Our names are Astarte (Patria Brown) and Black Cat (Kathryn Old). It is our honor to serve as your ritual crones for the fall session. We will be teaching the crone classes and facilitating the Crone Honoring ritual. We respect and appreciate the work that has been done with crones over the years at the California Women’s Herbal Symposium. This fall, we will retain the overall format of the classes and ceremony, adding a number of touches of our own. We intend to provide an environment that enables crones to focus on their strength and wisdom more than on frailties often emphasized in a phase of life that can last as long as fifty years. We intend to help women discover what it is to be a crone, what is her relationship to the forces of nature, what unique gifts she has to offer, and how she can manifest the power within.

In this class, as in every crone class offered at Fall Symposium, we will create sacred space, calling in and sitting with one another next to altars to the four directions. We will help build our Ancestor altar honoring those crones who have preceded us. We will learn what constitutes the designation of crone and what have been traditional, historical and current associations with the term. We will discuss our individual experiences of what it means to be a crone in these challenging days in twenty-first century America. We will make our own Crone Soul Collage cards to consult with and make contact with our wise Inner Crones.

In this class, we will explore the relationship of the crone to the elementals: air, fire, water, and air and their associated directions: east, south, west, and north. We will discuss the significance of the crone’s immersion in the forces of nature and their cycles. We will continue working deeply with the elemental that attracts us. We will become acquainted with many of the correspondences of each elemental, including rules, time, seasons, colors, tools, spirits, angels, smells, jewels, incenses, plants and herbs, trees, animals, goddesses.We will choose an element that we are attracted and study in more detail what it means to us as crones. We will practice calling in the directions, casting the circle, and opening the circle. This will be an important responsibility in the rituals we will be participating in on the Sunday evening of the Symposium. We will make a Soul Collage card that shows your crone relationship to the elemental of your choice.

In this intensive, we will manifest the crone’s power within by studying, creating, and consecrating wands. We will explore the ways in which these magical tools  may be used by crones in general. Specifically, we will prepare for and practice the ways we will use them before, during, and after the Maiden and Crone Honoring rituals that occur on Sunday evening during Symposium. We will have the opportunity to look deeply into the stick or branch we choose and articulate the metaphorical meaning of this creature of nature. We will then determine how you make your wand — adorning the wand to amplify your intentions and deciding how you want it to appear. We will consecrate our wands using meditation and invocation. Finally if time permits, we will learn how to store our wands in order to protect them and to radiate benefit to all sentient beings.

In this class, we will delve into the gifts of the crone, particularly as they are embodied in the deep wisdom of lunar and solar cycles. We will also explore archetypes of the crone expressed in four crone goddesses: Cailleach, Spider Woman, Hecate, and Woman of the Mist. Some of the gifts of the crone may include but not be limited to: perspective, connection to the ancestors and the descendants, surrender, patience, trust, energy conservation, rest, meditation, reflection, soul guidance, truth telling, acceptance, forgiveness, healing, spiritual connection, and contact with celestial energies. We will amplify our own gifts using herbal charms and commit to sharing them during these daunting times.