Mother goddess

Did You Know?

• In Egyptian mythology, sky goddess Nut is sometimes called 'Mother' because she bore stars and the Sun god, and was thought to draw the dead into her star-filled sky.
• At Çatalhöyük, a seated female figure flanked by what James Mellaart described as lionesses was found in a grain-bin, possibly intended to protect the harvest.

Hinduism

In Hindu mythology, the Mother goddess appears under many names, including Annapurna, Durga, Parvati, Mahadevi, Shakti, Kali, and Mahakali. As Annapurna she provides food and nurturance; as Durga she destroys demonic elements that male gods cannot handle; as Kali she is the erratic, chastening mother associated with death, destruction, grace, and rejuvenation. As Shakti or Mahadevi, known commonly as Devi, she is the life-giving, generative power of the universe. Goddesses such as Saraswati, Lakshmi, Radha, Parvati, and Durga represent both the feminine aspect and the shakti of the supreme being Brahman. The divine mother manifests in various forms as the universal creative force, becoming Mother Nature (Mula Prakriti), who gives birth to all life and nourishes it, then re-absorbs all life forms back into herself. She also gives rise to Maya and prakriti. The Shakti sect, associated with Samkhya and Tantra philosophies, is monist, viewing Shakti as the motive force behind all action and existence. The cosmos itself is purusha, the unchanging divine ground, actualized by feminine dynamism. Worship of the mother deity traces back to early Vedic culture; the Rigveda calls the divine female power Mahimata, meaning 'great mother'.

Christianity

The Council of Ephesus in 431 gave Mary the title Theotokos, or God-bearer, meaning she is the Mother of God because Jesus is both fully God and fully human. Mary is deeply important in Christian worship, especially for Catholics and Orthodox believers, though most Protestants do not practice devotion to her. Catholic and Orthodox teachings stress that honoring Mary is not the same as worshiping God, which is reserved for the Trinity alone. The oldest known prayer asking for Mary’s help, the Sub Tuum Praesidium, goes back to around the 200s. The Hail Mary, which began in the 1000s, became a key part of the Rosary. Catholic and Orthodox tradition says Mary’s body was taken into heaven at the end of her life, called the Assumption in the West and the Dormition in the East. She is seen as the greatest saint, and some believe she still intercedes through reported appearances. Christian theology does not call Mary a goddess or divine; she is considered a created being, separate from and below the Triune God. In pre-Islamic Arabia, a group called the Collyridians was condemned as heretical for worshiping Mary with burnt dough offerings. In the Latter Day Saint movement, many believe in a Heavenly Mother who is the wife of God the Father, together called Heavenly Parents, though some denominations teach there are multiple Heavenly Mothers. The Shakers believe Holy Mother Wisdom will eventually be fully revealed.

New religious movements

In Theosophy, the Earth goddess is referred to as the Planetary Logos of Earth. Modern Wicca and other Neopagan traditions worship the Mother Goddess, or Great Goddess, a figure assembled from many feminine deities across different cultures and time periods. She is often seen as a Triple Goddess, embodying the Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and is called Mother Earth, Mother Nature, or the Creatress of all life. Her symbols include the full moon, stars, the Earth, and the sea, and within Wicca she is sometimes known as Gaia, though her name varies by tradition. The English historian Ronald Hutton has argued that the term Mother-Goddess is merely a projection of the Virgin Mary by scholars onto ancient evidence, a claim later criticized for overlooking pre-Christian goddesses who were mothers or both virgin and mother, and for lacking supporting evidence or citations. Carl Gustav Jung proposed that the archetypal mother exists in the collective unconscious of all people; his followers Erich Neumann and Ernst Whitmont expanded this idea, suggesting this archetype underlies many mythologies and may even predate the father archetype. In the Baháʼí Faith, Baha'u'llah describes himself as the Mother, the manifestation of God, stating that every letter from God is a Mother Letter. The World Mission Society Church of God believes South Korean woman Zahng Gil-jah is God the Mother, also called New Jerusalem Mother, Mother Jerusalem, or Heavenly Mother.

Prehistoric matriarchy debate

There is a difference of opinion between academic and popular conceptions of the term Mother goddess. The popular view, driven by the Goddess movement, holds that primitive societies were initially matriarchal, worshipping a sovereign, nurturing earth goddess, based on nineteenth-century ideas of Johann Jakob Bachofen. Academics view both Bachofen and modern Goddess theories as projections of contemporary world views onto ancient myths, often accompanied by a desire for a lost, peaceful civilization that likely never existed. Feminist authors long claimed that peaceful, matriarchal agrarian societies were exterminated by nomadic, patriarchal warrior tribes, a view supported by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, though her work has been questioned and is now considered highly controversial among feminist archaeologists. Since the 1960s, the alleged worship of the mother goddess and women's social position in prehistoric societies became linked, making the debate political. The Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines have been explained as depictions of an Earth Goddess, but in academic circles, prehistoric matriarchy is considered unlikely, as worshiping a mother goddess does not necessarily mean women ruled society, and the figurines may portray ordinary women or goddesses.