The Mother Goddess

During his recent trip to Cuba, Pope Benedict knelt before a wooden statue of the Virgin which “appeared to two fishermen and an African slave” 400 years ago, as The Times reported on March 28.

Here’s an undeniable fact the cult of Mary is often conflated with the cult of the Mother Goddess- John Guillaumier, St Julians

Strange to say, the so-called “Marian miracles” and “apparitions” always occur to illiterate peasants in some out-of-the-way place like Guadeloupe or Gozo rather than to the “Vicar of Christ” or to some saintly bishop at the Vatican!

“The Pope referred to the Virgin by her popular name, La Mambisa, in a gesture to the many non-Catholics on the island who nonetheless venerate the statue as an Afro-Cuban deity” – also known by the Cuban populace as La Cachita.

Here’s an undeniable fact that the cult of Mary is often conflated with the cult of the Mother Goddess!

As a historian wrote: “Through all the transformations of religion, the Mother Goddess has remained. After the Cretan Rhea came Demeter, the Mater Dolorosa of the Greeks; after Demeter, the Virgin Mother of God”.

Long before the Virgin Mary, Ishtar, the Mother Goddess of Babylon, was addressed as “The Virgin”, “The Holy Virgin” and “The Virgin Mother”.

Cybele, the Great Goddess of Phrygia, was known in ancient Rome as Magna Deum Mater (“The Great Mother of God”). During her feast in Rome, the image of the Great Mother was carried in triumph through the crowds that hailed her as Nostra Domina (“Our Lady”).

The Egyptian goddess Isis, venerated as the “Sorrowing Mother” and the “Loving Comforter”, was represented in pictures and statues as holding her divine child Horus in her arms.

Statues of black Madonnas, worshiped in certain French cathedrals in the Middle Ages, have proved upon examination to be basalt statues of Isis!

Throughout the Roman world, devout litanies hailed Isis as Regina coelis (“Queen of Heaven”), Stella Maris (“Star of the sea”), and Mater Dei (“Mother of God”).

When Christianity came to Egypt, Isis was transformed into Miriam.

Similarly, the Church of Rome, in the fifth century of our era, attached the remnants of the cult of the Greek goddess Artemis to Mary and transformed the mid-August harvest festival of Artemis into the feast of the Assumption.

Thus, through ever-changing names – whether it’s Ishtar or Isis or La Mambisa or La Cachita – the cult of the Mother Goddess lives on among the credulous, miracle-craving populace.