Talk:Triple Goddess (Neopaganism)/Archive 9

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Incomprehensible Barbara Walker paragraph removed for improvements

Feel free to restore this paragraph when it says something comprehensible - it's missing a verb and doesn't mention any social critique (the section it was in):

According to feminist author Barbara G. Walker, various supernatural female triads like the Gallo/Germano-Roman Matres and Matrones (frequently depicted in trios),<ref>Walker, Barbara G. (1983). [http://books.google.com/books?id=KHmOpdtYjh8C&lpg=PA619&pg=PA619#v=onepage&q=&f=false ''The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets''.] HarperCollins. p.619: "''Matres'' meant the Celtic Triple Goddess, or Three Fates." ISBN 0-06-250925-X, ISBN 978-0-06-250925-3.</ref> the Greco-Roman Erinyes or Furies, or the Morrígan to whome she applies the Maiden Mother Crone model.<ref>Barbara Walker says the "triple Morrigan" is "the Irish trinity of Fates," composed of the virgin [[Anann|Ana]], the mother [[Badb]], and the crone [[Macha]]. — Walker, Barbara G. (1983). [http://books.google.com/books?id=KHmOpdtYjh8C&lpg=PA151&pg=PA151#v=onepage&q=&f=false ''The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets''.] HarperCollins. pp.151, 563, 675. ISBN 0-06-250925-X, ISBN 978-0-06-250925-3.</ref>

And note that Walker's work is (even moreso than that of Gimbutas) not accepted by modern scholarship. She can certainly be cited as a feminist author, Goddess proponent, and for social criticism, as she is very notable for such things, but any claims of fact should not be cited to her. DreamGuy (talk) 15:07, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Old NPOV dispute tags on article

The Jane Ellen Harrison and Jungian psychology sections of this article show as having been tagged as under dispute for NPOV concerns since 2009. Does anyone still think these sections violate NPOV policy? If so, I am curious to what the arguments there are. If there is no active dispute on either section then those tags can be removed. DreamGuy (talk) 15:14, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Tried reading through the archives, but they were complicated. Looks like lots of things were tagged back then. Only these two remain. Why? Was a concern about synthesis? DreamGuy (talk) 15:32, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
Both contain long quotations taken out of their original contexts, rather than summaries of the views. I believe summaries would be more neutral. --Davémon (talk) 18:36, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Robert Graves (recent edit)

