The Apache and Navajo Changing Woman1 and Celtic Cailleach2 are endlessly young, then old, then young again. The Delphic Oracle prophecies the future of empires3. The European Fates spin each child’s destiny at birth4. Mortals journey to the Celtic Underworld where days become centuries on their return5.
The understanding of time in these myths and traditions, what we might call “goddess time,” is profoundly different from our own daily experience. Our everyday perceptions of time, constructed by our brains in order to help us function in day-to-day life, tells us that time flows in a line from a remembered and unchangeable past to a present that is the same throughout the universe to the unknowable future6. Yet, for more than a century since Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, we have known the time, when observed on the level of atoms, fields, quanta, and such, also does not match our human perception7.
Contemporary physicists have confirmed or hypothesize a number of surprising characteristics of time. Time moves more slowly or quickly depending on where you are in relation to mass8. There is no “now” that is the same throughout the universe, or even a few centimeters away9. On an atomic level, the concepts of “past” and “future,” defined as events that happen only before or after one another, are meaningless10. When electrons are moving from one place to another, they are in a space where anything resembling the flow of time is replaced by “clouds of probability,11” with all possible outcomes of where the electron might go present all at once, until the electrons reappear after interaction with an object like a screen. Whether describing a view of time where past, present, and future behave in strange, nonlinear ways, or noting that time moves at different rates depending on your closeness to a mass like the Earth, I see echoes of these discoveries in “goddess time” — do you? And what can we learn from observing how goddesses and heroines express a different perspective of time about navigating our own century?
Einstein says that time moves more slowly the closer you are to Earth12. Oddly enough, time also moves more slowly in the Celtic Underworld, often understood to be under the earth’s surface and closer to Earth’s central core13. Adherents of the Fairy Faith accept without question that time moves more slowly depending on where you are. Perhaps they can model for us the ability to live comfortably with both our daily perception of time and “goddess time” when that benefits how we think about our world.
The goddesses of fate and holy women oracles constantly challenge us as we consider predestination. If an oracle tells us what may happen in the future, do we have the capacity to change it? While what happens in the quantum sphere is not the same as the human sphere, can the “cloud of probabilities”14 be a possible paradigm for our realm to cast off limiting beliefs that we do not have the agency to make a future better world? The Oracle of Delphi thinks so. After a king lost everything by making war after the Delphyne told him his attack on another kingdom would mean the fall of a great empire, she said he should have asked which empire would be lost. If he had changed his mind based on her counsel he would still have been king15. So, too, should we have the courage to believe that our lives are not an inevitable slog from the present to a predestined future and use our wisdom and common sense to make the choices that can bring about peace, love, and compassion, even when positive change may seem impossible.
Changing Woman and the Cailleach who move back and forth between youth and age represent a cyclical rather than linear view of reality. Similarly, at the elemental level, the meaninglessness of past and future also speaks to a view of time that, at least at that level, is similarly non-linear. To me, when we stop thinking in linear terms, we lose the sense that there will be an end to existence and our lives will no longer have had meaning. Each generation, including our own, becomes part of the great story of the the universe, connecting ourselves to both our ancestors and descendants. This also encourages us further to align ourselves with the seasons and nature, to take responsibility for gifting a healthy, bountiful earth to those who will come after us as well as to learn from those who came before us.
Finally, we come to our own aging, a source of fear and shame in our culture. From their cycling from youth to age and back, Changing Woman and the Cailleach teach us that while aging certainly creates changes in our bodies and minds, and we need to be accepting of both positive and negative effects, we are still fundamentally ourselves no matter what our age. And, in a universe in which we age at different rates depending on our position in space16, perhaps we can be no longer restricted by society’s assumptions of who we should be and what we should be doing at particular chronological ages.
Why does “goddess time” seem to reflect elements of new revelations about time? It may be that before the invention of the mechanical clock, people had a less rigid understanding of time as time mainly measured changes between day and night or the seasons and was very local since noon, for example, was based on position of the sun where you were at any given moment17. Or it may be that ancient people used observation and intuition in the absence of today’s precise instruments to come to similar conclusions about time as modern physicists. Or it could be something else or all coincidence.
For whatever reason, both modern physics and “goddess time” give us a glimpse of time unbound. We need our common understanding of time to get through daily life, but when we realize that in both very old myths and traditions as well as modern physics, time can be perceived very differently, we can open up our imaginations and see new ways of being for ourselves and our Earth. We can better recognize and cast off assumptions of ourselves and what is possible in our world if we live joyfully in time rather than being ruled by it. After millennia, it’s time.
Sources:
Dashu, Max. Witches and Pagans. Richmond, CA: Veleda Press, 2016.
Dashu, Max. Women in Greek Mythography. Richmond, CA: Veleda Press, 2023.
Evans-Wentz, W.Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. New York, NY: Citadel Press, 1990.
Monaghan, Patricia. New Book of Goddesses and Heroines. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1989.
Monaghan, Patricia. Red-Haired Girl from the Bog. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003.
Rovelli, Carlo. The Order of Time. New York NY: Riverhead Books, 2018.
Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2017.
- Monaghan, New Book of Goddesses and Heroines, 84.” ↩︎
- Monaghan, Red-Haired Girl from the Bog, 41-42. ↩︎
- Dashu, Women in Greek Mythography, 273-274. ↩︎
- Dashu, Witches and Pagans, 9. ↩︎
- Evans-Wentz, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Cultures, 339-340. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 167. ↩︎
- Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems, 73. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 77. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 16. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 21. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 88-90. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 12. ↩︎
- Evans-Wentz, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Cultures, 339-340. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 168. ↩︎
- Dashu, Women in Greek Mythography, 303. ↩︎
- Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems, 86. ↩︎
- Rovelli, The Order of Time, 59. ↩︎