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Goddess

feminine or female deity

A Goddess is a female deity. In some cultures Goddesses are primarily associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household, in others they also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing. In some religions, a sacred feminine archetype can occupy a very central place in prayer and worship. In Hinduism, reverence of the Sacred Feminine or Shaktism is a major current of worship along with that of Vishnu and Shiva. In Tibetan Buddhism, the highest achievement any person can achieve is to become like the great female Buddhas who are depicted as being supreme protectors, fearless and filled with compassion for all beings. Some currents of Neopaganism, in particular Wicca, have a bitheistic concept of a single Goddess and a single God, who in hieros gamos represent a united whole, transcending all gender and such appearances as can be discerned by mortal minds. Kundalini energy has been represented as either a goddess or sleeping serpent lying "coiled" at the base of the spine waiting to be awakened.

The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts — Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be. ~ Starhawk
Our Substance is our Father, God Almighty, and our Substance is our Mother, God, All-wisdom; and our Substance is in our Lord the Holy Ghost, God All-goodness. ~ Julian of Norwich
The goddess awakens in infinite forms and a thousand disguises. She is found where she is least expected, appears out of nowhere and everywhere to illumine the open heart. ~ Starhawk

Quotes

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I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned. ~ P. L. Travers
 
"Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." ~ Robert Anton Wilson
 
And the hunters as they advance will hymn Artemis Agrotera (Goddess of the Hunt); for yonder is a temple to her, and a statue worn smooth with age, and heads of boars and bears; and wild animals sacred to her graze there, fawns and wolves and hares, all tame and without fear of man. After a prayer the hunters continue the hunt. ~ Philostratus the Elder
  • I am a goddess, Peter, a creature of temperament and whimsy. I'm supposed to be arbitrary and mercurial—it's practically my job description.
  • Mistress maiden (despoina nymphê), ruler of the stormy mountains.
    • Aeschylus, Fragment 188 from Orion, Etymologicum (Greek tragedy 5th century BC)
  • There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock....
    • Sri Aurobindo, in a statement of 16 April 1907, as published in India's Rebirth : A Selection from Sri Aurobindo's Writings, Talks and Speeches 3rd Edition (2000)
  • I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.
    • Arthur C. Clarke, as quoted in Multiple Intelligences in Practice : Enhancing Self-esteem and Learning in the Classroom (2006) by Mike Fleetham, Section 2 : Using MI
  • Leto's daughter Artemis, goddess of the wilds.
    • Colluthus, Rape of Helen 14 (trans. Mair) (Greek poetry 5-6th century A.D.)
  • Jehovah, it seems clear, was once regarded as a devoted son the the Great Goddess, who obeyed her in all things and by her favor swallowed up a number of variously named rival gods and godlings — the Terebinth-god, the Thunder-god, the Pomegranate-god, the Bull-god, the Goat-god, the Antelope-god, the Calf-god, the Porpoise-god, the Ram-god, the Ass-god, the Barley-god, the god of Healing, the Moon-god, the god of the Dog-star, the Sun-god. Later (if it is permitted to write in this style) he did exactly what his Roman counterpart, Capitoline Jove, has done: he formed a supernal Trinity in conjunction with two of the Goddess's three persons, namely, Anatha of the Lions and Ashima of the Doves, the counterparts of Juno and Minerva; the remaining person, a sort of Hecate named Sheol, retiring to rule the infernal regions.
  • Artemis of the wilderness (agrotera), lady of wild beasts (potnia theron) ... Zeus has made you a lion among women... you hunt down the ravening beasts in the mountains and deer of the wilds.
  • Over the shadowy hills and windy peaks Artemis draws her golden bow, rejoicing in the chase...and when she is satisfied and has cheered her heart, then the huntress (theroskopos) who delights in arrows (iokheaira) slackens her supple bow.
  • I saw that God rejoiceth that He is our Father, and God rejoiceth that He is our Mother, and God rejoiceth that He is our Very Spouse and our soul is His loved Wife. And Christ rejoiceth that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoiceth that He is our Saviour. These are five high joys, as I understand, in which He willeth that we enjoy; Him praising, Him thanking, Him loving, Him endlessly blessing.
  • As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother; and that shewed He in all, and especially in these sweet words where He saith: I IT AM. That is to say, I IT AM, the Might and the Goodness of the Fatherhood; I IT AM, the Wisdom of the Motherhood; I IT AM, the Light and the Grace that is all blessed Love: I IT AM, the Trinity, I IT AM, the Unity: I am the sovereign Goodness of all manner of things. I am that maketh thee to love: I am that maketh thee to long: I IT AM, the endless fulfilling of all true desires.
  • And the hunters as they advance will hymn Artemis Agrotera (Goddess of the Hunt); for yonder is a temple to her, and a statue worn smooth with age, and heads of boars and bears; and wild animals sacred to her graze there, fawns and wolves and hares, all tame and without fear of man. After a prayer the hunters continue the hunt.
