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The Triple Goddess as a Hermetic Key to the Mysteries

The Triple Goddess as a Hermetic Key to the Mysteries

Last updated on: February 12, 2026 at 2:13 pm by Heron Michelle

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The Triple Goddess as a Hermetic Key to the Mysteries 2026-02-12T14:13:07-04:00 Heron Michelle

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This week, my adventures in visual art brought me back to my “Great Goddess in Three Aspects” candle illustration. I first sketched it in 2019, and it was eventually printed in black and white in my book Elemental Witchcraft. At the time, I was genuinely surprised that Llewellyn’s art director chose to include any of my sketches. I assumed—quite sincerely—that a “real artist” would later turn my drawing into “real art.” Imposter syndrome has long dogged my heals.

Despite my best efforts then, I was never satisfied with those early illustrations. They carried my ideas, but the execution did not fully convey what I saw in my mind’s eye. Over the five years since, I have worked steadily to improve my skills. Most nights, I decompress with alcohol markers and brush nibs layered with pencil and charcoal on translucent vellum paper, probably with some 90’s Star Trek playing in the background. I have obsessed over other artists’ reels and YouTube tutorials. I have taught myself enough digital graphics software and scanning techniques to produce all the diagrams and illustrations for my second book in the Pentacle Path series: Lunar Witchcraft.

I’m much happier with what I can do now, so I’m circling back to revisit the art from the first book. Today I share the 2026 revision of The Great Goddess in Three Aspects, rendered as a Hermetic diagram.

Once again, it is designed as devotional candle imagery. When wrapped around a 7-day glass sanctuary candle, each Goddess archetype appears in turn, backlit by flame. As the candle is turned, the crone and maiden meet face to face.

The Great Goddess in Three Aspects by Heron Michelle – Ink on vellum, 2026

The Triple Goddess as Hermetic Diagram

In modern Witchcraft—particularly since the 1990s—we have often named these archetypal faces of the Great Goddess as Maiden, Mother, and Crone. I am well aware that this language has fallen out of favor in some devotional polytheist circles, and I understand the concern. These archetypes should not be mistaken for the literal identities of ancient deities themselves.

The Triple Goddess was first taught to me as divine metaphor: a poetic way of revealing Divinity through the cycles of nature. The Maiden, Mother, and Crone correspond most visibly to the three primary phases of the lunar cycle—waxing, full, and waning or dark. Yet this pattern is observable everywhere:

generationally (stages of human life)
daily (phases of Earth’s rotation)
monthly (phases of the Moon)
yearly (seasonal change)
astrologically (cardinal, fixed, and mutable modalities)

As a Hermetic panentheist witch, I perceive divinity in every stratum of the cosmos. Divine metaphors like the Triple Goddess function as mirrors between inner and outer realities, revealing the receptive end of the
spectrum regardless of one’s physical sex or gender identity.

I wrote more about Hermetic Philosophy here.

Astrological Modalities

These archetypes also correspond to the modalities of a cycle: the energy that initiates (cardinal), the energy
that sustains (fixed), and the energy that dissolves or transmutes (mutable). This symbolism is not limited to feminine forms. If there are maidens, there are lads. If there is a mother, there is a father. If there is a wise old grandmother, there is a sage old grandfather.

The polarity of projective and receptive—masculine and feminine—is one expression of the yin-yang symbol of Taoism. Each pole contains the seed of the other. The key to unlock one side’s power lies in that small “keyhole” dot of its complement. Here is the plot twist: the symbol does not ultimately reveal a duality. The metaphors we assign to God (Yang) and Goddess (Yin) simply anchor the ends of a divine spectrum. That spectrum makes room for every possible expression of gender—the whole LGBTQIA+ rainbow.

Within Hermetic Witchcraft, archetypes are not prescriptions. They are keys that unlock occult mysteries. Like sigils, they compress complex truths into simple forms that can be contemplated, invoked, and unfolded over time. The Triple Goddess operates in this way. Rather than reading the metaphor as a biological script for every woman’s body, I understand it as symbolic shorthand for the cyclical mysteries embodied by the vastness of Nature herself.

That is how I approached this devotional art project.

The Great Goddess in Three Aspects

On the left, the Maiden embodies the cardinal impulse: beginnings, desire, emergence. She appears at dawn in early spring, reaching toward peaches not yet fully ripe. Her eyes are lifted heavenward, her hair lifting in the breeze. She holds the orange sacral chakra at her womb, aligned with Venus and generative potential. Ocean waves and seashells from which she rises evoke Venus’s birth from the sea and the depths from which all new life emerges.

