'Old' Goddesses

Despite gaunt bodies, sagging breasts and stomachs, goddesses present us with powerful images of old women

- Saswati Sengupta

DID you ever call any woman a crone? Did you ever get called one? The slur associates, as though naturally, the disagreeable with the ageing female body. Crone etymologically relates to the French word for carcass. But the earliest known usage of the noun crone, in the sense of the withered hag, dates only to the Middle English Period beginning from the 13th century or so. This conjunction of the decaying female body and disparagement appears then to be the mark of a certain order of history.

In the earliest religious layers of most cultures, the old and the young female selves were mythically understood as the anthropomorphic features of the earth. It was a recognition of the Earth Mother as the source of life who embraces growth and decay; receives corpses and sprouts crops. She symbolised the organic cycle of life. The old mother and the young maiden represented a symbiotic relationship rather than one of derision and desire.