Talk:Triple Goddess/Archive 1

Appropriateness

There probably ought to be some mention of the Norns as well as Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. But, this is outside of my field of expertise, so I'll leave it to others. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:17, May 24, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I thought the use of Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate were wholly inappropriate examples for the triple goddess, especially the 'maid, mother, crone' version. The Greek Fates (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) would be a far better example. Especially since their actions dictate the times of life: Clotho spinning, Lachesis measuring, and Atropos cutting. Birth, experience, death. Not that Demeter, Hecate, and Persephone aren't all groovy goddesses. They are- but they are not exactly a trifecta. Especially given Persephone's association with the dead (kind of ironic for a spring goddess, huh?). acadian_sidhe --68.11.145.140 02:10, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Also, Hecate wasn't generally depicted as a crone, but as a beautiful women (or often three beautiful women). Also, the implication that Gaia had three aspects and was synonymous with the Roman Magna Mater sounds dodgy to me. Basically, I think the article would benefit from taking a wider viewpoint. There are many examples of single goddesses becoming three (but sometimes 9 or 11 or 12, etc), such as with the Celtic Matronae, Hecate, the "Mothers" of Engyon, Brigid, etc. In some of these cases the three even fit the mold of maiden, mother and crone. All this should be mentioned, clearly indicating what is modern interpretation and what is historical. However just saying that they are Persephone, Demeter and Hecate and are all aspects of Gaia is somewhat limiting and seems incorrect. I don't really feel like rewriting this article myself right now, but I may do eventually... Fuzzypeg 13:23, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The norns may be a triad, as are the Charites, but no myth connects them with an aspect of a Triple Goddess, unless they were a triplicate of Hecate. A good starting text to clear the mind might be Kerenyi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter which discusses the Eleusinian mysteries that revolve around Demeter and Persephone, rather than any Triple Goddess. Gaia is simply one aspect: the fruitful Mother. Gaia is neither Maiden nor Crone. --Wetman 23:14, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

My point was that the article, since it's called "Triple Goddess", should discuss the phenomenon of triple goddesses (which were quite common; more so than, say, triple gods). Whether or not they fit to Graves' conception of the Triple Goddess, or the neopagan conception, or whatever, is another matter, and that can be discussed too.

By the way, I think you'd be hard pressed to establish the Norns (Scandinavian) as being aspects of Hecate (Greek). I specifically didn't include the Norns in my comment above because there's not such clear evidence for them being aspects of a single goddess. Fuzzypeg 11:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Wicca & neopaganism

Now that I really read it, this is an incredibly poorly-crafted page. It talks very little about the triple goddesses and their differences and similarities across cultures, but a whole lot about neopagan beliefs concerning triple goddesses. Not that that doesn't have its place, but I don't think that place should have been laced throughout the article. This is not an editorial, and it's certainly not an article about Neopaganism in general or Dianic and Wiccan views. It's misleading. acadian_sidhe--68.11.145.140 02:18, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree. At the very least, there should be a clear distinction between triads of female figures in general (quite common in Roman, Celtic and Norse mythology), and the "Maiden/Mother/Crone" arrangement, which seems to be a more recent invention (Robert Graves? Jane Harrison?) —Ashley Y 04:26, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Wiccan MMC triple Goddess derives from Graves. Unfortunately many people believe that this concept was widespread in antiquity and attempt to 'back port' it onto discussions of history. As with other wikipedia articles, the Wiccan material should be clearly marked in its own section. Its valid, relevant, and modern; this should be made clear from the article. --Nantonos 19:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Graves himself was not any kind of Wiccan, nor do I think that those who are partially inspired by Graves are all Wiccans, so Graves should not be relegated to a "Wiccan" section of the article. AnonMoos 17:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be Kore-Demeter-Persephone. Kore is the innocent spring goddess, Persephone is the dead goddess she becomes. And Demeter is the vegetation mother of her. But, this is were we are. They're spring goddesses, not lunar goddesses, which fundamentally contradicts Wiccan theology. The only to gods to fit would be Helios/ Apollo and Hecate/ Artemis/ Selene. None else. Not in egypt, celts or germanics. Wiccan theology is rubbish. We of course can`t DISPROVE there ever was an universal religion worshipping a trippled moon goddess and a vegetation-sun-god. But why should we believe it if we have NO reason to?

Two things: 1) I don't think you'd recognise Wiccan theology if it bit you in the arse; and 2) your comments here and elsewhere seem intended to insult/pontificate rather than to improve articles. Please find something useful to do or go else where. Wikipedia is not a forum. Fuzzypeg★ 05:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Women in paganism

I don't have much academic experience in religion, but I'm checking up on Dan Brown's suggestion that in the sweeping of Christianity over Paganism, women ultimately lost their cultural standing. Can anyone point me in the direction of more information on women in paganism? Thanks.

The first volume of Paul Veyne, editor, A History of Private Life will give you plenty of material and a bibliography. It's available in paperback. --Wetman 13:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Layout

Cheesy-looking layout now. --Wetman 13:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Wicca template

I have reservations about adding the {{wicca}} template to this page, since the Triple Goddess concept wasn't invented by Wiccans, is not currently embraced exclusively by Wiccans, and is not really a basic core Wiccan belief (from what I can tell). It's really more of a general eclectic neopagan thing, rather than a specifically Wiccan thing. Furthermore, the {{wicca}} template is big, loud, and annoying, and interacts in an unfortunate way with the placement of the images along the side of the page. I'm removing the template at least until the technical issues can be resolved... AnonMoos 17:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this analysis, and support removing the {{wicca}} template for all the reasons that you give. --Nantonos 21:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I'll place further comments elsewhere on this page. Fuzzypeg 13:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

But if someone were to write a subsection on "the Triple Goddess in Wicca", that would be helpful... AnonMoos 07:41, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Main three crescents symbol

Do you know for a fact that it originated among Wiccans? AnonMoos 06:05, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

No I don't, and I'm quite likely wrong. I was attempting a rearrangement of the article that gave a broader view of the triple-goddess phenomenon and wasn't linked solely to the maiden-mother-crone aspects. Particularly, I was trying to give context/origins to some of the different ideas and symbols. It looks like in the process I've antagonised someone into doing some really excellent work on the article.

I'm not myself a proponent of the view that Graves made it all up (I think he was brilliant and insightful); I just didn't feel qualified myself to rewrite those assertions. I'm really pleased someone else has come forward with so much good info... Fuzzypeg 04:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

File:RWS-02-High Priestess.jpg

The High Priestess (II) in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck

OK, it's just that there were a lot of cross-currents in pre-1960's esotericism / occultism / neo-paganism, and I don't think that organized institutionalized "Wiccanism" achieved great prominence until the 1960's. Graves didn't actually "invent" the basic idea, but he greatly popularized one interpretation of it... AnonMoos 15:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I bet the early 20th-century "High Priestess" tarot card had something to do with it -- it seems to be halfway between the Hathor headdress and the modern main triple goddess symbol... AnonMoos 05:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Three aspects

One of the biggest mistakes that the modern NeoPagans make in their interpretation of the aspects is the assumption that the triad of the Goddess relates to the three ages of mortal woman rather than to the universal experience of all living creatures to the three life-thresholds of birth:love:death. The order of the triad should be as Graves described and which is borne out by early Hindu scriptures such as the Puranas : white goddess of creation, red goddess of preservation, black goddess of destruction, hence the later patriarchal Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

I'm very impressed with what you've added to the page. It's nice to find someone who will actually go to the effort of writing about what they know, especially someone who can draw on detailed information and original sources. The article may need some structural work soon, given the amount of new material that's arriving. I've just reformatted the blockquotes and I'd like to try to set up the references properly as footnotes, so they link to a specific place in the text. I'll start attempting that now, if I can figure out what the different references refer to. Great work! Fuzzypeg 06:30, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for a two-years-delayed reply, but I thought I would add for the record that both an "internal" view of the three aspects of the triple goddess as analogous to three stages of a woman's life (maiden, mother, and crone) and also an "external" view of the three aspects of the triple goddess as analogous to women with different roles in a man's life, are contained in Grave's writings. For the former see the quote from the "White Goddes" on the article page; for the latter, see the quote "the Goddess who is our universal Mother, Bride, and Layer-Out" in chapter 21 of Seven Days in New Crete. By the way, with respect to the reference to "Watch the North Wind Rise" in the article, my copy of the book says "Northwind" (one word), while the Wikipedia article is "Seven Days in New Crete"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Lengthy quotation/copyvio

The lengthy quotation from "The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells : Texts". may be problematic as a copyvio. I would suggest to either reduce it in size considerably or to remove it if that is not possible. See Wikipedia:Copyright. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 01:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The use of a fully attributed quote in this context is "fair use" as it would be if the same quotation was used in a book. The editing of the block quote into smaller chunks was done skillfully and it should be left now as it is. It is not a copyright violation.

There are enough complaints regarding some of the statements made on this page being unsupported by fact. What could be more "factual" than a direct quote from a primary source.

Re: the removal of the Robert Graves link. It should stay. The Robert Graves forum also contains threads which explore the symbolism of the Triple Goddess in a deeper way than is possible within the scope of Wikipedia. Robert Graves is mentioned in more than one place in this text and is relevant to the discussion. In one of the forums there is an interesting thread about the survival of Triple Goddess symbolism in the ceremonies of the Greek Orthodox Church.

St. Sophia and St. Sapienta are another case in point. Both were credited with being the mother of the Three Graces : Faith, Hope and Charity ("Love") and both have separated Feast Days. (That of St. Sapienta is in fact, 1st August). The Greek name for the Three Graces was the Charites ("Graces").

The early Church needed a way to continue to honour the Gnostic Goddess, Sophia/Sapienta ("Wisdom") and making her into a saint was the only viable option.

CITATIONS

Please advise which form of citations would be acceptable. Fully attributed quotations from academic sources can be supplied with publication details, page numbers and ISBNs if need be.

Wikipedia allows various types of citation, and doesn't insist on any one variety, although it does suggest consistency. See WP:CITE. However as long as you provide some citation, no-one's going to insist that it be posted first-off in a perfect format. If they think they can improve it, they will. Many articles use footnote-style citations, which I rather like. To insert a footnote, at the point in your text you want the little number to appear you put <ref>whatever text you want to appear in the footnote</ref>. I don't completely like the way it makes the code difficult to read, but it works well in the final article. As long as we get the author, title, year, publisher and page numbers, that's the main thing. You can also look at how some of the other footnotes have been formatted. Fuzzypeg☻ 14:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Abrahamic Religion

The existence of monotheism prior to the Mosaic reform of Judaism is seriously in doubt among scholars do not have an orthodox religious agenda.

The major rewriting of the Hebrew Scriptures and the introduction of the Book of Deuteronomy by King Josiah (which basically centralised both spiritual and political power into the King and the Temple at Jerusalem while disenfranchising all other temples and shrines - including Shiloh) and the continued tradition of the consort of Adonai throughout the period of the monarchy mean that at best we can attribute monotheism (like the name YHWH) to the time of Moses.

See : 

* The tribes of Yahweh 1250-1050 B.C.E. by Norman K. Gottwald.
* Sarah The Priestess : The First Matriarch Of Genesis by Savina Teubal  
* Canaanites and Their Land, The Tradition of the Canaanites by Niels Peter Lemche

It's is much safer to say "monotheistic" religion than to use the term Abrahamic religion as some of the names of the tribes of Israel are now known to be West Semitic (Ugaritic, Amorite and Canaanite) communities.

The separation of the cultures is post-Exodus similar to the sectarian divisions which occured in Northern Ireland between the returning Irish people who had been living in Scotland and the Irish people who had never left their own country. Racially, linguistically, culturally and religiously there seem to be few real differences between the Canaanite and Hebrew elements of the population until the time of religious reforms. Archaeology also supports evidence for a mixed community rather than separatism.

