Being Chased by the Hag.
The Crone’s Initiation. Part 3 in the Hag Series.
After visiting several Cailleach sites around Ireland (see part 1: Chasing the Hag), it was sitting atop the Mountain of the Hag in the Hag’s Chair at Loughcrew, that I realised the joke was on me. I wasn’t chasing the hag, the hag was chasing me.
And she gets closer day by day! (see part 2: Dancing in the Dark: Navigating the ‘gifts’ of perimenopause.)
At that moment, suddenly one of the more recent myths of Cailleach the hag goddess made complete and utter sense to me. It is one found in Scotland, where she is inextricably linked to Bride, the green triple goddess of fertility, water, fire and craftmanship to name a few.
Bride is born at Imbolc. At one with nature, she is metaphor for the birth of Spring, and she blossoms right through the summer. But it is on Samhain that Cailleach rides out with her eight sister hags (sometimes described as maidens) and captures Bride, imprisoning her in the mountain of Ben Nevis. This heralds the death of Bride’s reign and the arrival of winter – Cailleach’s time - the rule of the hag, the Winter Queen. Her ugliness is said to chase the animals into hiding and hibernation, ensuring their survival and abundance the following Spring. For not only is she guardian of wells and streams, like Bride, but protector of all animals.
But one of Cailleach’s sons, Angus, the Summer King sets out to rescue Bride. When Cailleach discovers this, she is furious and sets off to challenge him. After a long battle in which Cailleach rises up storms and winds (the cailleachan) to aid her, it is on the eve of Imbolc that she finally gives in and turns herself into a stone to escape her son. Bride is thus released and Spring begins. Cailleach remains as a standing stone until the following Samhain when the cycle begins again.
It is a story of the seasons, of Summer and Winter and the cycles. Cailleach and Bride are depicted as two parts of a whole. Personified spirits of the seasons. In Scotland, Cailleach was very much she who formed the landscape, the land spirit itself. A great mother or earth mother figure. And while this is a later myth and there is soooo much more to both Cailleach and Bride than this little yarn, it’s this legend that popped up as I sat upon the Hag’s Chair. And while it seems obvious in retrospect, it wasn’t until this moment that its meaning sunk fully into me and landed…
The maiden can’t rule forever.
Youth and beauty will pass.
It’s the hag’s time at last.
Winter is coming.
The maiden is running.
The hag is a complex figure and there is much more to her than meets the eye, rather literally. So let’s look at some of her qualities relevant to the initiation of menopause, when the inner hag first starts knocking on the door.
Owning the hag.
The hag is a wise old crone, a visionary and prophet who can speak not just for the personal, but for the collective. Sometimes she is linked with the sovereignty goddess – she who bestows kingship, yet only on one who is worthy of it. She is able to do this for her far seeingness and her capacity to know what is good for the Earth as well as its people. To take the bigger picture into account.
The initiation of menopause is an offering to develop this inner vision and inner knowing. Via the inward process of shedding, feeling deeply, releasing and looking in, we may come out blessed with a greater empathy for all beings as part of a greater whole.
The crone is a great mother figure rather than a personal mother. She looks out for all beings, not simply her own family. (Interestingly this is an aspect that came out strongly in Mugwort spagyric alchemy process). From this broader viewpoint, collective wisdom and decisions can be made.
But the initiation isn’t passed by the physical shift from bleeding to not-bleeding on its own. The inward looking can be an arduous path. Of grieving, truthtelling, of uncovering and embracing the shadow aspects of self.
In my darkness, my doubts and my fears,
the morrighan comes to awaken my ears
to all that’s not working, to all that’s not said,
to all of the hate words inside of my head.
Projected on outward so they can be seen,
oh morrighan, morrighan how loathsome I’ve been.
Yet it can make the metaphorical difference between making grey hairs or silvery shining ones!
The hag is a truthteller.
On all levels. Inside and out.
She is willing to look to find the untruths that lie inside herself. To expose them and feel them and work with them. Consequently, she can see clearly in the outer world.
Embracing the hag is to speak truth though it may rock boats. She is not afraid of what others think. She isn’t here to people please, but to make a difference in the world. She is the shaper of the land on all levels – the personal landscape (physical body and smaller community) as well as the collective culture and its future. She brings visions for a better future while getting to the bones of the issue, pointing out the cracks and the denials that are hidden or turned away from.
In one Irish story, the hag as sovereignty goddess tests the brothers for their worthiness to be Kings. Only the brother willing to kiss the hag will become King.
She will test you for your superficiality and glamour. Only those that are able to look deeper than the surface levels (as she does) will see the truth. Beauty does not come from outer looks, but from an inner shine that can’t be faked.
