The imagery of the Madonna and Child symbolises the deep relationship between the Great Mother Spirit and humanity. This symbol can be found way back into pre-Christian times, in the statues for example of Isis and Horus – the New Testament stories bring the ancient stories about the heavenly gods into the manifest, human realm, as a sign to the world that humanity is on the way to embracing its own true, divine, nature. To get to that place of liberation and exaltation, however, humanity needs to repair its relationship to the Great Goddess, who is not only manifest as the living earth but also holds and nurtures us on subtle, psychic and spiritual levels.
Humans have had a relationship with the Mother Goddess for thousands of years. The gradual removal of this part of our emotional and mental practices and processes during the Patriarchal Era has left humanity with a big gaping hole in our collective energy field. Our sense of psychic connection to the earth, moon and stars has been pretty much eradicated within the scientific mindset with which we have been edcuating our children for several decades. Our sense of community, of belonging, of meaning has been worn down. So much psychological and emotional dis-ease on our planet comes from being too locked within our own sense of individuality, our isolated thoughts and feelings: humans are by nature communal creatures, we need connection with other people to know and achieve wholeness in ourselves. And to be fully embodied and in our strength, we need to know/feel ourselves as part of the wholeness of creation too. God-worshipping religions put divinity out of reach in the sky, banned practices that brought ecstatic, direct experience of the divine oneness, which gave birth to life and exists in us all.
Spiritual and religious teachings have long described the Divine Feminine as the presence of the divine in creation, and that is why men as well as women have to unlock and embrace their feminine aspect, in order to know Her. The Goddess was venerated in the ancient world in many forms – as Earth Mother (Gaea, Demeter, Cybele), Love Goddess (Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus, Freya), Underworld Goddess (Persephone, Hecate), Moon Goddess (Diana) etc. In her temples she was served by female priestesses and also feminine male priests, who wore female attire and were sometimes castrated. Mystery schools and sacred festivities engaged cross-dressing and same sex relationships as part of entry to the divine realms. Warriors would worship their war gods but they would also venerate the Goddess in Her temples, recognising Her as the older power. The Goddess was deeply involved in every aspect of community life.
Around the world the Mother appears in Creation stories and myths: In Japan it was a Goddess presiding over the course of the Sun; the Navajo of north America see the universe as spun into being by Great Spider Woman; the three Norns of Scandinavia also sat spinning the web of life, destiny and fate at the roots of the cosmic world tree, Ygg-drasill; In Egypt the Sky goddess Nut nourished the earth with her rain. The world now names the highest mountain in the world after a British explorer, but to the Tibetans it has always been Chomo-Lungma, Mother Mountain of the Universe. In South America veneration of the Goddess as Pachamama (Mother of Space and Time) has survived centuries of Christianity.
Carl Jung was of the opinion that the Great Mother archetype exists in everyone. She is our most ancient guide and companion. Zulu wisdom teacjher Credo Mutwa has described African wisdom that we each have inside us a warrior mind (which is the male god, the rational individualised sense of self), and the mother mind (which we all share as the portal to collective consciousness, which reveals our oneness with all life). He says, “We must awaken the mother mind within us. We must feel what is going on in the world. We mustn’t just listen to newspapers. We must ourselves, feel.”
During the past few decades a new Goddess movement has been emerging in the world. The Great Mother is returning to her place in human hearts and minds, gradually. Modern mystics such as Andrew Harvey spread teachings about her return. His book ‘The Return of the Mother’ (1995) traces how the divine feminine was hidden in the world’s male-led religions, and he presents the case for how a radical embrace of her all-encompassing transformative love will change humanity. Harvey says, “Coming to know the hidden and forgotten Mother and the marvellous wisdom of the sacred feminine as revealed from every side and angle by the different mystical traditions is not luxury; it is, I believe, a necessity for our survival as a species.”
We can reunite ourselves to the Feminine Divine through our feeling body – through devotional practices such as communal celebrations, particulary ones that align and attune us to the cycles of the seasons and the moon; through offerings, prayers, chants; through service to others and to the planet. We reunite ourselves to Her by remembering that everyone is her holy child, deserving of respect, safety and love, and treating all beings as part of her sacred unity.
The image of the Virgin Mother and the Christ child represents the second-birth that we can have in our lifetime. This is the birth to the Spirit, to cosmic consciousness, when we awaken to the divine child within us, becoming conscious that we are immortal consciousness realising itself physically. This second-birth does not require a Father, we are reborn and nurtured by the Mother Consciousness when the time is right for us. This happened for me aged 30 years old – as I surrendered my mind and body to the ravages of AIDS and prepared for death, my immortal soul came through – a strong, feminine presence that revealed to me that She loved everything about me, my sexuality, my character, my creativity, my joys. Suddenly every tree was speaking to me, as they had when I was very young, every flower was radiating presence as never before, birds and pets became angelic messengers, the land beneath my feet seemed to begin to reveal buried secrets. Everywhere I looked there were signs I had never noticed before – signs shouting at us all the time that we are in a magical reality full of spirit frequencies and multi-dimensional interactions. It had taken the surrender of my sense of ‘knowing’, of my disbelief, for my eyes to open to a fuller view of reality. That view was feminine.
Monica Sjoo, in the Great Cosmic Mother (1987) says“True religion is the original umbilical cord that binds our individual selves back to our larger, universal source. That source… is the Great Mother, who is the great cosmic weaver, the divine potter, the carrier of the heavenly water jar; we participate in her substance, her nature, her processes, her play and her work….
“The reality implicit in the Universe – in each one of us, in the self at the heart of being – is her way. It is very ancient, and has no time. …. Ecstasy is the only way through which the soul can lose itself in union with her…. Some male mystics have also understood this…
“Ecstasy is the dance of the individual with the All.”
rainbow messenger 