else (as if “the beast” from “Beauty and the Beat” was a woman who dared to grow old and own her wisdom, her power, her amplification, and the wholeness of her life and her value outside of these ridiculous ideas of old).

And this cultural gaslighting has convinced generations of women to wage war against their own evolution, pouring precious resources (our money, yes, but more devastatingly, our spiritual energy and personal power) into "anti-aging" rather than celebrating the profound transformation that time bestows, and the depth of amplification found in this most sacred realm of the Divine Feminine expression of the energetic field as embodied through our beings.

The most insidious part? We've been trained to police ourselves, as well as those around us. We’ve been taught to fear our own evolution, to apologize for the audacity of continuing to exist beyond our "prime." We whisper about "letting ourselves go" as though maintaining the appearance of perpetual youth is some moral obligation we've shamefully neglected.

But what if we honored the truth. That we've been deceived about the very nature of THE Feminine, and by extension, the depth of feminine ‘aging’? (aka the amplification field that only the Divine Feminine can be initiated through, and which belongs to her alone)

What if everything we've been taught about a woman's journey through time isn’t just wrong, but deliberately meant to keep us disconnected from our most potent source of power?

The Forgotten Power of Feminine Wisdom

Take a moment and look around. Really look.

Where are our elder women? Where are the silver-crowned queens who should be leading our boardrooms, teaching in our universities, guiding our spiritual communities, and speaking wisdom into our collective consciousness?

They've been erased. Tucked away. Encouraged to become invisible or to maintain the exhausting façade of perpetual youth, because heaven forbid we witness the natural evolution of a woman's face and body through time.

I mean, hell, we can’t even enjoy our bodies as they are in their prime. I mean, how many of us are still starving, killing ourselves at the gym, and/or desperately seeking the latest and greatest diet or workout to finally help us create, keep and have the perfect body we have so longed for since we first opened that fashion magazine in our youth. Trust me, this narrative is bigger than we are even willing to acknowledge, and the cognitive bias around it even greater than that, and that is why we are still stuck despite “knowing better”, well… one reason why… but I digress…

And the thing is, this wasn't always so. And deep in your bones, in the ancestral memory that flows through your veins, you know this.

Throughout human history, our ancestors understood something we've forgotten: a woman in her fullness, carrying the weight of decades lived and wisdom earned, possesses a formidable spiritual power. The elder women, the wise women, the crones (my favorite word and feminine title beyond just the archetypal form of late) they were not pitied but revered, not hidden away but sought after.

These were the leaders amongst leaders, the ones who led the tribes and imparted the mysteries of old. These were the priestesses, and the healers, they were the ones who passed judgement, and the ones who upheld the laws of the tribe. These women were the ones who created community, and saw to it that everyone was equal. (Because let’s get one thing straight, the opposite of a patriarchy, wasn’t a matriarchal structure where only the women held the power, but the communities where everyone had a voice, everyone was seen as valuable and part of the whole, where everyone was treated with respect and held accountable, and where inequality was NOT the most holy of idols like it is in our societies now a days)

While the specific concept of the "triple goddess archetype" as we know it today (maiden, mother, and crone) is largely a modern construct popularized in the mid-20th century, the reverence for women across different life stages exists across many ancient traditions. Throughout history, cultures worldwide recognized divine feminine energies appearing in threes, the Greek Moirai (Fates), the Norse Norns, the triple-faced Hecate. Each phase representing not just biological stages but spiritual evolutions. In these traditions, the elder woman, the wise woman, embodied the culmination of feminine power having moved beyond the vulnerability of youth and the nurturing demands of motherhood, she entered the realm of pure spiritual authority.

And you can feel this, can’t you? That knowing deep within you that says there's something profoundly backward about how we treat women as they age? That's not just your personal frustration, it's ancestral wisdom screaming through time, begging us to remember.

Because this authority threatened those who sought dominion over women's bodies and spirits. And so began one of the most effective campaigns of spiritual propaganda ever inflicted upon humanity: the demonization of the aging woman.

How the Wise Woman Became the “Warty, Evil Witch”

And now that we’re on this subject – one of depth and much needed reclamation of the power of the “crone” essence of the Divine Feminine, let me ask you something that might feel uncomfortable.

Why is the witch in our fairy tales almost always an older woman?