He played a very prominent role in funneling the "maiden-mother-crone" conception of triple goddess into modern paganism/witchcraft... Not sure why Wicca is now mentioned before Graves, because Graves had it before Wicca did... AnonMoos (talk) 00:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Damn, I've just spent an hour of precious time discussing the issue at length. The computer swallowed it when I went to post. In a nutshell? The article is about the neo-pagan triple goddess not about Robert Graves. Whether he invented her is a questionable thesis that I in fact question (which is a polite way of saying it is rubbish, Diana is a three-fold moon goddess who was both virgin and mother, who has long been associated with witchcraft, likewise Hekate was a triple moon goddess who can be found as a witch-goddess in that obscure text Macbeth, but anyway..) but anyway whether he invented or not she is here now and worshipped in various ways, drawing on various sources, independent classical, Gimbutas, Kerenyi, folkore....and that is what should get stress in the introduction. Fair enough to mention Graves and he is and at length in the article. Fair point about Wicca; in fact the main direct early influence of Graves on neo-witchcraft was on Robert Cochrane rather than Wicca, I don't know there is an academic source which says that. Probably not. Anyway, must fly, I don't know if my signature is getting through properly I am Jeremytrewindixon. For some of my more obscure points you will have to wait. ¬¬¬¬
I'm not sure whether Graves "invented" the triple Goddess, but I meant what I said above -- that he played a very prominent role in funneling the "maiden-mother-crone" conception of triple goddess into modern paganism/witchcraft. The Robert Cochrane (witch) article says "in the early 1960s...he placed an advert in the Manchester Guardian requesting that anyone interested in Graves' The White Goddess contact him" which really doesn't suggest that Cochrane was independent of Graves or chronologically prior to Graves (considering that Graves published his two most comprehensive/influential Goddess-themed books in 1948/1949, including the now often forgotten Seven Days in New Crete). I think that any impression of Wicca-exclusivity, or giving Wicca undue prominence, should be avoided on this article, and since Graves greatly influenced Wicca (whether directly or indirectly) but Wicca didn't meaningfully influence Graves, and the modern Triple Goddess concept was definitely not invented by Wiccans and is not revered by them exclusively, I'm not sure why Wicca is now mentioned before Graves... AnonMoos (talk) 07:21, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree about his very prominent role AnonMoos, ufortunately as I say my less rushed commemts were swallowed by cyberspace. I have no reason to believe that Cochrane's interest in the triple goddess was prior to Graves or independent of Graves, and in any case he was certainly heavily influenced by Graves; I was agreeing to your point that undue stress was given to Wicca, the initial influence of Graves was more on Cochrame who was outside of Wicca. (I certainly haven't forgotten Seven Days in New Crete btw, I agree with Hutton that as Utopias go it is a pretty unappealing one. Though a good read.) The article needs to be more about actual neopagan worship of the Triple Goddess and less proportionately about the theories of origin. Graves is important and I think the article gives ample shape to this importance without having him in the first line of the overview. Jeremy (talk) 13:00, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I do believe the way to make the article "more about the actual neopagan worship of he Triple Goddess" would be to add content regarding that area, than to diminish the content about the origins of the concept from the lede or elsewhere. Davémon (talk) 14:24, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, most certainly that too, Davemon, more content about actual worship I mean, but I stand by my view that the article is about the Triple Goddess not Robert Graves and the initial sentence is wildly inappropriate. What good citations do you have for the view that Triple Goddess worship is widespread in Wicca? (Do Wiccan covens have a Crone as well as a Maiden?) I'm inclined to challenge that. At the moment I don't have a JSTOR connection or a whole heap of time but will return. In the meantime, citation for the claim about Wicca please! Jeremy (talk) 06:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
On that point I concur with yourself and AnonMoos that Wicca specifically is overstated. The difficulty is that various neopagan factions on wikipedia tend to want to define and claim terms for themselves, so a neo-viking would want to claim their worship of the Triple Goddess (as the Norn) comes from direct historical sources, wheras a Post-Modern Celt wants to claim their worship of the Triple Goddess as Bridgit comes from direct historical sources, etc. etc. So these factions will want to distance their flavour of "neopaganism" from the Gravesian influence and blame "syncretic wiccans" for adpoting what they see as a-historical, cross-cultural figures into their essentially nationalistic pantheons (read through the archives to get the gist of these debates). All these points of view are valid beliefs, but in wikipedia terms, they are extreme minority views, which don't have direct scholarly support (evidence to the contrary always welcome). The serious identification of anything as a Triple Goddess only belongs to the Gravsian school i.e. you won't find any serious scholarly sources using the notion of Triple Goddess to discuss any ancient religion in any depth - again this is only based on the evidence I've seen, if there are sources that do this, it would be great to have them added. In that respect, the article is largely about Graves work, its reception within neopaganism and mainstream thinking, and the later adoption of Gimbutas by those same people, so I think he is well placed in the first sentence. Davémon (talk) 09:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, the first thing to say Davemon is that I do take your point about actual worship and I think it a good one; and I'm wondering if the article itself is well chosen in its boundaries. Is there in fact a neopagan cult of the Triple Goddess outside of these various individual reconstructions? She is written of to be sure, but to ask a Cambridge Ritualist type question is there a genuine cult or is she just a literary, philosphical or political figure? Graves himself remarked somewhere that people asked him if he really believed in the Triple Goddess but that he replied that was an "improper question". Your point about "serious scholarly sources" is less good. Kerenyi is a serious scholarly source, and he uses the Triple Goddess concept precisely to discuss Ancient Greek religion "in depth" reconstructing a triple goddess associated with the moon as an underlying structure underlying much of Greek myth. And for that matter Gimbutas was a serious scholarly source and the Cambridge Ritualists. There are fashions in academicia as elsewhere.....I continue to be puzzled about the rationale for graves in the first sentence. Maybe there should be an article on "Graves conception of the triple goddess"? But as the situation stands he did not introduce the concept, that would be more Jane Harrison. He is not the latest major exponent of the concept, that would be Gimbutas, and Gimbutas I think acknowledges no debt to Graves. Her work may have been adopted by the same people who adopted Graves but that brings us back to the point that it is the people who adopted this concept who are more significant for this purpose than Graves or Gimbutas....I will think on these things and doubtless return.Jeremy (talk) 23:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