This was always skillfully hidden by the Biblical editors and the religious reformers by referring to anything traditional and pre-Mosaic as "foreign" or "Hamitic". Evidence from the Book of Jeremiah (which was contemporary with the reign of King Josiah) shows that the Jewish population continued to regard their offerings to the Queen of Heaven as part of their ancient heritage. In fact, at the time, there was still a thriving temple to YHWH in Egypt which was only closed down after the reforms of Josiah.

Until the name of YHWH was used by Moses, the Hebrew God and the Canaanite Father God had the same name, and both were associated with Asherah. In actual fact it went a lot deeper than that, the only difference between the ancient Canaanite and Hebrew languages was the inclusion of more Hamitic loan-words in Hebrew via Ancient Egyptian. Hebrew as a written language did not even exist until the "Exodus".

The very earliest evidence for the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet is found near the shrine of the Goddess Hathor on Mount Sinai (which was a thriving mining community at the time producing turquoise and malachite). The ancient Egyptian placename for Sinai was "Bia" (the Mines).

The first evidence for the alphabet is written on the base of a a small red sphinx dedicated to Hathor with a bilingual inscription in hieroglyphs and proto-Sinaitic.

The inscription reads : "To Hathor, the Mistress of Turquoise" while the proto-Sinaitic inscription reads "To the Lady [Baalat]".

• [http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/images/serabit.jpg "To Hathor, the Mistress of Turquoise".

For a closeup of the actual inscription see Middle Bronze Age Alphabets.

For this reason I have changed the reference from "Abrahamic" to "monotheistic". Even early pre-Islamic traditions attribute the founding of the shrine in Arabia to Abraham "in honour of al-Uzza". If Abrahamic religion was monotheistic it was not monotheistic is the sense that we would interpret it.

Could we use the term "Hebrew monotheism" or something similar? My concern is that the article implies that monotheism was a new invention from a certain time and never existed previous to that. Now I'm sure that's going to be controversial. You seem to have replies prepared for those who would argue, however I think this is the wrong place to try to support that case, since it would involve importing all of the above discussion, plus quite a bit more, into the article, and having a lengthy section about the history of monotheism. Surely this is better discussed in the Monotheism article. The term "Hebrew monotheism", on the other hand, involves no such implied claim, and also provides better specific context.

If you really want to say that monotheism was a new innovation that never existed before a certain time, I think it should be said as a direct statement (rather than implied) and have supporting evidence or sources cited. Fuzzypeg☻ 01:55, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Neopaganism

I do not think that any article which covers archaeology, anthropology and surviving non-monotheistic traditions deserves to be classified under the heading of "neopagan" or co-opted by the WikiProject Neopaganism project. Most practising Hindus would heartily object if their religious traditions were classifed in this way. It could even be classed as a form of some form of imperialism or racism.

Please leave the topics which have historical merit out of the Neopagan loop.

It should not be necessary for any Wikipedia Project to lay claim to the work of others who may not agree with their philosophies or religious practices. The American Neopagan movement has also managed to offend the Native American communities by laying claim to their traditions while ignoring their voice.

I've seen this same argument regarding other Wikiprojects. I don't really know how these projects are organised, but I do know that if an article is part of a project it only means the article is of interest and importance to that group, not that the article has exclusive relation to that group.

I don't particularly like the term neopagan either, and I prefer to disassociate myself from it. However all that tag means is that a group of people have seen work was needed, and put the article on their todo list. It doesn't claim ownership, authorship or exclusive association. Fuzzypeg☻ 01:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I'm new to all this. I don't like the word "neopagan" either. It reminds me of "neoprene" something slippery and plastic. I have just clarified what the original author was probably trying to indicate regarding the primacy of Goddess-worship before the time of patriarchal monotheistic religions. I don't think that Abrahamic religions was a broad enough term because it ignores Zoroastrianism which also tried (and failed) to suppress earlier Goddess-traditions. If I had made a mistake in doing this please feel free to correct it.

20:41, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Video Games

The triad goddess in video games falls in an awkward 'popular culture' category not included in the article. An interesting topic, i think, but can it fit in the article? -- 06:26, 22 August 2008 68.18.158.234

I don't think there's any problem including a simple "see also" link to triforce (which this article has had in the past, though it doesn't seem to be there now), but any extended discussion probably would be out of place... AnonMoos (talk) 09:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Zelda

Tri-forcey!

Yeees. *pats you on the head* I'm sure. Disinclination 03:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

He's right though, it's an example of the archetype. The Triforce in the Legend of Zelda series of games was left in Hyrule by the goddesses who created the world: Din (power), Nayru (wisdom), Farore (courage). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.29.168 (talk) 00:42, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Final Fantasy VI

A legend of three goddesses fuels the artfully crafted plot of the Square title Final Fantasy VI.
Interestingly, there seem to be differing versions of the mythology in the game itself, just as is true of oral tradition and mythic/religious literature. Some of this ambiguity may be a result of translation problems or oversight. This 'fictional myth' of the game's plot also alludes to creation, Prometheus, and deluge mythology. -- 06:26, 22 August 2008 68.18.158.234

Unfortunately this kind of analysis/interpretation by editors is not allowed in the article as per the original research policy. Fuzzypeg★ 00:38, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Flaws

This article has many historical flaws fed by Neopaganism. Hecate is *not* a "crone" goddess. To the Greeks she was a maiden. Furthermore she wasn't considered in triple form until much later! The article should state clearly what ideas, as with Hecate being a crone, is from Neopaganism and originated modernly by New Agers and what was actually believed by the ancients. The triple goddess concept is not universal nor was it thought of the way that this article paints. The article is totally written from the POV of New ager. The whole view of this article is not NPOV or has correct citations in areas of concern. Also, it should be stated more clearly on the archetype of the Triple goddess, because this is mostly what this article is reflecting. Xuchilbara (talk) 00:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The idea of a goddess with three clearly functionally-differentiated aspects (as opposed to a triad of similar goddesses or semi-divine females) is more or less a modern concept (though not entirely "New Age", since Robert Graves, who greatly popularized the idea, had very little to do with anything "New Age"). Hecate had several quasi-contradictory aspects over her career, but towards the end in late antiquity she was most prominently kind of a goddess of night and dark magical curses, and that's how she's best remembered now... AnonMoos (talk) 16:18, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

But even so, she wasn't to my knowledge portrayed as elderly or crone-ish. She did in late antiquity take on strong "triple" connotations, and was identified with the moon, but she was also represented in the three-fold sculpture style as early as the late 5th century BC, according to Pausanius. Such sculptures became common, and the Roman ones we see in, say, the Vatican Museum, are copies of earlier Hellenic originals.  Fuzzypeg  ^talk  00:05, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Augustine

I'm surprised no one has left mention of the relationship (or at least coincidance) of the Christian Trinity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.210.113.173 (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I removed a section about Augustine. It read (with the missing reference filled in):

In one of the ironies of religious history, St. Augustine of Hippo mocked the pagan religions of his time for believing in a goddess who could be both three and one at the same time (The City of God Book VII Ch. 23). By the time he wrote his third book, On the Trinity, he had become a staunch proponent of the Trinitarian doctrine and had obviously resolved this conflict within himself or, at the very least, brought his thinking into line with orthodoxy.

This seems to be a misreading of Augustine. The text in question is as follows:

What I am to say is this: Since the earth is one, why has not that part of the soul of the world which permeates the earth made it that one goddess which he calls Tellus? But had it done so, what then had become of Orcus, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis? And where, in that case, had been his wife Proserpine, who, according to another opinion given in the same book, is called, not the fecundity of the earth, but its lower part? But if they say that part of the soul of the world, when it permeates the upper part of the earth, makes the god Father Dis, but when it pervades the nether part of the same the goddess Proserpine; what, in that case, will that Tellus be? For all that which she was has been divided into these two parts, and these two gods; so that it is impossible to find what to make or where to place her as a third goddess, except it be said that those divinities Orcus and Proserpine are the one goddess Tellus, and that they are not three gods, but one or two, while notwithstanding they are called three, held to be three, worshipped as three, having their own several altars, their own shrines, rites, images, priests, while their own false demons also through these things defile the prostituted soul.

... and so it continues. Yes, truly it is a naïvely simplistic view that Augustine is taking, but he is not talking about one goddess divided into three female aspects, but rather one goddess divided into two: a goddess and a god: Tellus divided into Proserpine and Orcus. And yes this is a little ironic in light of his later views on the Christian Trinity, but I'm sure there are even more ridiculous things to be found in his writing. Not relevant to this article anyway.  Fuzzypeg  ^talk  04:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Unattributed text regarding fates

I've removed two paragraphs regarding the Fates that have been lacking citations for well over a year. They're really interesting and worthwhile information, and quite likely correct, but the need citations. They also need a little clarification, such as in which cultures midwives were believed to represent the Fates, or if this is the interpretation of an outsider researcher, and so on. It's such a pity when someone adds brilliant info like this but doesn't say where they got it from. It's almost as useless as never having added it at all...

In traditional Greek folklore, a low table is still prepared on the 6th night following a birth with food and drink so that the Fates may enter the house and bless the child with good fortune. A similar ceremony occurs in India, where the goddess who visits is in single-form and is named Sashthi ("sixth"). This is similar to the Scandinavian tales of the Norns who visit the houses in which a birth has taken place. All of these themes, over the course of time, move from the realm of sacred myth to that of popular folktale and folk-custom. Some take this as a clue that most of the original cultural undercurrents would have had to be pre-Indo-European to have lasted so long and to have stretched across so wide a cultural and linguistic expanse.

The celebration of the life-thresholds was from early times in the hands of woman and was repressed comparatively recently. That is why the Three Fates, the Three Graces and the Three Furies were said to be sisters. When the women presided over the blessing of the child at birth and who acted as midwives they served the Fates, when they performed the traditional dances and songs for blessing weddings and acted as bridesmaids they served the Graces and when they fulfilled the role of professional mourners and psychopomp they served the Furies.

Cheers, Fuzzypeg★ 21:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Maiden Mother Crone perennial

I don't have the reference in front of me put Robert Graves' first reference for the MMC triple goddess in the Greek Myths was I believe taken from Pausanius, there was a temple of Hera with the goddess so divided. In general Graves seemed to enjoy sometimes giving the impression that his assertions were unsupported when they weren't.....Jeremy (talk) 07:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Also speaking of Graves, it seems little recognized that he actually wrote in the White Goddess of a five-fold rather than a three-fold goddess, the Triple Goddess is just the Readers' Digest version so to speak. As I recall the nubile woman expands to three of which the "mother" is only one. Five is the true number of the goddess, the pentacle and the apple and all that. There are two triads which cross each other amking five in all. Worth a mention somewhere. Jeremy (talk) 07:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I believe that Graves mainly refers to a five-fold goddess in connection with the solar year, while the goddess is most definitely three-fold in terns of lunar symbolism... AnonMoos (talk) 10:49, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I still don't have my Greek Myths in front of me, but I'm thinking Graves' citation for the MMC statue of Hera was the following from Pausanias [1]: [2.17.4] The statue of Hera is seated on a throne; it is huge, made of gold and ivory, and is a work of Polycleitus. She is wearing a crown with Graces and Seasons worked upon it, and in one hand she carries a pomegranate and in the other a sceptre. About the pomegranate I must say nothing, for its story is somewhat of a holy mystery. The presence of a cuckoo seated on the sceptre they explain by the story that when Zeus was in love with Hera in her maidenhood he changed himself into this bird, and she caught it to be her pet. This tale and similar legends about the gods I relate without believing them, but I relate them nevertheless. [2.17.5] By the side of Hera stands what is said to be an image of Hebe fashioned by Naucydes; it, too, is of ivory and gold. By its side is an old image of Hera on a pillar. The oldest image is made of wild-pear wood, and was dedicated in Tiryns by Peirasus, son of Argus, and when the Argives destroyed Tiryns they carried it away to the Heraeum. I myself saw it, a small, seated image.

Hebe is "youth" of course. I haven't yet finished searching Pausanias and am still hoping to find something clearer ; much of interest including in present context: 8.9.2] ..... Near the theater I saw a temple of Hera. [8.9.3] Praxiteles made the images Hera is sitting, while Athena and Hera's daughter Hebe are standing by her side.

