B. Mary as Earth-Goddess
For ancient people, the earth itself revealed the divine female. Observing the fecundity of the earth, they recognized the same mystery that is repeated by every woman in childbirth.
The similarity is clear: the earth is like a mysterious womb, receiving the seed, nurturing it, and in due time bringing forth the fruit. Thus Earth, capitalized, became personified as the Mother par excellence. This was also the basis of the cosmogonic myth that a sexual union between sky and earth was the primordial cause through which everything was brought into being.[630]Ancient literature amply testifies to the divine awe and respect with which the Earth was treated. Already in Homer, sacrifices, prayers, and oaths were directed to Sun and Earth,[631] Later, more precise statements were made, such as the famous fragment of Xenophanes: “everything comes from earth and everything returns to earth/’[632] Or, Aeschylus who put these words into the mouth of Electra: "... Earth herself, that bringeth all things to birth and having nurtured them receiveth their increase in turn...”[633] The examples could be multiplied,[634] but we must turn to the important point of how the mystery of creation observed in the functioning of Earth was transferred to women. A good starting point may be Plato, who hypothesized that begetting and bringing forth children was not always done as it is today. Originally men did the act of impregnation on earth “like the crickets,” but later Zeus moved their genitals to the front, so that a woman could be impregnated.[635] Here the image of a farmer sowing the seed on his field comes immediately to mind. And so we find that many ancient authors expressed the belief that there was a profound similarity between what the farmer did to earth when he ploughed it and what he did to his wife when he had intercourse with her and impregnated her.
This thought goes back to Sumerian times, as was demonstrated by professor Samuel N. Kramer in his translation of the “sacred marriage” between the god Dumuzi (=Tam- muz) and the goddess Inanna. In this dialogue the queen speaks first:“As for me, my vulva, For me the piled-high hillock, Me— the maid, who will plow it for me? My vulva, the water ground— for me, Me, the Queen, who will station the ox there?” The answer to her question is: “Oh Lordly Lady, the king will plow it for you, Dumuzi, the king, will plow it for you.” Then she joyfully responds: “Plow my vulva, man of my heart.”
They have intercourse, after which vegetation grows all around them.[636] Similarly, in the Greek language the verb ocpoco can mean to plow the field but also to beget children; in the passive voice it can express the idea of being begotten.[637]
Not only is the work of the farmer a sexual ritual, but human intercourse can be viewed as a microcosmic version of earthly fecundity. The sexual act has a “cosmic structure”; in it the primordial act of creation is repeated, and thus it is a constant reminder that the “cosmos is a living organism which renews itself.”[638] This close relationship between the work of the farmer and the activity of the husband has been adopted even into Christian theology. The great Alexandrian, Clemens, explained that the purpose of sexual intercourse is the generation of children just as the farmer’s act of cultivating the earth and sowing the seeds has the end of producing food. The farmer who gives his seed to an animated soil is concerned for the life of the universe, and so is on a much higher level than the simple farmer who produces only perishable food. One cares only for himself, the other cares for God and obeys God, who said: “Be fruitful and multiply!” (Gen.l.28.)[639] Hippolytus preserved a sentence from the followers of the heretic Simon, who justified their promiscuous behavior with this argument: “All earth is earth, and there is no difference where any one sows, provided he does sow.”[640]
The original mother is, of course, Earth, said Plato.
She not only brought forth men but also food for nourishment, and thus it is not “earth that imitates the woman in the matter of conception and birth, but the woman the earth.”[641] And so the poets sang the praises of “Earth, the mother of us all... Well-formed Earth, oldest of all who nourishes all things living on land... On you it depends to give life or take it away from mortal men.”[642] “Divine Earth, mother of men and of the blessed gods, you nourish all, you give all, you bring all to fruition, and you destroy all.”[643] In Athens there was a sanctuary to Earth “surnamed Olympian”[644] and an image of Earth “beseeching Zeus to rain upon her.”[645] For the Athenians, the concept of “mother” was identical with “Earth,”[646] and this concept shines through in Latin literature, too. The fragment of Xenophanes, quoted above, appears in Latin in a fragment of Ennius.[647] Lucretius wrote that “Earth has won the name of Mother, since from earth have all things sprung.”[648] Many times we read about the important role the Romans assigned to Earth in marriage relations and the birth of children. At the wedding of Aeneas and Dido “Primal Earth and Nuptial Juno” gave the sign, and later we read that “Mother Earth was provoked to anger.”[649] Newborn children were placed on the earth, from which the father picked them up in the presence of the goddess Levana, acknowledging the child as his own.[650] Consequently, in Italy little children who died were not cremated, but buried: it was believed that they still belonged to their “mother.”[651]Now, the best fertile soil is black in color and the blacker it is the more suited it is for agriculture. And so we hear that the Greek corn- goddess, Demeter, whose name already in ancient times was derived from Ge-meter = Earth mother, was in historical times still worshipped in Arcadia as an ancient earth-goddess.
