Mother Goddess
A Mother Goddess is a goddess portrayed as the Earth Mother who survives as the general fertility deity, the bountiful embodiment of the earth, mostly, but not always, in polytheistic religions. Her cult was already established in Neolithic times, as surviving archaeological remains attest. From the discovery in 1908 of the "Venus of Willendorf" in Austria, a range of small extravagantly fat female icons, collectively referred to as Venus figurines have been found across such a wide landscape that their distribution may be fairly called "universal'.From the elegant snake-offering goddess figures of Knossos to the rock-cut images of Cybele, to Dione ("the Goddess") who was invoked at Dodona, along with Zeus, until late Classical times, it is easy for some to class all archaic female goddesses as manifestations of the Mother Goddess, while most archaeologists avoid these more radical feminist theories.
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2 Olympian Goddesses 3 Hinduism 4 Shaktism 5 Mother Goddess worship 6 Neopaganism |
Matriarchy and Goddess history
The Mother Goddess has been revered in societies not formed as a matriarchy, though James Frazer (The Golden Bough) and his followers (like Robert Graves in The White Goddess) thought that all European and Aegean Mother Goddess worship had originated in neolithic matriarchies, as did the mythographer Marija Gimbutas. This theory is not widely accepted.
The neolithic cultural and religious context of idols like the Venus of Willendorf has not been securely established. Not all fertility goddesses who engender offspring are the Mother Goddess. Many female deities have been worshipped in the past: Ishtar (Inanna), in Mesopotamia, (Asherah in Canaan, ‘Ashtart; in Syria, Aphrodite in Greece), is well-known. In Scandinavia a female goddess was worshipped during the Bronze Age and later in Norse mythology as Freya. Other female goddesses in different pantheons may also be considered mother goddesses.
Olympian Goddesses
In the Aegean, Anatolian and ancient Near Eastern culture zones, the Mother Goddess was worshipped in the forms of Cybele (revered in Rome as Magna Mater, the 'Great Mother'), of Gaia, and of Rhea.
The Olympian goddesses of classical Greece eclipsed the Mother Goddess without ever really supplanting her. Her roles were divided among Hera, Demeter and Athena. In Minoan Crete one of her aspects was the Mistress of the Animals (Potnia Theron) who devolved into the huntress Artemis; the archaic Artemis of many breasts worshiped at Ephesus retained some of her older aspects. The Triple Goddess devolved into Olympian Persephone - Demeter - Hecate, the Maiden (Kore), Mother and Crone.
Hinduism
In the Hindu context, the worship of the Mother entity can certainly be traced back to early Vedic culture, and perhaps even before. Today, Devi is seen in manifold forms, all representing the creative force in the world, as Maya and prakriti, the force that galvanizes the Divine Ground of existence into self-projection as the cosmos. She is not merely the Earth, though even this perspective is covered by Parvati. All the various Hindu female entities are seen as forming many faces of the same female Divinity.
This form of Hinduism, known as Shaktism, is strongly associated with Vedanta, Samkhya and Tantra Hindu philosophies and is ultimately monist, though there is a rich tradition of Bhakti yoga associated with it. The feminine energy (Shakti) is considered to be the motive force behind all action and existence in the phenomenal cosmos in Hinduism. The cosmos itself is Brahman, the concept of the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendant reality that is the Divine Ground of all being, the "world soul". Masculine potentiality is actualized by feminine dynamism, embodied in multitudinous goddesses who are ultimately reconciled in one.
The keystone text is the Devi Mahatmya which combines earlier Vedic theologies, emergent Upanishadic philosophies and developing tantric cultures in a laudatory exegesis of Shakti religion. Demons of ego, ignorance and desire bind the soul in maya (illusion) (also alternately ethereal or embodied) and it is Mother Maya, shakti, herself, who can free the bonded individual. The immanent Mother, Devi, is for this reason focused on with intensity, love, and self-dissolving concentration in an effort to focus the shakta (as a Shakti worshipper is sometimes known) on the true reality underlying time, space and causation, thus freeing one from karmic cyclism.
Perhaps a problem with identifying all female entities as one prototypical mother goddess is the fact that, within different contexts, the meaning of "Mother" may change drastically. According to foregoing standards, some may even consider Mary to be a "mother goddess", being that she fulfills not only a maternal role but is often viewed as a protective force and divine intercessory for humanity. (Mary has also been proposed as a latter-day Isis.) Most Christians would object strongly to this characterization.
The Mother Goddess, amalgamated and combined with various feminine figures from world cultures of both the past and present, is worshipped by modern Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans. The mother goddess is usually viewed as mother earth by these groups.Shaktism
Mother Goddess worship
Neopaganism