Jeremy (talk) 05:10, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Still don't have a copy of Greek Myths but think that the above is in fact the citation. Presumably "an old image of Hera on a pillar" can also be translated "an image of Old Hera on a pillar" although not reading Classical Greek I can't be sure. And it is certainly an "old image" whether or not it is also an image of "Old Hera". Presumably his stress on having seen the "old" image himself means it is of particular importance for some reason.

Presumably also when Pausanius says "what is said" to an image of Hebe he is expressing doubt....leaving open the interpretation that "Hebe" in fact is Hera as maiden. 8.9.3 shows another example of Hera in a group of three goddesses including Hebe, and there is much of interest elsewhere in Pausanias, can't imagine how I never read him before. Hera holding a pomegranite, as a "holy mystery" yet, presumably connects her to the Demeter/Kore legend....is Hebe actually Kore to Hera's Demeter? Heracles, who was suckled by Hera, is supposed to be married to Hebe.....the head fairly spins with possibilities; such as that Heracles once harrowed Hell in a context similar to Dionysus, but that the secret of the Heracles/Hera mystery religion was better kept than the Dionysus/Semele or Demeter/Kore ones.....

I wonder if these possibilities have been discussed by someone repsectable who can be cited? In any case the MMC concept, implicit in the Demeter story, can probably be better cited than at present. Jeremy (talk) 01:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

It's all interesting, but it sounds like we need to wait for the Graves citation to be found... I don't know the literature well enough to find an author who's written on the Hera/Heracles mysteries, but most of these mystery traditions seem to incorporate that same harrowing of hell: Dionysus, Orpheus, Jesus, and possibly the Eleusinian Iacchus; there are also remarkable morphological similarities between Dionysus, Zeus, Hephaestus, Heracles, and so on. Again, I'm not familiar enough with the literature to say what the overall picture is, or what it means! Fuzzypeg★ 04:04, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The main context in which Graves alludes to a five-fold Goddess (as far as I'm aware) is when discussing his ogham tree-alphabet. The numbers 7 and 9 also make transient appearances -- but the main number remains 3. AnonMoos (talk) 16:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I tend to think there is too much Graves proportionately speaking. Marija Gimbutas propsed a version of the MMC in her Civilization of the Goddess, which however controversial is at least based on archaeological data. That should be referenced I reckon. The MMC can be found in Aleister Crowley, too, before Graves' stuff on it was published as Ronald Hutton points out in his book on Wicca. I would be surprised if it can't be overtly tracked further....Hutton reckons Harrison had it minus Crone. Gimbutas' version is clearly compatible with the Demeter story, she regards the Maiden as a death goddess which is of course consistent with that story, as Demeter's Eleusinian Mystery is seen as straightforwardly a survival of the goddess worship uncovered by her archaeology. (The central Wicca myth is BTW a version of the Sumerian "Descent of the Goddess" isn't it? When was the Sumerian story published?) Jeremy (talk) 03:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Graves was the one who greatly popularized the concept in the 20th century, and presented it in the context of a quasi-coherent "theology"... AnonMoos (talk) 05:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI -- discussion of this subject elsewhere

I started a new section at Talk:Trinity#NPOV -- Other Threefold Dieties ? since it seems to me that omitting this discussion makes that article POV. 66.102.204.8 (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I see little specific relevance, as explained there... AnonMoos (talk) 23:34, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Expanding section on Different triple deites

Hey everyone. As you can see, I recently expanded the section on Classical triadic goddesses to one on triadic goddesses from different cultures. I also added pictures to help illustrate the article. I must make it clear that I am not here to ram in lots of pointless information about goddesses from across the world, nor to introduce new age beliefs about all these triple goddesses in fact being the same Triple Goddess, but I believe that that section needed expanding for several key reasons:

1. Merely focusing on Classical deities is ignoring the various deities of a similar nature in different religions.
2. Understanding that there were various triple deities in history helps to explain greatly why Graves wrote of a Triple Goddess which was then taken up and adopted in the 1970s Wicca community.
3. To mirror the Horned God article more closely, which has chosen such a format after a long argument in the talk page.

Now, the information currently in this section isn't really substancial, but I beleive we can all work upon this. Cheers (Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC))

Nice work. I like it. And it makes sense to include these divinities and folkloric figures from various cultures, since they are the subject of quite a number of theories over the years regarding how they could be interlinked. The proposed proto-Indo-European triple goddess figure, for instance, as a precursor to the Matrones, Norns, Moirae and others. I don't have a reference in front of me, but it shouldn't be hard to track down. Fuzzypeg★ 02:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Probelematic section header

There seems to be a lot of non-Wiccan stuff under the "Triple Goddess of Wicca" heading. AnonMoos (talk) 14:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Citations

I have noted in the article some particular areas which need citations. Some areas seem to rely purely on primary sources, and I've added some secondary sourced content to the Gimbutu section. Also, some content in the "Celtic Pagansim" section is cited to: http://www.maryjones.us/jce/triplegoddess.html Is there any reason to assume this is a reliable source? It looks like a self-published website. --Davémon (talk) 21:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for a delayed reply (didn't really notice this subsection amidst all the other foofaraw). That website is actually a lot more level-headed than the majority of Wiccan sites, but if you're insisting on absolute scholarly respectability, then I assume it wouldn't qualify... AnonMoos (talk) 11:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Changed image caption

There's no evidence which anyone has brought forward that the waxing-full-waning symbol was invented by Wiccans (as opposed to being used by them). As discussed above at #Main three crescents symbol, I would suspect that it was devised based on a combination of Graves' lunar symbolism and the Hathor headdress sometime ca. the mid-20th century (after the publication of The White Goddess in 1948 and Seven Days in New Crete in 1949, but before organized institutional "Wiccanism" had achieved much prominence...). AnonMoos (talk) 11:29, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Surely you need to provide a citation for the origin? Otherwise your supposition would just be original research. Someone somewhere must have first invented the symbol. --Davémon (talk) 09:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Dude, you seem to be the one claiming that the symbol was originally invented by Wiccans, while my revised version of the image caption makes no such specific claims of origin, so you would seem to be the one who needs to provide sources... AnonMoos (talk) 09:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC) [Sorry, this comment was based on a partial misunderstanding -- Davemon was not the author of the revised image caption before I re-revised it.]

I have absolutely no idea who invented it or why. If no assertion to its origin can be properly sourced, then the article shouldn't be saying anything about the origin or inspiration at all. Davémon (talk) 09:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, since the current use of the triple-moon symbol is very conspicuously not confined to Wiccans, therefore saying that it's a "Wiccan symbol" (with no other attribution information) -- as was done in a previous version of the image caption -- fairly strongly implies that the symbol was either invented by Wiccans, or that Wiccans somehow have more right to it than other people do, and no evidence has been provided to support either of these assertions. AnonMoos (talk) 10:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

"no evidence has been provided to support either of these assertions" - so neither of them should appear in the article, both are original research. Is it even a "wiccan" symbol? The article doesn't even provide sources for that. --Davémon (talk) 12:21, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, it should be rather easy to document that it's used by Wiccans; the problem was that the wording of the image caption before my edit of 11:25, 11 December 2008 (which contained a typo, of course!) implied more than this... AnonMoos (talk) 12:30, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Latest additions

With the poor spellings ("appraoch", "critisised", "Graves" without apostrophe as possessive, "adolecence" etc.) and accompanying dubious assertions, I'm hesitating between correcting it and reverting wholesale, For one thing, Graves was not an academic (outside the field of English literature in his earlier days), and he made no particular pretensions to being a professional mythologist or anthropologist or cultural historian (or a professional anything except poet and author, for that matter), and he did not claim that what he was doing in the White Goddess (involving as it did admitted leaps of poetic intuition) was the same as professional academic scholarship... AnonMoos (talk) 01:30, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for the typos, my spellchecker in firefox seems to have stopped wroking. None of the assertions about Graves are dubious, but feel free to check the validity of the sources provided in the article and discuss them here if you find them unreliable. The assertion about the Iron Age triple Goddess with 3 citations however appears highly suspect, none of the 3 cites mentioned seem to directly support the sentance on their own, and the sentance appears to be a synthesis of them. Can some quotations be provided? --Davémon (talk) 09:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

If you just read the "White Goddess" book (have you ever done so?), then it's abundantly clear that while Graves considered his book to be a work of great erudition in a sense, he was not aiming towards conventional academic-scholarly respectability, and he harbored few illusions as to how his book would be received by the community of credentialled scholars. The thrust of your recent edits seems to be mainly towards including inaccurate gossip in a form which is not very useful for Wikipedia. AnonMoos (talk) 09:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I have read The White Goddess, several times. Have you read the sources provided? Do you have a problem with the source? Do you have a problem with the accuracy of the presentation of the source? If you have a different source that shows a different point of view, by all means add it to the article. Davémon (talk) 10:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I have a problem with inaccurate misspelled gossip (which is not particularly useful to Wikipedia in the form in which you added it) being brought in to this article. Inaccurate gossip which has appeared in print is still inaccurate gossip. AnonMoos (talk) 10:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

These sources are not "gossip". They are reliable academic sources published by reputable publishers. Davémon (talk) 12:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Really? The insinuations about Gimbutas' personal family life sound like nothing else other than pure unadulterated gossip to me, and if such material is at all verifiable and useful in any way for Wikipedia (which I somewhat doubt), it would probably fit much better in her personal bio article than here. And the problem with the insinuations about Graves is that they seem to seek to portray him as a kind of Barry Fell or Elaine Morgan figure -- and it's a pretty safe bet that those who know most about Graves would agree that whatever he was, he wasn't that. AnonMoos (talk) 12:19, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The critique of Gimbutas is rather detailed, well argued and posits that her "goddess-culture" relates to a specific part of her life. It's directly relevant to this article. I didn't know Graves personally, and I can only go on what the sources say. The gist of it is is that he was disappointed that more scholars didn't take up his views. If you want we can attribute the notion to the author, she doesn't elaborate or supply lots of evidence. That Graves isn't taken seriously as scholarship is important, as Juliette Wood points out, because a heck of a lot of people mistakenly believe in his work as history.

Sorry I just noticed you reverted again, after I tried to clear up the typos. Why? You have provided no reasonable evidence to support your case that this is "gossip". Please stop edit-warring, find the evidence to back up your position and discuss it properly! Davémon (talk) 12:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you spend your efforts in trying to find material which is true and useful for the purposes of Wikipedia, instead of trying to cram a lot of pointless junk into the article? And the Graves bit actually has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether you knew Graves personally, but with the question of whether he was a fringe pseudo-scientific type (see Fads and Fallacies#Overview and summary) earnestly trying to exhort and persuade mainstream scholars of the simple factual truth of his strikingly bold hypotheses (which he in fact wasn't) -- or whether he viewed the whole academic scholarship/science enterprise from a somewhat detached perspective, persuaded that he had arrived at certain neglected truths through leaps of poetic intuition, but not really trying to browbeat mainstream scholars into accepting anything he wrote, freely admitting that many of his conclusions were simply not verifiable by orthodox methods, and freely admitting that it probably wouldn't do an academic's reputation too much good to associate with him publicly (which was in fact his basic general approach, "side-stepping the mainstream" as it says). AnonMoos (talk) 20:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] If you can source Graves "side-stepping the mainstream" it would made a great addition to the article. I'm just trying to help out adding sources. Some of the sources suggested new material, which I've added. Graves being ignored by the mainstream, and his adoption by fringe-thinkers is critical in understanding the role his idea of a Trifold Goddess plays in society. Hopefully we can get the article to reflect these views. Further, I hope you approve of the restructuring, putting Graves first, as he coined the term, and putting the other comparitive/reconstructionist theories and examples later. etc. --Davémon (talk) 22:30, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

