Stages of a Changing Woman-Hood.

The Star Goddess and Child. The Birth of the 4th Soul-Generation, The Celebration of the Crone as She Enters a New Dimension.

For some time I have wanted to write a blog about the Star Goddess series that I have so-far painted.  I am going to cover the aspects of the second painting, which goes by the title The Star Goddess and Child. The Birth of the 4th Soul-Generation, The Celebration of the Crone as She Enters a New Dimension, but I first have to discuss a little about the first & third paintings.  The problem I face with this is that 2 out of three of the paintings are more abstract but the second is not.  The first of the paintings flowed from my paintbrush & was created without me really thinking about it.  I love it when paintings are created like that & often the message that I want to get across seems to be understood that much easier.  

Star Goddess & Child Maintaining the Balance of the Universal Energy Flow Trac Davies© .

   A lot of my abstract work flows like this and I end up with shapes and faces that I didn't plan but were painted there anyway.  The third of the paintings was actually finished before the second.  It was another one that flowed through me and was completed fairly quickly.  

Star Goddess & Child Contemplating the Universal Tides of Passion Trac Davies© .

But the second of these paintings deserve a little more explanation rather than as a representation of the weft and weave of time, energy and inner and outer states as the first and third paintings depict.  

The second Star Goddess painting was one I have had to think about, even after I painted it, after a conversation I had with a French friend.  She liked the second Star Goddess painting & I was trying to explain to her that they were the four stages of a woman's life, she asked me if I meant generations of women in the same family but I didn't and at that time I didn't quite know how to put it across.

Star Goddess and Child. The Birth of the 4th Soul-Generation, The Celebration of the Crone as She Enters a New Dimension

At first glance this does appear to be generational, the archetype of mother, maiden & crone except there is the baby, the newborn Star Goddess in her purest state.  To me, each of these women are the same one, just at a different stage of life and each stage is transformational in its own right.  They are not related, but they are all She, the Goddess that strives to be heard in every woman at each transformative stage in her life.  

 I will start with the Star Maiden, the link here between fire, spring and the Goddess Brigid has been underlined with fire & dance.  I tend to paint wild hair to depict the divine but somewhat primal energy and the hair on the Star Maiden's head burns fiercely and almost appears that of an explosion.  Her hair burns with such intensity because it is indicative of the rising sap of the springtime plants and that of passion & natural forces that drive such desires. These elements of spring and youth resonate most strongly with this woman. I have also painted her pubic hair as fire because this stage of life is usually the most passionate for a woman.  Many women have mentioned to me that sexual intensity burns the brightest and fiercest in this era, for the maiden just really meant that of an unmarried woman who had not had children.  This is true in the sense that once children come along, a woman finds it hard to divide her energy between that of her child's needs & of her own.  Her child always comes first and a woman usually accepts her lot with resignation but with new purpose and contentment, although it is often hard for her partner if she has one, to understand why.  So for this moment, the maiden dances with joy, feeling no shame in her nudity, her passion & desire burning brightly and her energy appearing to be never-ending.  There is a look of ecstasy on her face but also one of joyful amazement as this stage of life is full of intense and wonderful surprises!  Her message is to enjoy every experience, whilst youthful energy & passion last.

