The Goddess as Gaia and Our Mother

We are offering feminine divine names to balance our understanding of self and reality and divinity.  We will also link this with a deeper understanding of the Sacred Masculine as we move along.

God as the Goddess.

God can be known as the Goddess.  The Divine Feminine is an important name for the Deity that often gets forgotten when Patriarchy rules unchecked.  Marija Gimbutas, a very accomplished anthropologist who spent her life finding and uncovering myriad artifacts and relics from the goddess times has this to say about the Goddess:

The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature.  Her power was in water and stone, in tomb and cave, in animals and birds, snakes and fish, hills, trees, and flowers.  Hence the holistic and mythopoeic perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is on Earth.

The Goddess has many names.  While we are free to apply every name we give to “God” to the “Goddess,” some unique names have been forged for the goddess as well.  These will follow in several DMs. 

God as Gaia (Mother Earth)

If every being can be another name for God, as Aquinas taught, then surely Earth, our Mother in so many ways, our home so blessed and so richly endowed with beauty and life and diverse and wonderful creatures, can be another name for God.  Hildegard of Bingen sings thus:

The earth is at the same time mother,
She is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all….

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable God, pp. 59-70.

See also: Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, pp. 1-34.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.

Banner Image: “Legend of Aataentsic…Mother Earth” Photo by Dennis Jarvis from the MosaiCulture Gatineau on Flickr

Queries for Contemplation

What does it mean to say that “the earth is the mother of all”?  What follows from that?

Recommended Reading

Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God …Including the Unnameable God

Too often, notions of God have been used as a means to control and to promote a narrow worldview. In Naming the Unnameable, renowned theologian and author Matthew Fox ignites our imaginations by offering a colorful range of Divine Names gathered from scientists and poets and mystics past and present, inviting us to always begin where true spirituality begins: from experience.
“This book is timely, important and admirably brief; it is also open ended—there are always more names to come, and none can exhaust God’s nature.” -Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, author of Science Set Free and The Presence of the Past

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance

In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
 “This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.