Introduction
The advent of the internet has provided a chance for many forms of beliefs and discussions that now encompass the rebirth of the female deity. Together with the laying of the feminism foundation, politics and religion became the basis for the role of feminine spirituality which today has spawned great interest about the divine female.
While written literature and historical accounts are rich with information regarding the goddess, the divine feminine could never be as controversial and popular as the case of Mary named as “Mother of God” in the highly contested prayer “Hail Mary”. This has been used as weapon by many offshoots of Christianity as “pagan” incorporation of Christian beliefs paving the way for many protestant sects that continue emerging until today. This theory was further supported by the insistence that there is no scriptural or Biblical basis for Mary’s divination (All About Religion, P 4- 8).
Thesis Statement This paper will then proceed to discuss prevailing goddess worship with focus on the Sicilian ancient goddess worship prior to Christianity and before the controversial divination of Jesus’ mother Mary. It will also add that there could be a certain relation between the two. It will not however delve on the historical as well as philosophical discussion that this is an absolute truth and thereby avoid any recommendation on it.
Discussion
Ancient Goddesses
The goddess since the establishment of Christianity as a global and prevailing religion has been conferred a negative role after the rise of Protestantism that signaled division not only in Christianity but also against all other religious beliefs (All About Religion, P 4- 8). It is to be noted, however, that primitive religion dates back to about 8000 BC after careful consideration of the mortality of the thinking man, and as early, the vegetative goddess was introduced as fertility meant man’s survival (Religious Tolerance, P 1). Since then, the life-giving belief closely associated with the female took a divine role as well as a continuing mystery.
Shlain acknowledges the presence of the goddess of Lespugue ca 30-20,000 BC (Schlain, p 1) as an existing goddess statue indicated. Historians, however argue to the definitive roles of female statues and some suggest that these may only be representative of modern eroticism. Goddess suppression, however, has also been earlier attributed to Indo-Europeans who brought along Greek and Roman culture that championed among others war, worship of male gods Zeus or Jupiter as the supreme being (Schlain, p 2).
The early writings of the great philosophers Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle have also been linked in the goddess suppression. The female principle is further driven out with the prevailing of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As Religious Tolerance indicated, “The God, King, Priest & Father replaced the Goddess, Queen, Priestess & Mother,” (P 7).
Eastern goddesses venerated until today include Hindu Devi and Durga, the Javanese Nyai Loro Kidul, as well as Buddhist Vasya-Tara. Devi is the ancient Sanskrit for Goddess also synonymous with Shakti, Praktiri, or Durga. Worship of Devi is integral in Hinduism. A counterpart of the male god, she is considered a supreme being, the equivalent of male Purusha (Kinsley, 11). Nyay Loro Kidul is the legendary Queen of the Southern Sea of Java who may take the form of a mermaid or a snake. Vasya-Tara is of Buddhist origin although also closely linked with the Hindu (Jordaan, 387).
The Egyptians had the fertility goddess Isis who is the ideal mother, wife, and mother of nature as well as magic. Worship of her spread in the Greco-Roman world. Hathor is the goddess of joy, the principles of feminine love, and motherhood considered an important and famous deity (Chadwick, 526). Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war and sex considered as the counterpart of Venus. The Greek’s Aphrodite or Venus is the goddess of love, sex, lust, and beauty. Her mother is Dione, also viewed as the female form of Zeus (Thompson, 156).
Goddess Worship in Sicily
As early as 4000 BC, worship for goddesses Demeter and Persephone was noted in Sicily. Lake Pergusa located in the province of Enna was seen as a symbolism for the divine and human female body. The discovery of the nearby archeological site Cozzo Matrice which means “hill of the Mother” also added credit to the proposal. Ceramic materials and remnants of elliptical huts the overlook the lake and other circular enclosures from the Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe indicates a womb of the female divinity.