First off, I've never heard the phrase "trifold goddess"[sic] (which gets about one five-hundredth the amount of Google hits that "triple goddess" does). Second, the problem with the bit about Graves is that it's trying to label him as a crank, but unfortunately for the person trying to smear Graves in this way, Graves was simply not a crank. It's perfectly true that many of Graves' specific assertions were not and are not endorsed by mainstream scholarship, some of them are unverifiable by standard accepted scholarly/scientific methods, and some of them are very probably factually false. But this by itself is not enough for a person to be considered a crank (or else hundreds of millions of religious believers would be considered cranks). If you don't understand the perhaps subtle -- but still very important -- distinctions in this area, then you may not be the best one to edit the article in this respect. AnonMoos (talk) 22:54, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

"It's perfectly true that many of Graves' specific assertions were not and are not endorsed by mainstream scholarship" Exactly. The article now says that in an appropriate, cited way. If the wording on the article comes across as if Graves is a crank, then we need to work on that, because it is certainly not what is intended. Just removing the cited, relevant content because you don't agree with it makes no sense. Further, your wholesale revisions of constructive edits and comments such as "you may not be the best one to edit" smell strongly of article ownership. Please read wp:own and can we try to co-operate in improving the article under wp:or, wp:npov and wp:v. Thank-you! --Davémon (talk) 10:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Dude, the clause about the "scholarly ambitions" is factually false and highly inappropriate, since Graves simply didn't have "scholarly ambitions" in any intended meaningful relevant sense of those words (i.e. seeking mainstream academic respectability), as I already explained in great detail just above. Please excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall for a while... AnonMoos (talk) 11:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

P.S. As for article ownership, if you go through the edits history, you'll see that I only rather lightly intervened in the article as it went through several transformations over three years (my main contributions being the abstract symbol images and various comments on this talk page above) -- until you added material on Dec. 11th which is not useful for Wikipedia in its current form... AnonMoos (talk) 11:46, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Your "explanations" are just your opinions. They are not valid, reliably sourced, verifiable positions. "Factually false" is a false argument - Wikipedia isn't interested in so-called "facts" it is interested in "verifiable" information. The content is sourced, reliably, is verifiable. Stop removing it because you don't agree with it.

You seem to have a problem with the idea that Gimbutas's Goddess theories were influenced by her personal life. Again, this is verifiable information from reliable sources. Your argument "not useful for Wikipedia in its current form" is not a reason to delete cited content under wikipedia policy, and begs the question - what form do you think it needs to be in for it to be useful for wikipedia? Davémon (talk) 12:43, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If you can't understand the basic difference between "non-scientific" and "pseudo-scientific", then it really would be best for you to refrain from personally dealing with material which tends to obscure this quite crucial distinction. And I know relatively little about Gimbutas, but it seems abundantly clear that the material you added to this article is little else than shallow glib pop-psychologizing based on gossip. If such material is at all verifiable and useful in any way for Wikipedia (which I somewhat doubt), it would probably fit much better in her personal bio article than here.AnonMoos (talk) 10:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

No. The critique showing that Gimbutas theories are a product of her projection of her personal life onto history is not "shallow glib pop-psychologizing", it is a diligent and well-thought out critique of her work by an academic historian. As you claim to know "relatively little" about the subject your opinion is obviously based on something other than evidence relating to the subject. Again, your opinion is not enough to remove relevant, verifiable, cited content from the article. I will request a third opinion on this and the removal of citation requests to try to clear up this dispute. --Davémon (talk) 11:53, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Anon comments

Graves was not a Crank, but he was a self described eccentric. He was a great poet, brilliant writer of historical fiction, and a very educated man, but I don’t think it is in any way insulting to the memory of the man to describe him as being a little eccentric. The White Goddess includes some very interesting speculation about the significance of Goddess worship in prehistory, and Graves deserves credit for his work. His work does not, however, warrant any significant mention in an article about the triple goddess; neither does the neo-pagan/Wicca beliefs about the triple goddess. Grave’s theories, and the Wicca beliefs should perhaps have their own pages separate from the main triple goddess article, with passing mention and links on the main article. The main article should focus more on comparative mythology and the theories of qualified academics. For instance theories relating to the Trinity of Irish war goddesses Morrighan, Badhbh, and Macha deserves extensive discussion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.69.31 (talk) 17:18, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Graves work has also had an important and lasting influence on neo-paganism. The main article is at Triple deities which discusses trinities of both masculine and feminine groupings of Celtic deities alongside those from other mythologies. This article is just the sub-article that discusses the academic theories on neo-paganism and Graves. If you can add any content from qualified academic discussion of the Irish war goddesses at Triple deities it would be a very welcome addition to that article. --Davémon (talk) 18:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I am new to editing on Wikipedia (I just created an account 5 minutes ago, and have only made some small edits in the past), and am still getting accustomed to the format. I originally came to the Triple goddess page via a link from an article on Celtic mythology mentioning the Trinity of Irish war goddesses, and was a little annoyed to find an article about neo-paganism (not that I have anything against neo-paganism). I just checked the article, and the link has been removed. If someone more qualified than myself does not edit the Triple deities page in the next couple of days I will do it my self when I get back to college, and have access to my collection of books on Celtic Mythology. (IEInvasionismyth (talk)) —Preceding undated comment was added at 20:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC).

The addition of exceedingly useless "cite"-type tags

The "[citation needed]" tag added to the Norse Myths subsection was extremely pointless, since this article is not about Norns, and only makes a rather brief mention of Norns -- a mention which does not include any assertions which are not also made on the Norns article, which is properly linked to from this article. Under such circumstances, any documentation about Norns in fact belongs on the Norns article, not here, and pockmarking this article with such a "cite" template serves no particular purpose. I'm going to be rather free in removing "cite" templates of this general nature... AnonMoos (talk) 23:23, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

The article needs to cite how the Norns are related to the triple Goddess, otherwise this is a problem under wp:syn - it should be really easy to cite this, and adding the citation will improve the reliability of the article. --Davémon (talk) 09:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If the Norns suddenly appeared out of the blue in the article, with no particular relevance to the article topic, or visible connection to preceding or following material in the article, then their appearance here would certainly call for some highly-specific explanation. However, in a context of a quick tour through various triads of goddesses in various mythologies of the world, contained within an article whose overall title is "Triple Goddess", I really don't see why their brief presence in this article requires any particular citation -- given that the Norns article states that they are indeed a trio of female supernatural beings, and given that there are no assertions about the Norns on this article which go beyond what is contained on the Norns article.

Furthermore, please don't complain about "wholesale reversion" on my part, when I carefully preserved everything which I considered useful and valid in your recent edits, while you preserved nothing of what I had done in my recent work on the article. The truth is, while you made many improvements in specific details, you left the overall large-scale structure of the article in a very messy and highly-unsatisfactory state. Therefore please do not revert my edits wholesale at this time... AnonMoos (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

In what way is putting "indo-euorpean theory" before Graves "satisfactory". It's chronologically wrong and conceptually misleading. The Norns need citing. The leading paragraph to the section is wp:syn. The sources do not say what is being claimed. All the deities must be reliably sourced using sources which specifically relate to the idea of a "Triple Goddess". See wp:syn. It shouldn't be hard to do, but it has to be done. Davémon (talk) 12:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I was kind of arranging things so that there is a progression from historical mythologies to modern neopaganism in slow easy steps, and it seemed to fit best there (not to mention that it connected with the immediately preceding section on Hinduism). AnonMoos (talk) 10:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

"a progression from historical mythologies to modern neopaganism" that is not a neutral point of view. Most modern scholars would say that neopaganism is not a progression from historical myth, but an attempt at a "reconstruction" of belief-systems based on those myths, using the histographic techniques of 19th-century romantic scholarship. See Hutton et al. There is no progression, rather an interpretation. It is uttely misleading to structure the article after a progressive model. Lets start with Graves who actually coined the term. --Davémon (talk) 12:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, you previously eliminated the intro subsection to the list of triads of goddesses in world mythologies, but such an introductory subsection is in fact somewhat necessary to the overall structure of the article, so I just put back what had been there before (though I know nothing about what you seem to be specifically objecting to...). Feel free to drastically streamline it. AnonMoos (talk) 11:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Rather than "eliminate" the section I extrapolated the sources into the section "Indo-european theory" so that it actually reflected what they do say. See wp:v. The section as you re-insterted it si a synthesis of sources. --Davémon (talk) 12:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

And with respect to the cite tags on the Norns subsection, as long as the claimed relevance of the Norns to this article is that they're a triad of quasi-divine female beings, and the Norns article states that they're a triad of quasi-divine female beings, and we link to the Norns article, and don't assert anything which is not also asserted on the Norns article, I still don't see any need for specific references on this page. AnonMoos (talk) 11:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

"triad of quasi-divine female beings" is not the same thing as a "Triple Goddess". You need to find a reliable source that says "The Norns are a represenation of the Triple Goddess" for them to appear in this article( see wp:syn). The Norn article does not contain a source that calls them a "Triple Goddess". --Davémon (talk) 12:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

And last and possibly least, there's no real point in adding tags to the abstract symbol images. Slight variations of all the symbols are used on probably hundreds of Wiccan and/or Goddess websites out there (as can relatively easily be found by simple searching) and the main symbol is included at Wicca#Symbols. AnonMoos (talk) 11:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I am adding cite tags to the claims being made about the images. I could draw any squiggle add it to Wicca#Symbols - which is also unsourced - and then claim it represents the Triple Goddess. Without citations this entire thing could be just made up (see wp:or). --Davémon (talk) 12:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Ennead symbol

Three interlaced triangles

Some neopagans and/or Feminist Spirituality types have a Goddess ennead symbol too (although it would have to be in different colors from this graphic to be symbolically appropriate -- I actually made the image for the Brunnian link article, not this one!). By the way, if someone has spare time on their hands, one worthwhile project would be to rescue the Feminist Spirituality material from out of the Thealogy article (since "Feminist Spirituality" is a term with much more scholarly respectability and quasi-mainstream documentability, while "Thealogy" isn't even formed correctly according to the rules of Greek compounding -- though admittedly, "Psychoanalysis" isn't either...). AnonMoos (talk) 11:15, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Failed verification?

Hi, Davemon. I noticed you tagged some text as "failed verification". Your edit comment reads "need citations for indo-european root of celt/norse/arab trinities." I don't understand what you're on about, since the text in question doesn't mention indo-european roots or specifically celt/norse/arab trinities. There's some extra info in one of the footnotes describing Dumezil's trivalent goddess theory, but this isn't discussed in the article itself, so I doubt that's what you're referring to. Care to explain? Fuzzypeg★ 05:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The paragraph is being used to create a context for the list below, which at the time was subheaded indo-european thoery, and now just "historical" (whatever that is supposed to mean). The failed verification is:

"Triple female fate divinities, typically "spinners" of destiny, are attested all over Europe from the Iron Age and in Bronze Age Anatolia."

The citations given (three of them!) are:

1. West, M. L. (2007) Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford University Press. pp. 379-385. Might say something pertinent, haven't checked.
2. Petreska, Vesna (2005) "Demons of Fate in Macedonian Folk Beliefs" in Gábor Klaniczay & Éva Pócs (eds.) Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology. Central European Press. p. 225. Attests to the european wide belief in narechniti - no claims are made to the "triple" nature of them. Does talk about the triple nature of the Greek Fates, Norns, etc. but does not apply the triple nature to all of them. The text in the article is a gross oversimplification of the source and is misrepresentative.
3. Georges Dumézil in 1970 controversially proposed an Indo-European "trivalent" goddess was the origin of a number of later goddesses, including the Iranian Anāhitā, the Vedic Sarasvatī and the Roman Juno; in each of these goddesses resided three qualities corresponding to the three functions of the major trinity of Indo-European gods: magico-religious, martial and fertility. These goddesses expressed the three qualities through different aspects or epithets. (Nāsstrōm, Britt-Mari (1999) "Freyja — The Trivalent Goddess" in Sand, Erik Reenberg & Sørensen, Jørgen Podemann (eds.) Comparative Studies in History of Religions: Their Aim, Scope and Validity. Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 62-4.) - No claims are made for these Triple Goddesses being "spinners of fate".

