Crone

I know there is a negative side to the Crone, but your own tuning fork will tell you whether she's lived through her own crossroads. If she hasn't, don't trust her. She'll be into power. Another quality of a mature Crone is a developed masculinity.

Woodman defines the mature Crone through her freedom from ego-investment and power, while insisting on a negative pole identifiable by whether she has genuinely endured her own transformative crisis.

Woodman, Marion, Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993thesis

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It is as if the old crone, representing the psyche's transpersonal core herself 'wants' to incarnate in the human world but can do so (given the traumatic splitting we hypothesize) only through the transformation drama that unfolds through her agency.

Kalsched reads the recurring fairy-tale crone as an image of the psyche's own superordinate urgency toward wholeness, the agency behind the entire transformation drama in traumatically split psyches.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

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this sort of story originally presented the crone playing the part of the initiator/trouble-causer, making things difficult for the sweet Jung heroine so embarkation from the land of the living to the land of the dead could occur.

Estés argues that the crone's original mythic role is initiatory trouble-causer who forces the heroine's descent into her deeper nature, a function obscured by later devil-substitution in Christian-influenced tellings.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

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the Queen, in great sorrow, consulted an old crone who lived in the forest and was told th

Kalsched introduces the crone of the forest as the first point of transpersonal counsel in a tale he reads as depicting the archetypal defense system operating through traumatic splitting.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting

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It manifests as the dream father, mentor, old wise man or knowing crone, to which the dreamer's consciousness is pupil.

Hillman situates the knowing crone as a senex manifestation in dreams, noting that her authority can as readily foster paralysing dependence as genuine wisdom.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting

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Among the American Indians of the Southwest the favorite personage in this benignant role is Spider Woman—a grandmotherly little dame who lives underground.

Campbell documents the cross-cultural pattern of the benignant crone-figure — the decrepit old woman or underground grandmother — as the supernatural helper who enables the hero's passage.

Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting

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LeGuin, 'The Space Crone,' The CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer, 1976, pp. 108-110; see also Downing, Journey through Menopause, 1987; Walker, The Crone, 1985.

Signell's bibliography clusters Walker's monograph on the Crone with feminist and Jungian texts on menopause and women's elderhood, signalling the term's currency in gynocentric depth-psychological scholarship.

Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting

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Walker, Barbara G. The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.

A bibliographic citation of Walker's foundational text on the Crone as an archetype of female age, wisdom, and power, confirming the term's scholarly standing within the Jungian feminist literature.

Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991aside

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