Why is she depicted as warty, hunched, bitter, and dangerous?

Why is her knowledge portrayed as something dark and threatening rather than sacred and necessary?

This wasn't accident or coincidence. It was calculated.

Consider how effortlessly our culture transformed the archetype of the wise woman into the wicked witch. The medicine woman who understood the healing properties of plants, the midwife who guided new souls into this world, the elder who preserved ancestral wisdom, all became targets when toxic masculine power structures felt threatened.

The witch hunts were not merely historical events; they were systematic attempts to sever women from their power, particularly the authority that came with age and wisdom. A woman who has lived long enough to see through illusions, who trusts her intuition above external authority, who speaks uncomfortable truths, she represents a destabilizing force to systems built on control.

So instead of reverence, we were taught revulsion, and fear. Instead of aspiration, aversion, and instead of respect, mockery, vilification, dismissal, and belittlement (let’s make that a word haha)

The wart-covered, decrepit crone stirring potions in children's stories isn’t just a boogie woman meant to keep naughty children in line, this depiction is propaganda at its best. And it’s designed to disconnect us (US, the women of this world, not the little kids whom we were told these tales were made for) from our most potent incarnation.

And it worked.

Oh, how devastatingly well it worked and continues to work.

Look at how we speak about menopause, as though it's a disease rather than an initiation. Look at how we joke about "senior moments" instead of honoring the depth of reflection that comes with years lived. Look at how we hide our elders in care facilities rather than centering them in our communities where their wisdom could heal and guide.

And this is to say nothing of how fervently we’ve learned to praise the people who hate death and life most in this world, the ones who seek the fountain of youth, the ones who claim that “death is our enemy” without stopping for one moment to honor the power of the death-life-rebirth circle, and the ones who stand to lose the most from our remembering, honoring, and reclaiming all aspects of the Sacred Feminine in full. Because with that reclamation, comes the honoring of the deeper mysteries, the understanding that death is a lover we need most deeply I this life, and that rebirth is the fruits of a labor only the feminine can bring forth, for all thing come from HER, go to HER, and rest within HER…

Another deep sigh

We've been robbed of our birthright.

The knowledge that our power doesn't wane with age, it amplifies.

The Sacred Mysteries of the Crone

Let's pause here and breathe into the essence of what the Crone truly represents, not the distorted caricature we've been fed, but the sacred archetype in her full glory.

The Crone is she who has passed through the veils. She has bled with the moon for decades and then, in profound alchemical transformation, takes this creative power inward. The blood that once flowed from her body now circulates within her as concentrated wisdom, intuitive knowing, and spiritual potency.

This is no mere metaphor, it is a sacred energetic truth, and the best (and also craziest part in some respects) part? We get to live it in our very human bodies!

When a woman crosses the threshold of menopause (and honestly, this transmutation happens even as we enter perimenopause) a word that literally means "pause of the moon”, she undergoes an initiation as profound as any in human experience. Her relationship with time itself transforms. No longer bound to the monthly cycles that connect her to the immediate creation of life, she enters a relationship with eternity.

The Crone carries the gift of perspective.

From her vantage point, patterns become visible. Where the Maiden may see isolated incidents, the Crone perceives cycles. (In a more poetic way, we can say that she moves from being a maiden our in the fields, and a mother ripe with nurturance, to a wild and majestic crow flying so high above the world, she can see everything, she has wisdom and perspective beyond what is normally experienced on land, and she is a wonder to behold because of it) Where the Mother perceives the needs of the immediate family or community, the Crone perceives the needs of the seventh generation, and knows how to impart the wisdom these beings to come will need to create the most radiant of lives for themselves while at the same time, knowing how to help them say farewell to the lives they once lived and welcome the in between.

In many Indigenous traditions, when an elder woman speaks in council, all fall silent, not out of fear or obligation, but out of recognition that hers is the voice of accumulated wisdom, of dreams digested, of patterns witnessed across decades, of futures glimpsed.

The Crone is sovereignty embodied.

Having shed the expectations of youth and the obligations of motherhood (whether biological or metaphorical), she answers to no authority but her own inner knowing. She speaks truth without needing validation. She makes decisions without seeking approval. She draws boundaries without offering justification, and she owns her worth, her power and her divinity in full, come what may.

