The Evolution of the Great Goddess from the Paleolithic to the Present

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The Great Goddess of Middle Eastern religion was a fertility goddess who was subordinated by sky gods and divided into lesser goddesses but has survived in Roman Catholicism, modern feminist theory, and neo-paganism. Early Middle Eastern civilization worshipped a Great Goddess who represented fertility and the earth. As patriarchal society became more important, this goddess decreased in significance. The subordination of the Great Goddess can best be seen in Egyptian, Sumerian, Hebrew, and Greek religion. The creation myths of Sumer and Greece reflect this shift when a sky god dominates the earth goddess. The Great Goddess became divided into less important goddesses, each representing an aspect of the original goddess. Not only did goddesses become less important, but they sometimes even carried a negative role in religion. This change can be seen in the reversed role of snakes in myth. Snakes were originally a representation of positive forces and symbols of the goddess, but as the religion shifted they became evil figures such as dragons who were conquered by gods or heroes. The villainization of the goddess is also apparent in the myths of a woman bringing destruction through curiosity in stories such as those of Eve and Pandora. When Catholicism replaced the old religions as the dominant influence on Europe, the Great Goddess was no longer worshipped. However, remnants of goddess-worship can be seen in the importance of Sophia, the Virgin Mary, and the female saints. With the decline of Roman Catholicism, the goddess disappeared almost completely from daily life in the western world. Still, neo-paganism has increased in recent decades and there is a growing study of the divine as being a feminine force as well as masculine in many religions. Today men as well as women are turning back to the idea of a female divinity.

The earliest religions of the Middle East were largely goddess-centered. Some scholars argue that their cultures were also based on matriarchy, but others dismiss this as wishful thinking on the part of modern feminists. In any case, fertility goddesses dominated early religion in this area. Farming people gave female names to crucial rivers, such as the Ganges and Nile. At a time when children were greatly valued, women’s reproductive function was honored by the community. Many images of large-breasted or pregnant women have been found from Paleolithic Europe, yet no one has found images of heroes or warriors from before the Bronze Age. Agricultural societies tended to associate the life-giving earth with a mother figure, and that idea made its way into religion. Since religion’s original purpose was to try to appease the forces of nature and protect the people, it makes sense that farming people would develop goddesses as their major deities. Sumerian myth is full of fertility goddess: Tiamat, Innana, Erishkigal. Egyptian religion has many similar figures. Since the identities of these similar goddesses often blurred, many scholars consider them to be one deity rather than several separate ones. This deity is often referred to simply as “the Great Goddess”.

The Great Goddess was often represented as having three aspects, those of the female reproductive stages: maiden, mother, and old woman. Of these, the mother function was most important because of its obvious role in sustaining the population. The three aspects were linked with the cycle of life, death, and rebirth and with the phases of the moon.

As civilizations grew more advanced, patriarchy became predominant. Once better farming methods developed, people began to grow more organized and build cities. Leadership and military might became more valued than agriculture. In times of disorganization the closest anyone came to war is territory disputes between clans, but with the advent of the city-state battles became a way of life. Where before the major deities had been earth goddesses representing fertility and growth, sky gods representing power came to prevail. Warrior gods such as Marduk, Utu, Re, and Amun developed in Sumer and Egypt. Mother figures such as Tiamat and Eve not only were subordinate to males, but also had a negative function in religious stories.

One effect of the shift from goddesses to gods was that the Great Goddess became divided up into her various aspects, often according to their relationships with men. In Greek myth Hestia, Artemis, and Athena were virgin goddesses. Hera was the wife goddess and Aphrodite the sex goddess. Persephone and Hecate were associated with death. The only true Great Goddess of Greek myth was Gaea, who was important only in the creation myth. Even Gaea was abused by her husband/son. While most religions had one god who was worshipped above all the rest – Zeus, Jupiter, or Marduk – there was no similarly powerful goddess.

Another of the effects of the shift from matriarchal to patriarchal religion is the way goddesses are represented in the creation myths of Sumerian and Greek religion. Both start with an earth goddess and a sky god. They start off on equal footing but after they have children the sky god dominates his wife, going against her wishes to harm their children. A son overthrows the sky god and is overthrown by his own son. This third god overcomes a terrible monster and rules the world thereafter. This monster is either a representation of the mother goddess or the goddess herself. The change from positive to negative in the mother goddess echoes the change from matriarchy to patriarchy.