The two sources I have checked do not exactly say what the article is saying. Therefore, the verification of these sources has failed. I have attempted to use these sources to better effect in what has become: Triple_Goddess#Triadic_goddesses_in_Indo-European_theory, (which actually describes "Dumezil's [sic] trivalent goddess theory... in the article itself") and elaborates on what they say rather than over-simplify them. It is not perfect, the paragraph but it's better than the wp:syn of the tagged paragraph. --Davémon (talk) 11:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

So you haven't actually tried to verify the sources. If you had checked them you wouldn't be calling it synthesis. I therefore invite you to remove the failed-verification tag. Also, I haven't "over-simplified" the sources; this is only an intro section and I haven't misrepresented the cited sources in any way. Please be more diligent if you're going to challenge citations. Fuzzypeg★ 22:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Two of the sources do not support the assertion made in the article. The specific challenges have been made bold above to highlight the specific issues raised. Quotations showing where each of the 3 sources actually make the claim

"Triple female fate divinities, typically "spinners" of destiny, are attested all over Europe from the Iron Age and in Bronze Age Anatolia."

would make a very strong case to remove the failed-verification tag. Answering the specific challenges above may also help. A more creative and beneficial solution would be to simply separate out these sources into more descriptive sections that give each of them their own sentances or paragraphs describing what the sources actually say. Thanks! --Davémon (talk) 23:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

If you're not actually bothering to track down and read the sources I can't see how you justify such a bolshy challenge. However I'll grace you with an explanation:

There are 3 footnotes given. The third is not intended as a supporting citation, but is rather a note for further information, since from your edit comments you seemed unfamiliar with theories (such as Dumezil's) of IE origin of the triple-Goddess figure. (I also think this is useful for other readers).

The two supporting citations are West and Petreska. These are simply two handy citations for a widely recognised motif of triple fate spinners that still appear very frequently throughout the folklore of Europe and are historically attested as well. Other sources should be easily found as well.

Some quotes from West: "The Indo-Europeans seem to have believed that it [fate] was predetermined, not by a universal, all-encompassing destiny that laid things down at the beginning of time, but by supernatural females attending the birth of each child and establishing the contours of its life then and there as it lay in its cradle. I do not know of any Indo-Iranian evidence for this idea, but it is found all over Europe, as well as in Bronze Age Anatolia. In many traditions the goddesses determine fates by spinning." (pp. 379-380) He goes on to discuss a number of spinning fate goddesses, such as the three Moirai and the three Parcae (p. 381); He mentions the spinning fate goddesses the Nornir on p. 382, who appear as 3 goddesses of fate sitting at the well of Urð (p. 382); West relates the Norns to the Wyrds (Wyrd in Old English is a power that weaves destinies): these appear as a group in Chaucer, and later as the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare's Macbeth (p. 382-3). He mentions artifacts discovered in Germany showing spinning goddesses, such as a relief from Trier with a trio of Mother goddesses, two holding distaffs or spindles (p. 383). He mentions 10th century German ecclesiasts' denunciation of "the people's foolish superstitious belief in the three sisters anciently called the Parcae, who determine a man's life at the moment of his birth, and for whom at certain times of year some women lay places at table in anticipation of a visit" (p. 384). He then mentions some other spinning fate goddesses who appear in groups of other numbers than three, such as the Irish "seven daughters of the sea" and the seven Lithuanian dieves valditojes ("ruling deities"); the Latvian Láimas ("fortunes") are attested in hundreds of folk songs, most often singular but occasionally as a trio (p. 384). In Slavonic the same motif appears with the Russian Rožanicy or Roždenicy, the Czech Sudičky, the Polish Rodzanice, the Slovene Rojenice, the Croat Rodjenice, the Serbian Sudjenice, the Bulgarian Narečnice or Urisnice, all of whom are "supernatural females who appear at midnight within three days of a birth, mostly in threes, sometimes in a larger group, sometimes in the form of beautiful maidens, sometimes as grandmotherly old women, and pronounce destinies. They spin the child's fate as a golden thread, the eventual breaking or cutting of which will signify his death." (pp. 384-5). In Albanian lore 3 old women, the Fatit (also called Mir or Ora) appear on the third day after a birth and fix the child's fate. Phrases are used such as 'to tie off the destiny', 'predetermine the length of the thread of life', 'cut off the life' (p. 385).

Petreska affords us the following quote: "The belief in these mythical beings—narechnitsi—is very ancient and known almost to all Indo-European peoples. These concepts have existed ever since the Iron Age of the European territories; we may mention the example of the Greek moiras or the Roman parcae [she gives an inline citation], who were three women spinning one's destiny; the Gaels called them matronae, the Germans nornae, etc. The people of the Balkans use the following terms for these demonic beings: orisnici (Bulgarians), sudienitsi (Serbians), soenici, roenici (Slovenians), ursitoare, ursitele, ursoiare (Romanians), mirë (Albanians), or ora (Northern Albanians) and fatia, i.e., fatmirat (Southern Albanians), but they are known as zonja të jashtëmë (ladies from outside), and i të tri grat (three women), moira (Greek) etc." and "In a large part of Central and Eastern Europe, people believe in supernatural beings with chthonic characteristics of fertility goddesses who spin one's destiny [another citation]. According to a legend in the Okhrid area, the narechnitsi are three women sitting in front of the fire-place and spinning the thread of life: the first one spins on the spindle, the second one with her hand while speaking, and the third one cuts the thread with her scissors after the prediction." (p. 225).

So as you can see, the two sources are entirely in agreement with one another; giving both supplies extra authority (since I know from experience you're a contrary fellow) and also gives readers a wider selection of source material to follow up on for further research; I also needed both sources to establish that these divinities are attested from Iron Age Europe (Petreska) and Bronze Age Anatolia (West).

I think you could now perhaps remove your challenge, and perhaps offer me an apology for the rather insulting questioning of what I added: "gross oversimplification of the source" and "misrepresentative". In future, if you're not willing to check the sources, don't add failed-verification tags. Please remember, editors won't always have source material to hand after they've added it to the encyclopedia; making them jump through hoops just because you don't like it is unfair, and if useful, well-cited information ends up deleted simply because you've arbitrarily objected to it, that's clearly not improving the encyclopedia! Fuzzypeg★ 22:30, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. To summarise:

1. West has not been challenged.
2. Petreska does not attest to a triple nature of european-wide fate goddesses. Petreska as a citation, is not saying the same thing as the article. It is being oversimplified, makes no reference to "Bronze Age Anatolia" nor to the whole of Europe and indeed caveats the statements "known almost to all Indo-European", not "all over Europe" as the article says. The triple nature of each of the examples is not elaborated.
3. The Dumézil quote does not accord with the statement. Apparently the intention was "additional information", not to cite.

Moving forward:

1. West can be used to support the statement alone.
2. Petreska should be used to cite a separate sentance or paragraph attesting to Central and Eastern European areas, making specific reference to the examples given. That clears up the first verification failure.
3. The Dumézil cite just repeats what is said in the "indo-european theory" section, and can safely be removed as it is redundant. That clears up the second verification failure.

The verification failure tag will remain while the citation/content relationships are disputed. I apologise for any insult that pointing out that the references in the footnotes and the statement in the article do not match might have caused. The challenging of content is how wikipedia works. See WP:OWN.

If anyone has a better idea on how to update the article or a reasonable objection to the steps suggested in "moving forward" can they elaborate? otherwise I'll carry out those suggestions. Davémon (talk) 10:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

It is a very common convention to group citations at the end of a sentence (or even at the end of a few paragraphs, as in Hutton's books) when different parts of the sentence rely on different sources. It prevents multiple repeated footnotes in the same sentence, such as:

"Triple^[1] female fate divinities, typically "spinners" of destiny,^[1][2] are attested all over Europe^[1] from the Iron Age^[2] and in Bronze Age Anatolia.^[1]"

[1] West; [2] Petreska

(Indeed, MLA guidelines wouldn't allow mid-phrase footnotes!) If Petreska and West were not in such close agreement, juxtaposing them might be seen as WP:SYN, but they agree very closely, and quoting both allows more detailed information on chronological/geographical spread, as well as providing more research leads for those interested. There doesn't seem to be any specific guideline regarding this at WP:CITE, but it's normal practise and common sense. Fuzzypeg★ 12:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I see while I've been away you removed the Petreska citation, and the one about Dumezil. I've added them back in, because Petreska is necessary to verify that these deities are attested from the Iron Age, and because Petreska and the Dumezil info are potentially useful for readers. Footnotes aren't just about satisfying WP:V, but can also provide useful information for our readers! Please also remember that I went to some effort to add this information, and the article is not yet large and detailed enough that we should be pruning it for size! Please ensure you are improving the article, not merely reducing it! Thanks, Fuzzypeg★ 12:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

You're just adding back redundent content. Dumezil and Petreska are both still in the article. No content has been removed from wikipedia.--Davémon (talk) 10:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

As I've stated repeatedly, the citation of Petreska is necessary to verify that these deities are attested from the Iron Age onwards in Europe. West doesn't say this. This citation is directly relevant to the sentence I pinned it to. I don't know how I can make this any more clear! The note about Dumezil is also directly relevant here, and hey! I don't see Dumezil anywhere else in the article, or Petreska! Who are you trying to fool here? Fuzzypeg★ 03:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Fuzzypeg, you need to catch up on the more recent developments with this article. Check the article history and read the section Article Focus below before accusing people of being deceptive. Thanks. --Davémon (talk) 10:34, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I'm a theological research student with access to a large theological library. I find the topic of this article fascinating and it is tangentially related to my area of research, so I'm keen assist with reference supplying (and checking, if necessary). I do, however, have limited time. I think one aspect of Wiki that is really important is its capacity to write up important marginalised opinions, where these have been published, and to do this without weasling.

I heard about this page because it was listed as needing a neutral third party to assist. In this case, I will not adopt the third party mediator role, I'll actually try to join in and help. I'll remain neutral towards other editors, of course, as we all should, and indeed I am still willing to offer a third (semi-educated) opinion. I'm just saying that I think that is going somewhat beyond simply mediating.

Anyway, even should I agree with either side, 2:1 does not equal consensus. What is most important is that we try to all agree. I don't vote, and won't vote here. The commitment of both Davemon and Fuzzypeg to the article means that you two are the key "stakeholders" here, and your ongoing commitment lends more weight to the significance of your opinions than anything I offer, because I'm only here in passing.

I'll try to catch up on what has already been raised in current issues and meaningfully engage with that, but I would appreciate one issue at a time being raised, so we can all come to agreement slowly and steadily. Perhaps someone could suggest a minor disagreement that might possibly be resolved reasonably quickly. We could solve that, then move to something more tricky second. What do people think? Tell me to go away and I will. ;) Alastair Haines (talk) 23:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I requested a third opinion on the dispute I was having with AnonMous, which involved them removing cited content that says "Graves wanted 'The White Goddess' to be taken seriously as history" and "Gimbutas theories stem from a projection of her personal life rather than objective reading of the data" and the removal of citation requests for the text regarding the symbols. Really the most help would be to find sources for the many statements which are uncited, or the removal of uncited assumptions being replaced with well researched content. I'd like to see the Wicca section greatly expanded in describing how the Triple Goddess is workshiped etc. Also, I've only recently begun editing this article, and in no way shape or form wish to be seen as a "stakeholder". --Davémon (talk) 12:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I've read people who comment about Graves' seriousness regarding the historicity of The White Goddess, I'd have thought that was pretty standard. The comment re Gimbutas is pretty strong, but if sourced it's OK, unless serious evidence can be provided to show that it is undue attention to a strident critic.

