Embrace your inner wisdom with Crone.

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1 Issue 6 m 1

2 Embrace your inner wisdom with Crone. why Crone? Because we need a place which is ours alone: a place where we can explore who we are and where we re going. Crone is for every woman of any age ready to embrace her inner wisdom. who we are Dozens of contributors, poets, writers and editors all of them women 50 and up collaborate to create Crone. No outside experts here! join us by subscribing today Crone is not available on newsstands, and carries no advertising. Her support is entirely dependent on you! YES! Sign me up for a 1 year (2-issue) subscription to Crone. ($23 U.S. delivery, $40 international) EVEN BETTER! Save with a 2 year (4-issue) subscription. ($42 U.S. delivery, $76 international) BEST RATE! Save with a 3 year (6-issue) subscription. ($58 U.S. delivery, $110 international) To subscribe by mail, complete the Address Panel on other side and send this page along with payment. To order by phone, call us toll-free ( ) or order on the web at: Back Issues Crone #1-4: SOLD OUT in paper, but are available as PDF ezines from our website at PDF ezines are readable on desktops, laptops, (newer) Kindles and other e-readers and have enhanced accessibility options (large type, read aloud) as well as being in glorious full color! Back Issues of Crone #5 and some of Ann Kreilkamp s original Crone Chronicles are available. See order form on reverse. Subscriptions start with the next issue. Prices subject to change. We never rent or sell your name. Issue 6 m 127

3 crone Interviews by Vila Spiderhawk Barbara loves her little Witch (from the cover of Secret Lives.) Barbara Ardinger 40 m Crone

4 The prologue of Barbara Ardinger s novel Secret Lives is set in Neolithic Old Europe in a time when people worshipped the Goddess. (That framing device had me hooked right away.) But when I got into the heart of the book and met her fascinating characters, I just gave up the thought of doing anything else until I had finished reading. Ardinger s cast includes Bertha Mutspell, a woman who delights in dressing and behaving outrageously; Maude Lincoln, a blind widow who glides through life without white cane or guide dog; Herta Melos, the keeper of the ancient texts; and Madame Blavatsky, a talking calico cat. Though these characters come from very different backgrounds, they play beautifully off each other, often bringing me to laughter with their wit and confident good humor. However, this is not simply a feel-good book. These characters are old, and they ve experienced the cruelties that our patriarchal culture inflicts on us all and feel an urgent need to correct those wrongs. Ardinger, 71, shows that we can, even in old age, create a different, more respectful, way to live. While this tale is full of humor and some very clever wit, this is not a work to read without thought. This book deserves a thinking reader, and immediately made me want to know about the author of such a fascinating book. wants to unleash your secret life! Issue 6 m 41

5 Thank you so much for doing this interview, Barbara. What is it that drew you into the feminist, Goddess-loving spirituality so evident in this book? Barbara: I ve been trying to remember how I got from where I was (raised Calvinist and Republican in St. Louis, Missouri) to where I am now (a witch and a liberal in Long Beach, California.) When I started working on Secret Lives, the characters started taking on lives of their own. I just watched, listened, and wrote most of it down. I was Unitarian while in graduate school and I got my first natal chart and tarot reading as I was finishing my Ph.D. in My path to the Goddess also included stops at Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and the Edgar Cayce organization. I d been reading the feminist literature (Friedan, Greer, et al.) and came upon early feminist spirituality (Stone, Gimbutas, Eisler, Greer, Starhawk, Budapest, Monaghan, et al.), met some of those authors and learned more from them. So I started going to public rituals held by Long Beach WomanSpirit (which I mention in Secret Lives.) I also took refuge with Dagmola Jamyang Sakya and dedicated myself to Tara. By that time I had written my first few books, started teaching a class called Practicing the Presence of the Goddess and, well, here I am. Secret Lives is rich in the truths of the aging experience in our culture. What inspired you to take on this topic? I started writing the book in 1989 and I m sure the topic was suggested to me by several people at the time. In my writing career, I was meeting and interviewing some impressive elderly women, including two 42 m Crone

6 Photo 2012 Charles Elliott volunteers in their nineties who told me they were helping the old folks out. I also observed my grandmother and the mothers and grandmothers of my friends: old women who didn t act like they were old. As I started working on Secret Lives, the characters started taking on lives of their own. I just watched, listened and wrote it down. Clockwise, from top left: Reading my poem from Secret Lives at the Pagan Studies Conference in Claremont, CA, 2012; the framed covers of all my books; me and Schroedinger in my home office. (With a Maine coon on my lap, it s hard to stay on the home row!) Your work is spiritual and yet lighthearted. How do you manage it? As my regular readers know, I believe that spirituality is serious, but it doesn t have to be solemn! Issue 6 m 43

