Sacred feminine
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The sacred feminine refers to the representation of the mystical power of the earth or mother goddess often symbolized through images or events connected with fertility.
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[edit] Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell was an American professor, writer, and orator best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion. In his famous 1988 interview with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (first broadcast on PBS in 1988 as a documentary, The Power of Myth was also released in the same year as a book created under the direction of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), Campbell links the image of the earth or mother Goddess to symbols of fertility and reproduction (Chapter 6, "The Gift of the Goddess" and Episode 5, "Love and the Goddess" [1])
The connection of the image of the earth or mother Goddess to rituals surrounding, and images of, fertility was (and still is) common to numerous cultural and religious traditions including Gnosticism. For example, Campbell states that, "There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source...We talk of Mother Earth. And in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere" (p. 165, 1988, first edition). Campbell continues by stating that the correlation between fertility and the Goddess lay in the connection to agriculture:
- Bill Moyers: But what happened along the way to this reverence that in primitive societies was directed to the Goddess figure, the Great Goddess, the mother earth- what happened to that?
- Joseph Campbell: Well that was associated primarily with agriculture and the agricultural societies. It has to do with the earth. The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants...so woman magic and earth magic are the same. They are related. And the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. It is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, and in the earlier planting-culture systems that the Goddess is the dominant mythic form (pp.166-7, 1988, first edition).
Campbell also argues that the image of the Virgin Mary was derived from the image of Isis and her child Horus: "The antique model for the Madonna, actually, is Isis with Horus at her breast" (p. 176, 1988, first edition).
[edit] Cultural references
- Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code discusses the concept of the sacred feminine, with particular references to the goddesses Venus and Isis [2].
- Tom Robbins's book "Skinny Legs and All" discusses the feminine divine and how it relates to the three main patriarchal religons.
[edit] References
Book:
- Moyers, Bill and Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth. Betty Sue Flowers (ed.). New York: Doubleday, 1988.
DVD:
- Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers (Bonus Interview with George Lucas on Mythology from The Mythology of Star Wars). Mystic Fire Video, 2001.
