Triple Goddess Tattoo Meaning
The feminine, the moon's three faces, and becoming, being, and releasing in one form.
The Triple Goddess is the feminine divine in three faces — Maiden, Mother, and Crone, the three phases of the moon and of a woman's life, becoming and being and releasing held together in one goddess of three forms. To carry the Triple Goddess is to carry the feminine, the moon's three faces, and becoming, being, and releasing in one form — the threefold goddess of maiden, mother, and crone, the waxing, full, and waning moon, the three ages and the three realms united in a single divine feminine.
The triple goddess appears in Greek tradition in the linked forms of Artemis, Selene, and Hecate — a threefold feminine divinity often understood as maiden, mother, and crone. The three are connected as aspects of a single triple goddess, frequently associated with the moon and its phases: Artemis, the maiden — the virgin huntress, goddess of the wild and the waxing; Selene, the moon itself in its fullness, the full and shining moon; and Hecate, the goddess of the crossroads, the night, magic, and the underworld — the dark, waning, crone aspect. Together they form a triple lunar goddess spanning the phases of the moon.
This threefold goddess maps the three phases of the moon onto the three phases of the feminine life cycle and the three realms. The waxing, full, and waning moon correspond to the maiden, the mother, and the crone — the three great stages of a woman's life: youth and emergence, fruitful maturity, and aged wisdom. And the three goddesses also span the three realms — earth, sky, and underworld — Artemis of the earth and the wild, Selene of the sky and the moon, Hecate of the underworld and the crossroads between worlds. The Greek triple goddess is thus a rich and complete image of the feminine divine: maiden, mother, and crone; waxing, full, and waning moon; earth, sky, and underworld — the three faces of the goddess, the three phases of the moon and of life, the three realms of the cosmos, all united in a single threefold feminine divinity. The Greek triple goddess is Artemis-Selene-Hecate — maiden, mother, crone; the three moon phases and three realms in one feminine divinity. The Greek triple goddess is maiden, mother, crone — the triple goddess as Artemis-Selene-Hecate: maiden (Artemis the virgin huntress), mother (Selene the full moon), crone (Hecate of the crossroads, night, magic, and the underworld); the three phases of the moon (waxing, full, waning) mapped onto the three phases of the feminine life cycle (youth, fruitful maturity, aged wisdom) and the three realms of earth, sky, and underworld — a complete image of the feminine divine, the three faces of the goddess and the three phases of moon and life united in a single threefold divinity.
The Triple Goddess as a unified theological concept was largely formalized by Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1948) and later developed by Gerald Gardner in the foundation of Wicca (1954). Graves's work is poetically compelling but historically contested — he synthesized ancient material into a coherent mythology that ancient sources do not present as unified. What the ancient sources do provide: Greek tripartite goddesses (Hecate with three faces, the three Graces, the three Fates), Celtic triple goddess inscriptions from Romano-Celtic Britain, and the Indo-European pattern of triple divine function. The symbol itself — waxing crescent left, full circle center, waning crescent right — is a modern Wiccan codification of the moon's phases, clean and immediately legible as a tattoo silhouette.
Triple Goddess across cultures
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