7 THE WOMEN behind SECRET LIVES I met Patricia Kelly when we both attended a Tarot symposium. You know how you can meet someone across a crowded room and you feel like you ve known that person forever? We lived on opposite edges of the continent me in Orange County, CA and her in Queens, NY but that s how it was with Patricia and me. After the symposium, she crossed the continent twice more to visit me. When she retired a couple years ago, she moved to a community near Santa Barbara, so now we re in the same state! Patricia who calls herself Roswila is a woman of many talents. She writes poetry, plays flutes and the didgeridoo, and takes gorgeous photographs. You can see some of her work at I wrote each story in what became the first draft of Secret Lives on a typewriter and drove across town to make photocopies. I always made two photocopies of each story, one to tuck into my three-ring binder, the other to mail in a plain brown envelope to Patricia. She read every story and commented on it, either in a phone call or in a letter, and asked questions about things that were ambiguous. Thanks to her close reading, I was able to make the second draft much better than the first. As far as we can tell, the first version of Secret Lives, which she read, was only about twenty-four stories. That was maybe five titles ago. 44 m Crone I met Sandra Lange in 1991 when I was teaching a class in my living room and she signed up for it. Back in the nineties, she opened her home to a circle of women that was led by our friend Valerie Meyer. We held full-moon rituals, drummed, and studied The Artist s Way and Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron. Sandra and I like to go places together. We have driven to Riverside and beyond to visit friends and every time we seem to get lost. One time when she called her husband for directions, I grabbed her cell phone and said, Ron, I ll have your wife back home by Easter. We still laugh about that. For many years, Sandra and I have gone to a local Unity Church and walked their Chartres labyrinth together. Sometimes we go shopping we enable each other to spend more and more money. When Sandra had major surgery a couple years ago, I visited her in the hospital; I m glad she decided to stay on the planet. When I started writing Secret Lives, I asked Sandra to read the stories and comment on them, which she did. Like Patricia, she read carefully and paid attention to details. Both of these friends encouraged me and helped me to become a better writer. For that and for many other reasons I love these two old friends. BARBARA ARDINGER. Secret Lives first readers and friends of Barbara. Sandra Lange with Barbara near the Royal Theatre on the Queen Mary; left, Patricia Kelly.

8 It s important to be honest about what you believe, but you don t have to go around waving red capes or insulting people. Times are changing and we Witches need to change with them. The prologue of Secret Lives was absolutely fascinating. How did you research that era, given that it s based in a prehistoric time? I ve read the major books by Marija Gimbutas and her protégée, Miriam Dexter (who is a friend of mind.) I was lucky to meet Marija and hear her speak several times. My copy of The Civilization of the Goddess is filled with sticky notes! I invented the characters in the prologue, but the setting is as authentic as I could make it based on the work of Gimbutas and others. The death bed ritual in the book brought tears to my eyes. Have you participated in such a ritual for someone who was teetering at the dying edge of life? I was an AIDS emotional support volunteer for several years and helped a number of people get ready to die. I don t even know how many friends I lost to AIDS. I have lost several of my dearest friends to cancer. None of them had rituals like the one I created for the book. I think I wrote that story for my friends for what I wished I could have done for the friends I loved. In your story the women are careful to keep their witchcraft secret, and, given their experiences, that s easy to understand. Do you feel it s important that we who practice the Craft keep our spirituality to ourselves? Twenty years ago, I would have said yes, it s very important to stay in the broom closet. The fears that Emma Clare and Herta express are realistic for the time in which the book is set, especially because their husbands have government jobs. Nowadays, more people are open with their spirituality but there s still prejudice, although even that is changing somewhat. I think it s important to be honest about what you believe, but you don t have to go around waving red capes or insulting people. In Pagan Every Day, in spite of the title (which was assigned by the publisher), I wrote about a variety Issue 6 m 45

9 of religious holidays. Times are still in 2013 changing and we Witches need to change with them. BARBARA ARDINGER: A BIBLIOGRAPHY Non-Fiction: Pagan Every Day: Finding the Extraordinary in Our Ordinary Lives, Weiser, Finding New Goddesses: Reclaiming Playfulness in Our Spiritual Lives, ECW Press, Practicing the Presence of the Goddess: Everyday Rituals to Transform Your World, New World, Goddess Meditations, Llewellyn, A Woman s Book of Rituals & Celebrations, New World, Fiction: Secret Lives, Create Space, Quicksilver Moon, Three Moons Media, m Crone You share a great deal of wisdom in Secret Lives. Was it difficult to choose just the right words to make your points without being preachy? That was a huge challenge, and it s one reason the women [characters] argue so much, so that multiple points of view get expressed. I agree with Margaretta most of the time, and Cairo and Brooke express a lot of my opinions, but I also admire Emma Clare because her conservatism is sincere. Sometimes, in fact, I find myself agreeing with her. In all my books, I ve always been very careful not to propagate silly myths or give information that naïve readers (or readers new to this kind of spiritual knowledge) might easily misinterpret. That s one reason there are two scholars [as characters] in the book. Since you have written and published many books at this point, what single piece of advice would you give to a brand new author? Write simply. Also remember that your readers don t live in your head with you. Do adequate research and understand that even though you re writing fiction, you can t just make stuff up out of thin cloth. Oh, and one selfserving bit of advice: hire a competent editor (like me) who knows something about your topic. I m always finding

10 errors and boners and asking provoking questions. Most of my authors thank me for being a fussbudget. Your work is very detailed and readable. That means that you ve worked very hard to make the work flow for easy reading. I wonder which chapter gave you the most difficulty and why. I had to be very careful with the rituals in Secret Lives, so I wouldn t forget anything important, and I checked and double-checked details like books mentioned in the novel. But the hardest chapter to write was the one about weather war. The first thing I had to decide was point of view. Who would direct the cone of power? Did it need to be steered in this battle? Who would steer it? I finally selected Brooke because she s one of the least likely warriors. (As an intellectual, she d rather read than fight.) Then I had to work very carefully on the language to keep it from being funny. I also had to keep track of who was doing what, and where they were, as well as the goddesses they were invoking, and the invocations themselves. I had to draw lists and little maps to keep track, and then rewrite it and prune it several times, to keep it from being overdone. What can your readers do to enjoy the novel more? I invite Secret Lives readers to visit my website at com and check out the free Reader s Guide: it s like a really great big footnote. I explain allusions, give resources (like old movies), and comment on the action and characters in each chapter. I hope that Crone readers will check out my book as well as my blog there and enjoy keeping up with me. m Interviewer Vila SpiderHawk (68) lives with her husband and five cats. See her at Issue 6 m 47

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