Mystical systems
Triple Moon
Direct answer
Triple Moon: The triple moon is a symbol of a full moon set between a waxing and a waning crescent, used in Wicca and modern Paganism for the Triple Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone.
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At a glance
- Also called
- triple goddess
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Wicca, Pentacle, Pentagram, Triquetra
The triple moon is a symbol of a full moon set between a waxing and a waning crescent, used in Wicca and modern Paganism for the Triple Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone.
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What does the triple moon symbol mean?
The triple moon is drawn as a circle with a crescent on each side, their horns pointing outward. The three shapes are the moon growing, full and shrinking, and they are matched to three ages of a woman's life and three faces of one goddess: the Maiden of beginnings, the Mother of fullness and the Crone of age and wisdom.
The symbol and the scheme behind it are modern. Goddesses in threes are found in antiquity, among them the three-formed Hecate of Greek religion, but the neat pattern of Maiden, Mother and Crone tied to the moon was set out by the poet Robert Graves in The White Goddess in 1948. Wicca, which took shape in England in the following years, adopted it, and the emblem is now common on altars, jewellery and the circlets of priestesses.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Symbols.
What sets Triple Moon apart
The triple moon is read from left to right as time: the left crescent is the waxing moon as it appears in northern skies, the disc is the full moon, the right crescent the waning one. A dark or new moon, the fourth phase, has no place in the figure, and some modern writers add it as a hidden fourth aspect. Unlike most symbols on this shelf it can be dated to living memory, and its source is a work of poetic theory that its own author subtitled a historical grammar of poetic myth.
- Form: a full disc between two outward-facing crescents
- Three aspects: Maiden (waxing), Mother (full), Crone (waning)
- Modern source: Robert Graves, The White Goddess, 1948
- Ancient parallel: Hecate shown in triple form in Greek and Roman art
- Scholarly account: Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon (1999), on its modern origin
Often mistaken for something else: The triquetra and triskelion are old three-fold figures later given goddess meanings; the triple moon was drawn for the Triple Goddess in the twentieth century.
The story behind Triple Moon
The Cambridge classicist Jane Ellen Harrison wrote in the early 1900s of Greek goddesses appearing as maiden and mother and in groups of three. Graves turned that into a single ancient moon goddess, a claim historians of religion do not accept as history. The historian Ronald Hutton traced the idea's path into modern witchcraft in The Triumph of the Moon in 1999. The drawn symbol became widespread in Pagan books and jewellery in the later twentieth century.
Why Triple Moon matters
Triple Moon is the most used emblem of the Goddess in modern Paganism, and a clear instance of a recent symbol often taken for an ancient one.
How to read Triple Moon
Wiccans and other Pagans wear it to honour the Goddess and mark the moon's phases in ritual, with the full moon as the high point.
Triple Moon in practice: an example
A Wiccan altar cloth may carry the triple moon at its centre to honour the Goddess in all three of her aspects.
Where readings of Triple Moon go wrong
Triple Moon’s three roles are a modern pattern; many women and many Pagans do not find their lives described by it.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- triple moon symbol, triple goddess symbol, triple moon meaning, maiden mother crone symbol, triple goddess
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does the triple moon symbol mean?
It shows the waxing, full and waning moon and stands for the Triple Goddess of modern Paganism in her three aspects, Maiden, Mother and Crone, and for the cycle of beginning, fullness and ending.
Is the triple goddess symbol ancient?
Not in this form. Ancient religions had goddesses in groups of three, but the Maiden, Mother and Crone linked to the moon's phases comes from Robert Graves's book The White Goddess of 1948.
Who is the Triple Goddess?
In Wicca she is the Goddess seen in three phases that mirror the moon. Different traditions give the phases different names, often drawing on figures such as Artemis, Selene and Hecate.
