The Magna Dea of the Nations
Though we may fairly well assume that in prehistoric ages all nations revered a Magna Mater, historical development points to the Orient as the place whence the cult of Aphrodite was imported into Greece; there it found the soil prepared by the common belief in a mother goddess, a world-creatrix, a lady divine and supreme. The Greek Aphrodite was the same as the Astarte of the Tyrians, the “great goddess” of the Syrians and the Istar of the Babylonians.
It is quite certain that the cult of this goddess-mother played a more important part in the world of primitive mankind than the cult of a God the Father, the male deity of a later age. The goddess of love and life under whatever name she may have been known, as Our Lady, the Queen of Heaven, the Mistress of the World, the holy mother genetrix of all living creatures, the Dea optima maxima or Most High Goddess, was practically the same all over the world. We may not be mistaken if we attribute the height of her worship to the age of matriarchy. In prehistoric times the Magna Dea was looked up to with awe and reverence, possibly even with a devotion more ardent than in a later period. The Ancient of Days or Jupiter, i. e., Diespiter, the father of time and light, was symbolized by the all-embracing sky and also by the sun. The Greeks called him Zeus, a name pronounced dzeus, connected with the Latin deus and dies, and Sanskrit deva, the creator and ruler of the world. The Magna Dea was the all-mother, and it is but to be expected that when the social conditions of matriarchy changed into the age of the patriarchs the reverence for an all-mother was superseded by the worship of an all-father.
The Magna Dea was all in all to mankind. Her emblem as the goddess of vegetation and of the sustenance of life was the apple or pomegranate. As the goddess of the human soul she is represented as a bird like the Egyptian representation of the soul, a human-headed hawk; or as a dove, the symbol which later on represents the gnostic Sophia, the mother of the child-god, and in Christian dogmatology, the Holy Ghost.
Originally the deity was triune in India, in Egypt, and in other countries. In India we become acquainted with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Creator, the Revealer (or Avatar), and the Transformer (i. e., the one who destroys and renews). In Babylon the universe is divided into the three kingdoms of Heaven, Water and Earth under the three rulers, Anu, Ea and Marduk; and in Egypt men worshiped God the father or Osiris, God the mother or Isis, and God the child or Horus. Similar trinities are met with in other religions, and the Christian Trinity, although not taught by Jesus, is one of the oldest doctrines of the Christian church. Here indeed the Egyptian conception of God as father, mother and child makes its first appearance in the apocryphal writings, for there are passages in heretical gospels where Jesus speaks of the Holy Ghost as his mother. This idea might have been accepted as an orthodox thought if the age had not been strongly ascetic and dualistic, but on that account the feminine character of the Holy Ghost became offensive to the fathers of the church. In Hebrew the Holy Ghost as Ruah was still conceived as a brooding pigeon, but among the Gentile Christians the conception of the third person of the Trinity was translated by the neuter noun πνεῡμα and in Latin by the masculine spiritus. Nevertheless the old symbol of the brooding pigeon was retained and a feminine designation such as Sophia, the consort of God, was occasionally tolerated in the Greek church and among the Gnostics.
Wings have always been the symbol of thought, and serve as a simile to represent the soul not only in Egyptian mythology but also in Babylon and on the Greek islands. A human-headed bird attributed to a primitive period of Babylonian civilization has been interpreted as the soul of Semiramis, and may represent either a dead person or the goddess of the dead, and the same idea is expressed in a little figurine of the Greek islands which shows us a female deity with a dove on her head. We can scarcely be mistaken if we interpret this little figurine as an amulet denoting the goddess whose emblem is the dove. Whether the figure represent the goddess herself with her emblematic bird or whether it be the portrait of a dead person protected by the dove, is of secondary importance. The main truth on which we insist here is that the dove is the emblem of the great goddess to whom people look for salvation in the dark beyond. Thus flocks of pigeons enjoyed great liberties in Hierapolis, the holy city of Syria,—probably in the same way that the pigeons in St. Mark’s place are befriended in Venice both by the inhabitants and by foreign visitors.
Another emblem of the goddess of womanhood is the fish, as is fully described in Lucian’s most interesting treatise “On the Syrian Goddess.” In Egypt Isis has been represented with a fish surmounting her head as an emblematic ornament.
In some parts of Greece the hare or rabbit has also been sacred to Aphrodite, unquestionably on account of the fertility of that animal. Even to-day in Christian times the Easter hare and the egg are the symbols of spring, and the Easter festival cannot be celebrated without them.
A remarkable monument has been discovered in Boghaz-Köi in Cappadocia. It represents a procession of gods standing on their symbolic animals, and what interests us mainly is that it portrays the meeting of a god and a goddess, he standing on human beings, she on an animal which is apparently a lioness. Among her followers is a man on a leopard and two figures standing on a double-headed eagle. The idea of this symbol was carried to Europe by crusaders and became the emblem of the Holy Roman empire; it is still retained in the imperial arms of Austria and has also been accepted by the Czar of Russia. The subject of this monument in Cappadocia is still considered as under question. There is no explanation and there are no ancient books that can throw light upon it. But the composition speaks for itself. We see here the great goddess meeting the heroic god—whatever names they may have borne.
