Origins of the Ancient Goddess

From Fertility Cults, Primordial Waters, Mother Gaia, & Her Divine Consort

May 19, 2024

When it comes to the origins of spirituality, there is only so much we can and do know about the earliest traces we find of it in the prehistoric and ancient written record. We may sift through bones, tools, figurines, images on the walls of caves, and attempt to piece together theories about the beliefs and narratives of our primordial ancestors. We can find our way through ancient scripts, engraved on stones and tablets, written on fragments of cloth and animal skins, yet these only share traces of what must have been a much older oral tradition. In this way, the date of an object or manuscript does not denote the true age of the message it holds within it. Everything we examine is simply an echo of a long-lost peoples.

One of the earliest reverberations of divinity we encounter through tracing this trail of ancient origins is that of the feminine. The earliest figurines in all of history are carved images of women, breasts, hips, often in ecstatic seeming poses. On the one hand, the preeminence of the feminine principle is easy for even the modern mind to understand. There is a very simple truth presented here: life is a mystery, and it begins in the womb of a woman. The ephemeral nature of life persists, in a way we have no more answers (at least concrete ones) now then our earliest ancestors may have.

The enigma of life’s cycle - birth, death, and rebirth - is well beyond the capabilities of our comprehension, yet it is inextricably tied to the woman through the role of the mother.

This essay - one of my most viewed & shared - I originally wrote & shared on April 27, 2022. As I begin sharing a deeper dive into the divine feminine in mythology, reweaving our understandings into where we’ve always held these stories - the constellations. I wanted to re-publish it here for you, for free (my full Archive is for paid subscribers only), slightly edited. Writing this essay shifted the path of my own spiritual journey and as the spiral of life goes, I am coming back to and building on this work through my writing and classes (coming soon). If you enjoy this essay, I will be focusing on this topic in the coming months - much more to unfold, I can’t wait to share.

Mother nursing her child. From Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. Old-Babylonian period, 2000-1500 BCE. The Sulaimaniya Museum, Iraq.

While we can begin to imagine why the divine feminine was of such interest to early people’s by simply observing the miracle of childbirth and motherhood that we experience today, we cannot begin to comprehend how ingrained ancient people were with their earthly environment. Today, we stand, or sit, profoundly separated from the natural world through the function of our homes, our cities, our cars, even our phones and the way our constant communication style affects the mind. There has been a schism between humanity and the earth, but for this ancient people whose beliefs we will look at in this essay, humans were essentially indistinguishable from the earth itself.

Where did nature stop and the human body begin? Our earliest ancestors were completely, utterly immersed in the earth to the extent that they did not even recognize “the earth” as a separate being in the way that later generations would.

While we may fantasize about this world, our broken hearts longing for a reconnection with earth, the truth is that this primitive experience brought a harmony with nature that would have been both glorious and utterly brutal.

Earth Mother

The earth is distinctly feminine in nature, and therefore when she is conceptualized as a divinity, she takes on the form of a primal goddess. This is not surprising to our modern thought process, as to this day we still refer to her as Mother Earth in popular culture, but what is fascinating is to circle back to how deeply tied ancient people were to the physical earth and how that influenced the concept of it being their “mother.”

Ancient people across the world saw the earth quite literally as their biological parent. It was thought in many societies that “maternity resulted from the direct insertion of the child into a woman’s womb.”

Children were not conceptualized to be conceived by the father, they were essentially seen as a “result of a contact between her and some object or animal in the country round about.” This is essential to realize - that for many ancient people, the masculine had no part in creation. Conception was a matter between a woman and nature itself. In fact, children were seen as related only through their mother, not through the sexual partner or husband of their mother, meaning that humans were “related to their natural surroundings far more closely than any modern mind can conceive.” Men still saw children as part of their family, as both part of society and an object of their protection, but the “bond between man and offspring was not procreative.” (Eliade PCR 243-245)

Prehistoric Femme à la Corne, at least 25,000 years old found in a cave in France, located at the Berlin Museum

This begins to make sense of ancient practices that integrated babies with the earth that still persist into modern times. Saint Augustine referenced a Latin goddess named Levana who “raised children out from the earth: levat de terra.” The ritual of placing babies on the earth as soon as they are born and swaddled was found in Italy, Scandinavia, Germany, India, Japan, and more locations, with the intention being that the baby “make contact with the magic powers in the soil.” What we now call “grounding” or “earthing,” regularly lying on the earth for known therapeutic benefits, was extremely common behavior, women often gave birth in the forest, and babies bassinets were fashioned from beds of ashes, straw, or leaves. Unwanted children were never killed, they were always placed into nature with the intention that the Earth-Mother would either take care of them or at the very least decide their fate. (Eliade PCR 247-249)

In Europe today there are still people who believe that children “come” from pools, springs, rivers, trees and so on (at least in the mid 20th century at time of Eliade’s research). “What is significant about these superstitions is the cosmic form the “earth” takes; it can be identified with the whole surrounding area, with the microcosm, not merely with the earth as such.”