Statuettes suggested to be sacred objects were linked to Demeter or Persephone, or both. A nearby twin-peaked or double-breasted mountain has also been a celebrated religious center dedicated to Demeter. While there was what is considered as indigenous Sicilian cult at Lake Pergusa, the Greeks superimposed their religion due to strong resemblances of their Sicilian ancient tradition. Women had important roles as primary ministrants in Enna-Pergusa and throughout the island.
A plaques dedicated to a priestess of Ceres, the Roman counterpart, indicates this religious role of women. Their festivals celebrate agricultural cycle specifically the production of wheat and barley, as well as the human seasons of birth, growth and death and one of the rites was the Thesmophoria. It is an all-female rite that honors Demeter the goddess of growth and abundance as well as Persephone the goddess of both spring and death and the underworld. Enna is also considered the place where Persephone was abducted into Hades as written by poet Ovid (Rigoglioso, 8-11).
Ovid is said to have described the Lake as a remarkable spot filled with forests, waterbirds and wild flowers in bloom seen to have profound religious significance. Even Homer’s “Hymn to Demeter” is also alluded to the lake. The presence of the natural elements such as the water bird has been associated with the lake as an ideal place for the veneration of the female deity since the area was settled. Sicily by 5000 BC is found to have images of bird goddesses that embody the divine and the goddesses’ dominion of heaven and earth.
The crane is the herald of Demeter which migration and marks the coming of late autumn rains signaling the sprouting of grain. Waterbirds also provide indications for important farming cycles such as successful seed-sowing, maintenance of crop, or approaching storm (Rigoglioso, 10-12).
Feminist Goddess
The Goddess of today has been directly linked with the feminist movement. It is understood as a single divine power conceived in terms of modified monotheism. For some feminists, the Goddess is seen to:
- Have a personal presence in their lives
- Listen to petitions and dialogue
- Ontologically transcendent of the world
- As well as loving and good (Reid-Bowen, p 103-104).
Another form of Goddess feminism is encompassed on the belief of the “unity” of the person and the whole of nature with the world as the embodiment of the living body of the Goddess. This has been called pantheistic goddess. This is seen as atheistic and that the Goddess is instantiated in Birth-Death-Rebirth cycle. In addition, the individual women manifestations such as life-givers and mothers, the ecosystem, nature and the biological female are embodied in the concept.
On top of this, the goddess is also seen as the “Mother of All Possibilities” or the “Elemental nature or Power” (Reid-Bowen, 107). The goddess is seen as the matrix of life and death, organic processes, biological generation, as well as systemic health. As a functional, ecological and religious goddess, she is to be revered and valued with awe. It is to be noted however, that the pantheistic goddess cannot be petitioned no become a source of moral exemplar or justice (Reid-Bowen, 107).
Divine Feminine throughout History
The image of the divine feminine has been considered important in many cultures and traditions as earlier mentioned. While there was considerable suppression of the image with the conquest of western ideologies among Buddhists, Hindus and other so-called “pagan” religions, tradition and cultures all over the world indicate the presence of goddess worship together with the reverence on the role of the female in the life and reproductive cycle.
Transhuman reality has also been incorporated in non-theistic Buddhism relating to the Vajrayana Buddhism. This transcends the human experiences and is complex yet subtle topic sourced from Indian textual and artistic relics (Shaw, p 4). In addition to the enlightened female forms of Buddha, Shaw also pointed out there are twenty-two goddesses in the historical phases of Indian Buddhism.
The Divine Feminine is also given a rebirth with the divination of Mary as well as the Madonna and child images popularized during the Renaissance. In fact, Sonia D’Este acknowledged Mary as the “universal goddess” as her prominence grew supported by the devotion of royal families from England, France and Spain throughout their colonies (P 4). Here, Mary from being the mother of Jesus became the Queen of Heaven and equaled Jesus as interceder.