Pausanias knew that in Phygaleia, in Arcadia, there was a statue of the Black Demeter Me^aiva) which was eventuallyconsumed by fire. He also says that a statue worshipped by the Phygaleans in a cave was dressed in black, because that is how the goddess mourned for her lost daughter.[652] Aristotle quotes a poem by Solon in which he says: “... before the judgment-seat of Time, the mighty mother of the Olympian gods, Black earth, would best bear witness... ”[653] Several other goddesses were pictured as black, among them the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus, Isis, Ceres, and others. The meteorite stone at Pessinus, belonging to the Great Mother Cybele, was also black, which indicates that all these goddesses represented telluric fecundity and were worshipped as fertility goddesses.
In Christian tradition the role of earth as genetrix was based on Genesis 2.7: God formed the first man, Adam, from the earth. In Genesis 3:19 it is said that that is where men will again return: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Although there is no indication in the Bible of any worship of earth, the idea of “Mother Earth” is there. It appears in texts like Job 1:21: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return...,” or Isaiah 62.3-5, where the fruitful land is compared to a married woman. “Returning to dust” is a common expression of death[654] and the eschatological resurrection is described as coming back from the earth.[655] In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses the imagery of a farmer sowing seeds when he develops his thesis of the resurrection, and that, of course, is the classic text, used even today in Christian funeral services. On such occasions the idea of earthmother sometimes still shines through. In the funeral oration of his father, Gregory Nazianzen said, “Life...takes its rise from the corruption which is our mother...”[656] When the apostle John prepared to die, according to an apocryphal story, he stood in his grave and told his followers to “throw my mother earth upon me and cover me up.”[657]
The concept of earth as genetrix gained importance when the first Christian theologians established a parallelism between the primeval creation and the new creation brought about by Christ.
Adam was made from earth without a father, and Jesus Christ, conceived without father, was born from Mary “as yet virgin.”[658] In this text, Irenaeus already thought of Mary as representing earth. He was careful to emphasize her virginity at the time of conception because only so is the parallelism perfect. Thus in the Martyrdom of S. Andrew we read: “Since the first man, who brought death into the world through the transgression of the tree, had been produced from the spotless earth, it was necessary that the Son of God should be begotten a perfect man from the spotless virgin...”[659] Later, S. Ambrose spelled it out: ex terra virgine Adam, Christus ex virgine.[660] So Mary is presented as the virgin soil into which the creative word of God fell at the Annunciation when, through the Word, the conception of Jesus took place. Observe the parallelism: God created by his word both times. Earth brings forth when it is cultivated, woman conceives when her body is “cultivated” by a male. But it was not so in the case of the Virgin Mary; she was the “terra non arabilis quae fructum parterit, ”[661] i.e., she conceived without her body being “violated” by a male. For Christians who thought in terms of a “first” and “second” creation, Mary more and more emerged as the sublime female, the earth-goddess who gives life. But, incorporated into the Christian history of salvation, Mary is thought of not as just another earthgoddess, but as an integral part of a “new creation” made by God. In the divine act of generation she is Earth with whom Heaven unites and thus she is the female component of the divine. But she is also a part of created humanity, representing earthbound mankind in its relation to heaven, her Son and God’s Son is the first person of the new humanity. Thus the earth-goddess became a thoroughly Christian figure; Mary is not Cybele or Isis, she is the Mother of God, Jesus.In addition to Cybele, the Great Mother, there were many other divine females whose worshippers could transfer their devotion to Mary when they came to identify themselves with the new faith.
