Birthing the Wise Woman

Image by Anahata Giri: She is Me

Within the four phases of the archetypal life cycle for women - Maiden, Mother, Maga/Mage, Crone - the Mage phase is a powerful rite of passage, designed to birth the Wise Woman within. The Mage represents the autumn phase of a woman’s life when she reaps, integrates and shares the harvest of her life. A crucial part of this harvesting is the transformation that perimenopause and menopause bring. The power of the wild feminine, expressed through the leadership, strength, wisdom and creativity of the Wise Woman, is just the medicine that this precious, and troubled, world needs.

‘Ah yes, of course!’ was my immediate reaction when I first read about the Mage or Maga, on the website of revolutionary priestess Jane Hardwicke Collings. (1) Of course there is a whole phase missing, covering the 25 years or so, between Mother and Crone! Being in my mid-50s, I know I am not ready to be a Crone, Sage or Elder, yet my life has become especially potent in these midlife years, with my capacity to show up and love this world deeper than ever. As a soul guide, most of the women I work with are aged 40-70 years. Whilst some are in the midst of the Mother phase, most of them are being beckoned by the Mage within, as they navigate ways to harness the gifts of their life, and turn to an deeper life calling.

Let’s have a brief look at the four seasons of a woman’s life, to better understand where the Mage sits.

Maiden Mother Mage Crone

The Maiden or Seeker archetype is the Spring phase of a woman’s life and spans from birth to about 25 years old. (Note, the ages used throughout are approximate guides). This is a phase of discovering, playing, growing, exploring, learning. This includes adolescence, a span of several years, when young women gradually become their adult selves. This is a slow process of developing self-identity, self-worth, and self-directed steps in life towards interests, goals and relationships.

The Mother, Creatrix or Maker archetype is the Summer phase of a woman’s life and spans from 25 to 45-50 years. This is a time of birthing children and/or birthing social, business, scientific, earth-based or artistic contributions to the world. It is a time of creativity and ‘making’ that is not necessarily centred around childbearing. Usually this phase of a woman’s life involves a level of caring, serving or working for others. The word matresence describes the slow, unfolding process of becoming a mother and all the psychological and spiritual changes this entails. The mother archetype also includes developing the inner mother and the capacity for self-care, self-love and self-guidance, an important balance to the emphasis of service and giving to others that this phase often encompasses.

The fourth phase is the Crone, the Elder or Sage. The crone is aged 70-75+ and is the Winter phase of the life cycle. After the harvest years of the Mage phase, this phase is slower, quieter and includes letting go of a more outward focus and transitioning to a more inwardly focused phase of life. The Crone is living through her sagesence, (2) a culmination of her life wisdom. The word crone parallels the word crown. The crone carries her crown of distilled love, compassion and spiritual wisdom, on behalf of generations to come. Whereas the Mage is in the centre, dynamically involved with community, the Crone or Elder guides and shares her wisdom from the edge.

Maiden grows wild and free,

Mother births response-ability,

Mage reaps the harvest of her powers

Crone tends the All from roots to flowers.

Maiden Mother Mage Crone,

We walk this path together, alone.

Becoming the Wise Woman

The Mage represents the Autumn phase of the life cycle and spans from 50 to 75 years, though echoes of it can come in the 40s. The Mage is the  Wise Woman, the Autumn Woman, harvesting the gifts of her life. The word maga is Latin, the female equivalent of magus, magician or wise man. The word mage also means magician and includes both genders. There is magic in the way the Mage sifts the grain of her life from the chaff, then uses the grist to make purpose-infused gold, in service to the world.

Many women at this stage feel they have much to give, do and be even as they face the fact that their time on this planet is limited. This Autumn phase evokes reflection and review of one’s life to this point, to help make conscious choices about how to spend the rest of one’s life. As Collings describes, the Maga phase is a reckoning, (3) as women review the impacts of their past life on their life now. This reckoning and life review can be a time of gratitude or grief or both.

