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The Dark Mother, Baby Yaga, Tiamat, Fata Morgana, Kali, Hecate - Crone. These are some of the names given to the figure of the aged Goddess, the archetypal old
woman. To many, growing old means becoming a nuisance, unwanted, embarrassing, invisible - passing beyond redemption. Prétat writes:
The crone is a pattern imprinted deep within the human psyche. She is the third face of the Triune Goddess, who embodies the fresh possibilities of youth, the productiveness of middle age, and both the deprivation and wise nurturance of old age. Of these three, the crone aspect is perhaps the most powerful. Her face is weathered like old gnarled wood; her penetrating eyes see deep into our souls and beyond to the depths of the universe. Her clawlike fingers appear to reach out and pull us ever closer into her bony embrace - all this both frightens and fascinates. We cannot imagine serving her, yet something at the core of our being knows that this could be one of our greatest tasks - to accept and serve the archetypal demands of our own ageing.’
Jane Prétat, herself now 68 years old and a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Boston, has written a generous, fascinating and empowering book on growing old. She refers to clinical material, gerontological studies, personal experience, myth and fairy tale. She addresses the fears and fantasies evoked by changes which affect every aspect of the individual woman (or man, because this book should be regarded as a resource for either sex) - mind, body, spirit, social or public self-presentation, world view, relationships - and she addresses these areas with humour, realism and compassion. Her ‘voice’ is enriched by groundedness in her own experience and enlivened by her intelligent and imaginative dialogue with myth and fairy-tale which is used naturally and to great effect. The book is divided into an Introduction and eight chapters and is, in effect, a circumambulation of Prétat's two central convictions: first, that ‘Between our fift