That's nice -- Graves still played a very prominent role in funneling the "maiden-mother-crone" conception of the triple goddess into modern paganism/witchcraft. Whether he "invented" the triple goddess is a highly convoluted (perhaps meaningless) question which I really don't want to get involved in debating. Nevertheless, it can be said that during much of the middle of the 20th century -- between the time that hypotheses of "primitive matriarchy" and the Golden Bough began to be rejected in academic anthropology etc., and the rise of speculative/utopian radical feminism in the early 1970s -- there was something of a dry spell for goddess spirituality (or whatever you want to call it), and during that gap, Graves was the most prominent catalyzing figure in the English-speaking world giving it some minimal degree of publicity or cultural prominence that other interested people could pick up on... AnonMoos (talk) 02:05, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm with AnonMoos in identifying Graves as a significant figure here. Harrison doesn't seem to have been widely read, and while she might be the first historian to postulate a matriachal, triple goddess based idea, she doesn't really go into extended detail and doesen't seem to have had much influence outside her immediate circle, if research shows her to be anything other than a minor precursor to Graves, I would be very surprised. On the other hand, Graves White Goddess and especially his Greek Myths were very, very widely read, and we do have reliable published sources by experts in the field (Hutton) that clearly claim that it was Graves that influenced neopaganism and modern witchcraft. As far as I know, nobody argues that the idea comes from elsewhere. This isn't about whether Hutton was right or not, but whether there is any published sources that challenges that view or postulates alternative theories. I think Kerenyi was working with the idea of Jungian Archetypes and we have him there. I am doubtful about how serious analytical psychology is taken by historians, linguists and archaeologists. Doubtless it is influential in the creative arts and literary critisism, and I think we deal with him better there. Davémon (talk) 09:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't think relevant person on god's green earth doubts that Graves was a significant figure in popularizing the triple-goddess, Davemon, let us have no straw men (Corn maidens at least....). Harrison was a major academic figure in her day and Graves several times cites her in his Greek Myths. One early review of the Greek Myths criticises him for not citing the Cambridge Ritualists more, so obvious was their pervasive influence on the work. Other Cambridge Ritualists included A.B. Cook and Gilbert Murray, eminent men in their day, we are not talking minor figures here.
Another straw man, no one I think doubts that Graves was an important influence on neo-paganism in general. But on Wicca specifically? Where is the citation for that? We know that Crowley was a significant influence on Wicca, Gardner hinted it, various Wiccans confirmed it, Hutton established it. No question. And we know Crowley wrote of the triple-goddess. But which early Wiccan covens worshipped the triple goddess? Where is the citation for it? In case you missed it I am asking for a citation for Graves influence on Wicca and the salience of the triple-goddess in Wicca.
Kerenyi was an eminent classical scholar, and is to be taken seriously on that account, his association with Jung being irrelevant for this purpose for better or worse. Kerenyi doesn't hang off Jung he was an important classical scholar in his own right. His Gods of the Greeks was published in English translation in 1951, based of course on earlier work. Kerenyi also in this and other work referred to the underlying triple moon goddess as an obvious feature of Greek mythology. The argument for that has nothing to do with Jungian archetypes.
The lead paragraph is going to have to be changed. Jeremy (talk) 05:33, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Jeremytrewindixon -- I'm sure that Harrison and others have had much more academic respectability than Graves, but they don't appear to have had the same pivotal or catalyzing role that Graves did in funneling certain specific and vividly-imagined forms of the triple goddess (i.e. not vague or shadowy abstract schematizations) into modern neopaganism/witchcraft. As for the channels of influence from Graves into Wicca, I don't know the details, but according to our Gerald Gardner article, he personally met Graves (though I don't think that the triple goddess occurs in Gardner's main writings on witchcraft), and you mentioned Robert Cochrane (witch), etc. In any case, by the time that Wicca emerged into significant cultural prominence (beyond sporadic sensationalistic newspaper headlines) ca. the early 1970s, the conception of the goddess in most forms of Wicca seems to have been significantly Graves-influenced... AnonMoos (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
So "seems" is good enough for wikipedia now? No need to cite boring factual sources? You are dead right that the triple goddess does not occur in gardner's witchcraft writings....and if she did then Gardner as a folklorist of some repute would not have needed Graves as a source; he could have hardly been unaware of the eminent Cambridge academic Jane Ellen Harrison and he not only "met" Aleister Crowley but Crowley is known to have been a significant influence on Wicca. And Crowley wrote of the triple moon goddess too, as even Hutton notes....."the conception of the goddess in most forms of Wicca seems to have been significantly Graves-influenced" you say...."seems" according to which reputable sources? Details please. Cochrane is important but not Wicca...and according to my understanding what was most influential from Graves was the the celtic tree alphabet. Which Wicca covens worship a triple moon goddess, mother maiden, crone? What is the evidence that such postulated covens got it from Graves? Jeremy (talk) 05:10, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
If there were any directly relevant sources, then you would be more likely to know about them than I would, but the plausible facts seem reasonably clear: The Triple Goddess does not appear in early or "classic" Wicca, but after the White Goddess and Seven Days in New Crete had been published for some years, the common Wiccan conception of the Goddess became a Triple Goddess. The reinterpreters of Wicca could have theoretically gone back to Harrison, but that doesn't seem too plausible in the context of the 1950s and 1960s, when very little 19th-century or beginning-of-the-20th-century style anthropological theorizing had any degree of public familiarity or academic respectability (with Frazer's Golden Bough being a partial exception). That's presumably part of why Robert Cochrane advertised for readers of Graves, not readers of Harrison... AnonMoos (talk) 13:23, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
And why the hell does Lyn Meskell, who does not herself rate a wikipedia article, get top billing in the Jane Harrison article? And why was Jane Harrison not linked to her wikipedia article? (I have just done it)? I have a feeling Davemon that in dealing with Kerenyi and Harrison and for that matter Gimbutas you have an idea you are dealing with Von Daniken fringe people rather than weighty scholars from the centre of the academic world (Graves...well Graves is a case on his own, but not a Von Daniken either...) Jeremy (talk) 08:12, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Summary Needs Improvement

