Two Months and a Triad

[hapaxnym]

Yes, I know that it's been two months since I posted anything.

There has been Stuff What Happened.

But I don't want to talk about that right now.  So I'll talk about triads instead.

One of my online hangouts had been talking about Female Archetypes, specifically the classic triad of Maiden / Mother / Crone.  There is great power in these archetypes -

Comments

[nenya_kanadka]

I have not read the books in question, but I would say that YES, this triad speaks to me. :) As soon as you said "warrior" I thought "healer" for one of the others, but wasn't sure what the third would be. Warrior, Healer, and Queen sound wonderful.

I'm watching a lot of Babylon 5 these days and thinking how these would map onto people like Delenn or Susan Ivanova. (Or, for that matter, Talia Winters.) Susan is, of course, a Warrior, and to me Delenn is a Queen (both in that the word "goddess" keeps coming up in discussions with my friends, and in that one of her temptations is definitely to a extremely...flexible...approach to strict honesty at times). That leaves Talia (or Lyta?) for the Healer, which doesn't quite fit, although they are both telepaths in search of, among other things, stability and safety for their own people. Both are weapons at times, though.

Anyway, enough B5 rambling, but these three speak to me a lot. I think if I am any of them, I tend towards the Healer, while admiring the other two greatly.

[hapaxnym]

Oh, I am so glad these work outside the context of the books.

It is interesting that you cast telepaths as Healers, since the model (Fire) was a telepath as well, and most of her healing took place in that context.

And of course, a surgeon wields a weapon.

(I love archetypes and could talk about them ALL DAY)

[nenya_kanadka]

True about surgeons. In both Lyta and Talia's cases, they're made weapons without their consent, so "Sacrificing your own identity to others, loss of agency" applies there. They do fight that in various ways, with varying success. But I can completely see a teep being a healer.

I may link to this from my journal, if that's all right. I've never found maiden/mother/crone at all useful, though I understand it works for some people. Too much biology as destiny, for me. :) So thank you!

[hapaxnym]

Please, feel free.

[muccamukk]

In from a friend who linked me over. I really like this trio of symbols. I was never a huge fan of maiden/mother/crone, in any case.

My one quibble would be the use of the sword to stand for the warrior. I know women warriors use swords in that setting, but it's such a classic phallic symbol. It's almost like saying, "You get the penis! Go do the boy stuff!" It doesn't bother me as much with the queen and the keys for some reason.

[hapaxnym]

Yeah, I actually thought long and hard about the sword, because of the phallic associations

[muccamukk]

I totally see what you mean, but =for me the sword, more than anything else, is inseparably bound up with phallic symbolism. Which, as you say, isn't ideal for men or women, but, again for me, the act of reclaiming it really bogs down your symbolism.

I like Xena's Chakram, but it might be a little too Xena!. Talia in the Princess series has that whip thing. Dagger could work too. I like the viscous close combat associations.

Edit for punctuation.

[girasole]

You always amaze and delight.

I like these, very much. I confess the maiden/mother/crone works very deeply for me, but these work, too, in different ways.

I must read Bitterblue, which I don't have a copy of yet. I guess I will wait until the book is actually out.

[hapaxnym]

[Waves hi]

Yeah, I thought about holding off on this until Bitterblue was published, but I want to talk about it RIGHT NOW, darn it -- and this really isn't spoilery. I'd send you my copy, but hapaxdaughter has first dibs, as you might guess. Would you like it when she's done?

I must admit, you were actually the first person I thought of when the discussion arose about "moving beyond" the Maiden/Mother/Crone, because I can see how it works for you so well. (And you are all three at once -- you know that, don't you? -- I don't know how you pull that off.)

[girasole]

Yes, I am. I always have been. Friends in college remarked on both the mother and crone when I was neither; that was more than forty years ago. Thank you for seeing it.

I will wait for Bitterblue in finished copy. Every so often I want to read something NOT in galley, but in its final form, and so it shall be.

Did you love it? Is it going to break my heart?

[hapaxnym]

Yes. And yes. (But in good way).

[kisekileia]

Interesting! I can relate to all those archetypes--they connect to different times of my life and different facets of my personality. It's a bit hard to pick one, but I'd say I probably lean towards Queen right now. Where I am in terms of Maiden/Mother/Crone is clearer--I'm near the Maiden/Mother transition. (Late twenties, just moved in with my boyfriend, looking for work to get myself financially independent, hoping to have kids in a few years.)

[takumashii]

I may not be reliable on this because my whole field of vision is clouded by the envy caused by knowing that other people are reading Bitterblue and they are not me.

Actually, I don't know that this speaks to me, because I do so much better (she says modestly) in "intelligence" than I do at "leadership." I definitely don't feel like a healer or a warrior, but neither do I feel like a queen -- whenever I even think about being a library branch manager I think "No way, no how, not for me." That's not to say it's a bad conceptualization, at all -- it's hard to imagine any ways of lumping people together into only three groups that doesn't leave anybody out, and I like the idea of a division that has more to do with character than with age and fertility.