The Enuma Elish is the creation myth and theogony of the Babylonians. The creator in this story is Tiamat, “she who bore them all.” (Babylonian Creation Epic 1969, 60.) In this case the mother goddess does not conceive alone; the sky god Apsu is the father. She bears numerous sons, all gods, but they soon get on her nerves. “They disturbed Tiamat as they surged back and forth…they troubled the mood of Tiamat by their hilarity.” Apsu goes to Tiamat to plot against their sons. She objects, asking how he can think of destroying his own children, but he continues with the plan. The second generation learns of this plan and Ea, the cleverest of the sons, casts a sleeping spell on his parents. He kills his father and becomes the supreme god.

After this, Ea mates with one of his sisters and conceives Marduk. With two faces, four eyes, four ears, and fiery breath he is the greatest and most beautiful of all the gods. He creates a whirlwind to bother the gods. The others go to Tiamat to complain about the whirlwind and to remind her that Ea has slain her husband. She agrees with them and rallies forces to do battle on Ea and Marduk. Ea asks Marduk to lead his forces, and Marduk agrees on the condition that he will have complete command. Marduk battles his grandmother and kills her. He then proceeds to “divide the monster and do artful works.” He uses various parts of Tiamat’s corpse to create order in the world. He separates the sky and the land and the water. He creates the moon and sun and humans.

The benevolent mother goddess is inverted in this story. It seems likely that she was once a nurturing maternal figure, because at first she is protective of her children. Yet once her anger is aroused, she becomes a “monster”, a frightening and powerful figure. Hesiod tells the Greek creation story in his Theogony. Out of the void (Chaos) comes Gaea, a personification of the earth. Alone, she conceives Sky (Uranus), the mountains, and the oceans. With Uranus, she gives birth to the Titans, a race of beautiful gods; the Cyclopes, powerful one-eyed gods; and the Hundred-handers, monsters with a hundred hands and fifty heads each. As each of the children is born, Uranus buries them within Gaea. Gaea, unable to bear such mistreatment, gives a sickle to her son Cronus and tells him to castrate Uranus. When Uranus comes to mate with Gaea, Cronus leaps out and castrates him. When this deed is done, Uranus is powerless and Cronus becomes the supreme deity.

Cronus marries his sister Rhea, and they have several children. Cronus, not wishing to be overthrown as his father was, swallows his children whole as soon as they are born. Rhea goes to her parents, who advise her to trick Cronus by giving him a stone instead of the next baby. She does so, and the baby Zeus is safely taken care of by Gaea. Zeus grows up and frees the Cyclopses, who his father had imprisoned. The two generations go to war with the Titans fighting for their brother Cronus and the younger gods fighting for Zeus. Zeus wins the battle, of course, and becomes the final ruler of the universe. Before he can do so, Gaea mates with Tartarus and gives birth to a dragonlike monster. Zeus battles the monster and wins, proving his right to rule heaven.

This story has many parallels to its predecessor, the Enuma Elish. The similarities between the two have led scholars to agree that much of the Greek creation story was drawn from Sumerian myth. In the Theogony, Gaea is the parallel to Tiamat. Yet Tiamat becomes a monster and is the antagonist Marduk must slay to establish himself, while Gaea remains benevolent. Still, Gaea’s destructive powers are seen in her creation of the dragon. The dragon itself is a representation of the subverted goddess.

One of the most interesting side effects of the domination of the goddess is the change in the role of the snake in myth. It is easy to understand how something as dangerous as a snake would be frightening to humans, yet there are many indications that they were once seen in a more positive light.

In prehistoric times, snakes were seen as mysterious creatures connected with the gods. Mediterranean cultures assigned sacred identities to snakes, believing them to be connected with earth deities because they spent so much time underground. Many early images of snakes with their tails in their mouths have been found. This demonstrates the association of serpents with unity, cycles, and creation and destruction.

The snake was also associated with Mother Earth figures. A great python was said to live at Gaea’s shrine at Delphi. Among the most beautiful works of Etruscan art is a statue of a woman in elaborate dress holding a snake aloft in each hand. Many cultures share the image of a Tree of Life or a World Tree reaching to the sky and rooted in the earth, with a snake entwined in its branches. The tree often represents fertility.

Later, though, the snake came to have negative connotations in the form of Medusa, the dragon, and the snake in Eden. Now the Tree of Life is forbidden to humans and the snake plays the part of the tempter. And it is the woman Eve who first tastes the fruit and then persuades her husband to eat it.

The theme of a male hero conquering some sort of serpent is almost universal. The first example of that is the Delphic python. As mentioned before, Gaea’s python lived at Delphi to protect her shrine. Yet in later years, Delphi was a city dedicated to Apollo. Greek myth says that Apollo came to Gaea’s shrine at Delphi, slew the python, and established his oracle there. To honor Gaea, it was local girls who were chosen to be oracles and they bore the name Pythia in remembrance of the sacred python.

