THE GODDESS AND MAGICK
The Mother of the Earth; The Goddess
"Well, for instance, who is this All-Mother you're always talking
about?"
"Why, you are, Edward...The All-Mother. You're the All-Mother, I'm
the All-Mother, that little bird singing out there, it's the
All-Mother. The All-Mother is everything. The All-Mother is life..."
The primal and supreme deity of the ancient world, the oldest and
most universally worshiped, was the Great Mother, Mother Earth.
Images of Her date back to Aurignacian Cro-Magnon peoples, from
27,000 years ago, and are found all over the Eurasian continent from
Spain to Siberia.
For thousands of years before there were any male gods, there was
The Goddess, and Her worship continued unabated clear up until its
violent suppression by Iron Age patriarchy.
When and where worship of the Mother prevailed women and Nature were
held in esteem. The Chinese called Her Kwan Yin; the Egyptians knew
Her as Isis; the Navajo call Her Changing Woman. To the Greeks She
was Gaia, and to many of African descent She is Yemanja, Ocean Mother.
She is Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and She says: "All acts of love and
pleasure are my rituals." She is also the ancient Crone Hecate, who
gives us both wisdom and death.
The Goddess is diversity. She represents both darkness and Light and
Her worship is the reconciliation of opposites. There can be no such
thing as a "Good Goddess" or an "Evil Goddess". Death is part of the
natural cycle as night follows day and we accept it with grace as
Her final gift.
The search for Balance is the goal of Her people, and it is achieved
by the acceptance of multiple paths and truths. Dion Fortune once
commented that all goddesses are manifestations of the One Great
Goddess whose identity is as the universal feminine spirit of
Nature.
The eldest and greatest aspect of the Goddess is as Great Mother
Nature, the all-encompassing energy of Universal Life.
Her womb is the Quasar, the white hole through which all energy
pours into creation, and Her all-devouring mouth is the Black hole
itself through which all matter is consumed to be reborn once again
as between Her thighs the universe is squeezed from spirit.
Her energy then coalesces into Matter-Mater: the Mother of all
forms. She ignites, becoming the Star Goddess Nuit, whose galactic
breast is our Milky way. Of Her are born star systems and planets
including, of course, our very own Earth Mother, Gaia.
Because of the diversity of the Goddess, She is seen as manifesting
in many different aspects.
She is often called The Triple Goddess, which refers to Her link in
the fertility cycle where She appears as Maiden, Mother and Crone.
Some ancient cultures personified this Triplicity as the waxing,
full, and waning Moon, and other three-faced Goddess aspects are
familiar to us as the Fates, the Graces, the Furies, the Muses, or
even as Faith, Hope and Charity.
Another familiar division of Her aspects is into Mother and Daughter
(Demeter and Persephone), or as Sisters/Lovers (Fauna and Flora).
Such polarities are also important in Her worship. Sometimes the
polarity can exist with two different aspects of the Goddess
representing both poles, but more commonly it is the great gender
polarity, for the Goddess is a deity of sexual loving.
She is Ishtar or Aphrodite, the eternal Lover who awaits with eager
arms the mortal man brave enough to risk Her immortal favor. Many
men have worshiped Her as a lover, but she may never be possessed,
for She belongs only to Herself.
She is Parthenos, the eternal Virgin (in the pre-patriarchal meaning
"of her own household"). She represents the Strong Woman : not
dominant, but independent. Her lovers are not truly human but
divine.
She has been the Beloved of many gods, and though jealous male gods
eventually suppressed Her worship, She shared the co-rulership of
Heaven and Earth for thousands of years of marital bliss.
She is the inescapable Yin necessary for the cosmic balance of
Yang/Yin.
Symbols associated with Her (the Tree of Life, the Sacred Serpent,
the Labyrinth) are found in all parts of the globe, at the heart of
all the Mysteries, and underlying all the later accretions of
successive religions.
The search for Her is the search for our deepest ancestral roots.
I am the star that rises from the twilight sea.
I bring men dreams to rule their destiny.
I am the eternal Woman;
I am She!
The tides of all souls belong to me -
Touch of my hand confers polarity-
These are the moontides, these belong to me.
In all the cultures where She is still worshiped, there is no
confusion over Her identity : She is Nature, and She is the Earth.
She is not an atavistic abstraction, not a mystical metaphor, not a
construct of consciousness. Her body is of substance as material as
our own, and we tread upon Her breast and are formed of Her flesh.
"Walk lightly on the bosom of the Earth Mother," says Sun Bear, and
traditional Native Americans agree. Cherokee shaman Rolling Thunder
emphasizes that "It's very important for people to realize this: the
Earth is a living organism, the body of a higher individual who has
a will and wants to be well, who is at times less healthy or more
healthy, physically and mentally."
Frank Waters, author of Masked Gods and Book of the Hopi, makes the
same point...To Indians the Earth is not inanimate. It is a living
entity, the mother of all life, our Mother Earth. All Her children,
everything in nature, is alive: the living stone, the great
breathing mountains, trees and plants, as well as birds and animals
and man. All are united in one harmonious whole.
Renowned historian Arnold Toynbee, writing on "The Religious
Background of the Present Environmental Crisis," also observed that:
For pre-monotheistic man, nature was not just a treasure-trove of
"natural resources". Nature was, for him, a goddess, "Mother Earth,"
and the vegetation that sprang from the Earth, the animals that
roamed, like man himself, over the Earth's surface, and the minerals
hiding in the Earth's bowels, all partook of Nature's divinity.
Before ever land was, before ever the sea, Or soft hair of the
grass, or fair limbs of the tree, Or flesh-colored fruit of my
branches, I was: And thy soul was in me.
Her mind is virtue, perfected.
Her body is wisdom, perfected.
Her face is bathed in holy light;
She is compassion itself.
---ancient Chinese sutra to Kuan Yin