  • Neumann assumes for the whole region of the Mediterranean a universally adopted religion of the Great Mother Goddess around 4000 BC, which was revived about 2000 BC, and spread through the whole of the then known world. In this religion the Great Goddess was worshiped as creator, as Lady of men, beasts and plants, as liberator and as symbol of transcendent spiritual transformation. The Indus civilization also belonged to that tradition in which the cult of the Great Goddess was prominent. Numerous terracotta figurines have been found: images of the Mother Goddess of the same kind that are still worshiped in Indian villages today. Several representations on seals that appear connected with the worship of the Great Goddess also exist. On one of these we see a nude female figure lying upside down with outspread legs, a plant issuing from her womb. On the reverse there is a man with a sickle-shaped knife before a woman who raises her arms in supplication. “Obviously it depicts a human sacrifice to the Earth Goddess.” The connections between !"ktism, Mohenjo-Daro civilization, and Mediterranean fertility cults seem to be preserved even in the name of the Great Mother: “Um" for her peculiar name, her association with a mountain and her mount, a lion, seems to be originally the same as the Babylonian Ummu or Umma, the Arcadian Ummi, the Dravidian Umma, and the Skythian Ommo, which are all mother goddesses. The name Durg" seems to be traceable to Truqas, a deity mentioned in the Lydian inscriptions of Asia Minor. There is a common mythology of Great Mother: she was the first being in existence, a Virgin. Spontaneously she conceived a son, who became her consort in divinity. With her son-consort she became the mother of the gods and all life. Therefore we find the Goddess being worshiped both as Virgin and Mother”(2000:188-189). quoted from Kazanas, N. (2015). Vedic and IndoEuropean studies. Aditya Prakashan.
    • Klostermaier K. 2000 Hinduism Oxford, Oneworld Publications.quoted from Kazanas, N. (2015). Vedic and IndoEuropean studies. Aditya Prakashan.
  • The later patriarchal religions and mythologies have accustomed us to look upon the male god as a creator… But the original, overlaid stratum knows of a female creative being.
    • (Newmann 1955, quoted by Klostermaier 2000: 188). Klostermaier K. 2000 Hinduism Oxford, Oneworld Publications. quoted from Kazanas, N. (2015). Vedic and IndoEuropean studies. Aditya Prakashan.
  • The kind of connectedness women's spirituality and goddess spirituality teaches about the earth is missing in politics today and the people who are guiding our countries see only nature as a resource for industrial growth. They don't see the sacredness and the interconnectedness and the simple fact that we live on a finite planet.
  • The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts — Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be.
    • Starhawk, as quoted in Womanspirit Rising : A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979) by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow
  • In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control. Understanding this keeps us humble, able to admit that we cannot know or control or define everything.
    • Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
  • The goddess awakens in infinite forms and a thousand disguises. She is found where she is least expected, appears out of nowhere and everywhere to illumine the open heart. She is singing, crying, moaning, wailing, shrieking, crooning to us, to be awake, to commit ourselves to life, to be a lover in the world and of the world, to join our voices in the single song of constant change and creation. For her law is to love all beings, and she is the cup of the drink of life. The circle is ever open, ever unbroken.
  • Ritual is more than self-soothing activity.
    Spirituality is also about challenge and disturbance, about pushing our edges and giving us the support we need to take great risks. The Goddess is not just a light, happy maiden or a nurturing mother. She is death as well as birth, dark as well as light, rage as well as compassion — and if we shy away from her fiercer embrace we undercut both her own power and our own growth.
  • GOD IS COMING, AND IS SHE PISSED!
    • Anonymous bumper sticker as quoted in My First Saturnalia (1981) by Michael Rumaker, p. 3
    • GOD IS COMING, AND BOY IS SHE PISSED!
      • Variant bumper sticker as quoted in River Angel: A Novel (1999) by A. Manette Ansay, p. 107
  • I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
    I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
  • "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.
  • In its formative years, notably the 1970s and 1980s, the Goddess movement exhibited a range of attitudes towards female deity. As Carol Christ summarized in a threefold typology, members of the movement might hold to any of the following views:
(1) the Goddess is divine female, a personification who can be invoked in prayer and ritual;
(2) the Goddess is symbol of the life, death and rebirth energy in nature and culture, in personal and communal life;
(3) the Goddess is symbol of the affirmation of the legitimacy and beauty of female power (made possible by the new becoming of women in the women’s liberation movement).[1]
These perspectives could be elaborated and combined in various ways without disagreements or internal tensions surfacing. Thus, deity could be experienced, evoked and ritualized as single (the Great Goddess, the Mother Goddess), as triple (Maiden, Mother, Crone) and/or through culturally, religiously and mythically diverse individual goddesses (Athena, Cerridwen, Isis, Hecate, Kali, Tara and others).
  • The valley spirit never dies—it is called “the mysterious female”;
The gate of the mysterious female is called “the root of heaven and earth.”
Gossamer it is, seemingly insubstantial, yet never consumed through use.
  • I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and scorned.
I am the whore and holy.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and daughter.
I am the members [limbs] of my mother
and the barren one with many sons.
I have had a grand wedding
and have not found a husband.
I am a midwife and do not give birth.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am bride and groom,
and my husband produced me.
I am the mother of my father
and sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.

See also

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Wiktionary
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  1. ↑ C. Christ, 'Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections' in C. Christ and J. Plaskow, (eds.), Woman-spirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco 1992, 278.
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