I'm interested in Graves and Gimbutas, but only passingly in Wicca. With regard to the issues that concerned you most, I'm happy to see those through to resolution. It appears you've restored them, so I guess we need to hear any further objections from AnonMous. Alastair Haines (talk) 16:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Fates

Once had a section, now only a reference to a no longer existing section, ie "Fate-like figure" Anarchangel (talk) 22:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

There's some good material on the three, white-clad Moirae ("Fates") of Greek mythology and on the similar three Parcae of Roman mythology. It's a bit hard digging up material from an article history isn't it; easier to start again, and that's not easy. The page seems to need a little lasting love. ;) Alastair Haines (talk) 00:52, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

How are the Fates connected to the Triple Goddess? The Moirae aren't often portrayed as "maiden, mother, crone", and come to think of it, the Dumézils indo-european concept of a tripartate "warrior, priest, prole" deity doesn't fit either of these other 2 models either. There's possibly a conflation of 3 totally separate issues here, 1) Dumézils concept, 2) the Classical Fates (and derivatives) and 3)Robert Graves' Triple Moon Goddess (and derivatives).--Davémon (talk) 23:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps Anachangel's point was that the article appears to have a generic title—triple goddess—rather than refering to a specific instance or theoretical reconstruction. Under a generic heading, the "threefold" fates would fit, I'd have thought.

You really do have a grip on the literature here. The article may have started as an attempt to synthesize separate lines of scholarship into a single thesis, or it may simply have tried to classify these together for convenience and interest. I do get the impression that you're seeking to be clinically distinct, where another editor may be seeking to harmonize for stylistic reasons. There's something to be said for both. Though I am personally more inclined to feel yours is the more sober encyclopedic approach, I'm not closed to stylistic preferences in encyclopedic work—they are real. Alastair Haines (talk) 23:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is much of a case for a generic basis for the article. triple goddess (lowercase g) redirects to Triple Goddess (uppercase g). The capitalisation would imply a proper noun, and subsequenty be refering to a specific deity. The context of the article:Special:WhatLinksHere/Triple_Goddess also seems to be leaning towards the article being about the Wiccan deity (a derivative of Graves White Goddess, see Hutton et al.). I will definitely work towards separating out these strands (which is difficult with so much uncited material that could be misinformed). Unless these strands can be shown to be connected in reliable sources, collecting them together just looks like original research. A case in point, Gimbutas' adoption by eco-feminists does mean her theories had an influence on Wiccan thought in the 1970s - and therefore is relevant to the article and is verifiable and cited. Dumézil on the other hand was dealing with an entirely separate conception of ancient cultures which as far as I can source, hasn't been adopted by Triple Goddess worshippers, probably due to his ideological links with facism being too obvious.

Dumézil already has an article Trifunctional hypothesis which should also cover his Goddess theory, there is already a list of "Triple deities" which deals nicely with many more mythologies (including the classical "Fates") and repeating the female deities here without specific reference to the article subject seems redundant and synthetic. The construction of a eco/neopagan/feminist ideological myth of prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures is discussed at Goddess_movement#Prehistoric_cultures. These could then be listed in a "See also" making it convenient to use. It would require a radical change to the article structure, but a neutral, balanced change. Any thoughts? --Davémon (talk) 10:12, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I can't speak for Anarchangel or others, but everything you say sounds absolutely spot on to me: wikiwise and as regards the verifiable material that falls within my areas of reading. Keep going! It seems to me that you are being very responsible and minimalist about changes that are screaming to be made. Great stuff! :) Alastair Haines (talk) 00:58, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to get into the kind of arguments we got into at Talk:Horned God, but I note, Davemon, that you seem to be suggesting largely the same kind of edits here as I was objecting to so strongly there: removing a number of deities (such as the Fates)from the article, on the basis that you don't consider them to be relevant. You say "Unless these strands can be shown to be connected in reliable sources" — well, I've cited a couple of sources in the article, and you yourself suggest another: Hutton, who spends a whole chapter and more charting the development of academic and popular theory surrounding "The Great Mother" and more specifically "The Triple Goddess" (although I note, he doesn't discuss age attributions of maiden/mother/crone). Hutton himself is of the reductionist school and considers these goddesses historically independent, and linked only by modern theorists, but to that extent at least he still treats them as a single (modern, syncretic) divinity.

Here, as in the Horned God article, I am very reluctant to see verifiable material removed without very good reason. If you've read my summary of West and Petreska above, you'll see that the Fates are not only relevant to the Triple Goddess theory, they're vital to it.

And Alistair, I think it would be more precise not to say that AnonMoos, I and others are "seeking to harmonize for stylistic reasons", but rather that we are seeking to include a wide variety of views and a rich selection of information. Wikipedia, not being a paper encyclopedia, is well suited for comparing and contrasting a plurality of theories, and for providing researchers with all the leads they need to fully evaluate the subject for themselves. Rather than pass judgement on what the "correct" theory is, we would prefer to present all notable theories, with some indication of how they have been received academically. Fuzzypeg★ 11:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm neutral here. So long as one presents independent theories as independent theories, rather than synthesising them into something new, that's obviously fine (like the way you describe Hutton). In case it wasn't clear to you what I was saying to Davemon, I was defending your work as potentially stylistically integrated, rather than synthetic original research. I was trying to find a way to articulate a middle position.

Ultimately, but not right now, I'll try to work out specific issues with phrasing or presentation that argue clearly for or against neutral presentation of multiple points of view, or for or against an unsourced synthesis. I think you're just a little nervous, due to past discussions with Davemon, that I might be "falling under his spell". ;) Actually, I like what both of you say, at least at the theoretical level here in talk. I'll have to start looking more closely at whether edits reflect the principles we all agree on. But, as I've indicated, I'm going to be somewhat slow about getting around to that. Alastair Haines (talk) 14:34, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

There are no citations in the article that relate the "Historical" goddesses to the "Triple Goddess" of Graves/Wicca at all. Adding what Hutton says about the "Fates" relation to the Triple Goddess would be a great addition to the article - why not just go ahead and add it? --Davémon (talk) 19:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Great minds think alike! :) Hutton is a reliable source telling us that there is a notable modern synthesis, so we don't need to present that synthesis as though it were Wiki's (or its editors), it is an acknowledged POV. I like the idea of the fates being in the article. I liked Davemon's challenge to that, but I also like his (?) willingness to accept it, so long as it's sourced ... and it will be. Progress! :) Alastair Haines (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Article Focus

I have removed all the uncited content from the article, and refocused it to deal with the central theme of the Wiccan female deity and its development. All the cited material which was not directly related in reliable sources to Wicca has been moved to the Triple deity article. Trying to cover both the idea of a generic "triple female deity" and the Wiccan "Triple Goddess" was an invitation to wp:or. As the article currently stands it is nearly 100% verifiable, and follows the precendent set by the Horned God article. I have no doubt that some editors would like to see some of the old content restored, if that is the case please do so whilst ensuring that the content is cited to reliable sources that directly and explicitly relate it to the Wiccan Triple Goddess. Thanks! --Davémon (talk) 15:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems fair enough to me. Especially as it acknowledges that sourced material covering deleted material is naturally welcome. This follows all WP principles I can think of, especially WP:Burden. Alastair Haines (talk) 03:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

No, it's hardly "fair". Reread Davemon's comment. He's arbitrarily stating that this article may only contain information relating to Wicca and neopaganism. In fact, "triple goddesses" are discussed outside of the Neopagan movement, as I demonstrated with the citations that Davemon deleted. They are an important concept in comparative mythology. And these triple goddesses are not unrelated divinities fit only for a "list"-type article like Triple deity; as West and Petreska demonstrate, they are linked to a common origin in some quite respectable schools of academic mythography. If there's one article that should collect all this information in one place, this is it. However Davemon's edits push academia out of view and make it seem that the triple goddess theory is entirely a fantasy of modern tree-huggers.

Davemon has (here and at Talk:Horned God) proposed a surprising number of arguments for removing verified, well-cited, relevant information, added by experienced editors; none of his arguments so far have held any water, nor gained consensus, yet he has unilaterally deleted and deleted and deleted. I expect once AnonMoos gets back from break Davemon's destructive edits here will be substantially reverted. Fuzzypeg★ 00:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

• "There are a great many books on the market today relating the most plausible theories about the decline or conquest of ancient matriarchies and the rise of power of patriarchal societies, the outcome of which was suppression of women in general." [p.1.]
• "Reconnection with the Great Goddess archetype and Her three faces is vital to the health of humankind on all levels." [p. 1.]
• "The Great Goddess was worshipped for about 20,000 to 30,000 years of humankind's history as the prime deity, the Great Creatress. Originally the Goddess stood for unity, cooperation, and participation with all creation, while the male gods represented dissociation and separation from and dominion over Nature." [p. 3.]

Conway, D. J. "Maiden, Mother, Crone: The Myth and Reality of the Triple Goddess". Llewellyn Worldwide, 2003.

As far as I can see, Davemon believes this article should focus on the specificly Wiccan conception of their own Triple Goddess, and material tightly related to that. Undoubtedly, like with Conway above, some Wiccans can lay claim to being a continuation, if not a direct decent, from all manner of posited prior version of Nature and Goddess worship.

Were we to have an article on Mary, mother of Jesus, and people included material, sourced or otherwise on various famous Marys other than the specific one of the article, we'd all agree we needed to draw the line. I can see a parallel here. But I can also see significant differences. If there are triple goddesses of any kind outside Wicca, there's nothing to stop Wicca from claiming them and harmonising them into Wicca. I'd be surprised if there weren't many writers who did this. Were I a Wiccan, I'd be keen to point people to sources outside Wicca itself that suggest similar ideas.

Until we've got a clear boundary, within this article, for what constitutes material relevant only to the Wiccan Triple Goddess and what constitutes material completely unrelated to her, there's nothing to stop us from gathering sources and documenting them in separate sections.

I'm always suspicious if sources are being removed from Wiki.

However, there is one caveat here, I can see that the material Conway presents above would not pass scrutiny by science, history or anthropology. Were I a very serious Wiccan, wanting things to be academically as rigorous as possible, I'd find writers like Conway somewhat embarassing. However, like it or not, Wiki is a crude tool when examining certain aspects of philosophical, artistic, psychological, political or religious groups: close points of view tend to get lumped together, at least at this stage of the encyclopedias evolution. Differences between the views of various Wiccan writers need development and expansion. Perhaps there's an obvious "mainstream", perhaps the reader needs to be left to decide what is mainstream because there's no clear consensus.

Anyway, what Davemon suggested seemed sensible to me, but so does what Fuzzypeg says. I guess I do need to ask, is this article about the Wiccan Goddess or about any literature related to threefold feminine divinities? Alastair Haines (talk) 02:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I think it is quite simple, the article just needs to use reliable sources that directly relate to the subject of the article. This is simply upholding wp:or. Of course, when a reliable source says "Wiccans adopted the figure of Diana" (or the Fates, or Norns, or etc.) then that must be added. But random information about the classical Diana, or Fates or Norns that is not linked to the Triple Goddess of Wicca/Graves must not be added to this article - that would constitute original research. This decision was not arbitary - the "what links here" shows that this article is almost 100% used with refernce to the main deity of Wicca - not in a general anthropology / mythology or folklore way.

Conway doesn't look like a reliable historian or social-science source to me - but there is no reason we can't use it as a primary source example of the kinds of things Wiccans believe - good find. There are other Wiccan conceptions of the Goddess too, and gathering all of those together would really help develop the article.

No cited content has been deleted it has simply been moved to Triple deities.

So, in short we have two articles, one Triple Goddess which deals specifically with Wicca and another Triple deities that deals with the concept of Triple Goddesses (and Gods) which doesn't reference modern neo-paganism. There is no reason at all not to develop the Triple deities article beyond a simple list, and as the subject isn't tied to a neopagan conception, it can use a much wider variety of sources. --Davémon (talk) 10:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for a clear and reasonable sounding reply. I await hearing from Fuzzypeg that we can rubber-stamp this as reasoning we can all share, i.e. consensus.

PS Perhaps better sources:

• Wendy Griffin (1995), "The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female Divinity", Sociology of Religion 56(1): 35–49.

Griffin is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). Links are to her staff space hosted by CSULB.

• Lynda L Warwick (1995), "Feminist Wicca: Paths to Empowerment", Women and Therapy 16 (2/3): 121–133. [abstract only]

Perhaps most interesting of all:

"There are no rites of passage because there is no significant change. The Triple Goddess has only one face: Marilyn Monroe's".

• Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1990), "The Space Crone", in Ruth Formanek (ed.), The Meanings of Menopause: Historical, Medical, and Clinical Perspectives, (Routledge).

Alastair Haines (talk) 13:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Alistair, if you're trying to represent a neutral 3rd opinion, you'd do better to not assume this is a rubber stamping operation. You and Davemon are going great guns on the idea that this article is suddenly limited to the Wiccan conception of a triple goddess, when the longer-standing editors of this article such as me and AnonMoos have been trying to keep the context broad. You're proposing a radical change in direction, which has so far been complained against bitterly, and you suggest that all that's now required is a rubber stamp?

The limitation you want to apply to the article seems quite artificial to me. As I have demonstrated above, there is a quite respectable academic concept of a pan-European triple goddess. Neopagans don't own this concept, any more than they own the concepts of, say, an Earth Mother, a Sun God, reincarnation or magic! As Ronald Hutton has shown, academia popularised concepts of a widespread triple goddess before anyone had even heard of "Wicca" or "Neopaganism". And academia is still elaborating on the theme. There's really interesting information (and some really interesting controversy) to be had in this area of comparative mythology, and you and Davemon are essentially saying we're not allowed to bring the subject together as a whole but must disperse the separate facts to the furthest corners of the Triple deity list.

What really seems to be happening here is just what happened at the Horned God article. Anything that couldn't be seen to rub shoulders with the "lunatic fringe" was deleted or relocated by whatever expedient. I have deep concerns about what's happening here, and the pace at which it's being pushed ahead (despite the platitudes I hear about my views being "reasonable"). Massive changes are being made without consensus, and I believe without sufficient care. This is not friendly, collaborative editing: this is threats, ultimatums and unilateral deletion. The article needed improvement, not a coup. Fuzzypeg★ 12:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

A few things.

1. I'm always neutral, even when working alone, and there's nothing here to suggest this article is any different.
2. That my last sentence is defensive in nature, demonstrates that a personal attack has been made.
3. Consensus is a rubber stamping concept, it's not clear you understood the sense of my expression.
4. Since you clearly object, there is no consensus, hence no rubber stamp.
5. You reassert something that does have consensus—there is indeed some genuinely academic work regarding evidence for a threefold generic European goddess, independent of the neopagan Triple Goddess.
6. That Triple deity is somehow more "remote" than Triple Goddess is not at all clearly the case, unless you are inadvertently assuming what you purport to deny—that this article intends reference to The Triple Goddess of neopaganism. Even then, Triple deity would presumably include reference to the Christian Trinity, which would make it more citable not less.
7. Perhaps Davemon's motives are as you suggest, and perhaps his usual modus operandi is accurately described by what you say; however, you certainly are not describing what I've seen while I've been at this page. Davemon provides a reasonable case on the talk page in parallel with his edits to the article. When I show credence to your objections, he replies to both of us.

In conclusion, there seems to be only one substantial, unresolved issue here: is this article about the neopagan Triple Goddess, or is it about generic triple goddesses? I can see good cases for having two articles, and for having only one. I can see a "gender neutral" political argument for considering the generic triple goddesses at triple deities, and also a case for not POV-forking them out of that article. Frankly, I'm an inclusionist, there's plenty of relevance for the generic material to each of the three articles Triple deity, Triple goddesses and, indeed, even here at Triple Goddess. However, the material is mildly fringe at T. d'ty, bang on central at T. g'sses, and secondary here.

I'm very neutral here, in fact, not as a role. I am neither committed to exclusion of the generic material here, nor to it being given "equal weight", I'm somewhere in the middle, which is quite likely what a broad consensus of say two dozen uninvolved editors might say. As regards deciding about the motives and methods of particular editors, though, I'll leave that to people who have time for the "he said, she said" stuff.

If you're interested in collaboration and consensus, I'd get back to the excellent commentary you gave earlier and typing up a subsection. Davemon, despite your claims, has not locked the door on that kind of contribution. I'm hearing complaints, not seeing sourced edits. Use "maiden, mother, crone" as a point of contact, it's everywhere in neopaganism, but the academic material interacts with it independently of that, you're right, neopaganism stole it, it didn't create it. That's certainly worth documenting here. Alastair Haines (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother, Crone) and List of goddesses appearing in trios in mythology

I'd like to propose a solution here. First off, one thing needs to be made outright clear here: goddesses in Indo-European cultures do appear depicted in threes and it appears they do have something to do with fate. This is not disputed. The issue is how to sort these things out here on Wikipedia. Here's what I propose:

• Triple goddess - Fork
  • Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother, Crone) - handling the maiden, mother, crone stuff
  • List of goddesses appearing in trios in mythology - sorted by culture/language family

It's very important that we don't mix up the academia with the Wicca/Maiden, Mother, Crone stuff and right now we're failing at that. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I notice that we have a Category:European goddesses. It would appear that most European goddesses are individual personas, just like everywhere else. I think what some writers appear to have done is gather evidence that a particular triplet of goddesses associated with fate seems to be attested across Europe (going way back to whenever).

I think a little confusion arises because this reality was expanded upon and popularised by Graves (19th century) and others, leading ultimately to pride of place for the Triple Goddess in neopaganism (20th century), and later popularised again by certain elements within the feminist movement (late 20th century).

Ultimately, we don't have to restrict material to only one article. I doubt that the US civil war is left out altogether from the article on the US, just because it has its own article. ;)

I think Fuzzypeg's main concern is ensuring that Wikipedia documents the scholarship regarding pre-19th century triplicate goddesses in Europe. We possibly need a hatnote or "main article" link to bloodofox' List of goddesses appearing in trios in mythology (or a proper article, with a more sexy title, 8 words is a lot for a title, no offence intended).

The main problem here is that both the editors in conflict seem to be right! ;) Yes, this article is about the Wicca Goddess; yes, we need documentation of the solid scholastic tradition behind the more recent developments. Alastair Haines (talk) 07:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, regarding goddesses appearing in trios in mythology, there's no controversy about various goddesses appearing in threes in academia—they are well attested. The Maiden, Mother, Crone stuff is the problem, which is a modern invention. I realize my proposed title is long, but I can't see how it could be anything. 'Mythology' has to be in there or it will draw in the pop culture stuff, and 'appearing in trios' is also important as opposed to 'triadic' or ' triple'. My main concern is that when 'triple goddess' is used, it can also refer to these numerous goddesses that appear together as a trio, and this article doesn't reflect that but makes it seem as if this isn't the case. Regarding this article, I suggest we restrict it to the Maiden, Mother and Crone stuff or at least keep that stuff isolated from the what isn't open for debate (archaeological finds, attestations, and so forth) and make this list of goddesses appearing in trios immediately evident. :bloodofox: (talk) 07:27, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you and I agree. I actually think Davemon and Fuzzypeg may agree also. It's refreshing that the facts are not in doubt, it's just the tricky business of organising the info across various articles, a process helped a great deal if there is some generosity about duplication of material while it is all being worked through to a final settlement.

Were others to agree to an additional article, a content--not a POV--fork, would you care for a title like European goddess trios? I agree that a word other than "triple" helps distinction. Mythology is fine, so long as there are no modern believers in the ontological reality of such goddesses. I personally don't believe in any spiritual being or spiritual "force" that others label Gaia, however, I understand others find the possibility sufficiently compelling to assert their confidence in its (or her) reality. It would seem to be drifting from the NPOV to document the views of people who believe in Gaia in such a way as we communicated that we thought they were simply "making this up". I do see your point about discouraging "European goddess trios in popular culture", because that would bring us right back to the problem we have here. Mind you, couldn't it be solved by simply linking to this article! :) Alastair Haines (talk) 07:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Essentially I think :bloodofox: is saying there should be 2 articles, one for the neo-pagan concept and the specific history of that concept, one for the historical/archeological/mythological concepts and the theories around them. I definitely agree with that. As far as I can see that differentiation is being made in these articles right now. I think we agree these are two genuinely different topics, not merely POV-forks on the same subject. The "what links here" page shows that the phrase "Triple Goddess" is used almost exclusively to denote the Wicca and neo-pagan concept, a search on Google Books or Google Scholar for "Triple Goddess" shows almost 100% results from new-age feminist or neo-pagan sources, so from that I'm concluding that this is the right title for the neo-pagan article. Any argument to the contrary, backed up with similar evidence is more than welcome!

Further, we can conclude then that term "triple goddess" isn't used all that much in academia discussing goddesses that appear in threes, or singular goddesses who appear to have three aspects. I prefer Triple deity for this - granted this leads to the "evidence" for Dumézils Trifunctional theory getting lumped in with Nornir-types which is at best clumsy and at worst misleading it the material is not handled carefully. Perhaps Mythological Trinities (female)? --Davémon (talk) 08:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

The reason my proposed title is so long is because the reason why these figures appears in three is simply not known. It's simply a phenomenon that occurs, and it's unclear why. The numbers three and nine have a special significance throughout Germanic paganism, for example, and if something appears in any number, it is almost always a multiplication of three. That's about as close to an explanation you're going to get in the area of Germanic mythology, and there's probably a similar phenomenon in directly related European cultures. An article handling these 'goddess trios' would therefore need to state that they're not a 'trinity' in the sense of a singular being with three aspects—we simply don't know this—but must clearly state that there are numerous goddesses that for some reason are attested or depicted appearing together in threes, and then, afterward, bring out the theories in a neutral and isolated manner.

Do a Google book search for 'goddess trinity' and you will get a glut of Wicca and New Age hits too; it appears to be a simple fact that there are just more of these books out there now than there are academic works approaching the subject. I am sure that with any of these scholarly works that approach the subject, you're going to find the words 'triple', 'trinity', and 'trio' used throughout without having anything to do Graves or New Age stuff (Hilda Ellis Davidson's 1998 Roles of the Northern Goddess immediately comes to mind—and come to think of it, she actually has historical examples of Old Hag, Daughter/Maiden, and Baby trios in agricultural practices in her Mistress of the Grain survey). Therefore, I think it's actually largely pointless to split hairs about the terminology when someone looking for a 'triple goddess' could just be looking for information about these goddesses appearing in trios, and so a fork would be most appropriate. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:02, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Your outline for the mythology article sounds spot on.

Roles of the Northern Goddess references the M/M/C and p.6 specifically the moon symbolism which is attributable to Graves, so he has had influence there. She cites Ad de Vries Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery (1974), Google books only has a snippet view of that, so I can not check exactly where this is coming from, but its dating from the 1970s doesn't fill me with confidence that it isn't directly influenced by Graves or new-age feminism either. Hilda Ellis Davidson doesn't use the term "Triple Goddess", so I think this supports my position on the use of the term specifically to denote the wiccan deity.

Not meaning to split hairs, but to establish the right names for the articles. I don't see the need for a disambiguation fork (the "for other uses" does the job fine). That the popular literature out weighs the academic is a good reason to use the popular phrasing in its popular sense, this is, after all a general audience encyclopedia. I am unconvinced that people frequently use the phrase "Triple Goddess" in a mythographical way (to discuss or search for the Nornir, Hecate, Diana etc.). If some evidence were presented that the term is also widely and consistently used in that way, then that would sway the argument towards requiring a disambiguation fork. --Davémon (talk) 20:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

In Roles of the Northern Goddess, Davidson slams Graves' The White Goddess. See page 11. Davidson is well known for her accuracy and lack of tolerance for Rydbergian theory and the works of Graves, and I would be extremely cautious about proclaiming any sort of influence from Graves on Davidson. In fact, Davidson is one of the best known scholars in her field (when it comes to English language scholarship, that is) and I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with her works before approaching subjects relating to Germanic paganism. With Davidson's Roles of the Northern Goddesses, the closest you're going to get to 'triple goddess' is 'triple images of goddesses', which could easily result in an article called 'triple images of goddesses' which breaks down singularly to 'triple image goddess'. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:32, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll take your word on Davidsons reliability and read up on her works. Have you found much evidence for a mythological use of the term 'Triple Goddess' to support a disambiguation fork? --Davémon (talk) 22:25, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm with both of you on the distinction between pre-19th century material and Graves et al. on the other. Regarding names, I'd caution against using the word trinity (certainly not capitalised) to name the early European goddess triads. Trinity is both a technical term and now a proper noun. Those, like me, who believe it denotes a real deity mean by it something more three than one: regarding persons there are three, regarding deity the three persons are one God. The one-ness is more a description of something technically known as perichoresis. The "three aspects" view of the Trinity is known as modalism and was declared heretical a millenium and a half ago. History has endorsed that verdict, though for many years it was precisely how I thought it was supposed to work.