The 1950s also had bishops and the Catholic Church in general acknowledge the importance of the feminine by declaring the assumption of Mary much more ingrained on the faith as Pope John Paul II declared, “Mary I am all yours,” after escaping assassination and saying in public address, “With my heart full of praise for the Queen of Heaven … this liturgy presents you Mary, as the woman clothed with the sun …. In Mary the final victory of life over death is already a reality …. O Mary as Mother of the Church, you guide us still from your place in heaven and help us to increase in holiness” making the church the “greatest propagator of goddess worship in modern times,” (D’Este, P 11-12).
In addition to countless Marian devotions and organizations, Marian shrines also grew continuously in number of which France alone has 937. Tourism grew in many of these pilgrimage sites specifically at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico with 20 million annual tourists, Lourdes with 5.5 million, 5 million for the Black Madonna of Poland, and 4.5 million for the Fatima in Portugal (D’Este, P 13).
The Romantic movement also contributed to the continuity of the divine feminine concept. The writings and art of the period popularized the Moon and Earth goddesses through poets Keats, Shelley and Swinburne (D’Este, P 15). The hermetic order of the Golden Dawn and magic believers reintroduced Isis and other goddessed in the late 19th century. Aleister Crowley popularized ideal figures such as the star goddess Nuit and sexual goddess Babalon.
The medieval witch cult was revived and some point to Margaret Murray’s writings circa 1920 as she focused on the god of the witches. This was followed by Dion Fortune, a Christian mystic who wrote about Morgan leFay the priestess of Isis in The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic (D’Este, P 16). She is said to have written that, “All goddesses are one goddess” believed to have spread the use of the word.
Wicca
The interest on goddesses is heightened with the reintroduction of Wicca who together with the horned god, believes in the Triple Goddess: the Maiden Goddess, the Mother Goddess and the Crone Goddess representing various cycles of life. Wicca has been described as “the only religion which England has ever given the world,” (quoted by Philips, p 2) that soon spread to Europe, North America, Australia and other parts of the world. Gerald Brosseau Gardner was considered as one of the founders of modern Wicca.
He is said to be 55 years old at that time with interest in magic, folklore and mythology so that he was already 65 b the time High Magic’s Aid was published (Phillips, p 3). In 1939, Gardner was initiated into the Coven of the Old Religion in New Forest of Hampshire. He wrote in The Meaning of Witchcraft published in 1959 that “I had stumbled upon something interesting; but I was half-initiated before the word, ‘Wica’ which they used hit me like a thunderbolt, and I knew where I was, and that the Old Religion still existed,” quoted by Philips, p 4).
Modern usage of the Wicca interpolates a Goddess-oriented neopagan witchcrafts with similarities but entirely independent of the Gardnerian or Alexandrian Wicca (Adler, 56). Magic being one of the characteristics of the Wiccan religion is used for healing, love, fertility, and in removing negative influences (Adler, 84). These are also linked with the woman identity or female mystique.
Conclusion
This paper concludes that goddess-belief and worship has remained with the various human civilization and culture throughout the ages. The eastern and western countries both represent some form of female deities and worship: Egypt’s Isis, Hindu’s Devi, the Greek’s Aphrodite, the Roman Venus, and finally, the Catholic Church’s Mary.
While suppression through western influence became inevitable in two waves through the Greco-Roman invasions as well as the imperial colonialism periods, with Christianity as its main suppressant for a long time, Christianity also influenced if not revived goddess belief and veneration through Mary.
Today, goddess worship has been closely linked with feminism as the individual power of women and their role in society is becoming more pronounced, acknowledged and widely accepted. The study of nature, life-cycles as well as the growing concern to environment and the world in general also contribute to the growing interest on goddesses. Spiritually and politically, goddess-belief and feminism become closely related as women seek power if not equality between the sexes asserting their own important roles in all aspects of living.
More importantly, even history and the sciences acknowledge the importance of the feminine role in the physical, environmental and other fields of human existence as studies probe on the un-answered mysteries of nature which until now, science and technology failed to tame, influence and control: aspects which has been closely linked with the woman persona. It is therefore not surprising that it is the feminists who advance goddess belief and reverence.
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