At the center stands the Mother as axis mundi. She bridges the worlds above and below, holding the triple moon crowned with the yin-yang. Her pregnant belly is formed from a sacred spiral, seeded with an acorn shown in the Triple God image I will revisit next. That acorn echoes the “dot” within the yin-yang; the oak itself is associated with the Solar God archetype. A necklace of planets extends her dominion beyond Earth. Black and white stars above and below also suggest her cosmic nature. Robed in green at the heart chakra, she sustains life through love. Shown at midday, at summer’s height, she bears the responsibility of organization and sustenance. She faces forward into the Middle World, eyes closed, grounded and at peace.

On the right, the Crone appears at dusk in autumn’s dimming light. Her indigo robes bear the third-eye chakra at her brow, alongside the glyphs of Saturn and Lilith—symbols of boundary, death, and inner vision. Her gaze and silver hair fall downward toward the Underworld. She carries a torch to illuminate the way and a key that opens the threshold, hinting at chthonic associations with Hekate. The crescent sickle in her hand prepares to harvest ripened wheat. A serpent coils around her arm, and a skull rests at her feet. These are symbols of fertility, mortality, and wisdom earned through transformation. She is tomb and threshold, poised—when wrapped around the candle—to return her gifts to the Maiden once more.

Together, these figures describe cycles repeating across all levels of reality: never-ending circles of creation.

One Pattern, Many Names

Once we recognize the Triple Goddess as a symbolic map of cyclical process, her pattern becomes impossible to unsee. Human beings across cultures have observed these same tides and named them according to their own cosmologies. A traditional esoteric acronym for this mystery is GOD: Generation, Organization, and Dissolution. I delight in reframing “GOD” not as a distant patriarch in the sky, but as the process itself — the rhythm by which reality
unfolds.

Generation initiates – Maiden and Lad archetypes
Organization stabilizes – Mother and Father archetypes
Dissolution transforms – Crone and Sage archetypes.

This triadic movement is the constant cycling of energy into form, form into structure, structure into release.

“As above, so below. As within, so without.” – Hermetic Axiom

In astrological language, we call these tides Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. In Hinduism, we find them mirrored in the Tridevi and Trimurti: Saraswati with Brahma the Generator, Lakshmi with Vishnu the Preserver, and Parvati with Shiva the Dissolver. In Hermetic philosophy, the same rhythm appears in the three worlds—Upperworld, Middleworld, and Underworld—and in the alchemical triad of Mercury, Salt, and Sulfur. In ancient Greek religion, deities moved among these realms, recognized with epithets such as Ourania (heavenly), Pandemos (earthly), and Cthonia (of the underworld).

Hindu Tridevi and Trimurti E. A. Rodrigues, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Moral of the Story

Revisiting this image reminded me that creative skill, like the Goddess herself, unfolds through cycles of
becoming, working diligently, releasing, and beginning again. The Maiden learns by daring to try something
new. The Mother deepens through commitment and years of effort. The Crone gains wisdom through
attainment, relinquishes expectation, and teaches what she has learned. In this way, humanity continues the
Great Work of our collective evolution.

“Keep pure your highest ideal; strive ever towards it; let naught stop you or turn you aside.”
— The Charge of the Goddess

My own evolution as an artist, writer, witch, priestess, and woman follows the same spiral. I release the old
anxieties about whether my artwork counts as “real art,” or whether I qualify as a “real artist.” What does “real” mean in this Middle World illusion of separateness? The debate is irrelevant to my deeper vocation as a priestess. I create with devotion and reverence for the Craft. That is real enough for my magick.
I hope this image encourages other witches to trust their creative intuition—to paint, draw, stitch, sculpt, sing, or craft offerings to the Goddess, and share them proudly. In doing so, we make the world a little more beautiful, cycle by cycle.
Blessed be,
Heron

To see all of my devotional art creations so far, made for many individual goddesses of the ancient world, check out my offerings at TheSojo.com

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About Heron Michelle

Heron Michelle is a witch, priestess, and author of Elemental Witchcraft: A Guide to Living a Magickal Life Through the Elements. She teaches a modern Hermetic form of Modern Witchcraft through her on-line course at HeronMichelle.com You can read more about the author here.

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