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Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of a mother or mother goddess.
The Mycenaean Greek: Ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), "Mother Gaia", written in Linear B syllabic script (13th or 12th century BC), is the earliest known instance of the concept of earth as a mother. [1]
Demeter would take the place of her grandmother, Gaia, and her mother, Rhea, as goddess of the earth in a time when humans and gods thought the activities of the heavens more sacred than those of earth. [2]
— Leeming, Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia
In Greek mythology, Persephone, daughter of Demeter (goddess of the harvest), was abducted by Hades (god of the dead), and taken to the underworld as his queen. The myth goes on to describe Demeter as so distraught that no crops would grow and the "entire human race [would] have perished of cruel, biting hunger if Zeus had not been concerned" (Larousse 152). According to myth, Zeus forced Hades to return Persephone to her mother, but while in the underworld, Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds, the food of the dead and thus, she must then spend part of each year with Hades in the underworld. The myth continues that Demeter's grief for her daughter in the realm of the dead, was reflected in the barren winter months and her joy when Persephone returned was reflected in the bountiful summer months
Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius opened his didactic poem De rerum natura by addressing Venus as a veritable mother of nature. [3] Lucretius used Venus as "a personified symbol for the generative aspect of nature". [4] This largely had to do with the nature of Lucretius' work, which presents a nontheistic understanding of the world that eschewed superstition.
The pre-Socratic philosophers abstracted the entirety of phenomena of the world as singular: physis, and this was inherited by Aristotle.[ citation needed ]
The word "nature" comes from the Latin word, "natura", meaning birth or character [see nature (philosophy)]. In English, its first recorded use (in the sense of the entirety of the phenomena of the world) was in 1266. "Natura" and the personification of Mother Nature were widely popular in the Middle Ages. As a concept, seated between the properly divine and the human, it can be traced to Ancient Greece, though Earth (or "Eorthe" in the Old English period) may have been personified as a goddess. The Norse also had a goddess called Jörð (Jord, or Erth).
Medieval Christian thinkers did not see nature as inclusive of everything, but thought that it had been created by God; earth lay below the unchanging heavens and moon. Nature lay somewhere in the center, with agents above her (angels), and below her (demons and hell).
Therefore mother nature became only a personification, not a goddess.
Amalur (sometimes Ama Lur or Ama Lurra [5] ) was believed to be the goddess of the earth in the religion of the ancient Basque people. [6] She was described as the mother of Ekhi, the sun, and Ilazki, the moon. Her name meant "mother earth" or "mother land"; the 1968 Basque documentary Ama lur was a celebration of the Basque countryside. [7]
Algonquian legend says that "beneath the clouds lives the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and human" (Larousse 428). She is otherwise known as Nokomis, the Grandmother.
In Inca mythology, Mama Pacha or Pachamama was a fertility goddess who presided over planting and harvesting. Pachamama is usually translated as "Mother Earth" but a more literal translation would be "Mother Universe" (in Aymara and Quechua mama = mother / pacha = world, space-time or the universe). [8] It was believed that Pachamama and her husband, Inti, were the most benevolent deities and were worshiped in parts of the Andean mountain ranges (stretching from present day Ecuador to Chile and Argentina).
In her book Coateteleco, pueblo indígena de pescadores ("Coatetelco, indigenous fishing town", Cuernavaca, Morelos: Vettoretti, 2015), Teódula Alemán Cleto states, En nuestra cultura prehispánica el respeto y la fe a nuestra madre naturaleza fueron primordiales para vivir en plena armonía como seres humanos. ("In our [Mexican] prehispanic culture, respect and faith in our Mother Nature [emphasis added] were paramount to living in full harmony as human beings.") [9]
In the Mainland Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, earth (terra firma) is personified as Phra Mae Thorani, but is believed that her role in Buddhist mythology differs considerably from that of Mother Nature. In the Malay Archipelago, that role has been filled by Dewi Sri, The Rice-mother in the East Indies.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility of the earth. Although Demeter is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, and marriage, and had connections to the Underworld. She is also called Deo. In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Like her other siblings except Zeus, she was swallowed by her father as an infant and rescued by Zeus.
Hades, in the ancient Greek religion and mythology, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although this also made him the last son to be regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed joint rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth available to all three concurrently. In artistic depictions, Hades is typically portrayed holding a bident and wearing his helm with Cerberus, the three-headed guard-dog of the underworld, standing at his side.
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Persephone, also called Kore or Cora, is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the underworld after her abduction by her uncle Hades, the king of the underworld, who would later also take her into marriage.
Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose iconography, functions and myths are virtually identical to those of Greek Persephone. Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in the Aventine temple of the grain-goddess Ceres, along with the wine god Liber.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece. They are considered the "most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece". Their basis was a Bronze Age agrarian cult, and there is some evidence that they were derived from the religious practices of the Mycenean period. The Mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases: the descent (loss), the search, and the ascent, with the main theme being the ascent of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It was a major festival during the Hellenic era, and later spread to Rome. Similar religious rites appear in the agricultural societies of the Near East and in Minoan Crete.