 The Star Mother comes next, often many artists will paint a pregnant woman but I have painted one with a newborn child and there are many profound reasons for this.  We all know that pregnancy changes us in many ways, our body changes, our emotions are usually all over the place.  I found my brain was not in the right place at all, this is also linked with hormonal changes and I found myself drifting off a lot of the time.  However, this tenancy to reside in Lala land was truly underlined when I was pregnant with my daughter.  I now live in France but at that time, we had only been here for three months & I didn't speak French.  So, living in another country, speaking no French and learning a very different culture to that of my own was really hard but being pregnant it was almost impossible because I was 39, pregnant and I found I could not concentrate to learn the things I needed to survive in another country.  Pregnancy does change us but the birth of a child changes a woman in deeper and profound ways that can be overlooked at the time.  21 years ago I gave birth to my son, 5 months after the birth I started re-educating, which led to me taking a degree in biology.  This was a huge change for me and it has changed my life and ways of thinking enormously.  At 40 years old I had my daughter, not long after she was born I found myself going back towards creative pursuits.  Again, I was changed in a deep and profound manner.  Summing this up, when a woman has a child, new aspects of herself are also born.  At first, these aspects show themselves tentatively, a small pebble in the pool of subconscious reasoning, but once that pebble is dropped the ripples  go on forever.  So, we don't just have to consider the birth of the child, a new being but the birth of a new woman and this happens each time she has a child.  Childbirth changes a woman more-so than the pregnancy.  Here the Star Mother has no face, because she is now a mystery to herself & to others, no-one, including herself will know how the birth of her child will change her.  She also has a halo for hair because at this stage of childbirth and delivery, the woman is a true Goddess in every sense of the word but her energies are more focused on the child rather than her own personal development.  Every child born is a star child, a divine creature but so is the mother.  She has carried this morsel of life for 9 long months, she has made life with her partner, she has felt and watched it grow from within and birthed it.  There are some aspects of childbirth here that I do not feel qualified to comment on because I have had 2 Cesarean sections for my children as I can reach the third stage of labour but I can't progress beyond that point.  I do know that it must be like squeezing  a watermelon out of a keyhole & I also know that when women birth their children naturally, they tend to recover from the birthing process much faster.  It takes longer after surgery and stomach muscles are never the same again afterwards.  But the sense of overwhelming love and fierce pride that overtakes a woman's senses once she first sees her child is totally overwhelming and even though you are tired and sore, you feel part of the divine when you look upon your child & this feeling is the same whether you have naturally birthed it or had surgery.   The message from the Star Mother is to adapt, to nurture & to accept the new self as well as that of your new child.

Touching on the subject of the new Star Goddess, she is in her purest state, full of the potential of life & so shining at her brightest.  Her radiant energy reaches outwards as she connects with the living world but this state is one of total innocence and trust.  She has no preconceived ideas about what life is and her place within it, She just is.  This state of being, as many Gurus will tell you is the most difficult in life to reach but they reason that as we have already attained this state of mind, albeit in a newborn sense, we could, with practise attain it again.  Therefore, the message of this phase of life is just to be, have no preconceptions & expect nothing.  However, as any mother knows children constantly need love and attention as well as feeding, changing, bathing and burping!  We all know that babies expect this but as a newborn, whilst they are focusing on the new world around them there are none of these expectations so the message of the newly born Star Goddess can only be viewed from that point. 

The Crone

At last we reach the Star Crone, As the title suggests we are celebrating the Star Crone entering a new dimension.  She is enclosed in the oval of the piscis vesica which is part of another time & place, but as yet she has not entered the next dimension.  Her stare is almost defiant as she looks at the viewer but her head is angled slightly downwards as she prepares to leap into the cauldron of death and rebirth.  Her white hair flies freely, depicting her divine energy gained by hard work & many years of learning.  Her body and face are aged and she bears honourable scars of her life.  The cauldron in paganism always has been indicative of death and rebirth, Cerridwen is a Celtic crone Goddess that owns a sacred cauldron.  The difference between ourselves and the crone Goddess is we do not own death or birth, we are just part of the process, we do not guard it & it is not ours, only in the sense that we are all born and we all must die.  Rebirth can happen in many ways, the phases of a woman's life that I have discussed in this blog are all transformative & reincarnation has always been a deep part of pagan belief.  Not everyone believes in reincarnation, we could all be right or wrong and this is what scares people, this is why Crone Goddesses are looked upon with awe and terror, because death is a reality, we all have to face it & we do not know what lies on the other side of the cauldron's depths.  Crone Goddesses always have a sharp side but a kind hand, death is a harsh reality but for those who are suffering, it is a kindness too.  The Crone knows she does not have as much time as she used to, so there is a sharpness about her as she faces the depths of the cauldron but there is always a side to the Crone that is softer.  She has no fear, she has come this far, leaping into the void that is death is just another new adventure for her and because she can remember the spiral dance of her Maiden days, she will undertake it joyfully.


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