We often don't think of Mary as a "Goddess" - at least not formally. But if she is treated in the same manner as others treat the Goddess they worship, if she paid the same homage and addoration and veneration as a Goddess, then is there really any difference ?
MARY: THE MOTHER OF THE CHILD
Origins of Theology imported into the Roman Catholic Church
THE MOTHER OF THE CHILD.
Now while the mother derived her glory in the first instance from the divine character attributed to the child in her arms, the mother in the long-run practically eclipsed the son. At first, in all likelihood, there would be no thought whatever of ascribing divinity to the mother. There was an express promise that necessarily led mankind to expect that, at some time or other, the Son of God, in amazing condescension, should appear in this world as the Son of man.
But there was no promise whatever, or the least shadow of a promise, to lead any one to anticipate that a woman should ever be invested with attributes that should raise her to a level with Divinity. It is in the last degree improbable, therefore, that when the mother was first exhibited with the child in her arms, it should be intended to give divine honours to her.
She was doubtless used chiefly as a pedestal for the upholding of the divine Son, and holding him forth to the adoration of mankind; and glory enough it would be counted for her, alone of all the daughters of Eve, to have given birth to the promised seed, the world s only hope.
But while this, no doubt, was the design (original intention), it is a plain principle in all idolatries that that which most appeals to the senses must make the most powerful impression. Now the Son, even in his new incarnation, when Nimrod was believed to have reappeared in a fairer form, was exhibited merely as a child, without any very particular attraction; while the mother in whose arms he was, was set off with all the art of painting and sculpture, as invested with much of that extraordinary beauty which in reality belonged to her.
The beauty of Semiramis is said on one occasion to have quelled a rising rebellion among her subjects on her sudden appearance among them; and it is recorded that the memory of the admiration excited in their minds by her appearance on that occasion was perpetuated by a statue erected in Babylon, representing her in the guise in which she had fascinated them so much.*
This Babylonian queen was not merely in character coincident with the Aphrodite of Greece and the Venus of Rome, but was, in point of fact, the historical original of that goddess that by the ancient world was regarded as the very embodiment of everything attractive in female form, and the perfection of female beauty; for Banchuniathon assures us that Aphrodite or Venus was identical with Astarté,* and Astarte being interpreted, is none other than "The woman that made towers or encompassing walls "—i.e., Semiramis.
The Roman Venus, as is well known, was the Cyprian Venus, and the Venus of Cyprus is historically proved to have been derived from Babylon. (See Chap. IV. Sect. III.)
Now, what in these circumstances might have been expected actually took place. If the child was to be adored, so much more the mother. The mother, in point of fact, became the favourite object of worship in order to justify this worship, the mother was raised to divinity as well as her son, and she was looked upon as destined to complete that bruising of the serpent' s head, which it was easy, if such a thing was needed, to find abundant and plausible reasons for alleging that Ninus or Nimrod, the great Son, in his mortal life had only begun.
The Roman Church maintains that it was not so much the seed of the woman,
as the woman herself, that was to bruise the head of the serpent. In defiance of all grammar, she renders the Divine denunciation against the serpent thus: "She shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise her heel."
The same was held by the ancient Babylonians, and symbolically represented in their temples. In the uppermost storey of the tower of Babel, or temple of Belus, Diodorus Siculus tells us there stood three images of the great divinities of Babylon; and one of these was of a woman grasping a serpent s head .*
Among the Greeks the same thing was symbolised; for Diana, whose real character was originally the same as that of the great Babylonian goddess, was represented as bearing in one of her hands a serpent deprived of its head.
As time wore away, and the facts of Semiramis' s history became obscured, her son s birth was boldly declared to be miraculous: and therefore she was called "Alma Mater," § "the Virgin Mother."
That the birth of the Great Deliverer was to be miraculous, was widely known long before the Christian era. For
centuries, some say for thousands of years before that event, the Buddhist priests had a tradition that a Virgin was to bring forth a child to bless the world.*
That this tradition came from no Popish or Christian source, is evident from the surprise felt and expressed by the Jesuit missionaries, when they first entered Tibet and China, ~ not only found a mother and a child worshipped as at home, but that mother worshipped under a character exactly corresponding with that of their own Madonna, "Virgo Deipara," "the Virgin mother of God," and that, too, in regions where they could not find the least trace of either the name or history of our Lord Jesus Christ having ever been known The primeval promise that the "seed of the woman should bruise the serpent s head," naturally suggested the idea of a miraculous birth.
Priestcraft and human presumption set themselves wickedly to anticipate the fulfilment of that promise; and the Babylonian queen seems to have been the first to whom that honour was given. The highest titles were accordingly bestowed upon her. She was called the " queen of heaven." (See the Old Testament book of Jeremiah xliv. 17, 18, 19, 25.) § In Egypt she was styled Athor—i.e., " the Habitation of God," II to signify that in her dwelt all the "fulness of the Godhead."
To point out the great goddess-mother, in a Pantheistic sense, as at once the Infinite and Almighty one, and the Virgin mother, this inscription was engraven upon one of her temples in Egypt: "I am all that has been, or that is, or that shall be. No mortal has removed my veil. The fruit which I have brought forth is the Sun."
In Greece she had the name of Hestia, and amongst the Romans, Vesta, which is just a modification of the same name— a name which, though it has been commonly understood in a different sense, really meant" The Dwelling-place." **
As the Dwelling-place of Deity, thus is Hestia or Vesta addressed in the Orphic Hymns :—
"Daughter of
Saturn, venerable dame,
Who dwelle st amid great fire' s eternal flame, In thee the gods have fixe d their
Dwelling Place, Strong stable basis of the mortal race." "
Even when Vesta is identified with fire, this same character of Vesta as "The
Dwelling-place" still distinctly appears.
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RESURRECTING GODDESS MYTHS: Part 1
Has Christianity Integrated Ancient Mythology & Goddess
Worship?
RESURRECTING GODDESS MYTHS: Part 2
PSYCHOLOGY & MYTHOLOGY: A RELATIONSHIP OF RELIGIONS