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Robert Ingersoll

The Mother Of The Gods

The Mother Of The Gods

Crete gave Greece its sea god Poseidon, but it also gave the Greeks the archetype of the Great Mother, according to Dr Jane Harrison. Sir Arthur Evans found at Cnossos a clay seal impression showing a high peaked mountain, upon which stood a goddess. She had a sceptre in her outstretched hand, and was guarded by two lions, one to either side in heraldic fashion. Similar heraldic lions protect the great gate of the citadel of Mycenæ on mainland Greece. Between them, at Mycenæ, is a column which is the goddess. In the Cretan seal, she wore a skirt with many flounces. Behind the Mountain Mother on the seal is a Mycenæan shrine with columns and horns, marking a cult whose god was a bull headed man. Before the goddess stands a worshipper rapt in ecstasy.

In another aspect, the goddess is shown rising from the ground, in which she is knee deep. She seems to be the same goddess because she is dressed in an identical Cretan flounced skirt, but here has a short sleeved bodice which conspicuously displays her breasts, perhaps signifying her as mother. To either side of her are two blossoming plants, also rising from the ground. In her left hand, she has three poppy capsules, the poppy, with its countless seeds, being the emblem of fertility. Over her right shoulder are seen the heads of three snakes. Her right wrist is grasped by a male attendant, who lifts her from the ground. She is the Mother goddess rising from the earth in the spring. The scene depicted is what the Greeks called the Anodos—up rising. This Anodos was commonly shown on Greek vases, but here is its source in Crete. At Delphi, at Athens, and at Megara, the Greeks had rites of summoning or calling up the Goddess. One of these rites was called the Bringing up of Semele. Semele is the Thracian form of Gê or Gaia, the Earth.

Zeus, the Olympian patriarchal father god, largely effaced the Great Mother, but could not fully erase her. The priestesses at the ancient oracular shine of Dodona continued to chant her name in their litany:

Earth sends up fruits, so praise we Earth the Mother.

And at Delphi the priestess began her formal ritual address to the gods:

First in my prayer before all other gods, I call on Earth, primeval prophetess.

The Great Mother is called upon first, signifying that she was at Delphi before Poseidon, before Dionysos, before Apollo. In Greece the Mother and the Father gods are characteristic of the two main theological strata, the Mother is Pelasgian and Minoan, the Father Indo-European—Hellenic. The Mother is accompanied usually by a subordinate male, a mythical son or lover, who became the heroes protexted by Athena, Hera and Artemis. The author of the Homeric Hymn describes her and her gifts:

Concerning Earth, the mother of all, shall I sing, firm Earth, eldest of gods, that nourishes all things in the world; all things that fare on the sacred land, all things in the sea, all flying things, all are fed out of her store. Through thee, revered goddess, are men happy in their children and fortunate in their harvest. Thine it is to give or to take life from mortal men. Happy is he whom thou honourest with favouring heart, to him all good things are present innumerable—his fertile field is laden, his meadows are rich in cattle, his house filled with all good things. Such men rule righteously in cities of fair women, great wealth and riches are theirs, their children grow glorious in fresh delights, their maidens joyfully dance and sport through the soft meadow flowers in floral revelry. Such are those that thou honourest, holy goddess, kindly spirit. Hail, Mother of the Gods, thou wife of starry Ouranos, and freely in return for my ode give me livelihood sufficient.

The Great Mother preceded Zeus. She was remembered as “Wife of Starry Ouranos”, and Uranus was the grandfather of Zeus. On the Orphic gold tablet buried with him to ensure his safety is inscribed the proud confession:

I am the child of Earth and of Starry Heaven.

More than that, though, Mother Earth, Gaia, had brought forth Uranus by parthenogenesis, virginal birth. So she was the Mother of the Gods.

The change effected by the Patriarchal invaders is illustrated by a vase in the Oxford Ashmolean Museum, in which the uprising figure is marked Pandora. Pandora, the first woman, in Hesiod was made from clay by Hephaestus, the craftsman, then had bequethed a gift from each of the Olympians. She was meant to be beautiful and beguiling to men but meant nothing but trouble. Pandora opened, not a box, but a pithos, a large storage pot, an earthenware jar used in those days for storing almost anything, wine, oil, grain, even bodies—they were large enough to be used for burial—Diogenes lived in a pithos not a barrel. The picture of Pandora and the pithos was originally the image of the Great Mother with her store of gifts to humanity—grain, wine, oil, and so on, her cornucopia, the real horn of plenty, the annual harvest.

Patriarchy reinterpreted the image of the Great Mother, with her pithos full of the gifts of the earth, to suit themselves. They turned her into an empty headed bimbo letting loose the woes of the world, when, as the wife of Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus, she opened the pithos she was not supposed to touch. It was ancient propaganda, something scholars can rarely see. An intermediate version of the myth of Pandora proves it. The pithos belongs, in this variant, to Prometheus and stands for the gifts he had brought for humanity. Pandora opened it prematurely and let them all escape except Hope, which was at the bottom and could not get out before the lid was replaced. So, here, Prometheus brings the gifts as a direct patriarchal replacement for the Great Mother. So the older images of the uprising goddess that were everywhere, and the older myth, were explained away. These reinterpretations were not mistakes. They were intended. The god of patriarchal tribes like the Hellenes, Father Zeus, would have no Great Earth Mother in Olympus. She who gave all things quite openly is made into the slave of man, his plaything, his sex object, the brainless, bimbo woman.

The Earth Mother can be followed from Crete to the mainland and her influence on the Pelasgian goddesses revealed, how she gave to Aphrodite her doves, and to Athene her snakes.

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.

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