In a way, the earth can be seen as the ultimate mother, with life merely being detached from the earth’s womb and death a form of returning “home” to her. (Eliade 244, 253)

None of this was necessarily gentle, for example, let’s return to the common practice of unwanted babies being left in the wilderness. This still happened in Ireland in the 20th century, and we can only imagine that often these infants died, if they were not rescued by a human. Further, we can assume that more often than not these babies were the result of a union that was either not blessed or downright abusive. This is all to say that there is a dark side to the Earth mother, she gives, and she takes, and this was deeply, profoundly, recognized by ancient peoples in how they related to her.

Prehistoric Fertility

The earliest figurines we have found through archeological studies, or at least what we have access to in the modern day, depict the feminine form (Eliade v1 20). The truth is that it is “impossible to determine the religious function of these figurines,” and they may be more spiritual, representing a goddess, or more practical, depicting an ancestress. Yet, with the mystery of the feminine intact to this day, we can understand how “women’s particular mode of existence,” from our womb to our intuitive capabilities to our beauty, would have played an essential role in spirituality and religions from the very beginning (Eliade v1 21).

It just so happens that two Mediterranean island have some of the most incredible records of ancient goddess worship: Crete and Malta. On Crete, archeologists have found thousands of ancient feminine figurines, breasts bare, with arms raised in worship, “indicating (this culture’s) religious preeminence of woman, and above all, the primacy of the Goddess” (Eliade v2 132). In fact, there is no proof of the existence of an adult male god on Crete. Malta has some of the most ancient and spectacular stone temples dedicated to goddesses, particularly the concept of the goddess being a guardian of the dead (Eliade v1 118).

Various Venus figurines - see notes at end of article for sources

Again, through the reality of childbirth we can understand conceptually how the goddess became associated with not just fertility, but also death. If we consider the modern context, in 2020 in the United States, 23.8 women died per every 100,000 live births (CDC). Even as recently as 1900, that statistic was much higher, with 850 women dying per 100,000 births in the US - we have made leaps and bounds in medicine but childbirth is still a mortality risk for the mother. For infants the mortality rate is much more difficult to calculate, but if we only look at stillbirths, there were 24,000 stillbirths in the U.S. in 2014 (CDC).

All of this is to say that even with our the modern improvements in mortality for mothers and children, it is easy for the modern person, especially the modern woman, to understand why the motif of death would be tied to the feminine alongside that of life and creation.

We can imagine then why the most ancient cults of fertility were bound together with those of “death” - or really, a veneration of the afterlife (Eliade v1 46). Often it was not just death that became associated with the goddess, but also the soul’s survival after death, like in Pre-Aryan India (Eliade v. 2 137).

It is important to note that some early statuettes of goddesses also have a distinctly “terrifying and demonic aspect” to them (Eliade 45). While we can theorize that this darkness might have to do with the vividness of life’s inextricable connection with death, and all the fear and sorrow tied into that, we cannot fully know. What is clear, even from this point, is that the goddess was not seen as purely “good,” at least by our binary definition of that word. Because she was the bearer of life, she was also the bearer of death, and that difficult truth left an indelible mark on how the feminine was perceived as a force of divinity.

Primordial Waters

As we proceed from the prehistoric period to the oldest recorded creation myths and stories, we find that the primordial waters are among the most ubiquitous motifs - if not the singularly highest among them.

This makes logical sense when we think about the power, the expansiveness, the mystery of water and the ocean. What are we born from? Sacs of water held in the womb of the mother. Although this original water in creation mythology is often formless and genderless, or simply denoted as “chaos” it is (again) easy to understand how the waters of life are inextricably connected to the mother.

“History begins at Sumer,” or so a famous book on ancient Mesopotamia says, because this is the earliest cultures we have records from about the sixth and fifth millennium BC. The Sumers were not Semites, meaning they were not of the language or ethnic group of other early peoples in the ancient Near East, and many believe the Sumerians were originally from Africa. Their myths are some of the very oldest we have on record, and their creation story started with a primordial sea that was considered a “mother” who “gave birth” to the Sky (Anu - masculine) and the Earth (Ki- feminine).