The hag asks us to embrace the inner, to look below the warts on the surface. After all, the hag holds the maiden within her. No-one becomes a crone without first being a maiden. While the maiden has seeds of the crone within, only the hag has the ripened wisdom of lived experiences from her passage through the phases. She is ancient and holds them all within her. In some stories, kissing the hag actually turns her back into her beautiful maiden self again.
One thing the hag asks of us as we transition from spring and summer to autumn and winter is to accept the beauty of the moment. To embrace the truthtelling that each moment brings. Without judgement.
Part of the perimenopausal initiation is that the truth begins crying out louder to be seen. The physical body will begin to show its needs relentlessly. Learning to embrace what is showing up, allows us to work with what is there. Whether that is bringing healthy changes or calm acceptance, only you will know.
The hag asks us to drop cultural programming of what beauty is.
After all, why wouldn’t you love silver sparkles in your hair? The inner child would!!
Can you learn to love the crone, warts and all; to embrace finding a whisker on the chin with the laughter of a child? Can you embrace all aspects and phases - not just the pretty ones?
If you’re becoming a skinny hag, own and embrace this retreat back to the bare essentials, to the bare bones of your self. Can you embrace the stripping back to discover what messages it has to bring?
Others will notice their bodies softening and expanding. Can you own and embrace the soft curves that mirror the softening of rigidities or boundaries that may have been? Can you trust the body’s wisdom in providing extra padding to strengthen and protect your bones, or the extra storage room for oestrogen?
Of course, it’s important to develop the wisdom to know when things need to change and positive action; and what simply needs acceptance. Our body is always speaking to us and perimenopause is an acute time to be listening to its needs and to work with them rather than pushing them down.
To recognise when we are trying to go back to the past or stay a maiden forever, rather than embrace the beautiful gift that the crone phase can bring, can be a turning point.
Wisdom of the Hag
The hag loves a mystery. She speaks in riddles and rhymes because she knows that any answers coming from outside yourself are the antithesis of the Hag’s initiation. For the initiation itself is to enter more deeply into yourself. To become a wise elder hag as opposed to an old person, we must be able to find the answers from within.
Whether you embrace the hag or not, she will capture you. She is the truthteller not simply in words, but physically. When she shows up, your body will no longer stand back meekly while you continue to abuse it.
The Hag at the Threshold
The crone within offers us a choice at this threshold of our lives. She asks us to come to terms with all that has been.
We can become the bitter lamenter or be filled with the laughter of shedding.
If we choose not to address the past in all its pain, depth and joys, bitterness may plague the crone. The bitterness of being set aside and avoided, the bitterness of a culture that no longer recognises the visionary wisdom she has discovered via years of experience. Alternatively she can choose to use this cultural pain as fuel to fire up and create collective change.
Sage as spirit medicine for menopause I wrote about in the Part 2. It’s blissful ecstatic release of the outer world and into the inner wisdom of the sage is a manifestation of this choice.
While Mugwort may help us dive into the threads that have woven our lives together and help us to cut and reweave those we no longer want, Sage is an all round support in the surrender to all that once was. To find bliss in the process, rather than warring against it. Embracing the crone is to go deeply inwards, to clear ourselves of past resentments, pains and mistakes.
Cailleach’s initiation or the Crone’s initiation of menopause is to be thrown into the Corryveckan whirlpool (Cailleach’s cauldron), which her eight maidens are constantly stirring. Within this great cauldron of creation, we are stirred and spun, spinning off the old and all that once was, to be dissolved into the melting pot.
We have a choice to transmute hardship and bitterness in the whirlpool of menopause; to allow ourselves to dissolve and shapeshift into something new. The new brew created may be a gift for future generations as it contains the seeds of wisdom that are made in the process. The old seeds the new.
The wizened old hag who has come through this transition successfully, who has made it out of the whirlpool of chaos, fully felt all the feels and faced the shadows that needed to be seen, comes out like a wise child. Filled with joy and laughter and wisdom from beyond. She has an innocence that comes from releasing all that was, so that now she is completely present in the now. Like a child, but with the wisdom of her years anchored.
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About Heidi
I’ve been walking the plant spirit path for close to 30 years. With herbalism, homeopathy, and plant alchemy/spagyrics as early companions, midwifery and shamanism came a little later. After years of listening to the plants, I’ve since taught hundreds of people how to deepen their connection with nature and learn to hear the whispers of plants. I continue to offer The Flower Codes Training/ Shamanic Herbalism online course, as well as various in person shamanic nature-based courses such as Herbal Alchemy.
My published books include:
"The Flower Codes: Plant Spirit Teachings for your Soul to Blossom."
"Wild Flower Walker: A Pilgrimage to Nature on the Bibbulmun Track”;
and Blue Triangle Butterfly: A Homeopathic Proving.
So much truth in this Heidi, thank you. Haha and yes to being chased by the hag, I think it definitely feels just like that now that you say it.🩵