The primordial force of women

About the Earth, women and goddesses

Mircea Eliade, the famous specialist in religions and myths, hypothesized that humans first had a kind of primordial experience. Indeed, the earth, this soil on which he walks, lies, makes love and where he finds to eat, this soil from which he sees emerging the plants that feed him, as if it were from its bowels. Is is from the inside of this soft and moist layer, that life emerges, like the child of its mother. Eliade speaks of humus as «telluric layer and depth with its inexhaustible capacity to bear fruit» and “One of the first theophanies of the earth, as such, especially as a telluric layer and chthonic depth, was its ‘motherhood’, its inexhaustible capacity to bear fruit » [1].

Eliade refers to a modern-day Amerindian testimony: “

An Indian prophet Smohalla, of the Umatilla tribe, forbade his followers to dig the land, for he said, “It is a sin to hurt or cut, tear or scratch our common mother by agricultural work…. Are you asking me to plough the soil? Will I take a knife and plunge it into my mother’s breast? You ask me to dig and remove stones. Shall I mutilate her flesh in order to reach her bones? You’re asking me to cut grass and hay and sell it, and make money like white people? But how dare I cut my mother’s hair?" [2].

We find exactly the same reverence for the earth as a living mother in a sacred text of India.

What I cut and dig of you, O Earth,

May this even quickly grow again!

May I not open up, O purifying,

Neither your heart nor any mortal point!"3]

In this sense, but transposed to a goddess, some Indian sacred texts, say of the goddess Durga that the vegetation grows from her body.

"Then, Gods! I will feed the whole universe with these plants

that sustain life and grow from my very body,

during the rainy season.

I will then become glorious on earth as '

Carrier of herbs''[4].

Or that the Earth (in the sense of globe, but also in the sense of soil) is a mother of plants, bearer of all life (waters, plants, animals, men), fertile womb for our good.

“The Earth (…) carries the herbs (…) it possesses the waters

On it comes alive what breathes and vibrates (…)

Earth is Mother (…) Carrier of all things (…)

You bear the bipeds, you the quadrupeds;

Hold the five races of men (…)

Universal breeder, Mother of plants (…) »[5].

Julien D'Huy (‘Cosmogonies La Préhistoire des mythes’, Eds. La Découverte, Paris, 2020) and Jean-Loic Le Quellec (‘La caverne originelle - Art, mythes et premières humanities’, Eds. La Découverte, Paris, 2022) have recently made plausible the existence of a myth about the origin of life as «emerging from the earth». This myth would have existed at the time of the emergence of anatomically modern man from Africa, so before about 60,000 years before now. In the beginning, the animal mistress brought animals and humans out of her cavern.

The layout and paintings of some prehistoric caves seem to stage this primordial exit from the cave – and link it explicitly to the woman’s vulva. “In the deep part of the room at the back of the Chauvet cave (…) a rocky pendant is decorated with a pubic triangle filled with black and completed with an engraved vulvar groove (…). This pendant includes (…) other figurative traces : the foretrains of a bison (…), a feline and a mammoth are nested there while appearing to be associated – at least spatially – with the female figure, which is the oldest. It is the only place in the whole cave where these three species are arranged in this way, and Yanik Le Guillou, who studied this device, concludes that these animals seem to emerge “both from the wall and from the woman/pubic triangle”. (…) located “in the (…) back room”. Remarkably, the animals around them all seem to be heading out of the cave…”[6].

The rites of our ancestors have most likely ‘commemorated’, ‘actualized’ and ‘made present’ this origin (the emergence of the primordial cave). In some remote parts of the world, such as East India and Nepal, there are still shrines of goddesses, especially Kali, that are ‘deep in a gorge’ in the ‘bosom of Mother Earth’. “It was only at the end of the road that a rounded mountain with a curved wall, invaded by the most luxuriant vegetation, was visible, forming a bright contrast with the surrounding, parched, yellowish-brown landscape. Although it was the dry season, two tumultuous torrents descended along this concave mountain, flowing towards each other to form a V and throw themselves into a small ravine. Not only in the religion of the nature of the Khasi, but throughout India, the junction of two rivers is considered a sacred place, embodying the bosom of Mother Earth from which flow the infinite waters of life.” [7].

"One day," says the myth, "chthonian beings straightened themselves out of the original cave, and this act was recalled and renewed, for a few tens of thousands of years, in a thousand and one ways, by images ritually traced in innumerable caves." as they continue to be today in a few places in the world.”[8]

There is also another family of myths of the origin, called «diving» (older than 60,000 years also) where the creation of the earth is described as an «accumulation» of earth, soil, following the search for a small handful of earth at the bottom of the water[9].

