Halloween is for Crones
Long before I was Crone I loved Halloween best of all. The holiday of imagination. The holiday of “What if?” To wear a different identity and wander unafraid through the night was the very definition of what was possible.
It’s no accident that when we grow up we set aside Halloween as a childish thing. Our children carry the banner of that freedom. But then comes a moment later in life when Halloween regains its power, when we are the epitome of what it means to slip between worlds. Because Halloween is for Crones.
When I reclaimed All Hallows as an older woman I was a pirate for years. More recently I’ve become a fortune teller. My tarot deck does not tell the future, it tells the now: What will you create next? What will I? And on the night of October 31st, what fears will we render obsolete? What new powers will we embrace?
My newest book is set in the Middle Ages, long before Halloween candy, when All Hallow’s Eve meant bells rung for the dead, and soul cakes, and paid prayers to shorten the soul’s time in purgatory. I wrote about a young girl bringing her uncle’s heart back from battle in a pewter mug, and making love with a vampire, and how sex with the undead can go wrong. I wrote about the immense power this girl gained as an older woman and how that power grew as she passed the century mark and the five century mark.
But even vampires die someday, and Halloween is also a celebration of impermanence. One aspect of our power is seeing the other side of the veil and knowing we are both here and there. We embrace the artifice of time and the fragility of life. This in our present culture that fears death, that denies death, and therefore fears and denies the Crone. But on this one night we are everywhere, an inexhaustible supply of women who see the absurdity of every limit.
Maleficent and Ursula make fine costumes, but evil cannot be our only symbol of Crone power. And those tiny Fairy Godmothers in Cinderella cannot be our only symbols of goodness after menopause. We are more than that; we can be powerful and good. We can be Crone, the woman who has earned a crown.
I wrote this years ago in one of my first blogs:
“The classic Disney villain tried to recapture her girlish beauty in older life, and this “inappropriate” claim to power was her downfall, every time. What we have yet to see is old/beautiful/strong/good: a Disney queen heroine who is sexy and powerful in her older years. This is our challenge: To find or to make such stories, not only to benefit our granddaughters, but ourselves as well. Somewhere in me is a little girl who still believes that older women are evil in our power. As an older woman, I need to tell myself new stories, stories about women who are good and strong and beautiful later in life.”
On Halloween and every day we can create our own Goddesses and become them. More than choosing a costume for this special night, we can create an identity to inhabit year round.
A while back I wrote about pagan author Donna Henes’ realization that she praised her dog (“Good boy!”) many times a day, and her decision to start praising herself. I created a recipe for doing just that: a formula to invent and praise the Goddess in ourselves.
All the elements are in that essay: your choice of Goddess names, Goddess attributes, and a framework to build your own praise poem. Check out “Invent Your Own Goddess,” and discover the identity you’d like to inhabit on Halloween and throughout the year. One reader called it “Goddess-creating Mad Libs.” A fine game to play on Halloween, a time for serious fun.
On Halloween let’s celebrate once again: The holiday of imagination. The holiday of “What if?” To wear a different identity and wander unafraid through the night is the very definition of what is possible. I’ll see you out there.
Just in time for Halloween, we’ve launched The Sword of Vivienne, the prequel to my 2024 novel Vampires of a Certain Age. Both books explore how older women (in this case, centuries old) can use our power for the good. Available now at all the online places and at the Stella’s direct store. Enjoy! And please review!
“What a fantastic and compelling prequel this is. Vivienne is big, bold, beautiful and battle-ready. Initially her legendary sword skills serve to repel suitors but following her conversion to a vampire, she is driven by her own ethics and sense of fair play, along with a firm steer from Joan of Arc, to use her powers to defend women.
A gloriously gripping tale, with such delicious evocations of time, events and place. The tale leads seamlessly into Vampires of a Certain Age. I love both these books. Where will the next of the Blood Sisters Chronicles take us? I can’t wait.”
—Stephanie Shields, author of The Strange Woman and After Amba
