The Ephesian Diana whose many breasts nourish the earth and all living things.
She is the Nature Goddess aspect of the ancient Greek virgin goddess, Diana (Artmenis). The cows in her head dress relate her to a much earlier Nature Goddess, the cow-eared Egyptian Hathor, sometimes in cow form, who was later relegated to a minor status as Isis assumed much of her Nature Goddess role.
Before this there was the Egyptian goddess, Hathor, who before Isis, was the most popular of the goddesses worshiped in many temples across Egypt, and in many forms.
As Hesat, “the creator of all nourishment”, as a pure white cow whose udders flow with milk, and who bears food on her head. She is also closely associate with an earlier cow deity, the divine Mehet-Weret.
When St Paul was busy with the establishment of a formal Christian church, he hardly refers to the teachings of Jesus whose life and teachings had illustrated a philosophy of tolerance, acceptance, love of nature and ... a deep appreciation of the feminine. Jesus often spoke in parables about growing things, grape vines, trees, lilies of the field, fish and so forth, Paul wrote and taught rules and admonitions for Christians and their newly forming churches, excluding women from the developing church hierarchy except in subservient roles, for both women and nature were to serve rather than be partners with men.
I don't blame only Paul for our modern sense of being separate from Nature. It was already implicit in the Jewish religion that he had formerly served so well. Although Jesus often drew the symbolism of his parables from nature, and seemed to have spent most of his short life out in the fields, the hills and the sea, the supremacy of God-the-Father had already eroded the ancient veneration of the feminine as both part of that male God and as living, sentient Nature in the form of nature goddesses. Paul and those after him gave, one could say, the final blows to goddess worship and to understanding of nature as conscious and sacred. In much later times, the so-called age of reason, which emphasised the value of reason, of intellect over intuition, emotion, even experience, finished the job. The disastrous effects of this can be clearly seen in the world today.
Nature is the emanating principle, that through which God expresses Itself in the world, and humankind's awareness of that, or even muffled sense of it is everpresent. Veneration of Nature, therefore, cannot be completely suppressed, for She remains, however we might think of it, the great Mother from whom all life emanates, and new myths of Mother Nature arise to replace those that fade, or old ones, like the archetype of Gaia revived by the environmental movement, are given new life.
Whether it is expressed in goddess form or in our intense love for and devotion to Nature, or in the recognition of God as the manifest in Nature, reverence for Nature is fundamental to a truly spiritual comprehension of self and the world and to any meaningful concept of Oneness of the Divine, or the fundamental Unity of Being .
Gaia, ancient Earth Goddess surrounded by symbols of fertility.
The church and scientists who have taught - and do to this day - that mankind is master of the Earth have simply got it very wrong.
Nature is not only the Great Mother through which all of the world is born and by which it is nurtured and sustained; she is our most perfect, complete expression of the manifested life force, God or Spirit in matter. As an icon of Nature and her power to create and destroy, the Great Goddess, the Mother Goddess, is the other half, the complement, consort, beloved and soulmate of the masculine Logos or Father God.
This divine principle is reflected in the life of Jesus who was baptised in a river and infused there with the Divine Spirit. It is in the life and teachings of the Buddha, who was enlightened beneath a Bodhi tree and called on the Goddess of the Earth to witness his awakening. The Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, father of Taoism, described Nature as the great teacher from which we could learn how to live in harmony with the Tao.
The Essenes, who included Jesus' mother Mary and her family, taught that as human beings in our quest to return to God, we must go through Nature and honour her as our true Mother and our supreme teacher.
From the Essene Book of Peace -
"And Jesus answered: 'Seek not the law in your scriptures, for the law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. I tell you truly, Moses received not his laws from God in writing, but through the living word. The law is living word of living God to living prophets for living men. In everything that is life is the law written. You find it in the grass, in the tree, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves.
...."I tell you truly, that the scripture is the work of man, but life and all its hosts are the work of our God."
For St.Francis of Assisi, a monk committed to the doctrine of a Father God, nature is at least our relative, our brother and sister, of equal value to human beings. In his Hymn of the Creatures, he sings:
"....Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by which Thou upholdest in life all creatures. / Praised be my lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us, and humble and precious and clear. Praised be my Lord for our brother fire ...."
We are not completely lost, though. Nature is once more being seen as a living being to be venerated, honoured, not only by those who love her but even in more enlightened nations, in law:
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/726103
"A growing number of lawsuits and other projects are seeking to have non-human primates and other animals declared legal persons, while in New Zealand a river has been recognized as a person." (Nature as a legal person. https://journals.openedition.org/vertigo/16188?lang=en)
So will the Goddess of the World breathe again, come alive to us, inseparable from our concepts of Self, Being and God.
Dearest Tosca,
I am delighted to find you and recognize our Sacred Sisterhood! Your profile is mine to a T ! (accept the grandmother part) Your writing is beautiful and profound. Your comments on Jean's Goddess workshop page always, always spoke to my heart. I am excited to spend the weekend getting to know you and your writings on a deeper level. My own blog has sat stagnant for quite awhile now but I think that may change in the near future!
Posted by: Kathleen Botsford | 05/27/2016 at 11:41 PM