Vertical Dualism of Mother Earth and Father Sky (Mythology Synchroblog 3)
2 Comments May 1, 2008 at 7:15 am by mahud
This post is one of many in the third Mythology Synchroblog (View the list of other bloggers below)
…the primordial image of Mother Earth…is found throughout the world in countless forms and variants. It is the Terra Mater or Tellus Mater so familiar to Mediterranean religions, who gives birth to all beings.
…In some religions Mother Earth is imagined as capable of conceiving alone, without the assistance of a coadjutor. Traces of such archaic ideas are still found in the myths of partenogenesis of Mediterranean goddesses. According to Hesiod, Gaia (= Earth) gave birth to Ouranos “a being equal to herself, able to cover her completely” (Theogony, 126 f.)…. This is a mythical expression of the self-sufficiency and fecundity of Mother Earth.
…In other religions the cosmic creation, or at least its completion, is the result of a hierogamy between the Sky-God and Mother Earth. This cosmogonic myth is quite widely disseminated. It is found especially in Oceania—from Indonesia to Micronesia—but it also occurs in Asia, Africa, and the two Americas.
Eliade, Mircea, 1959 (1987), ‘The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion‘, p.139;134;135 (Harcourt Brace & Co.)
While both earth and sky surely created equally powerful religious impressions upon the human mind in many ways from prehistoric times, it seems natural to assume that the recognition of the earth as Mother preceded that of the Father as Sky. While the symbolic relationship between Mother and Earth is obvious (in the seasonal cycle of birth and growth), the symbolic relationship between Fatherhood and Sky doesn’t appear to be based on phenomenal reality, and may well be merely an subsequent and inevitable extension of the image of the earth as Mother, in a cosmogonic hieros gamos. In this way Father Sky became a mirror image of Mother Earth, rather than a reflection of fatherhood. Interpreted through supernatural revelation as a mystery of mysteries from a reality unseen, rather than the natural revelation of the mysteries that give rise to the life generating forces of the natural world, as epitomized by Mother Earth.
Father Sky as a mirror to Mother Earth is apparent in at least one respect, in the myths and rituals that transfer the act of childbirth into the invisible realm of the Sky God. In Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, he recounts an initiation rite of the Central Australian Aranda, where boys between the ages of 10 and 12 are separated from their mothers and are told they are no longer free to associate with the women and girls in the tribe. From then on (and when the ordeals of the initiation are complete) they are to “join the men and hunt the kangaroo.” (p.89). Before being taken away and reborn into manhood the men of the tribe sing:
“May he reach to the stomach of the sky, may he grow up to the stomach of the sky, may he go right into the stomach of the sky.”
Campbell, Joseph, 1959 (1969), ‘The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology‘, p.88 (Viking Press)
Campbell adds, “in this simple rite…
…it is apparent that the image of birth has been transferred from the mother to the sky… A woman gave birth to the boy’s temporal body, but the men will now bring him to spiritual birth.
Campbell, Joseph, 1959 (1969), ‘ibid‘, p.89 (Viking Press)
Comparatively, in Greek mythology there are also the mythologies of Dionysus Zagreus, the child of Zeus and Persephone, and heir to the throne of heavenly Olympus, who was torn apart by the Titans and again reborn in his father’s thigh. And in another myth, the mortal princess Semele, the lover of Zeus and their child (again) Dionysus:
Hera, Zeus’ wife, jealous of the affair, caused Semele to question her lover’s divinity, who then forced Zeus to fully reveal his destructive Godhead, which, in the form of a thunderbolt (akin to the solar force of transcendent reality), reduced Semele to ashes. The child Dionysus — prematurely born in the very moment of his mother’s destruction, exposed, as she was, to the indestructible wrath-bliss, — was, it seems, caught within the temporal threshold of simultaneous birth and death…. …Dionysus was then snatched up and sown inside his father’s thigh (perhaps a euphemism for penis), to be born a second time, in the heavenly realm of the Sky-God….
Dionysus and Jesus and the Simultaneous Cosmic Destruction-Creation (Between Old and New Moons)
The motif of rebirth via the Father is also apparent in the myth of Kronos who devours his children (the Olympian gods) immediately after his wife Rhea (associated with Gaia) had given them birth. Sometime afterward Kronos is forced to regurgitate the Olympians, who are reborn whole (via the mouth).
In the Hurrian version of the Hesiod’s myth of Kronos’ castration with an adamantine sickle, the god Kumarbi (who in the Greek version is Kronos), bites off the genitals of the god Anu (The supreme God of Heaven originally from Mesopotamia), and subsequently becomes pregnant with five gods. It is after Kumarbi gives birth to his children he attempts to devour them, but fails.