As far away as Thailand, people have long explained eclipses by saying that a serpent was swallowing the sun. In Egyptian myth, a serpent-monster called Apep battled the sun god Re each night for the sun. Each morning Re won the battle, bringing light to the world for another day. These “sun versus dragon” stories are especially relevant since the sun is often associated with masculinity.

In English legend, St. George was a great and pious knight who killed a terrible dragon in order to rescue a princess. He is now the patron saint of several countries and, interestingly enough, the Boy Scouts. Other Germanic fairy tales and legends about knights killing dragons abound.

St. Patrick is famous for converting Ireland. His greatest miracle was supposed to have been driving all the snakes from the island. This could certainly be seen as a metaphor for overcoming the goddess-worship of the Celts.

The Medusa was another serpent of Greek myth. She was once a beautiful woman, but after angering Athena she was transformed into a snake-haired creature so hideous anyone who saw her was turned to stone. The hero Perseus killed her.

Another Greek story is that of Heracles, who had to obtain the golden apples of the Hesperides as one of his twelve tasks. These apples would grant immortality and were sacred to the goddess Hera. The tree (a variant of the World Tree) was guarded by a serpent and three women. Hercules seduced the women and slew the serpent.

Another image of the subverted goddess is that of woman as destroying curiosity. Several cultures bear the motif of an overly curious woman bringing downfall to all humankind. The Greek story of Pandora is told by Hesiod: Zeus, wanting to punish the Titan Prometheus for bringing fire to men, created the first woman. Until this time, there had been no women and no problems, and this was to be the origin of both. All the gods and goddesses gave gifts to the new creation: beauty, music, jewelry, fine robes, charm. They called her Pandora, meaning all-gifted, but Zeus put in her the taint of curiosity, which was to undo everything. She was given as a present to the Titan Epimetheus along with a closed jar. Zeus gave the instruction not to open it and left the two alone. Of course, Pandora’s curiosity soon overcame her and she opened the jar, releasing plagues and troubles of all sorts into the world.

There is an obvious parallel to the story of Adam and Eve. Eve is not intended as a punishment to her husband, but the result is the same. She cannot resist the idea of divine knowledge, of a higher consciousness, and thus eats of the forbidden tree.

A second, less direct parallel between the mythological origins of both characters can be found in their names. When Adam and his wife are expelled from Eden, Genesis says “the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Yet at this point, Eve had not borne any children. The naming of a childless woman as “mother” implies that she is an aspect of an older Mother Earth function.

Pandora’s name also gives insight into her origins. It is generally taken to mean “all-gifted” (pan = Greek “all”, doron = Greek “gift” ) , but it could also be translated as “all-giver”. She was probably a Mother Goddess figure borrowed from some other culture. The Eve-Pandora story is also continued in the Greek myth of Psyche, when a woman who is forbidden to look on her husband does so and must complete difficult tasks to win him back. This story also survives in the Western European folktale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.”

When Christianity replaced the pantheon as the religion of the Roman Empire, it became the predominant religion of Europe. Churches replaced the old temples and the old gods and goddesses were largely abandoned. Roman Catholicism dominated every aspect of life in most of the continent during the Middle Ages and into the Rennaisance, leaving a vacuum of female religious figures. Still, the role of the goddess survived in three forms: Sophia, Mary, and the saints. “Sophia” is the Greek word for wisdom, and in early Christianity a feminine entity called Hagia (holy) Sophia represented God’s wisdom. The most beautiful cathedral of old Byzantium bears this name, and is still known as the Church of Holy Wisdom. The book of Proverbs represents wisdom as a woman. “She cries out…‘The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth…I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” “Happy are those who find wisdom…all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her.” The reference to the Tree of Life is especially important, as it connects her with earlier goddesses.

The Virgin Mary was a much more important figure, mostly developed during the sixth century. The Bible says relatively little about her, yet a multitude of stories and associations sprung up about her. Far more churches, medieval and modern, have been named for her than for any other saint. Entire Masses have been written for her. More people in the world have been named “Mary” – or variants thereof – than any other name. Mary was seen as somewhere between divine and human, above the other saints, yet not a goddess. She was the intermediary between God and the world, and many prayers were addressed to her in hopes that she would put in a good word to God about them.

Many of Mary’s titles were borrowed, consciously or not, from old pagan goddesses. The Greek fertility goddesses Cybele and Gaia were known as “Mother of the Gods.” Athena was defined by her title “virgin.” The Mesopotamian Inanna and the Greek Hera were called “Queen of Heaven.” Inanna was also called “Morning Star.” The Egyptian mother goddess Isis was “Star of the Sea.” Isis was also often represented with her infant son Horus on her lap, acting as a throne.

