Earth Mother

“ Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands--Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. ”

“ Even though she has sung false music to me, and kept my feet solid on the ground, and drawn my star-roving eyes ever back to gaze upon her, she, the conserver of life, the earth-mother, has given me my great days and nights and fullness of years. ”

“ Thereupon the Earth-mother repulsed the Sky-father, growing big and sinking deep into the embrace of the waters below, thus separating from the Sky-father in the embrace of the waters above. As a woman forebodes evil for her first-born ere born, even so did the Earth-mother forebode, long withholding from birth her myriad progeny and meantime seeking counsel with the Sky-father. ”

“ Out of the earth rises life, to it it returns. She it is who guards all germs, nourishes all beings. The Aztecs painted her as a woman with countless breasts; the Peruvians called her 'Mama Allpa,' mother Earth; in the Algonkin tongue, the words for earth, mother, father, are from the same root. ”

“ The idea of the Earth as a mother is more simple and obvious, and no doubt for that reason more common in the world, than the idea of the Heaven as a father. Among the native races of America the Earth-mother is one of the great personages of mythology. The Peruvians worshipped her as Mama-Pacha or ‘Mother-Earth,’ and the Caribs, when there was an earthquake, said that it was their mother Earth dancing, and signifying to them to dance and make merry likewise, which accordingly they did. ”

“ Here, too, the mother is vigorous and ample, but rounded and softened by more genial environment. Yet in the generousness of her form as in the strenuousness of the other’s, we feel the same suggestion of the earth-mother, the mother in closest affinity with nature. Only, as nature progresses from rigour to amenity,{229} the primal instinct of preservation of her young has passed into the all-pervading tenderness of maternal solicitude. It is, in fact, the typical conception of motherhood, as compared with the merely individual representation that appears in each of these groups. ”

“ Her traits, attributes, characteristics, they have so thoroughly inherited and imbibed, that, from any doctrinal point of view regarding the origin of the species, the earth may be said to have been created for men, and men to have been created out of the earth. By her nurture and tuition they grow up and flourish, and, folded in her bosom, they sleep the sleep of death. The idea of the earth-mother is in every cosmogony. ”

“ Vain thine endeavour our spirits to sever,
Take my soul with thee, Angel of Heaven,
Bear me unto her, Angel of Heaven.
THE MOTHER. There is a land whereon the sun's warm gaze,
God-like, all-seeing, falls right down through space,
And the weak Earth, quite smitten by its rays,
Lies scorch'd and powerless with mute silent face,
Like a tranced body, where no changing glow
Tells that the life-streams through its channels flow. ”

“ With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between,—
Our little mother isle, God bless her!
In earth's broad temple where we stand,
Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,
We hold the missal in our hand,
Bright with the lines our Mother taught us. ”

“ The children of the Flat, long housed in close, cramped quarters, were hilarious at sight of the brown Mother Earth; and this great-hearted Mother to whom they turned instinctively never fails and never disappoints, but remains always heart to heart with the best in human nature. ”

“ If this account of the Earth which physicists and biologists give us be true, then we geographers should take a less material and a more spiritual view of the Earth than we have done, and should, like primitive people all the world over, regard her as Mother-Earth, and recognise our intimate connection with her. Primitive peoples everywhere regard the Earth as alive and as their Mother. And so intensely do they feel this liveness that many will not run the plough through the soil from dislike of lacerating the bosom of Mother-Earth. ”

“ The song breathes the pleasure and worship of ancient tillers of the soil in the labours of the earth and in the goods the mother gave. It has grown, it seems, out of the breast of earth herself; earth is here the Mother of Men. ”

“ We speak of Mother Nature, but we do not discern the living truth behind our words. How few of us have the vision of this great brooding Mother, whose garment is the [Pg 399] earth and sea, whose head is pillowed among the stars: she, who, with death and sleep as her familiar shapes, soothes and rests all the weariness of the world, from the waning leaf to the beating pulse, from the brief span of a human heart to the furrowing of granite brows by the uninterrupted sun, the hounds of rain and wind, and the untrammelled airs of heaven. ”

“ Thus far we have been considering Mother Earth in her benign, kindly aspects, as the maintainer and giver of fertility to men, animals, and plants, the patron goddess of agriculture, in which respects she is the counterpart of the Hellenic and other deities of the West. In this aspect she is closely connected with the cult of trees, which force their roots into her bosom, and draw support from her, while by their branches they link her with the spirits of the air. ”

“ The Light One gave his mother's body to the earth, the Great Mother from which springs all life. He made great mountains, and covered them with forests from which beautiful rivers ran. The Dark One threw down the mountains, gnarled the forests, and bent the rivers which his brother had made. ”

“ She always thinks that things are going to grow in her gardens, and things do grow in them, too; but they are not always the things my mother has led me to expect. For her, I hope she will find the garden of her dreams in Paradise; for me, this earth will do, even this small, hill-circled scrap of it; for I am no gardener in my heart, only an observer of gardens. I own to an unregenerate enjoyment in watching my mother’s vegetables misbehave, just as, surreptitiously, I can’t help loving the whimsical goats of my father’s rustic flock. ”

“ We say Mother now, first, for we are tracing this everlasting theme of motherhood, in the Mormon economy, without which nothing of the woman part of the divine scheme can be known—next to nothing of patriarchal marriage, to which we are traveling, be expounded.
Eve—immortal Eve—came down to earth to become the Mother of a race.
How become the Mother of a world of mortals except by herself again becoming mortal? How become mortal only by transgressing the laws of immortality? ”