And perhaps most threatening to patriarchal systems, she is comfortable with mystery. The Crone understands that not everything needs to be conquered, dissected, or owned to be valuable. She knows that some knowledge comes through surrender rather than control, through listening rather than proclamation.

This is why the Crone has such a profound relationship with death. Not because she is closer to physical death (though she may be), but because she has died many small deaths, and found her way through many rebirths time and again throughout her life. She has released identities, shed roles, abandoned pretense and with each transition, she has found her way back to self more presently each time. Making her stronger, more potent, and in many ways, more dangerous or threatening to the select few who will forever view life, death, rebirth, and the feminine as “evil”

While youth-obsessed culture runs screaming from mortality, the Crone walks toward it with curiosity and respect. She knows that without death, there is no rebirth. Without winter, no spring. Without darkness, no generative void from which new life emerges.

The Crone teaches us that endings are not failures but completions. That release is not loss but liberation. That the dark is not to be feared but explored for its rich treasures.

This is the wisdom we desperately need in a world obsessed with constant growth, expansion, and light at the expense of necessary contraction, rest, and darkness. This is the perspective essential for navigating the complex collapse and regeneration cycles our world faces.

And this is precisely why the Crone was (and is) demonized. Because a woman who no longer fears death cannot be controlled through fear. A woman who embraces the dark feminine cannot be manipulated through shame. A woman who knows her own authority, value and potency cannot be ruled through doubt.

The mysteries of the Crone are not abstract philosophical concepts, they are embodied knowing, cellular wisdom, bone-deep truth. They are activated through lived experience, through surviving heartbreak and betrayal, through witnessing both birth and death, through losing everything and discovering that you remain.

Can you feel her stirring within you? Even if you're decades from physical menopause, the Crone energy lives in your spiritual DNA. She is your future self, reaching back through time, offering her hand, inviting you to remember what your soul has always known.

She is the keeper of the mysteries, the walker between worlds, the compassionate truth-teller, the elder who earned every line on her face and every silver strand in her hair. She is the wisdom we've been taught to fear but desperately need to reclaim.

The High Cost of Eternal Youth

Now that we've remembered the sacred mysteries of the Crone, let's be honest about what we sacrifice when we chase the illusion of eternal youth.

I see it in the eyes of women spending thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatments that promise to "turn back time." The frantic energy. The underlying terror. The desperate hope that if they just try hard enough, they can outrun the natural evolution of their own soul.

When I watch friends at the injection clinic, religiously applying retinol, researching the latest "anti-aging" breakthrough, I don't judge them. Goddess knows I've been there too, hell, if you came over to my house today, you’d see some of these items in my bathroom today.

So yes, I understand the very real fear of becoming invisible, of being discarded by a culture that only values women as decoration, and only for a long as they are “pretty, young, and pure” little ingénues onto whom someone can project their own narrative of fantasy. (eeeeeewwwwww)

But I grieve. I grieve for the blocked initiation. I grieve for the refused wisdom. I grieve for the Divine Feminine power left unclaimed.

Think about it. When we spend our energy fighting against our natural evolution, what are we really rejecting?

We're rejecting the invitation to become sovereigns of our own truth. We're refusing the initiation into deeper realms of intuitive knowing. We're denying ourselves access to the ancestral wisdom that wants to flow through us.

Every hour spent applying "anti-aging" cream is an hour not spent in communion with the dark mysteries the Crone carries. Every dollar invested in "looking younger" is a dollar not invested in developing our spiritual gifts, in knowing ourselves more deeply, and courting ourselves more sincerely than ever before. Every ounce of energy spent trying to maintain a facade of youth is energy stolen from the soul work that would actually transform us.

This preoccupation with youth creates a spiritual bypass.

Instead of diving into the rich, mysterious depths that age invites us to explore, we remain in the shallows, terrified of our own evolution.

And what's waiting in those depths? Everything that terrifies the systems built on our insecurity.

In those depths lives a woman who no longer seeks approval from a culture that profits from her doubt. A woman who speaks truth without softening her edges. A woman whose intuition has become so refined that manipulation glances off her like water off a duck's back. A woman who prioritizes her soul's calling over society's expectations.

The Crone energy doesn't care about being liked. She cares about being true. The Crone energy doesn't fear exclusion. She knows her own worth. The Crone energy doesn't need external validation. She validates herself.

