Mind you, all attempts at historical revisionism are highly subjective to some degree, so the question becomes not “who is telling the truth, and who not?” but “who has the best quality bullshit?”

Lastly, there was Charles Seymour’s inspirational essay The Old Religion: A Study of the Symbolism used in Woman’s Mysteries which examines Harding’s work. These essays weren’t published until after The White Goddess and Graves probably never read them, but Seymour was a friend of Christine Hartley. They did occult work together and Seymour’s essays were circulated “underground” among occult circles long before Graves published The White Goddess and perhaps even before Gardner published Witchcraft Today (1954). Seymour cites not only Harding, but also Frazer, Harrison, Margaret Murray, Celtic historian John Rhys, Charles Leland (author of Aradia: Gospel of the Witches), and Mead’s translations of the Hermetic texts. The concept of a triple goddess could easily have entered neopagan circles from Seymour’s works rather than Graves.

None of these sources depict the old age phase of the goddess as anything like “a nice old Grandma”. In fact, she becomes the embodiment of death; a sort of female grim reaper. Much of The White Goddess (and Graves’s later poetry) examines the concept of death personified as a female. Frazer explored the same idea in European folklore, where traditions often suggested that the young goddess who planted the crops became the same old woman who chopped them down and ate them–an attitude that he extended to human kings in his hypothetical recreation of early matriarchal cultures. Graves spends much of The White Goddess drawing parallels between these early kings and poets who spend much of their life writing romantic love poetry only to be betrayed by a female who turns bitter over time, eventually equating to the female embodiment of death.

In all honesty, Graves wanted to write about the goddess as a pentad, with 5 phases which would probably connect to the 5 points of the pentagram and 5 phases of life which Graves placed on a circular calendar much like the Wiccan “wheel of the year” but he was unable to develop the idea fully. The idea of a triple goddess was, in fact, already so entrenched in Western literature that Graves had a hard time trying to develop the other 2 phases. The White Goddess mentions the goddess as a pentad at least once but only the 3 phases are developed because they were the easiest to find evidence for in the ancient paganism and later literary traditions which Graves researched.

We have an E-Zine and would love to feature your work and generate you some traffic back to your webpage.

The email I left is valid and we can be reached any time, If you follow the link to our webpage we also have a Chaos Magick chat room if that is better.

Looking Forward.