The Crone by Barbara G. Walker

Author:Barbara G. Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

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The Crone and the Cauldron

Shakespeare’s three Weird Sisters, chanting over their cauldron, were direct descendants of the Triple Goddess Wyrd, or Weird (Fate), worshiped by Shakespeare’s ancestors. More than eight centuries before the lifetime of the bard of Avon, the author of Beowulf revered the Goddess Wyrd who was also “the Word” (Wurd), writing the fate of every man in her book of life. She was another form of Eostre, the Easter Goddess said to have come from the land beyond the Ganges, that is, the home of Triple Kali, who also wrote each man’s fate in her sacred Sanskrit letters.1

Similarly, the three Norns of Scandinavian myth were known as Die Schreiberinnen, “the Writing Women”; and Rome’s Triple Goddess Fortuna was known as Fata Scribunda, “the Fate Who Writes.”2 Beowulf said the decrees of Wyrd were always final. Every man would have to bend his head reverently to her will.3 In Greece the fatal female trinity controlled even the will of Zeus, who claimed paternal authority over all gods. According to Ovid, Fate was the Triple Goddess who “abhors boastful words,” warning men to receive her edicts humbly, whether they brought good fortune or bad.4 In the time of the Roman Empire, the Goddess Fate elicited “a passionate surrender” that has been compared to the eagerness of later Christian mystics to submit to the will of God.5

In the eleventh century A.D., Burchardus of Worms said people still honored the three Fates at the turn of the year, laying tables with food and drink for them, with three knives to cut the Three Sisters’ meat.6 In the twelfth century, the bishop of Exeter scolded those who laid tables with three knives for “the fairies” (fays, Fates), “that they may predestinate good to such as are born in the house.”7 Ecclesiastical disapproval notwithstanding, the Weird Sisters were recognized in Tudor England not only as witches, but also as the Fairy Godmothers who came to each infant’s cradle “for to set to the babe what shall befall to him.”8 Gypsies never ceased to lay three pieces of bread on a baby’s bed, “one for each Goddess of Fate.”9

Why were the Wyrd/Weird Sisters, the Norns, the Fortunae, and other versions of the Triple Goddess so often associated with cauldrons?

Whatever Shakespeare may have said, the witch’s cauldron seems to have been much more than a vessel for stewing newts’ eyes, frogs’ toes, or any other magical recipe. In the Middle Ages, the chief symbol standing in opposition to the male cross was the female cauldron. The vessel was an important and central symbol in pagan religion.

Variations on the northern Goddess Wyrd included Wurd (the Word) and Urd (Earth, Erda), whose “mighty roaring cauldron” lay deep at the root of the World Tree, that is to say at the foundation of the universe. It was tended by the Triple Goddess herself, in the shape of the Norns. This fount of life was sometimes known as Urdarbrunnr, the Stream of Urd.10 The cauldron was usually described as the source of life, wisdom, inspiration, understanding, and magic.

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