Nữ thần mẹ là nữ thần đại diện hoặc là một bản chấtnhân cách hóa, làm mẹ, sinh sản, sáng tạo, hủy diệt hoặc là hiện thân của sự phong phú đa dạng của Trái Đất. Khi được đánh đồng với Trái đất hoặc thế giới tự nhiên, những nữ thần như vậy đôi khi được gọi là Mẹ Đất hoặc Mẹ Trái đất.
Có sự khác biệt ý kiến giữa quan niệm học thuật và phổ biến về thuật ngữ này. Quan điểm phổ biến chủ yếu được thúc đẩy bởi phong trào Nữ thần và cho rằng các xã hội nguyên thủy ban đầu là mẫu hệ, tôn thờ một nữ thần đất mẹ có chủ quyền, nuôi dưỡng. Điều này dựa trên ý tưởng của thế kỷ 19 về sự tiến hóa đơn tuyến của Johann Jakob Bachofen. Tuy nhiên, theo quan điểm học thuật, cả hai lý thuyết về Nữ thần hiện đại và Bachofen đều là sự phóng chiếu của quan điểm thế giới đương đại về những câu chuyện thần thoại cổ đại, chứ không phải là cố gắng tìm hiểu tinh thần của thời đó.[1][2] Thông thường, điều này đi kèm với mong muốn về một nền văn minh đã mất từ một thời đại đã qua mà đáng lẽ ra sẽ có công bằng, hòa bình và sự khôn ngoan.[3] Tuy nhiên, rất khó có khả năng một nền văn minh như vậy từng tồn tại.[4]
Trong một thời gian dài, các tác giả nữ quyền chủ trương rằng các xã hội nông nghiệp mẫu hệ hòa bình này đã bị các bộ lạc chiến binh du mục theo phụ hệ tiêu diệt hoặc khuất phục. Một đóng góp quan trọng cho việc này là của nhà nữ khảo cổ học Marija Gimbutas. Công việc của bà trong lĩnh vực này đã bị nghi ngờ.[5] Trong số các nhà khảo cổ học nữ quyền, tầm nhìn này ngày nay cũng được coi là gây tranh cãi lớn.[6][7]
Kể từ những năm sáu mươi của thế kỷ XX, đặc biệt là trong nền văn hóa đại chúng, việc tôn thờ nữ thần mẹ và vị trí xã hội mà phụ nữ trong các xã hội tiền sử được cho là đảm nhận, có mối liên hệ với nhau. Điều này làm cho cuộc tranh luận văn hóa trở thành một cuộc tranh luận chính trị. Theo phong trào nữ thần, xã hội mà nam giới chiếm hiện tại nên trở về bình đẳng mẫu hệ của thời gian trước đó. Hình thức xã hội này từng tồn tại được nhiều bức tượng nhỏ đã được tìm thấy chứng minh.
Trong giới học thuật, chế độ mẫu hệ tiền sử này được coi là khó xảy ra. Thứ nhất, thờ nữ thần mẹ không nhất thiết có nghĩa là phụ nữ đóng vai trò cai trị xã hội.[8] Ngoài ra, các bức tượng này cũng có thể miêu tả phụ nữ bình thường hoặc nữ thần, và không rõ liệu có thực sự có một nữ thần mẹ hay không.[9][10][11]
^The idea of the Mother Goddess, also called the Great Mother or Great Goddess, has dominated the imaginations of modern scholars in several fields. The image of the Mother Goddess with which we are familiar today has its modern genesis in the writings of Johann Jakob Bachofen. In 1861 Bachofen published his famous study Das Mutterrecht in which he developed his theory that human society progressed from hetaerism, characterized by unrestricted sexual relations, to matriarchy, in which women ruled society, and finally to the most advanced stage, patriarchy. Bachofen conceived of religious practice as progressing in a parallel manner from a belief in a mother goddess to a more advanced belief in a father god, associating belief in a mother deity with a primitive stage in the development of human society: "Wherever we encounter matriarchy, it is bound up with the mystery of the chthonian religion, whether it invokes Demeter or is embodied by an equivalent goddess" (Bachofen, 88). Bachofen believed that the matriarchal form of social organization derived from the maternal mystery religions (88-9).As we see with Bachofen, modern theories of the Mother Goddess have inevitably been shaped by modern cultural presuppositions about gender. Lynn Roller believes that "[m]any discussions of the Mother Goddess rely on modern projections ought to be, rather than on ancient evidence defining what she was" (Roller, 9). William Ramsay, the late nineteenth-century archaeologist, who was the first researcher to demonstrate that the principal deity of Phrygia was a mother goddess, drew heavily on Bachofen's theory (Roller, 12). Like Bachofen's, Ramsay's understanding of the national character of matriarchal pre-Phrygian society is based on contestable evidence and relies on stereotypically feminine characteristics; he describes matriarchal pre-Phrygian society as "receptive and passive, not self-assertive and active" (12). For Ramsay, this "feminine" character explains why this culture was conquered by the masculine, warlike Phrygians with their male deities. Thus, constructions of ancient matriarchal societies, which are inseparable from "a glorification of the female element in human life" (12), are suspiciously similar to modern stereotypes of the feminine that are not necessarily native to pre-Phrygian culture. Given these observations, Bachofen's repeated emphasis on the necessity of freeing oneself from the cultural prejudices of one's own time if one is to truly understand these ancient cultures takes on an ironic tone. It is not only Bachofen and Ramsay, but many others after them, who assume the stereotypical femininity of the Mother Goddess. Many of these conceptions of what a mother goddess ought to be stem from "the Judaeo-Christian image of the loving, nurturing mother subservient to her husband and closely bonded with her children" (Roller, 9).Smith (2007)
^At one time, scholars tended to use the 'Mother Goddess' label for all female figurines found at sites. This was largely because of the belief that the worship of fertility goddesses was an important part of agricultural societies all over the world, and also due to a tendency to look at ancient remains through the lens of later-day Hinduism, in which goddess worship had an important place. However, scholars are now increasingly aware of the stylistic and technical differences among assemblages of female figurines. Further, all goddesses need not have been part of a single goddess cult, and not all ancient goddesses were necessarily associated with maternity.'In the light of such problems, the term 'Mother Goddess' should be replaced by the longer but more neutral phrase— 'female figurines with likely cultic significance.' This does not mean that none of these figurines might have had a religious or cultic significance. It is indeed possible that some were either images that were worshipped or votive offerings that were part of some domestic cult or ritual. However, not all female figurines necessarily had such a function. Whether we are looking at human or animal figurines, in all cases, their possible significance or function has to be assessed, and cannot be assumed. Apart from their form, the context in which they were found is crucial.Singh (2008) p. 130