“ Wherefore, again, again, how merited Is that adopted name of Earth—The Mother!— Since she herself begat the human race, And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth Each breast that ranges raving round about Upon the mighty mountains and all birds Aerial with many a varied shape. But, lo, because her bearing years must end, She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld. For lapsing aeons change the nature of The whole wide world, and all things needs must take One status after other, nor aught persists Forever like itself. ”

“ And we men of the more advanced races have still more cause to consider her as our Mother, for we now know that not only the plants and trees but we ourselves sprang from her—as indeed we are nourished by her daily, eating her plants or the animals which feed on her plants. And as we judge of a lily, not by its origin, the ugly bulb, but by the climax, the exquisite flower; so we should not judge of the Earth by its origin, the fiery mist, but by its issue—ardent human fellowship. ”

“ No fancy of nature can be plainer than that the Heaven-father and the Earth-mother are the universal parents, nor could [360] any ceremony acknowledge them more naturally than the Chinese marriage when bride and bridegroom prostrate themselves before Heaven and Earth. The Earth-goddess is clear in classic religion, Dēmētēr, Terra Mater, and perhaps the last trace of her worship among ourselves may be the leaving of the last handful of corn-ears standing in the field or the carrying it in triumph in the harvest-home. ”

“ Thus, as the Most Holy Virgin brought forth this mystic Seed, which when cast on earth, budded and brought forth many other seeds, she has consequently brought us all forth and has become the Mother of us all. How much we ought to love the Son and the Mother! for they are our Divine parents, and it is impossible to love one without loving the other. ”

“ With a heart full of joy, the mother now bent over the slumbering babe, kissing it again and again.
"Grieving mother," said the angel-maiden, in tones of flute-like softness, "God saw that it would not be good for your child to remain on earth, and he therefore removed it to this celestial region, where no evil can ever penetrate. To me, as an angel-mother, it has been given; and I will love it and care for it with a love as pure and tender as the love that yearns in your bosom. As its infantile mind opens, I will pour in heavenly instruction, that it may grow in wisdom and become an angel. ”

“ God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.—Henry Ward Beecher.
When the social world was written in terms of mother-right, the religious world was expressed in terms of mother-god.
There is nothing more charming than to see a mother with a child in her arms, and nothing more venerable than a mother among a number of her children.—Goethe.
Mother-Earth.
"Earth, Mother of all," is a world-wide goddess. Professor O.T. Mason, says: "The earth is the mother of all mankind. ”

“ If she had had a mother, she might, even in the wilderness of earth, have become a blossom fit for heavenly gardens, but as it was, her wayward nature, so full of dangerous beauty, was left to run wild. ”

“ But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs. ”

“ Into the arms of our mother we come,
Our broad strong mother, the innocent earth,
Mother of all things beautiful, blameless,
Mother of hopes that her strength makes tameless,
Where the voices of grief and of battle are dumb,
And the whole world laughs with the light of her mirth.
[Pg 19] Over the fields, where the cool winds sweep,
Black with the mould and brown with the loam,
Where the thin green spears of the wheat are appearing,
And the high-ho shouts from the smoky clearing;
Over the widths where the cloud shadows creep;
Over the fields and the fallows we come ”

“ Above the rocks that blossom into rose,
On towards the sun!
It does not matter now how I am clothed;
For my mind glitters with a thousand thoughts,
Star-sown, moon-shaped, sun-colored,
Amber-shining like polished foliage in a great dawn wind,
And the lustre on the heron’s breast
Is now God and now the Morning Star:
I travel East to meet the sun!
{30}
BROWN MOTHER
Brown Mother, Earth Mother, my love does it stir, is it living? ”

“ The earth is conceived as a mother bringing forth every species of living creature from her teeming bosom; and not only that, but a nursing mother feeding her young offspring with abundant streams of milk—an unexpected adaptation from the myth of a golden age. ”

“ In the designation of Maaemä, Earth-mother, given to the earth itself, there may be traced survival from the stage of direct nature-worship, while the passage to the conception of a divine being inhabiting and ruling the material substance, is marked by the use of the name Maan emo, Earth’s mother, for the ancient subterranean goddess whom men would ask to make the grass shoot thick and the thousandfold ears mount high, or might even entreat to rise in person out of the earth to give them strength. ”

“ Bless her, now that we are thinking of all good mothers, whether the queen true to her children on her island-throne, or the faithful mother in the farmer’s cottage;—so many on the earth—so many who have gone from the world, and whose remembered faces now bring heaven near. ”

“ Its mother-instinct drew the fledgling still
To the wide ocean floods to roam at will;
Its timid nurse, upon the other hand,
Sought evermore to lead it back to land.
O Man! thy mother, Heaven, thy nurse is Earth,
And thou of both wert nurtured from thy birth;
From thy true mother comes thine impulse free
To launch forth boldly upon being’s sea;
While aye thy nurse fears for thee, and would fain
Thee to a narrow slip of dry restrain.
110
III.
SCIENCE AND LOVE.
Who that might watch the moon in heaven, would look
At its weak image in the water-brook? ”

“ A mother closing the dying eye of child after child, till it seems as if she were to be left alone in the world again, is one of the saddest sights of earth: when the cradle-song passes into a dirge, the heart is laden indeed. ”

“ The face of Mother Earth is the book in which many a man and woman and child read lessons of delight, spelled in letters of rock and fern, of brook and cowslip, of maple leaf and goldenrod. Such lessons mean little save to the pure and humble. ”

“ Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard calling: "Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to sin!" ”

“ In the dark womb where I began
My mother’s life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her. ”