Sacred Mother Archetypes

Topic: Sacred Mother Archetypes 

In honor of Mother’s Day, today we're going to talk about Divine Motherhood and how that concept is found, to some degree, in nearly all ages and cultures. 

 

Humanity has long considered mothers and motherhood to be sacred. Mother is the first face we learn to recognize as infants. For most of us, she is the one we turn to time and time again, for advice or help or just a sympathetic ear. It makes sense that some of our first ancient deities were Mother Goddesses. The Woman of Willendorf, with its exaggerated feminine features and lack of face or feet, may have been a representation of a Mother Goddess, although some theorize that those sculptures were self-portraits of pregnant women who could not see their faces or their own feet at that stage in the pregnancy, but who felt the contours of their own bodies. This suggests our ancestors’ reverence for the state of pregnancy, as these statuettes could have been used as currency. 

The bountiful Earth herself is worshipped as the ultimate Mother Goddess by multiple cultures under different names and has been for centuries, from the Ashanti’s Asasa Ya, who brings forth new life in the spring, to the Ancient Greek’s Gaia, who has been adopted by some adherents of the current Neo-Pagan spiritual tradition.  

Other Mother Goddesses include the Greek Goddess Demeter, one of my favorite Goddesses, whose daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades and who returns from the Underworld every spring, and the West African/Yoruban Orisha Yemaya, a Goddess of the ocean and considered Mother of All. The Hindus have Durga, the Supreme Mother Goddess from whose forehead sprung Kali. Modern Neopagans and Wiccans worship the Mother aspect of the Triple Goddess. Even the Virgin Mary could be considered a Mother Goddess; although I’m sure many Christians would consider that concept too pagan for comfort, she is an embodiment of the Divine Feminine for them purely because of her motherhood. And of course, my own Mother, Doloris, is a Patron Saint of the Path and represents the Divine Feminine in my personal observation of Path practices. All of these archetypes embody the ultimate Motherhood, recognized as the wellspring of all life and thus the most powerful force in the Universe. This is the day when we recognize our own Mothers, and thank them for bringing us into existence. 

What is your favorite memory of your Mother? 

Namaste. 

Reverend CJ Carlin