But enough, they didn't register trade marks when the term trinity was coined, and it's been used since quite freely by poets and even Hutchison 3G's Australian ad campaign (see Three Is a Magic Number and video). I suspect academics wouldn't be quite so casual, however. Prove me wrong at Google Scholar! :) Alastair Haines (talk) 17:06, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, if Trinity causes theological confustication, and is no more representative of the literature than 'trio' or 'in threes' then it's probably no good. Actually finding a title that represents the literature might be impossible, as they'll all phrase "comes in 3's" or "divisible by 3" in a million different ways. "Trios" is appropriate for the Nornir and the fates, but not for Hekate which is a "three-in-one". Perhaps we should be thinking along the lines multiple articles for the relative Goddess (trio) and divisional Goddess (3-in-1) etc. --Davémon (talk) 20:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. There is not a clear cut division here to cut. For example, the famous Matres and Matrones erected by the Romans in Celtic and Germanic areas often feature three goddesses together (and who are generally held to be directly connected to the dísir among the Germanic peoples, which directly connects them in with the valkyries and norns—further pointing to an ancestor cult, but I'm getting ahead of myself here..) bearing Latinized forms of their Celtic or Germanic names. Are they supposed to be three individual goddesses? Are they a single goddesses appearing with three bodies? We don't know this from Germanic sources, and it is not our place to try to figure it out. Therefore, we need to list the goddesses depicted/attested in trios and then follow it up with the theories surrounding them. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

In every depiction of both the Nornir and the Matres I've come across they're depicted as three different bodies, they are obviously represented as 3 different things, a trio. In the case of the Nornir each is also given a separate name. Hekate is sometimes depicted as having 3 faces and one body and occasionally as 3 'overlapping bodies' in a somewhat cubist manner, but not as 3 different things but as a 3-in-1. There is zero evidence to suppose that they were represented in any way other than as three discreet figures and it is a huge leap of imagination to treat them as if they were a single goddess with three bodies. There is a clear and obvious distinction between the Hekate-type and Nornir-type which can be made without any interpretation of the significance (or otherwise) of this difference in representation. Either way, there isn't enough content to justify these articles and the Triple deities article would be as good a place as any to collate the theories and information about either form until it needs splitting off. --Davémon (talk) 09:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be a misconception that Robert Graves "invented" the concept of the triple goddess and actually coined the term; in fact, in working out his particular "grammar of poetic myth" by drawing on ancient and early-medieval source material, Graves simply translated a term used (with variations) by numerous ancient writers. Let me confine myself to Latin literary sources, listed more or less chronologically:

• Horace, Carmen ("Ode") 3.22.4: diva triformis, "goddess of three forms" or "triform goddess," which the Oxford Latin Dictionary clarifies as referring in context to "the goddess having the three aspects of Luna, Diana, and Hecate."
• Vergil, Aeneid 4.510–511: ter centum tonat ore deos, Erebumque Chaosque / tergeminamque Hecaten, tria virginis ora Dianae, "she invokes aloud three hundred gods, both Erebus and Chaos, and Hecate the triplet, the three faces [expressions] of the virgin Diana"; for more on this passage, including Servius's gloss, see Alden Smith, The Primacy of Vision in Vergil's Aeneid, p. 117f online.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.94: per sacra triformis… deae, "through the rites of the triform goddess."
• Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.194: triceps Hecate, "three-headed Hecate."
• Ovid, Heroides 12.79: precor … per triplices vultus arcanaque sacra Dianae, spoken by Medea, "I pray … by the triple faces [or guises] and secret rites of Diana.
• Seneca, Medea 7: Hecate triformis, "triform Hecate", another invocation by Medea.
• Silius Italicus 1.119: nigra triformi hostia mactatur divae, "a black sacrificial-victim is offered to the triform [or shall we just give up and call her the Triple] goddess."
• Apuleius, Metamorphoses (aka The Golden Ass) 11.2 (the so-called "Isis Book"): Proserpina triformi, "tri-form Proserpina" (Persephone); in context "Proserpina, dreaded in cries that pierce the night, repelling attacks of ghosts with thy threefold countenance"; see this link, also Griffiths' note here, where triadic composition is shown to mirror the theological point.

I leave it to others to present the Greek evidence. The point is that we're dealing not with a triad as such, but with a singular noun with a modifier meaning "triple." It is a sometime convention of religious iconography to depict the diva triformis as three separate physical entities; literal three-headedness (as with Cerberus) was viewed as monstrous (despite the waggish Ovid above with his triceps). It illustrates a theological point. See, for instance, Diana Nemorensis#Qualities. On the numismatic icon of this goddess, see Mary Beard et al. in Religions of Rome, pp. 15–16. Further doubt as to the applicability of the term? See Carin M.C. Green, Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia, a section called "The Triple Diana." On the trinitarian paradox in antiquity, see for instance H.S. Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion, vol. 1, Ter unus: Isis, Dionysos, Hermes: Three studies in henotheism (Brill, 1990), which is conceptually useful but not specifically on the triple goddess. The textual evidence, however, could hardly be more straightforward: the concept of a triple goddess, in exactly that wording, existed in antiquity. In some cases we can see something trinitarian; elsewhere, the goddess, like the moon, represents phases, or one mutable entity inhabiting three different forms, perhaps in some sense simultaneously; or three goddesses represent aspects of a broader category of the one divine She, or Pasithea, a cult title of Cybele.

I came to the article "Triple Goddess" needing to link and was surprised it was so devoid of relevant content. I often write or contribute to articles on Greek, Roman, and continental Celtic traditions of religion, myth, magic, and medicine. I have also taught mythology at the university level. I agree with those who call for a separate article, if this one can't be saved from those who wish to hijack it for a narrow doctrinal purpose. I would propose something along the lines of Goddess triads (antiquity) or Goddess triads (Europe), and then a redirect page to there for Triple goddess (antiquity). (I also like the idea of a list page.) But in fact the diva triformis does not seem to be a triad in the sense that the Graces or Fates are, even when for purposes of visual representation she is depicted as such; the noun is singular, the true triads are plurals. I see no reason other than obstinance for not organizing the current Triple Goddess article into subheads for antiquity and for modern belief systems. (If capitalization is the issue, use the lowercase in discussing antiquity.) Many Wiccans and Neopagans are reconstructivists with a scholarly bent who appreciate knowing about the ancient sources, and the article shouldn't serve a particular agenda anyway. The length and vehemence of this talk page are prima facie evidence that Davémon's views are highly disputable. The argument indeed is circular: "Whilst various pagan goddesses throughout history have appeared in triadic form," the article admits, "none have had the 'maiden, mother and crone' aspects associated with them." Well, who says that's what the Triple Goddess is, and only is? Clearly that concept doesn't cover the full range of what constituted the entity called "triple goddess" in antiquity. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

What Graves did was reinterpret, via poor scholarship, the Greek source material you're talking about. He reframes the idea into a much wider context and essentially claims that the idea of a triple-female-deity was some kind of non-culturally specific, universal, female-goddess archetype. That idea originates with Graves, and ends with neopaganism. As many of the citations in the article explain (Hutton, Woods, et. al.) this is a completely different concept to how the ancients though of their Goddesses. --Davémon (talk) 18:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

You have stated my point precisely: If the article is called "Triple Goddess", to which "triple goddess" (lower case) redirects, it presumes to be about the entire concept and should follow Wiki guidelines in presenting the full range of the topic. If it is about "Maiden, Mother and Crone", it should be called that. If it is only about a particular Neopagan doctrine actively excluding the sources from antiquity, it should be called "Neopagan doctrine of the Triple Goddess" or "Triple Goddess (Neopaganism)"; "Triple goddess" generically should NOT redirect to it. A number of Wiki articles (correctly or not) use the term "triple goddess" to refer to goddesses in antiquity. And you err in saying I discussed Greek source material. I explicitly said I didn't deal with Greek sources. I did demonstrate the existence of the concept in the study of Roman religion. I understand what Graves did; but arguing with the benighted old boy doesn't get us to an article on the "Triple goddess" that actually covers the subject. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a popular encyclopedia, not a specialist one. Therefore article naming is supposed to be based around the most commonly used language - which in this case means "Triple Goddess" = the neopagan / Gravesian conception. For example, the majority of wikipedia pages that link here are in regards to Neopaganism rather than ancient mythology and a "Triple Goddess" search at Google Scholar: [2] brings up a significant majority of neopagan and eco-feminist texts, rather than scholarly mythographic texts. "Triple Goddess" as a proper noun is exactly the right title for this article content. Of course, there is space in wikipedia for the current scholarly ideas relating to triple-female-divinities in various antique cultures, but it is not this article as these historical concepts are completely separate to what the modern term signifies. Davémon (talk) 16:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely with Davemon. The content is appropriate for this specific article. dougweller (talk) 22:07, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, your logic escapes me but I take your meaning. You have refuted none of my points from a scholarly perspective; you have not acknowledged that there are Neopagans and Wiccans (this I know from personal experience) who are reconstructivists developing their religious practice through the study of ancient texts; you are completely incorrect if you imagine that a high school or college student might not be looking for information on the triple goddess of antiquity for a mythology project; but you have made the point that doctrine prevails over scholarship on this page. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Some reliable sources discussing neopagan reconstructivism in regards to the Triple Goddess would be a great addition to the article. I've been unable to find any neopagans that haven't simply used Graves or since he's been discredited, used Gimbutas (both already in the article). There is use of the TG/MMC concept in literary criticism which also needs expanding. A textbook or course notes on mythology for high-school or college students that uses the term "triple goddess" in any context could also be very useful for this and the [Triple Goddess (antiquity)] article. --Davémon (talk) 20:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Cynwolfe, don't give up! I hear you. I'm not sure there's as big a difference between you and (only two) others. In fact, I think you have argued (with more sources, rigour and obvious accomplishment from long practice) essentially the same broad points that Davemon has previously made with a little more arm-waving (and against some pretty stiff opposition).

It's good to see Doug at this article, too.

Cynwolfe, I think what others are defending here is the hard won ground that the neopagan Triple Goddess has a primary claim to this namespace. They have also taken the heat when challenged by others, who were unable to make the case for other triple, tripartite, etc. goddesses with as much concise, quality erudition as yourself.

I'm not sure the issues have received decisive treatment, just barely enough mandate for something workable for the present time. Whatever else the several interested parties at this page may end up agreeing to, don't we all agree that there is far more out there in the literature than we have currently got around to documenting at this project, irrespective of our quibbles regarding under just which headings we will classify it.

Perhaps, just maybe, if you, Cynwolfe, could respond to my begging by dropping some text around your fabulous Latin sources, I might come good to do my best to scrape together what I can from Greek, though I'd need your guidance in where to look.

I can see part of the issue remains, "but where do we put this material?" Well, a little can go here, where secondary sources confirm its relevance to the neopagan TG. But we really do need quality treatment, going back to primary sources and the depictions, related to the sorts of real data that Graves hobbled together creatively, but has been dealt with more in keeping with our needs as an encyclopedia by others.

We need you Cynwolfe, talk to me please! ;) Alastair Haines (talk) 02:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Significant Viewpoints ?

I think we might need to add some views from the different Wiccan 'denominations' (eg. Dianic/Alexandrian/Fairy), but I don't think these views are so significantly different to warrant a template. Can anyone point to some reliable sources that illuminate which significant viewpoints are missing? --Davémon (talk) 09:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll remove that then. --Davémon (talk) 18:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)