Mother goddess
In some polytheistic cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptian religion which narrates the cosmic egg myth, the sky is instead seen as the Heavenly Mother or Sky Mother as in Nut and Hathor, and the earth god is regarded as the male, paternal, and terrestrial partner, as in Osiris or Geb who hatched out of the maternal cosmic egg.
Between 1961 and 1965 James Mellaart led a series of excavations at Çatalhöyük, north of the Taurus Mountains in a fertile agricultural region of South-Anatolia.
Striking were the many statues found here, which Mellaart suggested represented a Great goddess, who headed the pantheon of an essentially matriarchal culture.
A seated female figure, flanked by what Mellaart describes as lionesses, was found in a grain-bin; she may have intended to protect the harvest and grain.
[4][a] In Egyptian mythology, sky goddess Nut is sometimes called "Mother" because she bore stars and Sun god.
"[6][7] In Hinduism, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Radha, Parvati, Durga and other goddesses represents both the feminine aspect and the shakti (power) of the supreme being known as the Brahman.
She also gives rise to Maya (the illusory world) and to prakriti, the force that galvanizes the divine ground of existence into self-projection as the cosmos.
[10] The primordial feminine creative-preservative-destructive energy, Shakti, is considered to be the motive force behind all action and existence in the phenomenal cosmos.
This masculine potential is actualized by feminine dynamism, embodied in multitudinous goddesses who are ultimately all manifestations of the one great mother.
[citation needed] Although no Mother Goddess exists in Christianity, both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church revere Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, a rendering of Theotokos and Deipara since the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, and disregard Protestant objections to Marian devotion.
Since the Apostolic age the church has believed that Mary entered heaven alive after her death and subsequent resurrection, known as the Assumption in the west and the Dormition in the east.
According to Mariology and Scholasticism branches of study, though Mary is venerated as the foremost saint, she is still a creature and never viewed as an equal of the Triune God who is the Creator.
In pre-Islamic Arabia, Collyridians were an unorthodox Christian denomination who reportedly worshipped Virgin Mary by making burnt offerings of dough to her.
English historian Ronald Hutton, however, has forcefully stated that any use of the term "Mother-Goddess" can be accounted for, and disregarded, as the scholars and mythographers' own projection of the Virgin Mary onto the evidence and source data.
[28][e] For a long time, feminist authors claimed that these peaceful, matriarchal agrarian societies were exterminated or subjugated by nomadic, patriarchal warrior tribes.
[30][g][31][h] Since the 1960s, especially in popular culture, the alleged worship of the mother goddess and the social position that women in prehistoric societies supposedly assumed, were linked.
