Crone's Cairn - Hel Did Not Come
A Stone Turned in the Crone’s Cairn series | A 'Natural Cycles' Stone
Crone Stone Name: The Waning Moon
Cycle: Crone
Stage of Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey: Healing the Wounded Masculine
Author’s Notes
“… what represents death also supplies symbols of rebirth.”
~ Carol Lee Campbell, Creator of the Crone Stones
Campbell calls Hel the ‘Scandinavian Goddess of the Underworld.’ In older Norse sources, though, Hel is as much a realm as a ruler, and the personification of her as a goddess is debated. More reliably, Hel shows how Norse myth treated death and the afterlife—not strictly evil-vs-good but multiple “destinations,” multiple roles, different fates depending on how you died.
In her Crone Stones, Campbell has linked Hel and “the waning moon” stone to the death stage of our natural cycles. The crone.
She suggests a modern reimagining in which Hel, the death-ruler, walks the earth as Hild—a vision I use symbolically here rather than as a historical belief.
Cycles end.
Closures come.
So this stone perhaps speaks of how closure will inevitably find its way.
Hel Did Not Come
Hel over high water would not come for me. Nay– it would be the bone-hour of truth, and Hild. Waning with the moon, my crossing approaches. In the swaddle of fallen leaves, I find rebirth. Loose ends snag our way to Niflheim. Valkyrie down nestles me and I re-awaken. From the battlefield, we are reborn.
~jlynn
How difficult is finding closure?
Have you looked at K. M. Weiland's archetypes? She alternates male and female, but I think you would like her description of the crone arc.