Four Aspects of the Goddess & the Wheel of the Year

By Norma Joyce

“These are the missing pieces I’ve been looking for! Simple enough for the beginners and full of aha! moments for those who think they have already heard it all. Maiden, mother, woman, crone circles the wheel of the year seamlessly. I feel as though she has always been . . . aha! welcoming revelations and insights from Norma Joyce as she dances her spiral dance. A glimpse of the goddess through the third eye of a high priestess. No library is complete without this one. Waiting for next book isn’t going to be easy. Thank you, Norma” (Susan Walker).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524537425

Norma Joyce

I have been a priestess since Women in Conscious Creative Action became a national coven in 1983. During that time, it has been my pleasure to work with people, hold gatherings, retreats, and rituals. It has been my life path, and the goddess has helped me know the steps to take. From childhood on, I have felt the change that is happening for the planet and the living life that has come to it. It has been my blessed work, learning about the many things that have become societies and now will or are changing as we move further and further into the Age of Aquarius. Each of us have felt that change, and even as we go on with our mundane life—working, raising children, keeping house, helping family—each of us have felt the changes that are happening. We have felt the touch of the goddess, and we know that we have work to do on our path. I hope the words in this book can help you understand the four aspects and will know what each time of your life has been—will be—a part of her. Blessed be on every step of your path.

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Copyright © 2016 by Norma Joyce.

ISBN:                  Softcover                  978-1-5245-3743-2

                            eBook                        978-1-5245-3742-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 02/06/2018

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV Maiden

Chapter 5 Mother

Chapter 6 Woman

Chapter 7 Crone

Chapter 8

Appendix 1

Appendix II

Appendix III

I would like to give my deepest thanks to my son, Eric, for helping me keep the computer going, and not losing his temper with my lack of computer knowledge. Also the women in my Wing who have listened to me talk about this for a long time. The women who read it, and gave me support, Holly Baggett, Kerry Holmes, Nancy Lee, Michaela O’Connor and Susan Walker. These women, along with my partner, Majik, for her continuing support and my daughter, Jane-ellen, who are dear to my heart. When I went to think about who I wanted to thank I thought of all the hundreds of women who have taught me things, over the years, so even if your name isn’t here you are in my thanks.

To Vardis Fisher, who taught me to use my mind, again:

Upon the geography of space, there are no boundaries where all is infinite, nor age where time is only the measure of change within the changeless, nor death where life is the indestructible pulse of energy in the hot and the cold. There is no morning or noon or evening for what has always been and will be. There has been no beginning and there can be no end. But there is and has been and will always be that continuous change in appearance of things which, in the small catalog of finite perceptions, is known as birth and growth, evolution and progress, age and death.

Darkness and the Deep 1943

When the world was new

And all life was one

She shimmered on the seas

and in the air

the earth blossomed and became

She

      Who is one, Life

And life grew in the seas

The Tides moved

and kissed the Moon

The water moved in our bodies and became

She

      Who is two. Earth and Sea

And the people changed

Saw life in parts

and wholeness was fragmented

The facets of the jewels became

She

      Who is three, Mother, Maid, Crone

Now we are moving

Into a new time/energy

and movement swirls

As one who becomes

She

      Who is four, we celebrate Woman.

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Introduction

Forty years ago when I first, officially, became involved with goddess/Goddess spirituality I had difficulty fitting the three aspects of the Goddess with the four phases of the Moon. I struggled and pushed to make it fit, and then just accepted that not all things are neat and tidy, the way I like them. I thought of it as one of the mysteries.

In 1985 when I was organizing the first Festival of Women’s Spirituality, in Oregon, I suggested to the panel members, the theme speakers, that we address the fourth aspect of the Goddess. No one was interested. In fact they kind of looked me like I had lost my mind to want to bring up something that was not relevant to women’s awaking spirituality.

This became a nagging push within myself. I wanted to explore this concept more, with other women who like to talk about concepts and perhapses. And I couldn’t find anyone who found it as interesting as I did. They would listen and say, yes, it could be that there are four aspects, but so what, and they would go with other topics.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that it was more then so what. It was important for us as women, in this society, in this culture and this time. As time went on I realized why this was important and how the Moon and the four aspects of the Goddess all came together. I would like to explore that concept with you now, to help the goddess within, and our collective energy creating the Goddess.

Goddess Bless,

Norma

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Chapter I

Our foremothers died at a young age. Some, like my Grandmother, lived until their mid-seventies, but they were thought of as exceptions, and it was not the case for her Mother or Grandmother. We, as women, were Crones at 40. There was not much written, or studied about Menopause because not many women lived through it. Women were thought of as the aberration of being human so their conditions were not addressed. There was another reason that it was not written about, and that was because it was felt that once a woman was past childbearing age there was not much use for her. It was over, their usefulness was over. In some cultures older women became the childcare workers as the young women went into the fields. In our industrial society this work was not seen as valuable, because it did not bring in money. In Patriarchal societies it was not seen as something important for future generations to have the wisdom of the foremothers given to them.

I was fortunate to be brought up in a household that was extended, with aunts and uncles, but more important, my Grandmother was the matriarch of the clan. She was thought of as the wise woman, who was living a full life. She was also thought of as an old woman at 50, and that was not just a child’s view of an adult. This perception came from the behavior of the adults around her. I have pictures of her holding a baby, that she had delivered in her role as midwife/nurse, and she had the aura of being an old woman. This picture came from about the time she was in her 50s.