On the one hand, women can enjoy the bounty or fruits of their life path: life wisdom, loving relationships, heightened sense of self, accomplishments, knowledge, confidence and abilities gathered from navigating various social and work roles in their lives. Women in this phase can feel more comfortable in their own skin and their own ways of being. They may care much less about others opinions or judgements and feel ready to live from a greater sense of self acceptance and autonomy. For Mage women who have children, their children may be older or adult, leaving women with more space and time to consider how they want to move forward in their lives. There can be much to be grateful for in this phase.

On the other hand, the Mage phase for many women can be a time of confusion, grief, and even crisis. There may be grief around the ending of outgrown social or work roles, or sorrow and frustration about hopes or dreams that remain unfulfilled. She may question the conditioning received from her family and society, about who she is and how she should be in the world. This deep self-reflection and review is a necessary part of a profound and challenging recalibration that is occurring for the midlife woman. This recalibration is also supported by the physiological, psychological and spiritual transition of perimenopause and menopause.

There is an important hormonal shift that happens between the Mother phase and the Mage phase that helps women shift their focus from primarily serving others to honouring the deeper self. Collings describes oestrogen as the “hormone of accommodation”, (4) and it supports a woman in the Mother phase to have a primary focus of looking after children, family, businesses and so on, with her own needs often secondary. My Mum used to call this “the burnt chop syndrome” and you can guess who willingly has the burnt chop! As oestrogen levels decrease in the peri/menopausal woman, this can help her give her energy and focus to her inner path. As Collings says, the menopausal women, after many years of caring for others, is likely to say “How come I’m the only one who does anything around here?!” - or perhaps “Why do I always get the burnt chop?!”. Strong emotions of resentment, grief, rage, sorrow and fear can arise in the Mage woman as she lets go of outgrown ways of being. Anger can be a powerful inner messenger and a catalyst for change and growth. The Autumn woman expresses and listen to all her emotions as powerful messengers, and takes responsibility for the next steps on her life path.

The Autumn phase of life can be a time when a woman’s inner life brings forth rich and evocative messages. Her inner resources - emotions, intuition, sensations, embodied experiences, dreams and insights - will guide her. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that still routinely pathologises and diminishes menopause as a hormonal problem with annoying physical or psychological ‘symptoms’. With the medical model dominating the narrative around menopause, we can forget that menopause is a natural phase of life. As Collings says, “We need to rescue menopause from the Western medical model and from the dungeons of patriarchy.” (5) Rather than solely turning to medical treatment, which can be needed at times, the Mage woman can turn to her inner experience with curiosity to explore the meaning and messages that her experiences are showing her. This respects perimenopause and menopause as “a physical and spiritual alchemical process that precedes a rebirth”. (6)

Interestingly, this process of meaning-making is assisted by a heightened intuitive capacity found in menopausal women. According to Doctor Christiane Northrup, two hormones, the luteinising hormone (LH) and the Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), rise during menopause to the same peak levels that a woman experiences during ovulation and then stay at that level for the rest of a woman's life. This heightened level of LH and FSH is thought to increase our intuition and visionary capacity. (7)

In the middle of writing this piece, I have a short luminous dream, an image of two pieces of beautiful, grey and weathered driftwood on the sand, by the ocean. Each piece of driftwood branches and curves, one above and one mirrored below, to form an eye. I wake up with this image of the two pieces of driftwood in mind and think of the life I have led above ground and the life that is emerging from underground. I sense the two coming together. I feel the part of me that is beautifully weathered by life, wrapped around my inner vision. What is my wise woman wanting me to see, as I stand here by the ocean of my life? Following inner vision, what steps will I take across the sand, in the time that I have left on this wondrous, yet turmoiled planet?

The Autumn woman is willing to shed leaves and shed outgrown selves, to compost and allow space for decay, death and letting go, knowing this is necessary for the powerful rebirth that is to come. In some women, the Mage phase evokes a descent into the underworld of the soul. This often begins with a challenging, disturbing time of undoing, unravelling and letting go into the unknown, well before there is a re-making and becoming. This echoes the dissolution phase of the soul journey, as described by Bill Plotkin, in The Journey of Soul Initiation, (8) a brilliant guidebook for Autumn women who are  following soul’s wake up call. Dissolution here is more than a dissolving of roles, it is a foundational dissolution of who we thought we were. Our persona, mask or self-identity crumbles and we are suspended in a state of not-knowing. This becomes the liminal space for something deeper and truer to be born, that emerges as we connect with our soul-self.