Mary is a combination of the virgin, queen, and mother goddesses – the Virgin Mother, heaven’s queen. She is important in the Catholic religion as the mother of Christ and she is usually represented enthroned with him on her lap. Still, she is perhaps more important as the perfection of purity. What makes Mary different is that, though she was married and, according to tradition, had children, she was revered for her chastity and her virginity. This is very representative of the medieval mentality, which held that anything pleasurable was bad for the soul. Mary was truly the feminine ideal of the Middle Ages: pious, pure, and humble.

Many lesser saints became replacements for the old pagan goddesses. When converting a new area, it must have eased the transition if people could pray to saints who bore some resemblance to the local deities. One of the patron saints of Ireland, for instance, is Bridget. Bridget was also the name of a Celtic goddess of metalworking and poetry. In almost every pagan religion there are many gods and goddesses, each the patron of an aspect of life. Greek sailors prayed to the sea goddess Isis, women in childbirth to Artemis, soldiers to the warrior god Ares. When Catholicism replaced the pantheon, the system of patron saints evolved. Sailors could now pray to any one of five patron saints of sailing, women in childbirth to one of three, and soldiers to one of eight saints. There are patron saints for everything from near-sightedness to stamp collectors to geese. Many fantastic miracles have been attributed to saints even when there is no documentation of the events and the Church does not acknowledge these miracles. This demonstrates the important role of saints in popular religion.

The concept of the female divine may have survived the conversion of Europe, but today it is even less present in mainstream culture than during the religious fervor of the Middle Ages. Not only is paganism long gone in most areas, but even Christianity is weaker than ever. Notre Dame of Paris is inhabited more by tourists than worshippers hoping for Mary’s intercession and Hagia Sophia is more noted for its architecture than its religious significance.

Many have pointed out that modern women do not have a universal role model in the way previous generations did. The Victorian scholar Henry Adams says in his book The Dynamo and the Virgin that in ancient times, the two feminine role models were Venus and the Virgin. He says that in Europe these traditions remained even after the conversion of the Roman Empire and the Protestant Reformation, but in Protestant America they never became part of the culture. This, according to Adams, creates a psychological dilemma for the American woman, who has no true model of femininity.

Still, the goddesses of old have not completely disappeared. Since the 1960s neo-paganism has become popular as an alternate religion. Many people want to be able to worship both male and female gods through religions like Wicca. In her book The Spiral Dance, Starhawk describes a theology in which nature is honored through the worship of a mother goddess and her consort. In this respect neo-paganism is very like the old agricultural relgions of the Middle East: while the goddess is given many names and images, she remains essentially the Great Goddess. Books such as Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman and Christine Downing’s The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine have been received well by both scholars and people looking for religious experience. Many women find goddesses more accessible, nurturing, and positive figures than a male god. Yet neo-paganism more unisex religion also has many male followers.

Jean Shinoda Bolen’s book Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women is designed as an aid in psychological self-analysis. Bolen uses the Jungian idea of archetypes to categorize women’s personalities based on the archetypes found in the Greek goddesses Artemis, Athena, Hestia, Demeter, Persephone, Hera, and Aphrodite.

Today many places of worship are adapting to accept the idea of God’s being neither male or female – or both. Many modern services omit references to God’s gender; others refer to God as both a male and a female. One argument goes that Adam was created in God’s image and only afterwards was separated into male and female - therefore God must be male and female in one. The popular singer Bobby McFerrin recorded a version of the 23rd psalm in which all the masculine pronouns are turned to feminine ones – “The Lord is my shepherd/ I will not want/ She makes me lie down in green pastures/ She leads me beside still waters/ She restores my soul.”

The Great Goddess of ancient Middle Eastern religion, then, has changed greatly over the millennia. Originally a Paleolithic fertility goddess and a mother earth figure, she was the main deity of many religions. With the rise of more patriarchal society, sky gods became more important and dominated the earth goddesses of Sumerian and Greek myth. The Great Goddess became divided into her many aspects who were defined according to their relationships with gods. Later when Catholicism became the dominant religion of Europe, goddess-worship disappeared completely. Yet remnants of the feminine divine can be found in the Virgin Mary, Sophia, and the female saints. Female religious figures disappeared almost entirely with the Protestant Reformation and in mainstream America there is still no single female role model. Yet neo-pagan goddesses are growing in popularity and many places of worship now acknowledge God as both male and female.