One of the concerns of our society is teen pregnancies. In the days gone by the age that was expected for women to marry, and bear children, was 16 or younger. We have moved our societal expectations forward and we no longer condone early marriages or childbearing. In Oregon we have a settlement of Russian Old Believers, in their society the young women are married at about fourteen. This is to keep them busy with babies, so they won’t become loose, and as a means of keeping their culture intact. It is possible for the Old Believers to keep to the old ways because most are farmers and integrate the young men into the work on the farm, and the families help to support these young couples.

Childhood in the past, in a lot of cases, ended at six or seven when the children went into the fields or factories. Now we aren’t sure we want children to cross the street alone at six.

I know that we live in a different world than my Grandfather did when he went into the factory at the age of seven. Or when my Grandmother came to the United States, by herself, at twelve. Just as we can no longer look at the past for our marital and childbearing standards, we can no longer look to the past for our forms, our words, our expression of our spirituality. We are moving into a new Age and it is time we brought our spirituality up to date.

There are a lot of people who are feeling confused about the changes that are happening and are grasping at anything to give them stability. They are the people who see their religion as clothing to protect them from change. They don’t welcome change, they hide from it. I want to welcome the changes that are coming into being and at the same time I want to have forms to help me celebrate those changes.

I don’t think it will help us, in the long run, to look to the past to find ways to express our deep longings, our milestones, our emotions. I think we need to be open to new ideas and allow our minds to expand with the potential of what change could mean.

When I am talking about the changes I am not talking about earth or political changes. I am talking about deep cellular-level changes. Changes that can happen to us at the cellular-level and we are not even aware of them as they are happening. We will only know when we look back and realize the differences that have come about.

We have four levels in our being. The physical, which includes the cellular; the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. If any of these change, change will also occur in all others. We have seen it often that as you change your physical activity, or what you are eating, the emotional will follow in increased ability to handle situations that before would have been devastating. We can see this in children who are malnourished who are not developing mentality. We are not the four separate parts, we are one in wholeness. Even when that wholeness is not functioning at full capacity there is still the connection and the wholeness is unbalanced, but it is still there.

When this wholeness is being deprived in any one area, all areas will suffer. A person who does not have enough to eat will not care very much about his/her spiritual growth, and then will start having problems with the physical first and then the mental, and emotional parts of their life. The spiritual becomes something that can not be felt, in most cases, but is something to be feared. They can start having thoughts about being punished by a higher power, and a spiritual well-being will become a religious fear. A person who lives, constantly, in a stressful situation will soon find themselves with health problems and will not be able to think clearly. People who have been blocked, for one reason or another, in their mental abilities will find that they are not able to understand the need for wholesome food and will become depressed and fearful because they are not gaining new information. In all of these situations the spirit becomes diminished and causes other parts to sink further down into the mire of soulless living.

This can become a downward spiral that will take a major shaking up to stop. Usually the Goddess brings that to us in the form of a time of chaos followed by a time of loss. This shaking up brings some people to the realization that something needs to be done about the situation, and to others they go further down the spiral.

It might be a serious health crisis, to the point where total life/living comes into the spot light, and is examined to find the weak area that is causing the dis-ease. If there are not changes at this time then the body can opp out of this life and tries again with another body at another time and place.

For the people that are hearing/feeling/sensing the changes the spot light is turned on, and the living of their life comes into balance. It is at this time that a lot of people no longer find satisfaction in the substances that numbed their awareness, or the relationship that kept them in turmoil, or the mind numbing staring at TV. They leave their religious beliefs that are blocking their spiritual development and come to terms with the very fact that only they are in control of what they put into the body they are living in. Whether that putting in is food, other people’s negative thinking, mind robbing rot, literal religion, or, so called, entertainment it is still going into us and becoming part of the damaged whole.

Once we allow our self to feel the changes at the level of our very being we then find our self changing in ways, and directions, that we didn’t even know we wanted to go. Relationships that we thought we couldn’t live without are no longer holding us. Food that we craved no longer satisfies our taste when we put it into our mouth. These changes become us, the essence of our being. They are now our way of looking at the world and we live in complete integrity with all parts of self in balance.

We forget that we were worried to death just a few short months ago, and it seems a silly game we have been playing to keep our self from the true reason for our coming to this life, in this time.

I believe that women are feeling these changes in ways that they can no longer deny. They reach out and find that in a lot of cases there is no one to grasp their hand. They feel lost because there is not a structure, a form, to express these changes. They have a deep longing to celebrate these changes with women who are feeling them also. They are feeling what true wholeness can feel like, and it feels scary to them, because they have never felt this soaring filled/empty feeling before. They want to grasp another woman’s hand to ground themselves, and they find that it is not really to ground themselves, but to celebrate.

Each year more and more women are feeling the changes that they have made and what the cosmos is bringing at the cellular level. They start reaching out and celebrating with other women of like thinking. Look at how many books have been published each year on women’s spirituality! How many could you find twenty years ago? This is not a fad. This is an energy shift that is being felt worldwide. This is the divine feminine energy that has been repressed for thousands of years saying, IT IS TIME! It is time to balance out the energy that has been so one-sided, so that we can enter this new age with joy and full-wholeness.

It is with these changes that women are feeling the deep need to help other women gain independence from the downward spiral of the out of balance life, and to enable them to think for themselves. People are waking up to these changes. They are waking up to the danger that this planet is in. The danger that was caused by greed and a belief in the right to rape anything, and anyone, that doesn’t have the power to stop you.

And yet what is this power? The power to hire and fire people at a whim, and the next day for you to be fired off your throne? This is not true power. Power over is only an illusion, and can only continue when people are willing to say that your illusion is real. It is the story of the Emperor’s new clothes over and over again, and we have been taught, in the past, to believe it.

Now we are saying, no, the Emperor doesn’t have new clothes, in fact, he is bare-bottomed and we are all bare-bottomed under the clothes of illusion we wear. We are also