The Three Faces of Chava

The Maiden — Mother — Matron model is a series of authoritative faces that Chava bears in relation to knowledge, creation, and consequence. Like the traditional Wiccan Maiden — Mother — Crone triad from which it's derived, these faces are relational, experiential, and cyclical.

She, the naïve youth who ate of the Fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and gave to her Husband to consume as well; in truest love, insatiably curious, and unwilling to let any rules stand in her way.

Our Verdant Lady of the Green Underground, and Virgin of the Mysteries, this is Chava before knowledge: Innocent not because she lacks intelligence, but because she lacks information and context.

As innocent, she is not passive. She is curious, relational, and exploratory; she is the first seeker of the Mysteries. The first to choose transformation knowingly, even without understanding cost ... She seeks not power, but likeness, and her eating of the Fruit is an initiation, not rebellion; a rule-breaking in pursuit of truth, in a quest to grow closer to HaShem through knowledge.

This face of Chava is the initiatrix who did not yet know what initiation meant.

She, the proudly exiled self-physician, self-midwife who alone pulled her first children forth bloody from her own womb; feral, wild-haired and wild-eyed, and fiercely protective, standing fully within her own power.

The Great Solar Queen Crowned Eternal and Radiant, this is Chava after exile. Fertile and protective, she is the Solar Queen crowned in her embodied power: Radiant, feral, and fully inhabiting her authority.

Standing on barren ground she remakes Gan-Eden with her own hands. She is the first physician, becoming Em Kol Chai (Mother of All Life) as self-midwife and self-healer; the first to bleed mortality into the world and survive it.

This is the Chava who creates life under constraint, not through abundance- transforming knowledge into continuity; she is not diminished by exile, she thrives within it as the one who teaches how to live after mistakes, and still create after the fall.

She, the ever keening widow, Spruce-Cedar-Cyprus wreathed and deeply fragrant within the enormity of her own failure; Starry-Eyed and reflective in her knowledge and experience, and both demanding and commanding in presence.

The Veiled Consort Crowned With Thorns, and Keeper of That Which Cannot Be Undone; this is the Chava after all things, made of memory, grief, and discernment. She is not diminished by her grief, however, nor softened by time.

This Chava does not seek. She knows- and this Chava knows cost because she paid it first. She stands crowned with thorns and evergreen, veiled not to hide her power, but because power needs no display. Her eyes are bright and reflective because she has seen what comes of every choice.

She is the dweller at the edge between worlds who carefully guards the thresholds and tends the edges of creation. What she guards now is not innocence, however, but integrity- testing the worthiness of others and protecting the future from the unready; she enforces consequence not out of cruelty, but because she knows the cost.

Chava is the Maiden — Mother — Matron not because she ages, but because knowledge demands all three responses. She seeks it, she births its consequences, and she guards its use.

In this way, Chava is not merely the first woman. She is the first Witch Mother: The Great Queen of Becoming, and Veiled Guardian of the Mysteries who stands forever at the crossroads of innocence and wisdom, creation and consequence, love and law.