246
The Testimony, June 2004
Mary the mother goddess
Tony Benson
F
ROM THE earliest times pagan religion has
involved the worship of a great mother goddess. We meet her in the Bible on many
occasions as part of the false worship of the nations around Israel, and as part of the false worship which the Israelites themselves all too often
followed to their condemnation.
The mother goddess appears in the Old Testament in the following designations:
Ashtaroth/Ashtoreth/Astaroth. This name occurs
nine times in the Old Testament as the name
of a mother goddess widely worshipped
amongst the Canaanites and other nations.
Other forms of the name are Astarte in Phoenician texts and Ishtar in Mesopotamian texts.
It is from the name of this goddess that we
get the word ‘Easter’.
Asherah. This is the name specifically of a Canaanite mother goddess. It occurs forty times
in the Old Testament, and is always translated ‘grove’ in the AV. This may well be
because most occurrences of the word seem
to refer to an image of this goddess rather
than to the goddess herself.
Queen of heaven. This phrase occurs only in
Jeremiah (7:18; 44:17-19,25) and appears to
be another designation for Ashtaroth.
In the New Testament we have Diana of the
Ephesians mentioned in just one passage (Acts
19:27-41). The reference is rather misleading,
however, since the Greek is ‘Artemis’, whose
Roman equivalent was Diana. However, Artemis
was the goddess of hunting and depicted as a
virgin, and it seems that Ephesus was the centre
of the cult of an Asia Minor mother goddess, the
worship of which seems to have been (rather
confusingly) merged with that of Artemis/Diana.
The above is merely a very simple outline of
the facts as they relate to Scripture. There are
many version of the great mother goddess figure in ancient religions, sometimes rather confusing, as with Artemis/Diana. A mother
goddess figure is worshipped today by some in
the Western world, though sometimes rather
secretively, often under the name Gaia.
The mother goddess is effectively worshipped
today also in the guise of the Virgin Mary. It is a
far cry from the simplicity of the Apostolic
Church of the New Testament, in which Mary
Diana of the Ephesians
has no special status, to the present position in
which Mary has been exalted to a divine status
which is quite unwarranted from Scripture. How
did this come about, and why? It came about
because pagan beliefs about the great mother
goddess were introduced into the Church as part
of a wide-scale importing of pagan beliefs and
practices. How it came about is for further consideration in this article.
The return of the goddess
Much of the material for this article has been
taken from a book entitled The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image.1 The joint authors’
basic theory is that the worship of the mother
goddess was the original religion, but that this
worship got pushed into the background by what
they term ‘Judaeo-Christianity’. This theory does
not, of course, accord with what we believe from
1.
Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, Book Clubs Associates, 1991.
247
The Testimony, June 2004
the Bible, namely, that the worship of the one
true God was corrupted, resulting in a belief in a
multitude of deities, among which was the great
mother goddess in her various forms. However,
what they say regarding the worship of the Virgin Mary as the great mother goddess is of interest to us.
Significantly, chapter 14 of the book is entitled, “Mary: The return of the goddess”. In it we
read:
“Mary is the unrecognized Mother Goddess
of the Christian tradition. Apart from the first
chapter of Luke, where she holds the centre
of the stage in the story of the Annunciation,
Mary appears very infrequently in the Gospels, and then she plays a completely subordinate role to her son. Yet within 500 years of
her ‘death’ a pantheon of images enveloped
her until she assumed the presence and stature of all the goddesses before her—Cybele,
Aphrodite, Demeter, Astarte, Isis, Hathor,
Inanna and Ishtar”.2
The authors quote another writer as saying: “And
so it came to pass that, in the end and to our day,
Mary, Queen of Martyrs, became the sole inheritor of all the names and forms, sorrows, joys,
and consolations of the goddess-mother in the
Western World”.3
After Constantine adopted Christianity in the
fourth century A.D. many pagan ideas and customs were adopted by the already doctrinally
corrupt church. Among them was the worship
of the Virgin Mary, who became acknowledged
by many as Theotokos, which means ‘Mother of
God’ or ‘God-bearer’. This, to us, shockingly blasphemous title for a human being would not have
been strange to those recently coming from paganism, where the idea of deities emerging from
human mothers was not unusual.
Worship of the Virgin Mary was in fact the
subject of some dispute in the Church, being
rejected by Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Syrian bishops, but accepted by
Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria. A council of
Church leaders was called at Ephesus in A.D.