Thus, one of the most ancient religions begins with a feminine creatrix making the world through the process of parthenogenesis, or creation without sex. (Eliade 56)

Akkadian cylinder seal impression depicting a vegetation goddess, possibly Ninhursag, anoth mother-goddess sitting on a throne surrounded by worshippers (circa 2350-2150 BC)

Sumer was later conquered by the Akkadians and from it came the Babylonian civilization and the famous tablets of the Enuma Elish, their creation epic. There is a continuation of the theme of the chaotic primordial waters, yet they are split into masculine and feminine - this is a theme in Sumerian to Babylonian myth transference: the Babylonians raise the male figures up to higher status. Apsu, the masculine water, is freshwater, and many ancient peoples thought that the earth floated on freshwater to explain the presence of rivers, lakes, and springs. Tiamat was the feminine aspect of the water, fierce and chaotic, aligning with the saltwater and her oceanic qualities. (Eliade PCR 191)

Tiamat was a distinctly ferocious divine entity, who had an epic battle with a lesser god named Marduk that caused her to create many beasts, monsters, snakes, and lions. At the end of their fight, Tiamat tries to swallow Marduk whole, and Marduk sends raging winds that violently rip apart her body, eventually splitting her skull and cutting her corpse in two, with half becoming sky and half becoming earth. While Marduk and Tiamat are “charged with demonic values,” Tiamat is associated with the chaos of water and a “wholly negative” form of creativity in how she gives birth to a whole world of monstrous beasts and even her dismembered body begets the world (Eliade v1 71).

What this ancient origin story demonstrates is how the mother goddess of creation was much more dynamic and complex, and even darker, to ancient peoples than we may realize in our modern perceptions of her. What I intend to investigate further

Divine Couple

While the Earth Mother creates from parthenogenesis, the divine couple of a goddess and a male counterpart give birth through their sacred partnership, or “hieros gamos.” This is extremely common in mythology and early religions - the earth goddess being counterbalanced by a male sky deity. Every single civilization in the Indian Ocean has this myth, and it is as widespread as Sumeria’s divine couple we touched on earlier to the Kumana in southern Africa whose myth states: “The Earth is our Mother, the Sky is our father. The sky fertilizes the Earth with rain, the Earth produces grains and grass.” (Eliade PCR 240)

To touch back on the Babylonian story, Apsu, the masculine fresh water, and Tiamat, the femine salt water, gave birth to the sky Anu and the earth Nudimmud, also known as Ea, and even seen as the brother pair Enki and Enlil at times. Apsu is bothered by the “noise” the younger gods are making and wants to “annihilate them.” Ea makes Apsu fall asleep, and Ea and wife Damkina give birth to Marduk, and we know what happens next: Marduk battles Tiamat and takes over as the pre-eminent god of the Babylonian pantheon. This is another common theme, that of the supreme god, and goddess, being usurped by one of their lesser progeny.

Egyptian creation stories tend to begin with an earthly mound self-creating within the primordial waters as the beginning of life and consciousness. Sometimes it is a primordial egg, a lotus, or even a serpent that gives birth to the original Egyptian sun god Atum (masculine).

Shu (standing, centre) supporting the sky goddess Nut arched above him and with the earth god Geb lying at his feet, detail from the Greenfield Papyrus, 10th century BCE; in the British Museum.

Male gods often create lesser gods, and even humanity, solo. In Egyptian myth, Atum, through masturbation, gives birth to the first divine couple, Shu, a god of air, and Tefnut, a goddess of water. Shu and Tefnut procreates to make Geb, the Earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky. While sometimes it is through a violent grab of power, there are other times, like in Egyptian and Indian mythos, where the original supreme gods are not taken down through violence, but simply fade away over time, as their children rise to prominence. (Eliade 87)

While Homer scarcely mentions Gaea, Aeschylus glorifies her, writing that the earth “gives birth to all beings, feeds them, and receives back from them fertile seed.”

Hesoid’s (most ancient) version of events says that in the beginning there was Chaos / the Abyss, Eros, the god of love, and Gaea, the goddess of the earth. Gaea, through parthenogenesis, “bore a being equal to herself, able to cover her entirely, starry Uranus, Heaven.” She also solely gave birth to the Mountains, the Nymphs and the barren Sea, but gave birth through hieros gamos (sacred marriage) with Uranus a second divine generation that included six male Titans, six female Titanides, three one-eyed cyclopses, and giants with three-hundred arms. Similarly to the Babylonian origin myth,the “noise” of the lesser gods annoys the father God, Uranus, who hates them, and he later battles with one of his male progeny who takes over, Zeus. (Eliade v.1 249, PCR 239)

There is a “mystical solidarity between man (humanity) and vegetation” and the “fertility of the earth is bound up with the feminine,” therefore “religious creativity was stimulated not by the empirical phenomenon of agriculture but by the mystery of birth, death, and rebirth identified in the rhythm of vegetation” (Eliade 40). Naturally, agrarian cultures develop a cosmology that centers around the renewal of the earth, and the woman, obviously, figures prominently in this theme.