Meanwhile, the vault of ancient knowing that each elder woman carries, the healing songs, the plant medicine wisdom, the ceremonies that bind communities, all of this remains locked away while we chase the phantom of perpetual youth.

And this is exactly what patriarchal systems want. Because a world full of empowered Crones, women who've reclaimed their initiation into elder wisdom, who know the mysteries of death and rebirth, who carry the long view in their bones, such a world would shatter every structure built on control and fear.

So they keep us chasing youth. Keep us terrified of our own power. Keep us investing in the shallow when we could be claiming the substance.

But the invitation remains open. Every wrinkle ignored is a story not written on your face. Every gray hair treated as an enemy is an ignored crown of wisdom. Every struggle against natural aging is a resistance to your own becoming.

What if, instead of anti-aging cream, we invested in elder councils?

What if, instead of Botox retreats, we created wisdom circles?

What if, instead of hiding our years, we celebrated our initiations?

The choice before us isn't really about looking young or old.

It's about whether we'll answer the call to evolve into the wise women this world desperately needs, or remain forever suspended in an illusion that serves everyone but ourselves.

The Dark Feminine and Her Mysteries

I want to tell you a secret, one that was almost lost to time, but that lives still in the bones of every woman who has ever walked this earth.

Ancient priestesses understood that feminine power deepens with age. The intuition sharpens. The connection to the unseen strengthens. The tolerance for illusion evaporates.

These are not losses but profound evolutionary gains. These are the gifts of the Crone initiation.

In many forgotten traditions, it was only women who had crossed the threshold of menopause who were considered ready to hold the deepest spiritual mysteries. Having moved beyond the biological imperatives of reproduction, their energies could fully devote to spiritual matters. The crone phase wasn't a diminishment but an ascension, a sacred graduation into the realm of pure spiritual authority.

The dark feminine (not dark as in evil, but dark as in mysterious, hidden, operating beyond the visible spectrum) finds her fullest expression in the woman who has lived long enough to embrace both the light and shadow of existence.

She no longer fears her own depths or the depths of others. She has walked through enough dark nights of the soul to know that the void is generative, that endings birth beginnings, that what appears as darkness to the uninitiated is actually the womb of creation itself.

This is why the priestesses of old would pass their most sacred knowledge only to those who had entered the crone phase. They understood that certain wisdom requires a vessel that has been tempered by life, a consciousness that has expanded beyond personal desire and fear, a spirit that can hold paradox without needing to resolve it into simpler truths.

Can you feel the power of this?

The Crone doesn't need to prove her authority, it radiates from her being.

The Crone doesn't need to demand respect, her presence commands it.

The Crone doesn't need to explain the mysteries, she embodies them.

This understanding completely reframes what we've been taught about aging.

What if menopause wasn't the end of a woman's prime but the beginning of her spiritual sovereignty?

What if the changing hormones weren't deficits but alchemical agents, transforming her very consciousness?

What if the softening of her body was matched by a strengthening of her spiritual perception?

In Earth-based traditions, the moon cycles were sacred templates for understanding feminine power. The waxing moon belonged to the Maiden, full of potential and becoming. The full moon belonged to the Mother, radiant with creative power. But the dark moon, the void, the apparent absence of light, this belonged to the Crone.

And in that darkness, everything was possible.

In that empty space, all potential existed. The dark moon wasn't an ending but a gathering of power, a compression before expansion, a death before rebirth.

This is the Crone's domain, the mysteries of the void, the wisdom of cycles, the understanding that what appears as loss to surface consciousness is often gain to soul consciousness. She knows that your truest power isn't what you can grasp and hold, but what you can release and allow to transform.

When a woman fully embodies her Crone energy, she becomes a conduit for ancient wisdom to flow into present time. She speaks not just from personal experience but from ancestral knowing. Her counsel doesn't just address immediate problems but perceives patterns spanning generations. Her prayers don't just ask for personal blessings but align with cosmic rhythms.

This is the medicine our world needs. Not more striving, more doing, more building, but more being, more knowing, more allowing the natural cycles of death and rebirth to work their transformative magic.

The Crone initiates us into accepting both endings and beginnings. She shows us that wisdom often comes through release rather than acquisition. She teaches us that true beauty emerges not from maintaining but from allowing, allowing ourselves to be marked by life, to be transformed by time, to be sculpted by experience into vessels capable of holding greater truth.

