The main use of any culture is to provide sym­bols and ideas out of which people construct their sense of what is real. As such, language mirrors so­cial reality in sometimes startling ways. In contem­ porary usage, for example, the words “crone,” “witch,” “bitch,” and “virgin” describe women as threaten­ing, evil, or heterosexually inexperienced and thus incomplete. In prepatriarchal times, however, these words evoked far different images. The crone was the old woman whose life experience gave her in­ sight, wisdom, respect, and the power to enrich peo­ple’s lives. The witch was the wise-woman healer,
the knower of herbs, the midwife, the link join­ ing body, spirit, and Earth. The bitch was Artemis­ Diana, goddess of the hunt, most often associated with the dogs who accompanied her. And the vir­gin was merely a woman who was unattached, un­claimed, and unowned by any man and therefore independent and autonomous. Notice how each word has been transformed from a positive cultural image of female power, independence, and dignity to an in­ sult or a shadow of its former self so that few words remain to identify women in ways both positive and powerful.