“The Parliament of Rooks” ( Sandman 40) is an extremely interesting story for this aspect of Eve. In this issue (13-16), she recounts the story of the three wives of Adam. These are Lilith, the Mother, the nameless virgin (the Maiden), and Eve, the Crone. Yet, once again, the paradigm is shifted slightly. The Mother is Adam’s first wife, the Maiden his second, and the Crone his third—that seems like the wrong order. Eve is also, as well as being the Crone, the Mother: “You’re everybody’s mother,” Cain says to her (12.6).
In any case, this clearly establishes Eve as an aspect of the Three. So, when the Three are attacking the Dreaming in The Kindly Ones (Sandman 65), in their aspect as the Furies, they leave Eve alone: “She is, in herself, an aspect of ourselves.” (14.2).
At 17.1 in Sandman 40, Eve says something very important: “But some say Adam married only once, and they speak truly too.” Of course, this is an element of Eve functioning as an aspect of the Three-who-areOne. But Gaiman also establishes here that what might be seen by some as mutually incompatible “truths”—how can Adam have three wives, yet have married only once?—can exist simultaneously in the multiverse of The Sandman, and yet both remain “truths.” Again, Gaiman is creating a mythology, with all the inherent inconsistency that mythologies have.54
All this leads eventually to the thirteen-issue storyline of The Kindly Ones (Sandman 57-69, February 1994–July 1995). The Three are central to this story, in many aspects.55 The story takes its name, of course, from the euphemism for the Furies, the Eumenides, which Aeschylus used as the title of the third play in his Oresteia trilogy. They appear as the Fates at the beginning and end of the story. And their role as the Furies, and their connection through that to Lyta Hall, who as a superhero took their name, and is the child of another superhero who not only took their name but also took her powers from them,56 is the driving force for the plot.57 It also provides a link back to the main DC Universe, from which The Sandman was by now increasingly distant.58
Furthermore, there are other manifestations of the Three in this story. I have already mentioned the three women in the nursing home. In Part 4 (Sandman 60) Lyta Hall encounters the immortal sisters of Medusa, the Gorgons Stheno and Euryale (16). They are an aspiring Three, prevented from achieving their ambitions by the death of their mortal sister. They attempt to make Lyta Hall their third, but again fail.59 In Part 7 (Sandman 62, 23.1-2) there is a brief mention of the Morrígan. In Part 13 (Sandman 69) we learn that Rose Walker is working on a book on the Triple Goddess in TV sitcoms (18.3). In Part 4 (15.2), we have already seen some of the materials she is researching—Bewitched (USA, 1964-1972), a sitcom about witches, where the triad is Tabitha (once she is born in 1966), Samantha, and Endora, and Roseanne (USA, 1988-1997), where the triad is Darlene (why not Becky?), Roseanne, and Roseanne’s mother Beverly.60
The Kindly Ones also shows the limitations of the Three. They are unable to exact revenge upon Dream for what he has done (or rather, what Lyta believes he has done) to Lyta’s son Daniel, only for his killing of his own son (Part 7, Sandman 62, 23.5-6, 24.6). And in the end, they are cursorily dismissed by Death (Part 13, 9.4).61
After their leading role in The Kindly Ones, the Three are largely absent from The Wake (though Eve features in that storyline). There is, however, one last manifestation of the Triple Goddess in Sandman, in Gaiman’s prose story, The Dream Hunters.62 Here the villain of the story, the master of Yin-Yang, keeps in a dilapidated house “three women: one old, one young, and one who was neither young nor old.”63 Clearly here Gaiman once again presents the Maiden, Mother, and Crone; they function as oracles, much as the Three did earlier in the main sequence of The Sandman. They are, however, not quite a clear representation of the Three, as they seem to be the servants of the Master of Yin-Yang. Perhaps they are closer to the humans who manifest themselves in aspects of the Three, such as Judy, Kate, and Bette in “24 Hours” (Sandman 6) or Foxglove, Hazel, and Thessaly in A Game of You.64 There does seem to be something magical about them, however, as they mysteriously disappear when their house is destroyed.