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, Minthe is an Underworld Naiad associated with the river Cocytus. She was beloved by Hades, the King of the Underworld, and became his mistress. But she was transformed into a mint plant by either his wife Persephone or her mother Demeter. The plant was also called by some as hedyosmos, which means "sweet-smelling".
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Plutus is the god and the personification of wealth, and the son of the goddess of agriculture Demeter and the mortal Iasion.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Pluto was the ruler of the Greek underworld. The earlier name for the god was Hades, which became more common as the name of the underworld itself. Pluto represents a more positive concept of the god who presides over the afterlife. Ploutōn was frequently conflated with Ploûtos, the Greek god of wealth, because mineral wealth was found underground, and because as a chthonic god Pluto ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest. The name Ploutōn came into widespread usage with the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which Pluto was venerated as both a stern ruler and a loving husband to Persephone. The couple received souls in the afterlife and are invoked together in religious inscriptions, being referred to as Plouton and as Kore respectively. Hades, by contrast, had few temples and religious practices associated with him, and he is portrayed as the dark and violent abductor of Persephone.
In Greek mythology, the Greek underworld, or Hades, is a distinct realm where an individual goes after death. The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual's essence (psyche) is separated from the corpse and transported to the underworld. In early mythology the dead were indiscriminately grouped together and led a shadowy post-existence; however, in later mythology elements of post-mortem judgment began to emerge with good and bad people being separated.
Melinoë is a chthonic goddess invoked in one of the Orphic Hymns, and represented as a bringer of nightmares and madness. In the hymn, Melinoë has characteristics that seem similar to Hecate and the Erinyes, and Melinoë's name is sometimes thought to be an epithet of Hecate. The name "Melinoë" also appears on a metal tablet in association with Persephone.
Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter in Greek mythology, appears in films, works of literature, and in popular culture, both as a goddess character and through the symbolic use of her name. She becomes the queen of the underworld through her abduction by Hades, the god of the underworld. The myth of her abduction represents her dual function as the as chthonic (underworld) and vegetation goddess: a personification of vegetation, which shoots forth in Spring and withdraws into the earth after harvest. Proserpina is the Roman equivalent.
Mythic Warriors is a 1998–2000 anthology animated television series, which featured retellings of popular Greek myths that were altered so as to be appropriate for younger audiences, produced by Nelvana and Marathon Media. Two seasons of episodes were produced in February 8, 1998 and March 14, 1999; then aired as reruns until May 21, 2000, when CBS' abolition of its Nelvana-produced children's programming in favor of Nick Jr. and later, Nickelodeon content resulted in its cancellation. The series was based on the book series Myth Men Guardians of the Legend written in 1996 and 1997 by Laura Geringer and illustrated by Peter Bollinger.
Myth-o-Mania is a series of books for children by Kate McMullan.
Fjörgyn is a personification of earth in Norse mythology, and the mother of the thunder god Thor, the son of Odin. The masculine form Fjörgynn is portrayed as the father of the goddess Frigg, the wife of Odin.
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (Sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants, as well as of Pontus (Sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.
A Miser Brothers’ Christmas is a 2008 Christmas stop motion spin-off special, based on the characters from the 1974 Rankin-Bass special The Year Without a Santa Claus. Distributed by Warner Bros. Animation under their Warner Premiere label and Toronto-based Cuppa Coffee Studios, the one-hour special premiered on ABC Family on Saturday, December 13, 2008, during the network's annual The 25 Days of Christmas programming.
A vegetation deity is a nature deity whose disappearance and reappearance, or life, death and rebirth, embodies the growth cycle of plants. In nature worship, the deity can be a god or goddess with the ability to regenerate itself. A vegetation deity is often a fertility deity. The deity typically undergoes dismemberment, scattering, and reintegration, as narrated in a myth or reenacted by a religious ritual. The cyclical pattern is given theological significance on themes such as immortality, resurrection, and reincarnation. Vegetation myths have structural resemblances to certain creation myths in which parts of a primordial being's body generate aspects of the cosmos, such as the Norse myth of Ymir.
The Eleusinian Mysteries hydria from Capua is a 4th-century BCE ancient Greek red-figure hydria, showing the reunion of Demeter and Persephone at the start of each spring. It was used to celebrate the Eleusinian Mysteries and the rebirth of nature in the secret cult of the two goddesses. The vase was found in 1883, along with another large vase, in a tomb in the Santa Maria necropolis in Capua in southern Italy. It dates back to between 375 BCE and 350 BCE. It is theorized that the vase had been buried with a former pilgrim to Eleusis. It is painted in the Kerch style and is held by the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.
Lore Olympus is a romance webcomic created by New Zealand artist Rachel Smythe. The comic is a modern retelling of the relationship between the Greek goddess and god Persephone and Hades. It began publishing weekly on the platform Webtoon in March 2018. Lore Olympus is currently the most popular comic on Webtoon; as of March 2024, it has 1.4 billion views and 6.5 million subscribers. The comic has won two Eisner Awards, two Harvey Awards, and two Ringo Awards. It was announced in 2019 that a television adaptation was under development.
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