And the moment a woman stops resisting this natural evolution and instead claims it as her birthright, she becomes dangerous to every system built on keeping women small, insecure, and disconnected from their deepest power.

This is why they fear the Crone. Not for what she does, but for what she knows. Not for what she demands, but for what she refuses. Not for what she builds, but for what she has the wisdom to let go.

When we reclaim the mysteries of the dark feminine through Crone initiation, we don't just transform ourselves, we become agents of transformation for our families, communities, and cultures.

Reclaiming Our Birthright

I believe we're at a tipping point. I feel it in my bones, and perhaps you do too. The ancestral memories are stirring. The old ways are whispering through dreams and synchronicities. The Crone energy is rising, refusing to be silenced any longer.

Women are remembering what patriarchy tried to make us forget. We're waking up to the sacred nature of our initiation through time. We're beginning to question why we've accepted diminishment when our natural trajectory should be toward amplification, expansion, spiritual sovereignty.

What might happen if we collectively rejected the notion that a woman's power decreases with age and instead claimed the truth, that we become cosmic portals, wisdom keepers, and sacred authorities?

What if we recognized that the changes in our bodies aren't degeneration but initiation, the caterpillar doesn't mourn the cocoon; she celebrates the emergence of wings.

What if we understood that our culture's obsession with female youth isn't about aesthetics but about silencing the prophetic voice of the elder woman, the one who sees through illusions, who speaks inconvenient truths, who remembers what came before and can envision what could be.

The reclamation of the sacred Crone isn't merely a personal choice; it's a revolutionary act. When women refuse to vanish into insignificance as they age (when they instead step more fully into their authority, embrace their mystical gifts, and claim their place as wisdom carriers) they shatter the foundations of systems built on control through fear.

This is why it feels so difficult, so countercultural, to embrace aging. Because it is. It's a direct confrontation with structures designed to keep you doubting your own evolution, your own becoming, your own sacred authority.

But here's the truth that pulses beneath all the propaganda: You were never meant to remain a maiden forever. Your soul designed this journey through all phases of feminine power, culminating in the profound sovereignty of the Crone.

The initiation is calling. Can you hear her? She speaks in the quiet moments, in the dreams that wake you at 3 AM, in the sudden knowing that arises when you stop trying to preserve youth and start honoring wisdom.

Listen closely. The Crone aspect of yourself is speaking across time: "I am your future. I am your power. I am what you're meant to become. Stop running from me. I am the treasure you seek, disguised as what you fear. Come home to yourself. Come home to me."

The Wisdom We Desperately Need

Our world teeters on multiple precipices: ecological collapse, spiritual bankruptcy, collective trauma bleeding across generations. The linear, extractive consciousness that created these crises cannot solve them. We need something older, deeper, more rooted in natural law.

Enter the Crone, she who holds the memory of cycles within cycles, who understands the regenerative power of death-and-rebirth, who knows that nothing is truly lost but only transformed. Her perspective spans lifetimes, her wisdom crosses thresholds our modern minds can barely comprehend.

The elder woman, still connected to the rhythms of earth and moon, attuned to the whispers of ancestors, keeper of medicines both herbal and spiritual, she is the bridge between what was and what could be. While youth culture chases the next shiny thing, the Crone points to the eternal patterns that could guide us through these dark nights.

When we silence her, when we teach her to diminish herself, when we convince her that her moon-blood wisdom has no value once it flows inward rather than outward, we reject the very consciousness that might midwife us through this planetary crisis.

Look at our decision-making structures. Notice where the Crone's voice should be and often isn't. Is it any wonder we perpetuate harm when we exclude the perspective that naturally prioritizes the seventh generation? That considers the ancestors as well as the descendants? That weighs every action against the long arc of cosmic justice?

This isn't just about representation or equality, though these matter deeply. This is about accessing a form of knowing that youth-obsessed culture has systematically suppressed. The Crone doesn't think linearly; she thinks cyclically. She doesn't seek control; she facilitates flow. She doesn't impose solutions; she aligns with natural law.

The feminine wisdom in its elder form carries exactly what humanity needs to navigate climate chaos, social upheaval, and spiritual disconnection. She knows how to tend what's dying with reverence. She knows how to midwife what's being born with patience. She knows when to intervene and when to allow nature's intelligence to work its transformation.