A problem with a vertical dualism of Father Sky above and Mother Earth below, is that the Role of the Great Mother can become subordinate to that of the Heavenly Father. An example could be the Taoist conception of the cosmos as the heavenly yang, which is masculine, and the earthly yin, which is feminine, which gave rise to the belief that the heavenly-yang-masculine principle is superior to the inferior earthly-yin-feminine principle, otherwise understood as interacting opposites that exist in a dynamic state of macro and microcosmic equality:
…it would have to be admitted that yang generally appears to be superior to yin. The precedence of yang over yin is partially solved by Robinet, who wrote, “seen horizontally as two complementary poles in human life, they are clearly equals; if aligned vertically, Yang is always upper and dominates Yin….”
Fowler, Jeaneane, 2005, ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism: Pathways to Immortality‘, p.74 (Sussex Academic Press)
Although the above author goes on to say that even when the cosmic duality of yin and yang when viewed “horizontally,” (in the realm of Human: A mixture of heaven/yang and earth/yin), yang and yin still retain, respectively, superior and inferior associations. Yung Sik Kim in The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi (or Zhu Xi: Confucian scholar), Writes, “…some yin-yang associations suggest an obvious supremacy of yang over yin. What was good, great, virtuous, lucky, and noble, for example, was associated with yang, whereas what was bad, small, evil, unlucky, and humble was classified as yin (2000, p.53). Also, in family relationships the husband and father is seen as superior (yang) to both his children and wife (who is yin ‘inferior’ in relation with her husband, but yang ’superior’ in relation to her children).
Despite the continual insistence of the Biblical scriptures to the contrary*, as a Christian I understood God to contain both male and female aspects and also transcend them. I wasn’t being unique or anything, as Christians acknowledge that God created both male and female in his image (Genesis 1:27). I understood that ‘Father,’ ultimately went beyond the limitations of gender and that a human Father was simply a “copy or shadow” of the heavenly reality. The reality is that although the Bible contains hints of sexual equality, its writers (and many readers, even today) were certainly partially blinded by patriarchal religious values (enshrined in the Old Testament) and couldn’t completely overcome them. The closest to Bible comes to a hieros gamos is the relationship between God/Christ and the Church (the Bride of Christ). But what about the Goddess? Why was God never scripturally revealed in feminine terms? I really don’t remember asking those questions until I began studying mythology.
What distinguishes the witness of the prophets and the apostles, so that it can have this significance for the existence of the congregation and its proclamation to the world? After all, they were men fallible as we are, children of their time as we are of ours, and their spiritual horizon was as limited as ours—in significant ways, even more limited than ours. Whoever enjoys that sort of thing can again and again demonstrate that their natural science, conception of the world, and also to a great extent their morality cannot be binding for us. They told all sorts of sagas and legends and at least made free use of all kinds of mythological material. In many things they said—and in some important propositions—they contradicted each other. With few exceptions they were not remarkable theologians.
Barth, Karl, 1964 (2006), ‘God Here and Now‘, p.59
- * God is continually addressed as lord (Heb: Adonai), and his name, YHWH (Tetragrammaton), is also translated as LORD (between 6000-7000 times) throughout the Old Testament. God’s relationship with King David is that of a Father and Son in Psalm 2:7, and the Messianic theme is repeated with Jesus (the Son) in the New Testament (Hebrews 1:5), who continually refers to God as the/his Father (‘Father’ in the Sermon on the Mount, John’s Gospel 1:18-10:15, 10:17-16:10, 16: 15-32). The rest of the New Testament, including the Letters of Paul (Gal-Col; 1 Thes-Phile), repeats the pattern.
Who’s Participating…
- Is duality really a figment of your imagination? (Dream Builders)
- Duality and Beyond (Quaker Pagan Reflections)
- Duality - Love With Its Back Turned (Aquila ka Hecate)
- Seeing Number 11 and Symbolic Duality (Symbolic Meanings)
- On What Are These Things Woven Back And Forth?: Thoughts on Duality (ReligionThink)
- Jewish Duality vs. Dualism (Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism)
- ARCHETYPES Part 2: Archetypes in Duality (When Isis Rises)
- Maybe: Pagan Thoughts on the Limits & Uses of Duality (FULL CIRCLE * Earthwise News & Notes)
- The Dual (Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess)
If I’ve missed your post let me know. I’ll add more as I find them 
Some Previous Mythology Synchroblogging
It is said that when the Primal Pair had finished animating all things, they pulled a feather from a bald eagle, and blowing upon it, set it in motion. Everything in creation, like the eagle feather, is in constant motion, and depends upon Holy Air for its existence. Without Air nothing would be possible. As language animates the landscape through speech, so also speech is animated through the invisible and all surrounding power of Air.
Chanting the Landscape (Theme: Landscapes)
The Greeks identified Cybele with Rhea, the mother of the Olympian Gods. Cybele was known as the mother of both the Gods Meter theon and Men. Among many other epithets she was also known as ‘Mountain Mother’ Meter oreie and ‘Idaean Mother,’ pointing back to her origins in Asia Minor. In the Homeric Hymn (14) To the Mother of the Gods, it is said that she enjoys hearing the sound of rattles and tympanums and the mountains and forest valleys echo with the roaring of lions and the crying of wolves.
The Great Mother from Asia Minor to Rome (Theme: Motherhood)