The belief in a singular Triple Moon Goddess was likely brought to modern scholarship, if not originated by, the work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Harrison asserts the existence of female trinities, and uses Epigenes and other ancient sources to elaborate on the Horae, Fates, and Graces as chronological symbols representing the phases of the Moon and the threefold division of the Hellenistic lunar month.

However, Harrison's interpretations and contribution to the development and study of the Triple Goddess were somewhat overshadowed by the more controversial and poorly-supported ideas in her works. Most notably, Harrison used historical sources for the existence of an ancient Triple Moon Goddess to support her belief in an ancient matriarchal civilization, which has not stood up to academic scrutiny. Ronald Hutton writes:

[Harrison's] work, both celebrated and controversial, posited the previous existence of a peaceful and intensely creative woman-centred civilization, in which humans, living in harmony with nature and their own emotions, worshipped a single female deity. The deity was regarded as representing the earth, and as having three aspects, of which the first two were Maiden and Mother; she did not name the third. ... Following her work, the idea of a matristic early Europe which had venerated such a deity was developed in books by amateur scholars such as Robert Briffault's The Mothers (1927) and Robert Graves's The White Goddess (1948).

John Michael Greer writes:

Harrison proclaimed that Europe itself had been the location of an idyllic, goddess-worshipping, matriarchal civilization just before the beginning of recorded history, and spoke bitterly of the disastrous consequences of the Indo-European invasion that destroyed it. In the hands of later writers such as Robert Graves, Jacquetta Hawkes, and Marija Gimbutas, this 'lost civilization of the goddess' came to play the same sort of role in many modern Pagan communities as Atlantis and Lemuria did in Theosophy.

The "myth and ritual" school or the Cambridge Ritualists, of which Harrison was a key figure, while controversial in its day, is now considered passé in intellectual and academic terms. According to Robert Ackerman, "[T]he reason the Ritualists have fallen into disfavor... is not that their assertions have been controverted by new information... Ritualism has been swept away not by an access of new facts but of new theories."

Ronald Hutton wrote on the decline the "Great Goddess" theory specifically: "The effect upon professional prehistorians was to make most return, quietly and without controversy, to that careful agnosticism as to the nature of ancient religion which most had preserved until the 1940s. There had been no absolute disproof of the veneration of a Great Goddess, only a demonstration that the evidence concerned admitted of alternative explanations." Hutton did not dispute that in ancient pagan worship "partnerships of three divine women" occurred; rather he proposed that Jane Harrison looked to such partnerships to help explain how ancient goddesses could be both virgin and mother (the thir…

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While most Neopagans are not Wiccan, and within Neopaganism the practices and theology vary widely, many Wiccans and other neopagans worship the "Triple Goddess" of maiden, mother, and crone. In their view, sexuality, pregnancy, breastfeeding—and other female reproductive processes—are ways that women may embody the Goddess, making the physical body sacred.
• The Maiden represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the promise of new beginnings, birth, youth and youthful enthusiasm, represented by the waxing moon;
• The Mother represents ripeness, fertility, sexuality, fulfilment, stability, power and life represented by the full moon;
• The Crone represents wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.
Helen Berger writes that "according to believers, this echoing of women's life stages allowed women to identify with deity in a way that had not been possible since the advent of patriarchal religions." The Church of All Worlds is one example of a neopagan organization which identifies the Triple Goddess as symbolizing a "fertility cycle". This model is also supposed to encompass a personification of all the characteristics and potential of every woman who has ever existed. Other beliefs held by worshippers, such as Wiccan author D. J. Conway, include that reconnection with the Great Goddess is vital to the health of humankind "on all levels". Conway includes the Greek goddesses Demeter, Kore-Persephone, and Hecate, in her discussion of the Maiden-Mother-Crone archetype. Conway specifically believes the Triple Goddess stands for unity, cooperation, and participation with all creation, while in contrast masculine gods can represent dissociation, separation and dominion of nature.

The Dianic tradition adopted Graves's Triple Goddess, along with other elements from Wicca, and is named after the Roman goddess Diana, the goddess of the witches in Charles Godfrey Leland's 1899 book Aradia. Zsuzsanna Budapest, widely considered the founder of Dianic Wicca, considers her Goddess "the original Holy Trinity; Virgin, Mother, and Crone." Dianic Wiccans such as Ruth Barrett, follower of Budapest and co-founder of the Temple of Diana, use the Triple Goddess in ritual work and correspond the "special directions" of "above", "center", and "below" to Maiden, Mother, and Crone respectively. Barrett says "Dianics honour She who has been called by Her daughters throughout time, in many places, and by many names."

Some neopagans believe that the Triple Goddess is an archetypal figure which appears in a number of different cultur…

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Author Margaret Atwood recalls reading Graves's The White Goddess at the age of 19. Atwood describes Graves' concept of the Triple Goddess as employing violent and misandric imagery, and says the restrictive role this model places on creative women put her off being a writer. Atwood's work has been noted as containing Triple Goddess motifs who sometimes appear failed and parodic. Atwood's Lady Oracle has been cited as a deliberate parody of the Triple Goddess, which subverts the figure and ultimately liberates the lead female character from the oppressive model of feminine creativity that Graves constructed.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series provides another parodic take on the concept, with covens of witches generally made up of "The Maiden, the Mother, and the...Other One." It also plays with the concept in different ways; for example, Nanny Ogg is generally "the Mother" of the main witch trio, but is actually as old as Granny Weatherwax, while commenting that she never qualified as the Maiden mentally.

Literary critic Andrew D. Radford, discussing the symbolism of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, in terms of Myth sees the Maiden and Mother as two phases of the female lifecycle through which Tess passes, whilst the Crone phase, Tess adopts as a disguise which prepares her for harrowing experiences .

The concept of the triple goddess has been applied to a feminist reading of Shakespeare.

Thomas DeQuincey developed a female trinity, Our Lady of Tears, the Lady of Sighs and Our Lady of Darkness, in Suspiria De Profundis, which has been likened to Graves's Triple Goddess but stamped with DeQuincey's own melancholy sensibility.

According to scholar Juliette Wood, modern fantasy fiction plays a large part in the conceptual landscape of the neo-pagan world. The three supernatural female figures called variously the Ladies, Mother of the Camenae, the Kindly Ones, and a number of other different names in The Sandman comic books by Neil Gaiman, merge the figures of the Fates and the Maiden-Mother-Crone goddess. Alan Garner's The Owl Service, based on the fourth branch of the Mabinogion and influenced by Robert Graves, clearly delineates the character of the Triple Goddess. Garner goes further in his other novels, making every female character intentionally represent an aspect of the Triple Goddess. In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, the Maid, the Mother, and the Crone are three aspects of the septune deity in the Faith of the Seven, much as the neopagan triple goddess is incorporated in Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.

Graves's Triple Goddess motif has been used by Norman Holland to explore the female characters in Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo. Roz Kaveney sees the main characters in James Cameron's movie Aliens as: The Alien Queen (Crone), Ripley (Mother) and Newt (Maiden).

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