Statues and statuettes of pagan goddesses, some of them holding a child, are very close to, one could say identical with, representations of Mary and the child Jesus. A Celtic votive statue, reprinted by Jacques Huynen,[662] is very similar to the statue of the venerated Virgin of Marsat, reprinted on the opposite page in Huynen’s book. It is well known that the iconography of Isis and Horus was basically adopted by Christians when they started to portray Mary and Jesus as Mother and Child.[663] It is entirely possible that in some cases pagan statues may have been “baptized” and rededicated as objects of veneration of Mary. It is a well known fact that sanctuaries dedicated to Mary were often built on sites that were originally used for the veneration of pagan goddesses. The same development could have happened in regard to statues, particularly when the statue of the Virgin is black in color. Shrines of earthgoddesses were scattered all over Europe, as are venerated statues of the “Black Madonna,” which can be found in great numbers from Great Britain to Hungary and Poland. In none of them with which I am familiar can negroid features be detected; therefore, they are not black because of their race. In some cases the material from which they are made is black; in other cases, it is claimed that accumulated dirt and soot may account for their color. This explanation, usually given by Roman Catholic scholars,[664] does not explain why the whole body of the statue turned black, even under the clothing, and not just the face and hands. And what about those to which none of these arguments apply? One answer lies at hand: they are black because they represent earth, the mother of all. That Christians could so easily think of Mary as black should not be surprising. Not only was the relationship between Mary and the virgin earth long established, from quite early the Song of Songs was interpreted in the church in a Marian way. This love song was explained as referring to the relationship between Christ and the church, his bride; since the church was identified with Mary, the song could be also be applied to the love of God and Mary; and the female lover in the Song of Songs is black: “I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jeruselem.”[665]Thus nothing stands in the way of seeing in the veneration of the Black Madonnas a continuation of the popular piety with which the great mystery of earth was honored. In some areas of Europe the roots of this piety, such as that of the Celts,[666] may go back to pre-Roman times. It may have been Artemis or Isis who inspired the cult. In Tindari, Sicily, the Madonna Nera is in a church erected on the site of a former sanctuary of Cybele.[667] Lyons, France, was also a city of Cybele where a huge temple was built in her honor, only to be replaced later by a Christian church in which the black virgin is venerated; it is assumed to be the replica of an ancient image.[668] In Italy, Monte Vergine near Naples was in Roman times a place of pilgrimage for worshippers of Cybele. Here again her sanctuary was transformed into a church. Many stones from the pagan structure were used to build the new one in which the Madonna Bruna (brown Madonna) is now honored.[669] In Marseilles, which was formerly the Greek colony of Massilia, the most popular goddess was Artemis, whom the Phocaeans, founders of Massilia, brought from Ephesus. The statue of Artemis from Ephesus is black, and so is the Virgin venerated in the Notre Dame de la Confession.[670] In Paris, a center of the worship of Isis, a black statue of Isis was actually venerated as the Virgin until the sixteenth century.[671] The French sometimes affectionately call Mary “la Bonne Mère,” the good mother, which was the name of an obscure Roman goddess, Bona Dea, who was worshipped exclusively by women in secret nocturnal ceremonies.[672] It was probably that version of the Great Mother which the Hungarians brought from Asia, and which, re-interpreted as Mary, is still included in the church calendar there under its ancient name. The two feast days assigned to this celebration, called the “Greater” and “Lesser,”[673] are the most popular Marian holidays in Hungary. But regardless of place or origin, it was the desire to worship the mother goddess that eventually restored these images, in which people found expressed reverence for the fertility of the earth, for childbirth, and for the feminine aspect of God. The same idea was transplanted to the new world. Soon after the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, the native mother of life in Guadelupe was replaced by the Virgin Mary. Her image, dark like that of an Indian, is said to have been imprinted miraculously on the mantle of an Indian convert.[674]
There are more than four hundred Black Madonnas all over the world. Not all of them are native creations. Some of the most famous are attributed to the workmanship of St. Luke and are believed to have been brought to Europe one way or another. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa was, according to tradition, painted by St. Luke on a table made by Jesus and discovered by St. Helena, Mother of Constantine. Other Madonnas also claim such distinguished origins, and pious tradition keeps alive the faith that many of them were brought back by the crusaders when they returned from the Holy Land. Yet the origin of the cult of the Black Virgin is shrouded in mystery. It began to flower during the Middle Ages, but clearly it was there much before. Many attempts were made to account for the origin of the cult: it was connected with medieval initiation rites, spiritual traditions, even the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. Historical methods, psychological techniques, even astrology have been used to explain the phenomenon. Yet the solution seems to be simple: the Black Madonna is the ancient earth-goddess converted to Christianity.[675]
Earth, however, is not only the source of fertility and new life. It is also an agent of death. Franz Altheim and Albrecht Dieterich collected much material demonstrating that in Greek and Roman religion the cult of the earth also included the cult of the dead.[676] We have seen above how often Greeks and Romans expressed the idea that “everything comes from earth and everything returns to it.” This is ultimately what lies behind the saying of Paul, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”[677] Terra Mater controls the fate of seeds and of the dead; she is the great womb in which seeds grow and in which the dead wait for the renewal of their life. In ancient Greece not only the harvested seeds were placed in earthen jars, but also the bodies of the dead. In many ancient cults, rites for the dead and rites for fertility coincided.[678] For these are the two overwhelmingly important issues of human existence: birth and death, the beginning and the end of life, which the earth goddess unites in herself. She is indeed the “Great Mother” and that is why the pious pray to the Madonna in the “Hail Mary”: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”