Marduk (or Melkarth or Bel or Baal) is a deity who rises to sovereignty through his victory over the powers of evil, and the climax of his life consists in his marriage. Can this great sculpture refer to any other topic than the festive occasion of the victorious god’s marriage ceremonial when he meets the great bridal goddess?29
The name Istar has been traced also in the Phenician word Astarte. The goddess was held in high esteem in Phenicia and was regarded also as the patroness of navigation. Coins represent her standing on the prow of a ship, and, strange to say, very frequently she carries a Latin cross in her arms. Beside the cross her emblems are also the moon and the swastika, and the latter is frequently found on her dress, and in one very archaic leaden figurine discovered by Schliemann in the ruins of Troy, the swastika is placed on her body to indicate the mysterious power of procreation. The idol was apparently intended to be carried in the hand, for its lower part ends in a shapeless stick.
From the excavations of Cyprus we reproduce the picture of a well-preserved statue of Astarte which must have been the recipient of offerings before an altar in some of the ancient temples (p. 106).
A beautiful modern picture of Astarte has been worked out by Sargent in his frescoes on the walls of the Boston Public Library, and we can see on this very picture her similarity to Murillo’s ideal of Mary in his many paintings of the “Immaculate Conception.”
There is a counterpart of the western Magna Dea in eastern Asia, but we no longer know it in its primitive form and have it only as it is represented in art in the shape of a Buddhist deity, a kind of female Buddha, called in China Kwan-Yon and in Japan, Benten. Here again in some cases we find that the fish is her symbol as it is that of the Syrian goddess, and she frequently presents a remarkable similarity to the Christian Virgin Mary. She is never pictured naked like the Greek Aphrodite but is always dressed in the most scrupulously decent fashion.30
One picture of Kwan-Yon with the fish bears an inscription which is a poetical expression of wonder at the mystery of incarnation, and following a literal translation we render it into English as follows:
“Untidy o’er her temples
Falls her disheveled hair.
The maid is easy-going—
In sooth she does not care.
Not decked in precious jewels
Nor dressed in gaudy lace,
She carries in her basket
A fish to the market place.
Who thinks that Buddha were
Made human form in her!”
The Chinese deity Kwan-Yon may, for all we know, be the Magna Mater of most primitive China. At least she was an ancient popular goddess. When Buddhism was introduced into the Middle Kingdom she was too dear to the people to be abandoned or degraded in rank, and so she was interpreted to be a female incarnation of the Buddha himself. Some pictures or statuettes represent her as denoting motherly love by holding a baby in her arms, which gives her an obvious resemblance to the Christian Mary, the mother of Christ.
The ancient Chinese were rich in divinities of all kinds and among them there is a goddess who in one way or other might easily have developed into the Buddhist Kwan-Yon. This is the Queen of Heaven or Holy Mother, who is worshiped with great fervor in some localities. Emperor K’ang Hi bestowed upon her the high title of T’ien Hou, that is, “Heaven’s Ruler,” but we may very well assume that she did not originate in his days but existed since older times. She, or some figure like her, must have been known before the importation of Buddhism, and Kwan-Yon presupposes the primitive existence of a female deity of love, charity and universal goodwill.
The northern Venus, called Freya, the mother-goddess of the Teutons and in fact of all the Teutonic races, did not share the fate of the Venus of classical antiquity. She never deteriorated into the goddess of sensuality. It is strange that we descendants of the Germanic nations are better posted on the national gods of Greece and Rome than on those of our own ancestors. These are mainly remembered from the names of the week days and even there the god of war, Tiu, has become quite unintelligible in Tuesday. Freya’s day, Friday, is easily recognizable as the Latin dies Veneris or vendredi, and it is peculiar that on that very day Christian custom still retains the fish diet of the ancient Astarte. The motive of course is changed, and the fish is no longer thought of as the emblem of Astarte but is eaten in remembrance of the death of Christ on the cross. Fish has become the diet of fasting. Such is the logic of tradition, which persists after the reason for it has gradually been forgotten.
H. A. Guerber in his Myths of Northern Lands describes Freya as follows:
“Although goddess of love, Freya was not soft and pleasure-loving, for the ancient northern races said that she had very martial tastes, and that as Valfreya31 she often led the Valkyrs down to the battle-fields, choosing and claiming one-half the heroes slain. She was therefore often represented with corselet and helmet, shield and spear, only the lower part of her body being clad in the usual flowing feminine garb.
“Freya transported the chosen slain to Folkvang, where they were duly entertained, and where she also welcomed all pure maidens and faithful wives, that they might enjoy the company of their lovers and husbands even after death. The joys of her abode were so enticing to the heroic northern women that they often rushed into battle when their loved ones were slain, hoping to meet with the same fate; or they fell upon their swords, or were voluntarily burned on the same funeral pyre as the beloved remains.
“As Freya was inclined to lend a favorable ear to lovers’ prayers, she was often invoked by them, and it was customary to indite love songs in her honor, which were sung on all festive occasions, her very name in Germany being used for the formation of the verb freien, i. e., ‘to woo.’”
When the conception of the mother goddess of antiquity began to decay, a new faith spread and under a new name the old ideal was revived as Mary, Mother of God, Maria Theotokos; the star of the sea, or Stella Maris; and the Italian fishermen sing to her the beautiful lines,
“O sanctissima, O piissima,
Dulcis mater amata.”