The Fourfold Goddess: Maiden, Householder, Regent, Wise Woman: A New Metaphor for Women’s Midlife Creating Sovereignty and Power (2024)

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The Fourfold Goddess: Maiden, Householder, Regent, Wise Woman. A New Metaphor for Women's Midlife Creating Sovereignty and Power.

Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

The Maiden— represented by the waxing moon. She is the symbol of girlhood, purity, pleasure, independence, freedom of expression, unbridled energy, untamed wildness. She is encouraged to explore and discover her passions and path. She is unapologetic and eager to blaze her own trail.

These three figures are often described as the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, each of which symbolizes both a separate stage in the female life cycle and a phase of the Moon, and often rules one of the realms of heavens, earth, and underworld.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. Mary Wollstonecraft's quote captures a profound truth about human nature and the choices we make.

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and a passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women. She called for the betterment of women's status through such political change as the radical reform of national educational systems. Such change, she concluded, would benefit all society.

One multi-armed goddess is Goddess Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune, and prosperity. She is the consort of the god Vishnu and is typically depicted with four arms. In at least one of her hands, Goddess Lakshmi holds a lotus flower, which is a symbol of beauty, purity, and spiritual enlightenment.

The Morrígan is mainly associated with war and fate, and is often interpreted as a "war goddess". W. M. Hennessy's The Ancient Irish Goddess of War, written in 1870, was influential in establishing this interpretation. She is said to derive pleasure from mustered hosts.

Hecate (Hekate) is a goddess of Greek mythology capable of both good and evil. She was associated with witchcraft, magic, the Moon, doorways, and creatures of the night like hell-hounds and ghosts. Hecate often carries a torch in her connection with the night.

Pratisara: one of the five Pancha Raksha Goddesses. This form of Pratisara can be either white or yellow. With four faces and eight arms on the right side she holds a wheel, vajra scepter, arrow and sword.