^A popular undercurrent in fringe archaeology concerns the ostensible presence of a lost civilization hidden somewhere in the proverbial dim mists of time. This lost civilization is usually portrayed as having been amazingly and precociously advanced, possessing technological skills as yet still not developed even by our modern civilization and paranormal capacities of which we are not even aware. This lost civilization (or civilizations) is usually presented as the mother culture of all subsequent, historically known civilizations, having passed down their knowledge to them. The lost civilization was, tragically, destroyed, through either a natural cataclysm or some catastrophic technological mishap, and has been somehow hidden from us.Feder (2010)
^There isn't a scintilla of physical evidence that anything of the kind occurred. There is no archaeological evidence of a supersophisticated civilization 10000 years ago—no gleaming cities, no factories powered by Earth energies [...] Feder (2010)
^There is another popular view of figurines, which may be summed up as the "Mother Goddess" issue. The idea of the ascendancy of the Mother Goddess as the primeval deity can be traced back to nineteenth century culture theory, endorsed by Freud and Jung (Parker Pearson 1999:99-100; Talalay 1991), if not before. The modern manifestation was given a huge impetus in the work of Marija Gimbutas (1974, 1989, 1991). To reduce Gimbutas's argument to simplicity, she viewed early Neolithic society as egalitarian, matrifocal, matrilineal, and focused on worshipping a Mother Goddess (Tringham 1993), as evidenced by females figurines found in Neolithic sites in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean region.'Few archaeologists support her notion for a number of reasons (Meskell 1995; Tringham 1993, for example). They maintain that the Mother Goddess is an assumption, not a theory, and certainly not a demonstrated thesis. The critics argue that Gimbutas is blending modern myth, feminist ideology, and psychological theory unsupported by clinical research to impose the Mother Goddess archetype on past societies. [...]Gimbutas's own work included excavations at Achilleion (Thessaly). Reviewers of that work (McPherron 1991; Runnels 1990) find problems with the sample size (four 5 x 5 m test units on the slope of a tell), use of dating methods, lack of explanation of field methodology, recording systems or lack thereof, omission of clear criteria for discerning interior versus exterior contexts, typology, statistics---it is hard to find a part of this work not negatively critiqued.Wesler (2012), pp. 65–66.
^In her book The Faces of the Goddess from 1997, Motz negated the popular theory of the archetypal fertility cult of the Mother Goddess which supposedly would have existed prior to the rise of patriarchy and the oppression of women.
^We begin with an issue that is foundational to the modern study of women in the ancient world, namely the Mother Goddess. As Lauren Talalay demonstrates in Case Study I ("The Mother Goddess in Prehistory: Debates and Perspectives"), there was a desire among scholars, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, to locate a period in the distant past in which women were not secondary, when female power was celebrated, and when an overarching Mother Goddess was the primary divinity. This myth continues to have great appeal, as witnessed in "goddess-tourism" in the Mediterranean even today. While it is no longer an active scholarly theory, the issue of the Mother Goddess continues to be an exemplar for the problems of studying women in antiquity: mysterious images disembodied from their contexts, multiple scholarly biases and motivations, and conflicting interpretations of the scanty and fragmentary evidence.James; Dillon (2012)
^Worship of a nurturing Mother Goddess who oversees cosmological creation, fertility, and death does not necessarily entail or reflect a pacific matriarchy and female power in society.Talalay in James; Dillon (2012)
^Let me be perfectly clear about my own position: the maternal Great Goddess is a fantasy, a powerful fantasy with an astonishing capacity to resist criticism.Loraux in Duby, G.; Perrot, M. (1994)
^It may be impossible to ever prove one way or the other that a Great Goddess existed in prehistory. As the essays that follow suggest, what is more likely is that interpretations of female deities, their intersection with the roles of women in antiquity, and the place of these debates in modern society will be rewritten many times in the future.Talalay in James, S.L.; Dillon, S. (2012)
^Goddesses of the prime of life are often described as mother goddesses, although that term is questionable, given that the goddesses may not be maternal in any conventional sense. For instance, the single child of Cybele was conceived upon her while she was in the form of a rock and was never reared by her (see Southeastern Europe). Similarly, the eastern Mediterranean goddess Ninlil gave birth by making images of people from clay, as did the Chinese goddess Nüwa. The distinction between mother goddess and creatrix is often difficult to locate. In the Pacific, the goddess Papa both created the earth and gave birth to the gods.The role of goddess as creatrix is common among goddesses, who can create by some other mechanism than birth, as Inuit Aakuluujjusi did when she threw her clothing on the ground, which walked away as animals.Monaghan (2014)
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