431, with Cyril as president. Cyril and his supporters got there early, declared the Council open
before Nestorius and his supporters arrived, excommunicated Nestorius, and declared Mary to
be Theotokos, making it the official doctrine of
the Church. (Such skulduggery was all too typical of the church councils of those times, councils that approved some of the basic doctrines
held by mainstream churches today. One won-
ders how adherents to these doctrines today can
justify them, bearing in mind their dubious origin, quite apart from their unScriptural nature.)
It is significant that it was at Ephesus that
Mary was given the title Theotokos, bearing in
mind that Ephesus was the centre of worship of
the great mother goddess Artemis. Her worship
had been banned in 380 by the Emperor Theodosius, and here it was coming back in another
form.
Development of the cult
Once the worship of Mary became accepted by
the Church, her image was frequently represented in ways reminiscent of the great mother
goddess in all her forms. Baring and Cashford
comment: “It [took] less than a century for Mary
to take over the role of Isis, Cybele and Diana,
the remaining goddesses, whose cults had dwindled with the decline of the Roman Empire and
were, in any case, often suppressed, with their
temples closed and their teachers and priests
banished”.4 They bring out some remarkable facts
to show the development of the cult. For example, in a one-hundred-year period in France during the Middle Ages, eighty cathedrals were
dedicated to Mary, and between 1928 and 1971
there were 210 reported visions of Mary.
The following are some of the ways in which
the Virgin Mary has been depicted over the centuries, as identified by Baring and Cashford:
The Great Mother. This is illustrated by the
statue of Mary at Ravensburg in Germany
dating to about 1480. It depicts Mary gathering people in the folds of her cloak like children with their mother.
The Protectress of Sailors. Mary is depicted in a
ship, taking on the role of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
The Spinner of Destiny. Mary is sometimes depicted as spinning thread, picking up the imagery of pagan goddesses who spin and
weave the destiny of men and women.
The Earth Goddess. Mary is depicted on a bed
of corn, or surrounded by sheaves, or with
a tree of life, images of the old pagan goddesses and their perceived role as bringers of
fertility.
2.
3.
4.
pp. 547-8.
Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology, p. 45. Cited
by Baring and Cashford, p. 549.
Op. cit., p. 551.
248
The Testimony, June 2004
“Mother of the Church”—one of the many titles
of Mary. Source: Bible Magazine
Goddess of the Animals. Here Mary is depicted
surrounded by animals, especially lions, as
pagan goddesses often were.
The Black Virgin. Mary is often depicted in black
wood and with black robes, as pagan goddesses were, including, significantly, Artemis
(Diana) of Ephesus.
New beliefs about the Virgin Mary developed
in the Church over the years. The following new
doctrines emerged:
Perpetual Virginity. The Council of Chalcedony
in 451 declared that Mary remained a virgin,
despite the fact that the natural way of read-
ing the Gospels is that after the birth of Jesus
Mary had normal marital relations with Joseph and had a number of children by him
(Mt. 1:25; 13:55,56). These children then had
to be explained as the children of Joseph by a
previous marriage.
The Dormition. This means ‘falling asleep’, and
refers to the idea that Mary did not die but
merely fell into a literal sleep. In 600 the Feast
of the Dormition was established to celebrate
this on 15 August each year.
The Immaculate Conception. In the twelfth century the idea began to develop that Mary
herself was miraculously conceived in her
mother’s womb. This doctrine was officially
adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in
1854. The purpose of this was to remove Mary
from all association with sin. It became accepted that Mary was miraculously born with
a nature incapable of sinning.
The Bodily Assumption. This doctrine asserts
that Mary ascended bodily to heaven after
the pattern of her Son, except of course that,
unlike with Jesus, there were no witnesses to
this supposed event. This was made the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church
in 1950, after a petition signed by eight million Catholics. This appears to be a development from the doctrine of the Dormition
referred to above, with Mary ascending to
heaven after a short period in the grave in
which her body did not experience corruption.
Queen of Heaven. In 1954 Mary was proclaimed
to be Queen of Heaven by the Roman Catholic Church and worshipped as such.
These developments in doctrine have progressively removed Mary from being a normal member of the human race, albeit a woman of great
faith who will one day be raised from the dead
and receive eternal life from her Son, and have
made her a divine figure with many of the attributes of the great mother goddesses of old.
Thus did paganism find its way back into the
Church after the Church, already much corrupted
in doctrine, had apparently triumphed over paganism.
Audio Bible studies from the Internet
Brother Carl Hinton (Bedford ecclesia) has created a website from which audio Bible
studies can be downloaded. The site is www.cmhdigital.co.uk . Those using the site will
be required to insert a PIN number, which is 97890. Any enquiries or comments should
be sent to Brother Hinton at CarlHinton@cmhdigital.co.uk .