“They looked like a set of Russian dolls”65: The Triple Goddess in Other Gaiman works Gaiman was not alone in being interested in the motif of the Triple Goddess. At about the same time as Gaiman’s earliest issues of The Sandman appeared, his friend Terry Pratchett published Wyrd Sisters (1989). Pratchett had already introduced the elderly witch Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites, two years previously. In Wyrd Sisters, he gave Granny a coven, including the matronly (she has a great many children) Nanny Ogg, and the young novice Magrat Garlick, thus filling the three roles of Crone, Mother, and Maiden.
Whether the two authors had discussed their respective ideas with each other is unclear. However, Pratchett uses his three witches differently from Gaiman. Where, as we shall see, Gaiman’s One who is Three are supernatural primal forces, and at least partly symbolic, Pratchett’s witches are very much more down-to-earth. Granny Weatherwax does not hold with a great many things, and one suspects that being symbolic is one of these.66
Neil Gaiman found his own voice early on in the writing of The Sandman (as discussed above), and the creative mode that he employed in that work is something within which he has largely remained for his subsequent writing. Although Gaiman manages to avoid repeating himself in detail, later works such as Neverwhere, Stardust, and American Gods emerge from the same sort of thematic territory as The Sandman. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this, and most writers do it to one degree or another. But it does mean that one should not be surprised to see the Triple Goddess recur through his works. The following section examines some of the more prominent examples of Gaiman using the Triple Goddess motif. There are other examples, for instance in his short stories, but those have been omitted here for reasons of space.
There are a few mentions in the remainder of Gaiman’s work within the DC Universe. In “Notes Towards a Vegetable Theology,” written as part of his plans for Swamp Thing,67Gaiman postulated three May Queens, female earth spirits, who would be in his plans: Black Orchid, the Batman villain Poison Ivy, and Thorn (of Rose and the Thorn).68 In the Black Orchid mini-series, Gaiman’s first published work for DC, there were three versions of the main character, the experienced crime-fighter who is killed at the beginning, a mature version who achieves consciousness to replace her, and a child version; this could be another version of the Triple Goddess motif. Surprisingly, however, in The Books of Magic, in which Gaiman set out the magical aspects of the DC Universe, there is just one brief explicit reference to the Three in the first chapter, in the context of ancient Greece, where Gaiman mentions the three-faced witch-queen.
The Triple Goddess next becomes significant in Stardust, an illustrated fairy tale that draws heavily upon the third chapter of The Books of Magic (both were illustrated by Charles Vess).69 The main antagonist here is the Witch-Queen, who is one of three sisters who call themselves the Lilim (who were in Sandman 40 the children of Lilith, first wife of Adam).70 The Witch-Queen is, in a sense, an aspect of all three of them.71
American Gods is another return to the pan-pantheon. It would be very surprising, therefore, if aspects of the Triple Goddess did not manifest themselves in this story. And so they do. The most interesting is where the protagonist of the novel, Shadow, encounters the Slavic Zorya, or Auroras.72 Unsurprisingly, Gaiman chooses a version of this mythology in which there are three Zorya: Zorya Utrennyaya, the Morning Star, Zorya Vechernyaya, the Evening Star, and Zorya Polunochnaya, the Midnight Star. There are, however, other variants in Slavic myth in which there are only the first two, and indeed, these are the more common versions. According to Mike Dixon-Kennedy,73the only named Zorya are Utrennyaya and Vechernyaya. A Midnight Star is found in a few references, but she is quite an obscure figure, never given a name. Of course, Gaiman prefers the less common variant, because it allows him to use the Triple Goddess theme with the Zorya. Gaiman has admitted that Zorya Polunochnaya is at least partially his own invention.74 What Gaiman
does with Zorya Polunochnaya in American Gods is to make her a shadowy figure, whom Shadow is not quite sure he has actually met. This reflects the Midnight Star’s nebulous presence in Slavic mythology.
Later, Shadow encounters the Norns, before he carries out the vigil for Odin.75 Other manifestations of the Triple Goddess play minor roles in the work. There is an unremembered three-bodied deity. There is mention of the Brigids. The Greco-Roman Fates appear, as does/do the Morrígan.76
Kalī, who also appears in this novel, is another aspect of the Triple Goddess. Sancken suggests that she should be seen as such, since she embodies creation, preservation, and destruction.77 But her role as an aspect of the Triple Goddess is clearer than that. She is an aspect of the goddess Durgā, who is herself an aspect of Pārvatī, and Pārvatī, along with Saraswati and Lakshmī, form the Hindu Tridevi, literally the “three goddesses.” It should be noted, however, that Gaiman does not in this novel emphasize the Triple nature of Kalī.
