mother goddess

mother goddess, any of a variety of feminine deities and maternal symbols of creativity, birth, fertility, sexual union, nurturing, and the cycle of growth. The term also has been applied to figures as diverse as the so-called Stone Age Venuses and the Virgin Mary. Because motherhood is one of the universal human realities, there is no culture that has not employed some maternal symbolism in depicting its deities. Because of the wide variations concerning maternal figures, there is a pressing, but as yet unmet, need for a more complex and useful typology of mother goddesses and maternal motifs based on meaning, symbolism, and function.

Mother goddesses, as a specific type, should be distinguished from the Earth Mother (q.v.), with which they have often been confused. Unlike the mother goddess, who is a specific source of vitality and who must periodically undergo intercourse, the Earth Mother is a cosmogonic figure, the eternally fruitful source of everything. In contrast, mother goddesses are individual, possess distinct characters, are young, are not cosmogonic, and are highly sexual. Although the male plays a relatively less important role, being frequently reduced to a mere fecundator, mother goddesses are usually part of a divine pair, and their mythology narrates the vicissitudes of the goddess and her (frequently human) consort.

The essential moments in the myth of most mother goddesses are her disappearance and reappearance and the celebration of her divine marriage. Her disappearance has cosmic implications. Sexuality and growth decline. Her reappearance, choice of a male partner, and intercourse with him restore and guarantee fertility, after which the male consort is frequently set aside or sent to the underworld to be replaced the next year (this has led to the erroneous postulation of a dying-rising deity).

The other major form of the mother goddess emphasizes her maternity. She is the protector and nourisher of a divine child and, by extension, of all humanity. This form occurs more frequently in iconography—a full-breasted (or many-breasted) figure holding a child in her arms—than in myth.