The final two archetypal character arcs within the life cycle signal a distinct departure from the realm of the known. After sacrificing herself for the Kingdom at the end of the King Arc, the seemingly diminished Crone, leaves behind the “real” world of Kingdom and throne and enters instead the spooky forests and liminal hinterlands of Elderhood. Symbolically, the final two positive arcs—Crone and Mage—are decidedly more supernatural than those that preceded.
In archetypal and mythic stories, we see this shift represented by these characters’ ability to perform “magic.” This magic can be seen to represent the potential for a deeper spirituality, but it also certainly represents the accumulated life experience, knowledge, and wisdom of the characters’ arcs up until this point. The two arcs prior to that of the Crone—the Queen and the King—were focused on issues of power. As such, a character who has successfully completed those arcs will have a wily understanding of power that outstrips even the physically powerful youths of the earlier arcs. (We see this delightfully represented in the film Secondhand Lions, in which Robert Duvall’s Crone character handily beats up a gang of Bullies—then takes them home and offers them his initiatory speech about “how to be a man.”)
As we’ve already discussed, the Crone offers the potential for a profound arc into the deeper mysteries of Life and Death. But it is also a deeply fraught archetype. As the structural representation of life’s Third Plot Point (often called the “Low Moment” or the “Dark Night of the Soul” or simply “Death/Rebirth”), the Crone successfully completes her King Arc only to be faced with the most frightening existential challenge of her long life.
The Crone, all alone in her hut in the woods, represents a time of withdrawal from the world. This is so she can integrate the great losses and lessons she has taken away from her life’s Second Act period. That she can successfully mourn and integrate these lessons is not a given. If she cannot come to peace with the life she has so far lived, her regrets about what she might not have done or what she can no longer do, and her inevitably encroaching death—she may easily slide into one or both of her negative counter-archetypes of Hermit and Wicked Witch. The Hermit represents the passive polarity within the Crone’s shadow; the Witch represents the aggressive polarity.
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