The Great Mother
"Magic is the art and science of changing consciousness at will."
Organization:
The Great Mother: Introduction
Jung's Tribute to the Mother Archetype
Balance of the All Father and Great Mother
Charge of the Goddess
The Lady's Prayer
Hymn to Her by the Pretenders
Humankind has expressed the archetype of the Great
Mother from time immemorial. Approximately 25,000 years ago an anonymous artist sculpted
the "Willendorf Venus," one of the earliest non-tool artifacts yet discovered.
This ancient expression plainly details a bountiful mother figure. Her pendulous breasts
can nourish all comers, she swells with abundance--she promises fulfillment of need. 
Willendorf Venus
Willendorf Venus as Art
Willendorf Venus T-Shirt
The Great Mother, however, can frighten as well as sustain. Nothing is quite so unnerving as watching the Moon transformed from the nurturing light in the midnight sky into a black disk cutting away the light of the sun during an eclipse. Mother Earth may sustain the crops, but Mother Earth can generate terrible forces--earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Our primitive psyches enshrine the ecstasy of hunger banished by mother's breast, but we also harbor dark shadows of her absence, of her inability to make everything better. The Great Mother not only pours her love out upon the earth, but she also generates an image in our shadow, smothering, devouring, implacable, too terrible to contemplate.
Carl Jung wrote a marvelous hymn to the Mother Archetype:
This is the mother-love which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, joyous and untiring giver of life--mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is mother-love, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning, responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and fallible human being--so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding, and forgiveness--who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries for us that inborn image of the mater natura and mater spiritualis, of the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part. (Jung, 1969, p. 26)
Clearly, the mother archetype generates too much to allow projection onto a single human female. Jung, interested in archetypal manifestations in his own clients, spent little time with the Great Mother and concentrated instead on the mother archetype:
The concept of the Great Mother belongs to the field of comparative religion and embraces widely varying types of mother-goddess. The concept itself is of no immediate concern to psychology, because the image of a Great Mother in this form is rarely encountered in practice, and then only under very special conditions. The symbol is an obviously a derivative of the mother archetype. If we venture to investigate the background of the Great Mother image from the standpoint of psychology, then the mother archetype, as the more inclusive of the two, must form the basis of our discussion. (Jung, 1969, p. 9)
Nevertheless, the Great Mother archetype provides an arena for wrestling with the mother archetype. The human tribe has a long history of venerating Goddesses, from long before carving the Venus of Willendorf out of limestone, through the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary in the present era. This long history contains a vast library of rituals from which the modern individual can check out examples of how to directly engage the mother archetype.
Although the notion of enacting a ritual may sound bizarre, cultic, or even nonsensical, creative ritualization calls forth unconscious forces and portrays them in the realm of light. The conscious mind participates with a portrayal of the archetype, and thus uncovers hidden emotional material. Ritual can express special power in community, where each member brings a different facet to the experience, and the community can provide support for the individual members.
A Simple Ritual
Each night before bedtime, starting with the next new moon, light one or more white candles. Sit comfortably in front of the candles, and notice your breathing. Allow the cares of the day to slip away. Read the Charge of the Goddess by candlelight, then meditate on it for a few minutes. Jot any insights down in a notebook. Extinguish the candle and go to sleep. Note any interesting or unusual dreams in your notebook. Continue this until the next new moon.
Jung, C. G. (1969). Four archetypes: Mother/rebirth/spirit/trickster Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Changes last made on: 10/07/2001