Eliade believes that “the ascent of the Earth-Mother to the position of the supreme, if not unique, divinity, was arrested both by her hierogamy with the sky but by the appearance of the divinities of agriculture.” As agricultural goddesses take primacy, so does the drama itself of birth, fertility, and death. However, underlying the form of the agricultural feminine divinities we can detect the “mistress of the place” the Earth Mother. This is apparent in the Greek myths, as Demeter becomes a supreme goddess, venerated more commonly than her own mother Gaea. (Eliade v2 261-262)

Unknowable Yet Known

There are innumerable goddesses available for study, contemplation, and worship. These earliest divine manifestation of the feminine are fascinating in how they both comfort and surprise us.

There is such a familiarity in their symbolism and motifs - the water, the earth, the seeds, the sowing, the reaping, the way the life, death, rebirth cycle of nature mirrors our own womanly mysteries of procreation. It is intense, deep, unknowable, yet entirely intimate and innate, even if I cannot express the way I relate to it all adequately in words. That is why Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book “Women Who Run With The Wolves,” is so impactful and popular. There is something untouchable and unknowable that women feel in their bones when it comes to how we relate to Mother Nature.

When it comes down to it, the feminine is complex. The divine conceptions of the feminine, the mother, the goddess, reflect this, and it’s been made even messier but the increasingly patriarchial development of Western civilization. As we move forward in time with the goddess and her myths, we find again and again she is made out to be a villain or a victim.

The most ancient example, Inanna, exemplifies this. In the original Sumerian poem of the Bull of Heaven, Inanna threatens to cry out, and when she does her cry reaches heaven where the head god An becomes frightened. In the later Akaddian/Babylonian version of the story told in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna is portrayed as spiteful, lashing out at Gilgamesh because he spurned her marriage proposal. (Tigay)

With the few fragments we have of these tales, it is hard to tell how or why the story changed, but when put together with stories of many other goddesses, a pattern reveals itself: the power of the goddess has been inverted and hidden.

This has been perpetuated by the Judeo-Christian understanding of it’s own scriptures that preaches all ancient goddesses, or gods, in any form are inherently evil, simply because they are not Yahweh, and/or Jesus Christ. Yet even this interpretation belies a misunderstanding of why the ancient Hebrews wrote their spiritual mythology in a certain way - they broke away from the Canaanite pantheon of gods they originally worshipped in order to build tribal and political power by differentiating themselves from surrounding peoples (Römer)

If you have come this far, welcome - this is focus of my research, essays, and classes forthcoming: to reveal the hidden feminine, from ancient goddesses to Mary Magdalene, reweaving their stories from a higher perspective, both starry and grounded, with the intention that this process of remembrance brings us (individually and collectively) into greater wholeness.

Sources

Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas Volume One: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas Volume Two: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity. The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Eliade, Micea. Patterns in Comparative Religion. University of Nebraska Press, 1958.

Mor, Barbara and Monica Sjjoo. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. HarperOne, 2013.

India/Parvati: https://historycooperative.org/hindu-gods-and-goddesses/

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/stillbirth/data.html

The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic By Jeffrey H. Tigay

The Invention of God, by Thomas Römer

Venus figurine photo: Various (mostly) prehistoric “Venus” figurines. (1) Willendorf’s Venus (Rhine/Danube), (2) Lespugue Venus (Pyrenees/Aquitaine), (3) Laussel Venus (Pyrenees/Aquitaine), (4) Dolní Věstonice Venus (Rhine/Danube), (5) Gagarino no. 4 Venus (Russia), (6) Moravany Venus (Rhine/Danube), (7) Kostenki 1. Statuette no. 3 (Russia), (8) Grimaldi nVenus (Italy), (9) Chiozza di Scandiano Venus (Italy), (10) Petrkovice Venus (Rhine/Danube), (11) Modern sculpture (N. America), (12) Eleesivitchi Venus (Russia); (13) Savignano Venus (Italy), (14) The so-called “Brassempouy Venus” (Pyrenees/Aquitaine), (15) Hohle Fels Venus (SW Germany). Image from article, “Venus Figurines of the European Paleolithic: Symbols of Fertility or Attractiveness?” by Alan F. Dixson and Barnaby J. Dixson (2011). From: https://albertis-window.com/category/minoanmycenaean/