The 4th Face of the God and Goddess

The other week Terra and I both wrote posts going over the Triple Goddess and the Triple God. Which to me, and I would assume most of you, is the most common version of this concept, or the only version you’ve heard of. I know it was the only version that I knew of until about 3 days ago. Lol  

So, while scrolling on amazon like a week ago, I found a book called ‘Pagan Degrees for Children’ by Shanddaramon. This post isn’t really about the book itself but, while reading through this book to see what all it has in it to help us teach the children Paganism, I stumbled across a section of the book on deities, and one of things it says to have the child study the four faces of the Goddess. I read this and honestly thought for sure it must have been a typo, Serenity and our other friend that was here over the weekend thought it was strange and that they had never heard of it before. Which is saying something, because our friend (who is going to be featured on the blog here soon) has been practicing paganism pretty much longer than Serenity, Terra, and I have been alive. 

So off to google I went to figure out what the hell this mysterious fourth face of the Goddess was, and honestly, I kind of got disappointed that couldn’t have just assumed what it was, because it seems so obvious now. The fourth face of both the God and the Goddess is the Child. Like duh, right? Lol.  

So, what does this change about the Triple God/Goddess? Really nothing. Everything from the posts on the Maiden, Mother, Crone and the Warrior, Father, Sage still stand. This fourth aspect really just gets slapped in front of both of them. And it’s kind of like it makes way too much sense for me not to have wondered why in both aspects they start out like teenagers. Having the child phase just makes sense, because anyone that is in either of the three other phases of life and been through the childhood phase as well. It should be recognized in the divine too.  

The Fourth Face – The Child 

This fourth face would represent the little boys and girls all of us were at one point. It’s the curiosity of life and learning what you can and can’t do. It’s the playfulness of making friends and rolling around in the grass on a warm day. The child comes to you when you need to let loose and remember what it was like to not worry about everything and just enjoy the things around you. The child phase would be from birth to around when the person would start puberty, then they would move into the next phase be it the Maiden or the Warrior.  

We generally don’t see this aspect of divinity in most cases. Normally when we see anything about deities, they are considered older than time itself, they aren’t really depicted as children. And I personally think that should change. I want to see all the gods and goddess depicted as children too. I mean, who’s to say they weren’t children at some point? Granted, it’s unlikely, but we’re also talking about beings that can change how they look and how we perceive them at will. Why couldn’t they decide to be depicted as a child every once in a while? Or maybe they do, and we have just put so much focus on achieving things in our lives we forget to take the time to reflect on where we have come from. I mean, we all were children at one point, whether it was a good time or a bad time, we were. Maybe one of the bigger focuses of the child is to help the rest of the faces remember to take a break and just enjoy the ride every once in a while.  

Well, this honestly took a different path than I originally intended it to go. I’m not complaining about it, but I didn’t really intend to get all philosophical. Lol. Maybe I need to start listening to the child myself about some things. Lol.  

Anyways, have you heard of the fourth face of the god and goddess before? What do you think about the child phase of the deities?