The summary does not seem to summarize the concept very well. I came into this page knowing nothing about the Triple Goddess and it's unclear to me whether the term refers to one deity, three related deities, or a concept that can be applied to other deities. The summary definitely should NOT start out talking about someone who wrote about this topic. The sentence "In common Neopagan usage..." seems to be the best actual summary, but it implies there are other important usages that are not mentioned elsewhere. I would have edited the summary myself to improve the clarity but as I didn't come into this article knowing what the Triple Goddess is, I am missing the information to write an effective summary. The existing summary text does not have enough information for me to rewrite it effectively, and I'm having trouble reading through the rest of the article without the appropriate context that should have been delivered through the summary. meustrus (talk) 21:58, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I imagine that most adherents consider the Triple Goddess to be three aspects of the divine feminine, but I'm not sure that there's any commonly-accepted specifically detailed "theology". Otherwise, I'm not sure what you consider the article to be unclear about... AnonMoos (talk) 10:48, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
My problem is that the summary doesn't give me a basic context to understand the subject. What you just said would be a much better beginning to the summary than "The Triple Goddess is the subject of much of the writing of Robert Graves, and has been adopted by many neopagans as one of their primary deities." I'm just looking for a concise definition which can then be expanded upon. meustrus (talk) 16:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

recent edits (2013)

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] C'mon people, when there's a disagreement about material in the article, there's supposed to be a discussion on the talk page. Now, in the disputed material, the only citations are to ancient sources (Lucan and Ovid) yet an interpretation of that material is advanced, without any support from modern sources. This looks like original research to me, and therefore it shouldn't be in the article. What do others think? --Akhilleus (talk) 19:35, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