A woman in soul’s descent, is asked to let go of the old and discover her deepest mythopoetic self. Whilst the wise woman archetype reminds us of our inner wise woman, each woman has the potential to discover her own archetype, her own exquisitely unique soul essence and soul powers. This Autumn phase beckons forth the unique song of the soul. Some questions women might ask on this soul-led journey might be: What is ending in my life? What do I release and let go? Who am I at my core? What is the Mage showing me? The journey of endings, dissolution, death and loss should not be rushed, placated or avoided. Navigating this phase creates a birthing channel for transformation and beginnings. This echoes what nature shows us in the cycles of the seasons and of life and death -  there is birth, growth, full bloom, harvest, decay, death, rebirth, growth and the cycle continues.

This, sometimes intense, phase of shedding what is no longer needed, is like tilling the ground for new seeds of becoming. To give heart for this rigorous process, traditional Chinese Medicine calls the time of menopause the second spring. This reflect Chinese cultural honouring of ageing and elders. When menstruation ceases, the qi (energy) and blood are redirected to the heart, where Shen or Spirit resides. This can evoke heart-based qualities such as courage, passion, vitality and creativity. (9)

How would women embrace menopause differently if they saw it as the second spring and as a time of regeneration? This reframing gives heart to many women who may be struggling to see the transformative potential of midlife and menopause, or those who are late bloomers, or who may have not had fulfilling Maiden or Mother phases. During the Mage phase, some women may fully arrive into themselves and into their deeper lives. All around us we can see the mature and potent leadership and gifts that midlife women bring to the world.

In the first spring of a woman’s life, she germinates seeds of babies or her work in the world. In the second spring, she births the inner seeds of herself, of her unique wise woman, her mythopoetic self, her soul. During this Autumn phase, the desire to express and live one’s deeper calling and be truer to a deeper self, emerges with growing urgency. We attune to the soul, as the wild essence of us, that holds our deepest truest gifts for the world. In the unknown, we follow and trust our deepest, most intimate and beautiful questions. What seeds will I plant? What is mine to offer the world? Who is the deepest me? What are my gifts or powers? How can I contribute? What is my way to love this world?

Some Mage women may become grandmothers in this Autumn time. One of the tender and potent imprints of being a mother and/or grandmother, is that mothering stretches our hearts and perspective like nothing else. For a grandmother, future generations become more centred in the circle of her care. Mothers and grandmothers, as powerful bearers and caretakers of life, have the capacity to hold strong and determined boundaries against all that destroys life, including war and environmental devastation. The Wild Wise Woman, with her emboldened heart, shows up in the world as the fierce and tender protector of all life.

There is another aspect to the reckoning of the Mage phase, and this is a recurring theme that I see in midlife women: a surfacing of core wounding, calling for a deeper level of healing and integration. Core wounds are formative wounds often central to our conditioning. The hormonal effects on the brain during menopause may contribute to this emergence of wounding. During menopause, there are heightened fluctuations of oestrogen and progesterone in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas important for encoding and retrieving memories. This can bring to surface forgotten, buried or minimised hurts and wounds, losses or longings, making this a perfect time for healing. (10)

Some women have worked through their core wounding before the Mage phase, and know its place in their life journey. Some women, for many reasons, may arrive in this phase without having fully met their deepest wound. Others may be weary of yet another round of working with the effects of core wounding. “Not again!” may be the response. It is important for women not to despair here. The healing process is a spiral, that cycles over time, and although we may revisit the same wound, each time round we uncover deeper connections, insights and gifts. At times the core wound can feel like a bottomless pit, a dark gaping hole that we want to avoid. If we reframe this hole as a potent portal or birthing canal, and a holy one, (excuse the pun) perhaps this will give us courage to enter the portal, for the Mage knows: meeting the core wound, if not already done, is the next threshold for a woman to cross and is a powerful initiation, if she is to live from the fullness of her deepest self.

