Introduction: Welcome to the Crone Zone
Picture the crone: a gnarled old woman clad in a tattered black cloak. Stringy gray hair hangs limply over her shoulders, which are stooped with age. Her eyes are rheumy but all-seeing, hinting at the wisdom that lies within. She possesses magic found only in the dark heart of the woods. Legend has it she curses the souls of lost travelers and bakes children into pies. She prefers a solitary existence, rarely venturing into sight. But when she does, it is a fearsome harbinger of things to come.
The crone doesn’t always show up as a hag. Sometimes she’s a caretaker like Strega Nona, the Italian granny who doles out advice as well as bowls of pasta from her magical pot. But whether gracious grandmother or wicked witch, the crone is always cast as a woman whose best days are behind her.
At least, that’s how people, especially men, have described her.
The crone archetype has been around for centuries, but she’s most often associated with the three-faced Greek goddess Hecate. Hecate’s three faces are said to represent the three phases of a woman’s life: maiden, mother, and crone. Except that’s not how she was perceived by the ancient Greeks, who saw her three aspects as more representative of birth, life, and death. The “crone” business didn’t show up until
the mid-twentieth century. In his books
The White Goddess and
The Greek Myths, poet and mythographer Robert Graves rebranded Hecate’s faces as, let’s be honest, the three types of woman our culture recognizes: “young and hot,” “mommy,” and “old and useless.” In other words, you can be a
fucking goddess for more than two thousand years, and one day some guy comes along and decides,
nah, she’s a crone. And that’s that.
If it can happen to Hecate, it can happen to any of us—and it does. We spend our lives trying to fulfill all the expectations that society places on us, or that we place on ourselves: to be flawless but approachable, hot but also nurturing, competent enough to take care of everyone but never intimidating. And no matter how well we do at striking this impossible balance, one day everyone starts treating us like a hag who lives in a bog.
This book is for all of us entering our crone era—and looking to decide for ourselves what that means. Think of it less as a midlife crisis and more as a midlife calling. As we cross the threshold into cronedom, everything in our lives is changing—our goals, our fears, our living situations, our tolerance for bullshit, and especially our bodies. We stand at the crossroads with half our life behind us, trying not to pee, asking
is that all there is?
While this book can’t answer that for you, it can give you a place to start. On these pages you’ll find crone wisdom and crone warnings, crone spells and crone inspiration. While I’ll call upon pagan imagery and witchy ritual, this is not a book of witchcraft—but that’s not to say you won’t find some magic between its covers. You’ll get to know me: Nina, your crone guide. And together, we’ll discover our crone superpowers and learn about our crone touchstones:
Wisdom, to know who we areKnowledge, to understand what we wantFuck It, to do what we pleaseI don’t know about you, but my crone era has lit a fire in me. It feels almost primal, like the power of a thousand
fuck its has been flowing through my veins since birth and now is ready to be unleashed upon the world. I am a volcano, ready to erupt:
Mount St. Fuck You.
Picture the crone: filled with power and fury. Picture the crone: filled with wisdom and knowledge. Picture the crone: filled with love and desire. Picture the crone: free.
Okay, crones. We’re going in.
Copyright © 2025 by Nina Bargiel, illustrated by Pam Wishbow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