There is one important difference in how Gaiman handles these figures in American Gods from how he handles them in The Sandman. In American Godsthe various triples are notaspects of each other; rather, each is a separate deity or deities functioning within their own pantheon. It is quite possible in American Godsfor gods to exist in multiple aspects within pantheons—Shadow encounters an Odin who has traveled across the Atlantic to the United States, but also meets another aspect who has never left Scandinavia. But these aspects do not cross pantheons. This shows Gaiman, as he often does through his career, working through similar concepts to those he has addressed in Sandman, but in a manner that allows him to take a fresh look at them.
In the companion volume to American Gods, Anansi Boys, the protagonist, Fat Charlie Nancy, encounters what could be an aspect of the Triple Goddess, except that in this case, there are four of them. At the wake for his father, Charlie encounters four old ladies, Mrs. Callyanne Higgler, Mrs. Louella Dunwiddy, Mrs. Zorah Bustamonte, and Mrs. Bella Noles. All these names have resonances with other Gaimanic names, if not necessarily with ones used for manifestations of the Triple Goddess.78 Within their group, they are differentiated by age: “Mrs. Higgler was older than Mrs. Bustamonte, and both of them were older than Mrs. Noles and none of them was older than Mrs. Dunwiddy.”79 Fat Charlie was afraid of Mrs. Dunwiddy in his youth, with some reason, as she was primarily responsible for extracting part of his essence and creating his brother Spider. All four women turn out to be witches, though Mrs. Dunwiddy is the prime mover of the coven. Mrs. Higgler is somewhat differentiated from the others, being introduced in the novel first, as Charlie’s father’s neighbor, but the ritual that sends Fat Charlie to the beginning of the world is carried out by all four of them.80 In the novel, Gaiman never really treats Mrs. Dunwiddy, Mrs. Bustamonte, and Mrs. Noles as a Triple Goddess, even if Mrs. Dunwiddy easily fits into the role of crone. It is also worth noting that all four are definitely mortal—Mrs. Dunwiddy dies and is buried at the end of the novel, though there is some implication that she may come back.
Gaiman’s most recent published use of the Triple Goddess is in his illustrated children’s picture book Blueberry Girl, which appeared in 2009, though the original poem had been written in 2000. It begins with an invocation to “ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of neveryou-mind.” These are depicted by artist Charles Vess as three women, one elderly, one mature (and wearing a wimple), and one younger. How much of this is Vess’ imagination and how much Gaiman’s is hard to determine. From Gaiman’s description of the creative process on this particular work,81 it is unclear whether Vess was working from anything more than Gaiman’s original poem. Though Gaiman is friends with many of his artists, and he and Vess clearly discussed the project in broad terms, it is unclear how detailed these discussions were in terms of what Vess should draw,82 certainly as compared with the great detail that Gaiman would put into a typical comic script, and Vess may have come up with the imagery himself. But, of course, Vess has worked with Gaiman on many occasions in the past (on Stardust, The Books of Magic, and several issues of Sandman), and would be well aware of Gaiman’s interest in the Triple Goddess. It is natural that he would interpret Gaiman’s threefold invocation in this manner. The result is quite the most benign version of the Triple Goddess to be found anywhere in Gaiman’s work, as befits a children’s book. These ladies are not warning of disasters, exacting vengeance, or determining at which point a human life will end. Rather, they are the benevolent source of hope and possibility. Vess’ depiction of them as a multi-racial group–the youngestappearing lady is also non-white–is part of that.
“Three is the magic number”83 There are a number of ways in which study of the Triple Goddess in Gaiman’s works could be taken further. There is, of course, a link between these three goddesses/witches/spirits/etc., and all the other magical women found in Gaiman’s work.84 It is also worth noting that “threes recur throughout Gaiman’s work. Sandman31 is entitled “Three Septembers and a January.” Threes are particularly prominent in Neverwhere. For example, there are three ordeals to be passed to get the Key that is the central plot device (Alfred Hitchcock’s “Macguffin”) of the novel, which are passed by three characters, Hunter, Door, and Richard. Three people, Hunter, Richard, and the Marquis de Carabas, confront the Beast of London in the climax of the novel.