“In the beginning there was no sun, no moon, no stars. Everything was dark, and everywhere there was only water. A raft came, floating on the water. It came from the north, and there were two people on board, Turtle and Father of the Secret Society. The water was rising very quickly. Then a string of feathers was dropped from the sky, and so arose the Earth-Initiator. When he reached the end of the rope, he tied it to the bow of the raft, and mounted it. His face was covered and could not be seen, but his body shone like the sun. He sat down and said nothing for a long time. Finally, Tortue asked him: "Where do you come from?"; and Initiator of the Earth replied, "I come from above." Then Turtle said, "Brother, could you not make me a good dry earth so that I can sometimes get out of the water? » Earth initiator replied, “I don’t know. You would like land, but how can I create it if I don’t have the land to do it?” Turtle replied, "If you tie me a stone around my left arm, I will dive for it." (…)Turtle was long gone. She had been gone for six years; and when she went up again, she was covered with a green vase, so much she had remained at the bottom. When she reached the surface, the only soil she had managed to preserve was encrusted under her nails; the rest had been washed away by the waters. From the right hand Earth-Initiator took a stone knife from under his left armpit and carefully scraped the soil still present under Turtle’s nails. He put the earth in the palm of his hand, and rolled it until it was round; it was as big as a small pebble. He put it on the stern of the raft. He would look at it from time to time: she had not grown at all. The third time he looked, the earth had grown enough to be surrounded by his arms. The fourth time he looked, it was as big as the world, the raft was aground, and all around there were mountains as far as the eye could see.”[10].

The myths of creation of the earth by divers are represented among the Amerindians. Gods or diving animals are sent into primitive mother waters to find a piece of the body of the earth from which the world will develop on the surface of the waters. This is also the case for many creation myths from Central Asia. The creator Birhor (India), for example, sends a series of animals into the depths until finally an insignificant leech plunges and swallows some of the mud from the bottom of the water, rises to the surface and spits in the hand of the creator. From this tiny piece of mud, the creator forms the world.

The myths of creating humanity from earth (mud, dust, clay) are found in China where the goddess Nügua modeled the yellow earth to create human beings. In Central Asia, the creator Altaica creates humans from a piece of mud that floated in the waters. Among the Amerindians, the Hopi goddess Spider Woman transformed into human beings the thought of the creator by singing «May the thought live by modeling it in clay». The creator Efe in Congo made the first man out of clay covered with skin. The creator of the Malagasy people gave life to his daughter’s clay dolls. The goddess Jivaro of the Andes produced a child by breathing on earth (…). When the jealous bird, Auhu, broke the child into clay, the child and the broken pieces became the world… The oldest of all known creation myths of mankind is that of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia : their gods made humans from clay but being drunk when they did, the poor humans remained a very imperfect creation »[11].

According to the Semitic and Christian tradition, the first man, the primordial man, is called Adam (from the Hebrew adamah, «ploughed land», «glèbe» or «soil»), and is said to be drawn from the «glèbe» («dust») soil of the earth :

"IHVH-Adonai Elohims forms the glebe man

'Âdam, dust of the earth - Adama.

He breathed life into his nostrils:

And it’s the glebe man, a living being.”

(Genesis 2:7).

Closely related to Adam, the Glebe Man, is the Woman “Hava – Alive”, “mother of all living”

“The guy yells his wife’s name: Hava – Alive.

Yes, she is the mother of all living"

(Genesis 3, 20 – 21).   

And Adam, the Glebe Man, exists to « serve the glebe » and to « serve the Garden » (Genesis 2,5).

"IHVH-Adonai Elohîms takes the Glebe Man

and laying him in the Garden of Eden,

to serve and to keep it”

(Genesis 2:15)

[1]‘Traité d’Histoire des Religions’, Mircea Eliade, Eds. Payot, Paris, 1949 - réédition de 2020 pour les citations, p 254

[2] As cited in Eliade (1949), p 254 (en reprenant un témoignage communiqué par James Mooney, 1896) – our translation

[3] Atharva Veda 12, 1

[4] Devi-Mahatmya 92, 43 – 44

[5] Atharva Veda 12, 1 (Veda (1976), p 132-135)

[6] Le Quellec (2022), p 263

[7] 'Les Sociétés matriarcales, Recherches sur les cultures autochtones à travers le monde’, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Editions des femmes, Paris, 2019 - le Chapitre 'Les Newar' de la vallée de Katmandou’

[8] Le Quellec (2022) p 712

[9] D’Huy (2020), p 111 – 134

[10] Mythe maidu (Californie centrale) comme cité dans D’Huy (2020), p 109 – 110

[11] ‘Le sol et sa genèse dans la Genèse’ (Bible), C. Feller et L. Feller, dans Étude et Gestion des Sols, Volume 30, 2023 - pages 323 à 331