The references are to ancient sources that mention a triformis goddess. It doesn't require modern vindication as the text sources support the contention of the antiquity of the concept. You may not like that they exist, but they do. Modern publications that reprint the classics are included in the text, so your argument is without merit. No interpretation is offered, just what is clearly evident by the statements themselves in the ancient writings. Rasenna (talk) 22:17, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure it seems obvious to you, but since the text you've inserted uses the ancient sources to argue against the work of a modern scholar (Hutton), clearly these sources don't speak for themselves: they require interpretation by experts, appearing in what Wikipedia policy refers to as reliable sources. When you mention "Modern publications that reprint the classics", it seems that you're just talking about translations of the ancient Greek texts--this is not the same thing as the work of a scholar who comments upon and interprets the texts (as Hutton does, although I'm not sure whether he mentions these specific texts). If you can find the work of a modern scholar who says that these texts show us a three-formed goddess who has a connection with the neopagan Triple Goddess who is the actual subject of this article, then we're in business. Otherwise, the material has to be removed as a violation of the no original research policy. Essentially, everything that goes into a Wikipedia article needs to be based on modern sources, preferably peer-reviewed academic research. Interpretations of ancient texts by individual Wikipedia editors, even when those editors think the interpretation is obvious, is not allowable. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Since it seems clear that you wish to suppress the evidence of these ancient sources, I will rewrite my contribution to suit you more in keeping with the rules you quote. Rasenna (talk) 02:41, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that was very helpful. By attributing the interpretation of Lucan and Ovid to a specific source (Grimassi), the article now makes it clear that this is one point of view, rather than the absolute truth. Readers are made aware that there are different ideas of how modern ideas of the triple goddess relate to the ancient material, and know where to go to find more information. It's not clear to me, though, whether Grimassi was arguing specifically against Hutton or not. Either way, it would be good to clarify that in the article. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:16, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad the rewrite was acceptable. Yes, Grimassi does specifically counter Hutton in the works I mentioned (among others). I'm happy to work that into the article as well. Rasenna (talk) 16:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

"traditional Wicca" in August 2014 edits to lead paragraph

The Triple Goddess does not occur in Gardner's writings, which means that it would be very difficult to consider it a core or defining feature of Wicca (so that the phrase "traditional Wicca" in the context of the recent edits to the article lead paragraph unfortunately borders on the nonsensical). As discussed above on this page, and in the archives of this page, since Wiccans did not invent the Triple Goddess, and the Triple Goddess does not seem to be an essential or defining feature of Wicca, and Wiccans are not the only ones who reverence a Triple Goddess, therefore it would be inappropriate to make this article too Wicca-centric. AnonMoos (talk) 12:17, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Lunar goddess

Graves' conception of the Triple Goddess is not as an exclusively lunar deity (though the analogy of the three aspects with the thirds of a lunar month is prominent). Graves' "system" (if you can call it that) is more dynamic and flexible than that (and in fact the Goddess can also be considered to have five, nine etc. aspects in some contexts). Therefore I've reverted the addition of the word "Moon" twice in the initial paragraph. AnonMoos (talk) 07:07, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

The symbol of the subject

Shouldn't the image of the subject's symbol be at the lead and not the body?--Mr. Guye (talk) 23:21, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

If you mean File:Triple-Goddess-Waxing-Full-Waning-Symbol.svg, while that symbol is quite commonly used nowadays, its exact origin and chronology is unfortunately a little obscure (though it was almost certainly influenced by the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck High Priestess card crown, which was in turn influenced by the ancient Egyptian Hathor head-dress). It doesn't seem to have been used by Robert Graves, and if it was in use at all in the first half of the 20th century, it must have been obscure and little known. AnonMoos (talk) 12:38, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
I accidentally replaced this image when adding the infobox (apparently the template automatically pulls an image from the article if not image is provided?). Still, I don't see why using the image is a problem. Obviously a different/better image is preferable, but just because the symbol did not originate with Graves, does not mean it is not representative of the topic, as it is extremely widely used today to represent Graves' Triple Goddess. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:38, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

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