The surface of the Earth itself was thought to be the body of a great and powerful mother, from whose regenerative womb all plant and animal life emerged and into whose arms it was returned in death. The ancient Greeks believed that the folds and undulations of the Earth represented the body of the goddess Gaia. At Delphi the sacred stone called the omphalos, or navel, formed a spiritual link between Gaia and her progeny — a symbolic umbilical cord which held the spiritual and physical worlds in balance. Violation of the environment is still considered a crime in many beliefs, as shown in this description of a Native American's relationship with the Earth, made less than a hundred years ago: "You ask me to plough the ground? Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone? Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again."

At certain sacred locations the landscape was especially revered, particularly where it evoked the female body. Living temples were created from large areas of the natural terrain, such as the massive henge monument at Avebury in southern England. Neolithic peoples worshipped the Earth goddess in great seasonal festivals, linking the human life cycle — birth, puberty, marriage, childbirth and death — to the year's inexorable progress.

The power of maternal Earth goddesses derived from their links with both creative and destructive processes. The ambivalent role of these goddesses — bringers of birth and death, fertility and degeneration — found expression in many cultures as a polarization of imagery. The ancient Indian mother goddess, for example, garlanded with skulls and dripping blood from a long red tongue, survives in the Hindu pantheon as the avenging deities Kali and Durga, while her nurturing qualities appear in the gentle Parvati. The Celtic goddess Epona combined the roles of warrior, healer, guardian of the dead and source of fertility, the latter symbolized by the cornucopia with which she is sometimes portrayed.

In Greek myth, the grief of the goddess Demeter brought devastating famine to the world after the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, the god of the underworld. Persephone was subsequently permitted to return to Demeter for half of the year, during which the benign aspects of the goddess flourished. This alternation of the seasons reflects the natural cycle of growth and decay to which all physical life is subject.

The concept of the Earth as a goddess rendered sacred its natural curves and crevices — caves, rock clefts and springs. These were the points at which the body of the goddess opened and through which spiritual connections might be renewed. Several Earth goddesses are linked to the chronic powers of the underworld, a connection shown by their mastery over snakes and other subterranean creatures. In Attica, initiation rituals into the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter enacted a symbolic descent and return of the soul to the underworld.

Aspects of devotion to an Earth goddess still appear in our beliefs today, often in complex, transmuted forms. Many of the environmental concerns of our own time display a re-emerging awareness of our profound connection with the Earth, and of the importance of responsible guardianship for our own spiritual wellbeing.




From The Secret Language of the Soul by Jane Hope (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997).
Copyright © 1997 by Jane Hope

Used by arrangement with Chronicle Books.