MAIDEN: the crescent moon, viginal and delicate, grows stronger and brighter each night, appearing higher & higher in the sky as it comes to greater fullness. Ancient men & women have interpreted this phase of the moon to represent the young girl growing stronger with each passing day. She's the pure, independent athlete and huntress, who in Mediterranean Goddess lore was called Diana & Artemis. As she matures into a powerful woman warrior, or Amazon, she learns to defend herself and the children that she will someday birth into existence. In some cultures this free and independent Goddess is the Lady of the Wild Things and presides over the hunting rituals. In her hand she holds the hunting horn, taken from the cows and bulls that are her special animals. The horn is shaped like the crescent moon. Power of the Witch.

MOTHER: The full moon, when the night sky is flooded with light, is represented as a mother Goddess, her womb swollen with new life.... In the mother aspect of the full moon, the Goddess of the hunt also becomes the Queen of the Harvest, the Great Corn Mother, who bestows her bounty upon the earth..... In America she was the Corn Maiden, who brought maize to nourish the people......

CRONE: At some point in every woman's life the menstrual cycle ends. She ceases to bleed with the moon. She retains her blood forever, or so it must have seemed to our ancestors. She holds her power, and so she is power-full. She is an elder. She is the wise old crone..... The Greek Goddess Hecate, Goddess of Night, Death, and Crossroads, embodied this Crone......

And so from birth, to puberty, to motherhood, to old age and death, the eternal return of life is intimately bound up in every woman, no matter what phase of her own life she is currently in..... By Laurie Cabot