But then, Gaiman is hardly alone is making considerable use of threes. It is, after all, as most of the major religions of the planet recognize a magic number. It seems likely that the Triple Goddess will be seen in future work by Gaiman.
___________________ 27 The Sandman was unusual in the degree to which it was distanced from DC continuity (for the circumstances that produced that, see Gaiman in Bender, 23-4), but it was never intended to be fully outside it. As the series went on, Gaiman made less and less use of DC characters, beyond those he had introduced in the first twenty issues, and more-or-less made his own.
28 The first nineteen issues are now collected in Showcase Presents: The Witching Hour. 29 See Gaiman’s “Afterword,” Preludes, 240.
30 Cain first appeared in The House of Mystery175 (DC, July 1968); Abel was first seen in DC Special 4 (DC, July–September 1969), before hosting The House of Secretsfrom issue 81 (DC, August–September 1969). Gaiman also employed another anthology host in The Sandman, Destiny (from Weird Mystery Tales 1, DC, August 1972), first mentioned in Sandman 1 (15.5), but not shown until Sandman 7 (15.5). Gaiman brilliantly uses Destiny as the cornerstone of his entire mythological system. 31 In the “Afterword,” Preludes, 240, he cites Sandman 8 as the point at which he was finding his own voice; in Bender, 35, he selects Sandman 6.
32 This is particularly noticeable in his 1989 mini-series Black Orchid.
33 Gaiman in Bender, 15-18.
34 I think there is no need for the caution of Marshall, 92-3, with regard to identifying echoes of the witches of Macbeth in the Three.
35 I have adopted a reference system for comics that gives the page number followed by the panel number.
36 Which, as the Three hint, is the name of Arthur’s son in the Arthurian mythos, and a more appropriate name would be Morgaine, another character who has been identified as a manifestation of the Triple Goddess.
37 Brewer, 694.
38 See Morrow and Hildebrandt, “Issue 6.”
39 See the entry in March, 163. As an example of where the Fates are not all-powerful, in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (Collard, Persians, 99-129), the Titan Prometheus possesses knowledge that would allow Zeus to escape his designated fate. This is, of course, an aspect of the clash between the concepts of divine omnipotence and free will that many religions fail to resolve.
40 Moreover, what each one starts eating, the next one finishes; see Morrow & Hildebrandt, “Issues 2.” 41 Wagner, Golden and Bissette, 114; Goldfarb and Hildebrandt,
42 Goldfarb and Hildebrandt, ibid.
43 See Gaiman, in Bender, 197.
44 This is explained in Secret Origins 12. When Hippolyta Trevor was first introduced, in Wonder Woman300, she was the daughter of the Golden Age (Earth-2) Wonder Woman. After the restructuring of the DC Universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths(1985-1986) there never had been a Golden Age Wonder Woman, and so a new Golden Age Fury was created to be Lyta’s mother.
45 This is presumably an accidental misspelling.
46 See page 15 of the script to “Calliope,” reprinted in Dream Country.
47 Gorgo is an alternative spelling of the Greek name usually rendered as “Gorgon,” one of three monstrous women (who will appear in The Kindly Ones). Mormo is a Greek she-monster (see the entry in March, 261). Ereschigal is a Babylonian deity sometimes identified with Hecate. See Morrow and Hildebrandt “Issue 34.”
48 Wagner, Golden and Bissette, 72.
49 Foxglove, it transpires, was the lover of Judy, who plays the role of maiden in “24 Hours.” 50 The appearance of Foxglove, Hazel, and Thessaly as Maiden, Mother, and Crone has been recognized on many occasions: see, e.g., Morrow and Hildebrandt, “Issue 34”; Bender, 113; Sanders in Hanes and Sanders, 162-3 (though I question whether Thessaly is as consciously trying to recreate the Triple Goddess as Sanders suggests here); Wagner, Golden and Bissette, 72.
51 For an example of this Roman perception, see the Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, of Apuleius, where the hero’s troubles begin with a trip to Thessaly and an encounter with witchcraft.
The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman Page 18