When we exclude Crone wisdom from our collective problem-solving (whether in politics, economics, education, or spirituality) we choose to navigate by half a compass. We wonder why our solutions create new problems, why our "progress" often degenerates into regression, why our attempts at healing perpetuate wounding.

The path forward requires returning to the medicine of the elder woman, not as last resort but as first wisdom. Not as auxiliary support but as primary guidance. Not as quaint spiritual decorating but as fundamental life-sustaining knowledge.

Everything we need to heal ourselves and our world lives in the knowing of women who have walked this earth long enough to see patterns within patterns, who have loved and lost enough to value what truly matters, who have witnessed enough endings to trust beginnings, who have survived enough darkness to know light's preciousness.

The Crone's return isn't about replacing one system with another but about remembering the deeper order that allows all systems to serve their true purpose, the continuation of life in sacred harmony with natural law.

The Personal Journey to Feminine Wholeness

I want to speak directly to you now

yes, you,

the woman reading these words and feeling the ancient frequencies stirring within your bones.

What would it mean for your life if you embraced rather than resisted the natural evolution of your soul through these vessels we call bodies? If you recognized that every gray hair carries an ancestral whisper, every line tells a sacred story, every change in your womb space marks an expansion in your cosmic space?

I'm not asking you to throw away your beauty rituals if they honor your temple.

I'm asking about your relationship with your own mystery, the mystery of becoming who you were always meant to be.

What might awaken if you stopped viewing aging as an enemy to be fought and started experiencing it as an initiation to be honored? What gifts might emerge if you welcomed your changing form as the external expression of internal spiritual advancement?

The journey begins with recognizing the lies you've internalized as truth.

Every time you notice yourself wishing you were younger, pause.

Ask: what am I really longing for? Usually it's not youth itself but the freedom, confidence, or power you believe youth provides, yet these very qualities amplify with the Crone initiation.

To welcome the deepening of intuition that comes when life has trained us to recognize truth beneath surface appearances.

To honor the boundaries that strengthen as we tire of betraying ourselves to please others.

To celebrate the decreasing tolerance for relationships and situations that drain our essence.

To recognize that what society calls "confidence" in youth is merely preparation for the sovereign authority that is the elder woman's birthright.

The ancient priestesses didn't pass their wisdom to apprentices. They passed it to women who had walked through fire and emerged refined rather than burned. They passed it to women who had lost enough illusions to see what remains. They passed it to women who had answered the call to become themselves fully.

You are that woman, even if you don't feel like her yet. Even if you're still fighting your own becoming. Even if you're early in the journey of reclaiming your sovereign wisdom.

The Crone within you sees everything. She knows every wound that needs healing. She recognizes every gift waiting to be claimed. She remembers your soul's true purpose from before you were taught to doubt it.

When you call her forward, through meditation, dreamwork, ceremony, or simply intention, you're not summoning someone foreign. You're reclaiming aspects of yourself that your culture convinced you didn't exist or weren't valuable.

In shamanic traditions, they say that at certain points in life, you must retrieve soul parts that were lost or given away. The Crone initiation is just such a retrieval, bringing home the wisdom, authority, and spiritual power that is rightfully yours but was surrendered to cultural programming.

Each woman's journey looks different. Some awaken gradually through subtle inner shifts. Others experience dramatic initiations that shatter old identities completely. Some move through grief as they release who they thought they were meant to be. Others feel immediate relief when they stop trying to be someone they're not.

But one universal truth remains: when you align with your natural evolution instead of fighting it, when you honor the Crone as ally instead of enemy, when you claim your birthright as wisdom keeper, you don't just heal yourself. You become a healing presence in the world.

Your children learn different possibilities. Your community witnesses alternative models of aging. Your very existence challenges the systems that profit from women's insecurity. You become the elder your ancestors longed for their daughters to become.

The choice before us isn't really about looking young or old. It's about whether we'll answer the call to evolve into the wise women, the sovereign women, the medicine women this world desperately needs, or remain forever suspended in an illusion that serves everyone but ourselves.

The Crone whispers: "Come home to yourself. Come home to me. Come home to us."

Can you hear her calling?

And most importantly…

Are you brave enough to answer?