Welcome to the Crone Zone
Cronehood is really just a state of mind.
I have a print hanging in my living room that I’m sure people assume is a sketch of someone I know—or that it was, at the very least, drawn by someone I know. Neither are right, although I get how you’d be mistaken. The drawing feels intimate, but not at all quiet—transformed by a loving gaze, someone we might otherwise overlook is celebrated in all her glory.
I saw this print online and knew I had to have it immediately. One look at her and I thought, “That’s who I want to be when I grow up.”
The work is titled “The Sunset Queen”, by British artist Sarah Morgan. In it, a white-haired woman leans back in her lawn chair, gazing out at the viewer, the bright orange rays of the setting sun glowing all around her. She’s wearing sunglasses, so you can’t get a detailed read on her expression, but you get the sense she’s vaguely irritated that you’ve interrupted her during her favorite time of day.
Here is where I begin to do some extrapolating, although I don’t think any of this fiction is a stretch. In the narrative I’ve created, Sunset Queen is unapologetic about her desires. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She does not take the beauty of the world around her for granted. She wants nothing to do with anyone who would write her evening ritual off as dull or unproductive. Just because the sun sets every day does not make its descent any less special. As for the charge of unproductivity? She only sees that as a positive. By now, she’s been around long enough to know that her worth has nothing to do with whether or not she’s measured up to somebody else’s arbitrary idea of success. She is done sacrificing herself at the altar of capitalism in the hopes that she’ll someday be rewarded, because she knows to do so is a masochistic exercise in futility.
Have I mentioned I want to be her when I grow up?
You may be thinking, please, for the love of god. Get to the point. I hate to break it to you, but that was never my strong suit. If it’s a “point” you’re after, you’re in the wrong corner of Substack. Maybe the real point was the friends we made along the way. Etc. etc.
For those of you who are still here: I promise Sunset Queen is connected to what I’m trying to do in this post, which is explain why I decided to name this Substack “Withered Young Crone.”
I assume your first question when you saw my title was something like: Wait. Aren’t crones…old? Canonically, yes. And your second was most likely, Okay, but aren’t they also usually evil? Sometimes! Although that is where things get a little more complicated, for reasons I’ll dive into in a moment. But whether they’re portrayed as benevolent or villainous, crones are almost always wise, powerful, and most importantly, free.
Even if you aren’t super familiar with the word crone, you’ve probably been exposed to crone-like figures just by virtue of being a person in the world who consumes stories. The crone is an archetype that appears over and over again, across time and cultures. There’s Elli, who defeats Thor in a wrestling match; Spider Grandmother, a character featured in the lore of several Native American tribes, including the Hopi and Navajo; Cailleach, who in Gaelic mythology seizes control of the world from Samhain (the first day of winter) to Beltane (the first day of summer); Yama-uba from Japan, a spirit who likes to target lost travelers; and Baba Yaga, a cannibalistic witch who is said to live deep in the woods in a hut that stands on chicken legs.
More contemporary portrayals of the crone include the Evil Queen from Snow White, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Melisandre from Game of Thrones.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
This is somewhat of an oversimplification, but for the sake of not making this post 20,000 words long, way before the word crone ever existed, portrayals of older, crone-like spiritual figures tended to emphasize their regenerative power. Elderly women spirits and goddesses symbolized death, but not as we understand it today—that is, as a finality that ends in nothingness. They represented death as a natural and necessary part of a cycle that must take place in order for the world to be born anew. These feminine figures were feared, but they were also treated with a great deal of reverence.
At a certain point—which, wow, would you look at that, just so happens to coincide with the rise of monotheistic, patriarchal religious traditions!!!!—older female archetypes like these were stripped of any meaningful power, relegated to the background of religious texts and folklore and rendered, at best, semi-invisible helpers, and at worst, objects of disgust and contempt. In fact, the word crone first appeared in the 14th century and is derived from an Anglo-Norman insult, carogne, which roughly translated, means “carrion” or “carcass.” Neat!!!
In the tales we’re familiar with today, more often than not crones are portrayed as villains with petty vendettas (usually against literal teenagers), a creative choice that feels directed towards impressionable young women (who might be thinking about straying from their socially-prescribed paths).
In certain feminist and neopagan circles, there have been efforts to formally reclaim the word. The poet and classicist Robert Graves may have kicked these efforts off by situating the crone inside a (not-particularly-historical) triumvirate he called the “Triple Goddesses,” comprised of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. Modern paganism took this concept and ran with it—today, some women hold ceremonies to formally mark their transition into cronehood, which they see as a stage of life defined by wisdom and serenity. (By the way, as a resident of Portland, there’s no way there aren’t dozens of croning ceremonies happening all around me on a daily basis. Alas, I have yet to receive an invite to one. Maybe someday!?!!)
On a more personal level—and I can’t believe I’m sharing this so close on the heels of the entire post I did about how I love tarot but don’t really believe in its ability to divine the future—I once went to an astrologer who took one look at my birth chart and proclaimed that it was giving “big crone energy.” She said it admiringly, making it the first time I had ever heard anyone use the word “crone” to describe a status one should be proud of. (I forget the exact reasoning, but it had something to do with significant water and 8th house placements in my chart.)
It sounds silly, I know, but for some reason this felt like the permission I needed to get back in touch with the inner weirdo I’ve worked overtime to suppress since I was a kid. By nature, I’m a socially-anxious loner who has always been, shall we say, a little obsessed with finding my place in the world. (Not a great combination!) Until recently, I thought the solution was to be the nicest, politest, most broadly palatable version of myself, and so I worked very, very hard for a very long time to be as generally inoffensive as a person could be.
But you know what? I’m tired of it. And I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way.
That’s really where the title of this Substack comes in. The archetype of the crone has a lot to teach all of us about self-actualization and the importance of questioning the status quo and finding the courage to remake yourself, over and over, until you land on a version of you that you can live with. (Side note, should we just call them sunset queens from now on? I mean, the symbolism!!!! It’s perfect!!!!!!)
Another way of thinking about it is, if you find yourself torn between what you really want and what you think the world thinks you should want, ask yourself, “What would a mystical old woman living in a swamp do???” And do that. Unless the answer is “gobble up children who have wandered too far into the woods”—this is the one case where I would maybe suggest doing the more socially acceptable thing.
The world continues to burn down around us, so you might as well dance like no one is watching (naked, under the full moon, with the rest of your coven and some demon friends). Go on and move to that wooden hut built on chicken legs. Quit your 9 to 5 and devote your life to striking fear into the hearts of men. Or, at the very least, take in as many sunsets as you possibly can.
Today’s rabbit hole(s):
Vice explores the resurgence of unlikely feminist icon Baba Yaga
LMFT Dorothy Bevcar discusses her own croning ceremony: Tracking the Archetype of the Wise Woman/Crone
My favorite benevolent crone
The Sesame Street episode that was banned for being “too scary” (via Mental Floss):