Mother Earth

“ Now the Earth I regard as a lady—as dear Mother-Earth. A real living being—live enough, at any rate, to give birth to mankind, to microscopic animalculae first and through them to man. And no one can look at the features of Mother-Earth without recognising her Beauty. It is there staring us in the face. So I cannot conceive why we geographers should confine ourselves to the dressmaker attitude of mind and describe every other characteristic of the Earth except her Beauty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 soil was beginning to break free from the grip of winter, a few specks of green already showing and indicating life germinating in the womb of Mother Earth. "Mother Earth," I thought; "why, that's the name of our child! The nourisher of man, man freed and unhindered in his access to the free earth!" The title rang in my ears like an old forgotten strain. The next day we returned to New York and prepared the copy for the initial number of the magazine. It appeared on the first of March 1906, in sixty-four pages. Its name was Mother Earth. ”

“ Mother Earth is escorted through a field of golden grain to the Garden. Here she stops and tells her escort that the Holy Earth has a soul and that through the ages her friends have been, Story, Art, and Song and that the elements of nature when the seasons were made selected Autumn as the most beautiful of all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In my mind it is a memory of blue skies, enchanting vistas of blue mountains, myriads of blue butterflies against falling water, bright singing birds, and the most gorgeous and richest of tropical vegetation, vine-twisted trees, orchids, morning-glories of all kinds, and countless other magnificences. I sometimes think that it is because Mother Earth is so lavish here, asking only to give, demanding nothing of her children, that they have become rather like spoiled children. ”

“ True, adoration of Earth, the All-Mother, runs like a choric hymn through all the tragedy. Earth is the mother and the nurse of these children. They are brought to her for their last bed, and she gives them the final consolation. ”

“ So the one-and-forty pilgrims placed their staves in damp Mother Earth and hung their wallets upon them. Then standing in a circle they sang the sweetest of the holy songs, even the psalm of Elena; and as the sound welled upward to the heavens the bosom of moist Mother Earth heaved and trembled as if with mingled joy and grief, the pine trees shook [154] in a neighbouring wood, far away the oak trees upon the mountains bowed their heads, and the birds were hushed into silence. ”

“ We live in an enchanted mountain in the heart of a great forest. Our mother is the beautiful Sea Foam, whom you have often watched in her white dress upon the ocean. We help our mother with her work, but our home is in the deep recesses of these lovely woods. Never before has a mortal eye seen these woods nor witnessed our sacred dance in them. From our magical wands float out the mists to form the cloud-world. Upward they travel, gathering moisture as they go, and floating across the blue heavens, they fall again in refreshing rain upon the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I will sing of well-founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly: all these are fed of her store. ”

“ MOTHER EARTH HERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it.
When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About this time we began to prepare for the celebration of Mother Earth's first birthday. It seemed incredible that the magazine should have survived the hardships and difficulties of the past twelve months. The failure of some of the New York literati to live up to their promises to write for it had been only one of the ill winds which had pursued my child. They were enthusiastic at first, until they realized that Mother Earth pleaded for freedom and abundance in life as the basis of art. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then spoke his mother again, saying, "If this be so, then go out far from the habitations of men, and hiding thy face in a crack of the earth where the soil is parched for want of moisture; or else, in the hollow of an ancient tree, or in a narrow cleft of the everlasting rock, and speak it there." ”

“ 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. ”

“ MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brother Wind determines the weather and Sister Water gives sustenance to life. Brother Fire is praised for its heat at night, and Sister Mother Earth produces and sustains fruit, plants and herbs that we need to live from. Even forgiving humans are praised. ”

“ Can God and Mother Earth have done this, or do things grow of themselves? If we say that God and Mother Earth have done it, they must have used hands for the purpose. Do God and Mother Earth possess many thousands or many myriads of hands, so that they can produce many thousands and many myriads of things, all at the same time?
GOD OUR FATHER.
All creatures are to God like children, and the kindness and love of father and mother are the same to all their children.
ON SPIRITS.
The dead do not become disembodied spirits; neither have they consciousness, nor do they injure anybody. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The nurturing mother earth represents the ideal example of such an object. The psychology of the presexual stage contributes the nutrition component; the sexual libido the coitus idea. From this the ancient symbols of agriculture arise. In the work of agriculture hunger and incest intermingle. The ancient cults of mother earth and all the superstitions founded thereon saw in the cultivation of the earth the fertilization of the mother. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Earth, let me point you to your mother’s plant-window, and beg you to remember the fact that through our long, dreary winters we are never a month without flowers, and the vivid interest which always attaches to growing things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. ”

“ Thus, then, Nature, through the whole geological history of the earth, was gestative mother of spirit, which, after its long embryonic development, came to birth and independent life and immortality in man. ”

“ Of the Earth, of the Mother, my heart with her heart in accord:
[31] As I lie mid the cool green tresses that mantle her breast
I begin with the grass once again to be bound to the Lord. ”