This story came about as a result of a five-day workshop I attended in July 1985. It was called Ritual and Personal Power, and it took place at Hollyhock Farm on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada. It was conducted by Starhawk; that was the reason I went.

Starhawk’s books, The Spiral Dance and Dreaming the Dark, have been crucially important for me in my development as a political and spiritual feminist. Previously fascinated but a little nervous around anything to do with witchcraft, I found that Starhawk was reminding me of some things I already knew: that we are children of the earth, that we are subject to the cycles of nature, that our political work and our spiritual work are not different – in fact that we separate them at our peril. I went to the workshop to learn from her, and indeed I did. This, however, is not what this story is about.

For something that has no beginning and no end, the Cronestory is surprisingly easy to dive into.

Blazing hot day. Ocean, rainforest, the far end of the island. Lush garden, delicious veggie food, lovingly built living and working spaces. Days of working with 30 other women under the direction of Starhawk, learning about all those things I’d hardly dared show my interest in in polite feminist company. Magic. Witchcraft. Ritual. The Goddess. Connections, spirals, dancing, chanting, symbols, naming, dreaming, visioning, running together into the ocean, finding plants and rocks and shells to turn into noisemakers.

Power. Power in words, women, silence, earth, air, fire, water. Power in circles, spirals and cones. Power to. Power with. Power of connection and love.

Also, power of disconnection and rage. And as I sat, trying to digest my supper despite the gnawing of my guts as I strove not to spit with fury at the utter Niceness which surrounded me, Bev whispered in my ear, “We’re taking our coffee onto the back porch.”

And so we were. The dissidents. The few women who had shared some tentative, hurried words about our feeling of imbalance and of something missing. Those who insisted that the cup be passed widdershins at the dark of the moon. Those who frequently took time alone to try to understand why, in the midst of so much beauty and womanpower, something felt so off.

At last, over coffee on the back porch, we began to talk directly about all this, to share our despair at a world which is so terrified to look at itself that it insists that everyone – particularly women – waste a great deal of energy and integrity in the pursuit of Niceness.

In no time at all the relief at recognizing that we were not alone was expressing itself in exuberant laughter, cackles and croaks. My own heart leapt with the power of the recognition.

We allowed ourselves to stop being so Nice and thus were able to express to each other just what was so teeth-grittingly infuriating about all the Niceness that surrounded us.

We talked about our longings for the recognition of the shadows, the dark sides of our own natures and those of others.

We knew about cycles – we’d been working for days with moon cycles, sun cycles, cycles of life and death, cycles of energy. After all, witchcraft without cycles would be like Christianity without good and evil. Why, then, did recognizing and celebrating the darkness of the cycle as much as the lightness seem like such a subversive act?

The last day together at the workshop.

By now the Crone Porch was a haven for several of us. Leaving each other and the place where we had all gained so much and shared so much was going to be very difficult.

But, look. Five of us can stay together just a bit longer – we can spend the night together on Quadra Island, on our way back to our various homes – that should make re-entry easier.

That time spent together was the last catalyst we needed. It was as though we all fell in love simultaneously with each other, with ourselves, and with the energy which connected us. Through laughter and storytelling and symbols and eating and drinking, stronger bonds were forged. Easy re-entry, indeed!
A passionate and prolonged group hug at Campbell River airport the next day was the last time we were all physically together. We scattered to Washington, DC; Boulder, Colorado; Los Altos, California; Bellingham, Washington and Edmonton, Alberta. Was this simply the feminist version of the holiday romance, well known to all free-spirited women who have ever attended a conference, workshop or women’s festival? Well, that was in July, and it’s now November.

The Crones are a bigger part of our lives than we would ever have dreamed.

The Crone Correspondence, consisting so far of letters, tapes, drawings, poetry, part of a novel, postcards and gifts from Machu Picchu, photographs, Halloween masks, copies of numerous articles and a circular calendar – has continued ever since and shows no sign of abating. And still there’s more – we perform rituals at predetermined times, and share our visions, only to find, of course, that there are some amazing similarities in what we encounter. Still not enough – we plan to be together in body as well for Winter Solstice, travelling many miles at a most unfriendly time of year.

So what? Is this any more than just something pleasant which is happening to me? I think so. This five-pointed star is teaching me lessons I didn’t even know were there to be learned.