Our deepest wound will show us exactly what medicine we need to receive to heal. The healing journey is unique to each woman. As we heal, we connect with our compassion, strength and wholeness. Nature can guide us too. We can take our wounds or longings to a tree, a river, a wild place that we are drawn to, and ask for guidance from the wild beings around us. For women working with wounding from their own mother, a connection with Mother Earth can give her wild mothering and help her develop her inner mother.

Earlier in my life I had done a lot of inner work around my childhood wounding from growing up with a violent father, including working with a conditioned imprint to hide. Now in my Mage phase, I recognise the thread of hiding and invisibility much more deeply, seeing its effects on my whole life path. On a nature wander, I noticed a beautiful, bright orange butterfly, and I found myself saying “I am emerging.” These words have been powerful medicine for me, during my midlife years.

The aim of this healing is not so much to resolve or remove the core wound, but rather to be ripened by the wound, and this fits in well with the Autumn harvest theme. Being ripened by the wound is to understand the place of the wound in not only our life journey, but also within the deepest mythical unfolding of our soul’s path. To do this we work through the ways the wound has conditioned us and the ways it brings forth our specific, unique gifts. The core wound can show us both what medicine we need to receive to heal and the unique and specific medicine that we have to give to the world. Then our core wound ripens into the sacred wound. The sacred wound is a sacred and potent gateway into our soul gifts and contribution to the world.

The word maga reminds me of the Sanskrit word marga, which means path. During the time of autumnal descent, the path can feel unknown and tenuous because each woman is creating it from within. She is no longer content to walk a path carved out by conditioning or culture. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she is consciously creating her life path in honour of herself. She is remembering how to dance to the beat of her own drum. She follows the question: what is my true path? The Sanskrit word marga can also mean the track of a wild animal. Tracking the soul can be like tracking a wild animal - for the soul is wild. The Maga feels, senses, intuits her way, and courageously walks a path that honours the wild essence of her own soul.

Another meaning in Sanskrit for marga is scar. When our wounds are ripened, we know that we are not bearing open wounds any longer. Instead we proudly carry our scars. Another brilliant guide for the Mage phase is the book Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes . She writes: “Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength and what you have endured. They’re a treasure map to the deep self.” (11)  Alongside our scars, I wonder if we can also be proud of our greying hair and wrinkles, and our beautiful, weathered bodies and hearts, that have so much life wisdom to bring to the world.

A Native American saying describes a woman’s journey with power, that reflect the stages of Maiden, Mother and Mage: “At menarche a girl meets her power. Through menstruation, she practises her power. At menopause, she becomes her power.” This is not destructive power over, but power within and power with others. Collings poses the question: what if grandmothers ruled the world? As the Mage, the Wise Woman, becomes her power, she steps into heart-centred leadership, co-creative and shared power that honours the web of life, distilled soul wisdom and revolutionary love. She follows her vow to trust the Wise Woman, the wild feminine within. She weaves the more beautiful, wise and compassionate world that we know, in our bones, is possible, especially if Autumn Women, Wise Women, everywhere, lead the way.

♡

Special thanks to Jane Hardwicke Collings, founder of The School of Shamanic Womancraft, for her inspiring, empowering and potent teachings. I highly recommend all her work, including her online course and one day workshop both titled Autumn Woman, Harvest Queen.

References:

1. Jane Hardwicke Collings, article Autumn Woman Harvest Queen

2. Jane Hardwicke Collings, article Introducing Sagesence

3. Jane Hardwicke Collings, article Introducing Maga

4. Jane Hardwicke Collings, online course Autumn Woman Harvest Queen

5. Jane Hardwicke Collings, one day in person workshop Autumn Woman Harvest Queen

6. Jane Hardwicke Collings, online course Autumn Woman Harvest Queen

7. Dr Christiane Northrup cited in Jane Hardwicke Collings online course Autumn Woman Harvest Queen

8. Bill Plotkin, Journey of Soul Initiation, New World Library, 2021.

9. Cassandra Young, article The Second Spring.

10. Dr. Christiane Northrup, article Why Anger is Common in Menopause

11. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves, Rider Publishing, 1992.

Anahata Giri is a soul guide. She is passionate about helping midlife women claim their sovereign soul-self, step into their power and bring their soul-gifts to the world.