We’re breaking all the rules. After all, people fall in love in couples, and express that love in pretty predetermined ways, many of which tighten the couple bond and loosen others the two may have. We’ve fallen in love as a fivesome, and are equally in love with the whole idea of our fiveness.

When I send out four copies of my long introspective letters, or add to the circulating tape and send it on its way, I do so trusting that everything important will be heard and understood by somebody.

Another rule being broken – continuity and consecutiveness. You know, I’ll write to you, and then you reply with some further thoughts on what I wrote about and then I’ll write back and so on. Not so the Crones.

Ellen sometimes writes every day. Her letters include poems and wonderful drawings and ideas for ritual to do at our shared times.

Bev takes a magic journey to Machu Picchu and pours her insights into her letters and onto a tape.

There will be a long silence from Barb, then I receive a note of such depth and insight that I can’t do anything else till I’ve replied to it.

Diane is quiet for a time too, though her silence feels different, and then comes a package full of ideas and challenges.

Me, I write great lengthy bursts of what I’ve been taught is navel-gazing and store them in my computer, intending to send off a package of three or four of these at a time. Then the printer dies on me and there they are, locked in until I can afford to have it fixed. So, the dates of the letters and the sequence of events and ideas written about become redundant. The circulating tapes (now travelling three at a time) would further confound more orderly minds. Yet it’s no longer confusing to read or hear the answer to a question I hadn’t heard asked yet.

It’s no longer frustrating to have received no feedback about something I wrote which I was particularly proud of or nervous about – it will pop up somewhere else in new clothes and with new significance.

Again, so what?

Well, one of the things which attracted me to witchcraft was my desperate need to get beyond dualism – that right/wrong, either/or, black/white headset we’ve been taught is the only way to view the world. I believe this all-pervading dualism is the most serious barrier we have to peace, freedom and equality.

Dualism leads to “othering.” Seeing life forms – people, the universe – as over there, outside, utterly unconnected to me, as “other.” It’s a short step from this to seeing the “other” as less worthy than myself. This leads to manipulation, exploitation, and violence against others and the earth.

What have my last 15 years in the women’s movement been about, if not about trying to change this state of affairs?

The crones – this new relationship of five, conceived in power and nurtured in a climate of non-linear, wholistic communication gives me previously undreamed of tools to do my work – to push the limits imposed by our linear language and thought forms...

... And to dare to whisper, “but the Emperor is naked!”

Hecate.* Dark mother. Speak about niceness.

My heart leapt in my breast when the Crones met. I have been silenced too long. Women are silencing me. We say it’s the patriarchy, and cast the blame away from us, but we women can choose, and often we choose silence. We know why. To do otherwise is very scary. But it’s even more scary to go down into the pit with our eyes bandaged and our mouths full of mud. We will explode if we remain silent.

So, what shall we speak about? Everything. One of the tools we use to silence ourselves is the thought that only the big, important things are worth breaking silence about. And who decides what those are?

Women are choking on their own silence. I, Hecate, feel this, and am exploding. All I ask is a place to be heard. I have wisdom for you which I can give you with gentleness. I will not hurt you; it is the blocking of my wisdom which is hurting you, and hurting me. I talk of death and the underbelly of dark and great changes. I am silenced by Niceness, the child of dualism and judgement. This is not our stuff, women. We know about complexity, we who weave and make tapestries, we who raise children to survive in this world while nurturing those things they brought with them. It takes a gentlesure touch to bring into being the utter glory of the complexity of our lives and deaths. We kill our knowledge of complexity by the Niceness, but drawing forth the complexity for all to see will not harm you – it will bring abundant and vibrant life, which you have been taught to fear.

Think about some of these things, and think about them in two ways. One way is Niceness, the patriarchally imposed curtailed segment of our totality, which is all that we are officially allowed in order not to rock the boat. The other way is my way, the manifestation of your wholeness. Think about these things in these two ways.

• speaking softly

• a gentle touch

• making love

• expressing anger

• singing

• laughing

• weeping

• greeting the new day

• being alone

• growing old

• anything else you can think of.

How does that feel? Do you understand? If to serve me you must confront Niceness in you and root it out, does that mean you will become hateful, or strident, or man-hating, or masculine, or anti-life, or violent? What do you think?

*Hecate: The Goddess known as the Holy Crone, who represents menopausal women who hold the wisdom of time. Nancy Blair writes of Hecate: “She teaches us how to make friends with ambiguity, chaos, endings, death, mixed up feelings, the unknown, and the scary by accepting what cannot be controlled.”