Under the Leaves 3 - Mother Earth - Father Sky

"Mother Earth and Father Sky" is an Indo-European concept.

"Father Sky" is usually the father of a pantheon (all the Gods in a culture), and he is complementary to the "Mother Earth" who is the mother of all gods, a fertility goddess who is connected to the Earth where all life sprang from.

The idea that the Earth is female and nurtures humans came from ancient cultures from the Middle East. We have to go back more than 10.000 years to trace the beginning of the worshipping of the Mother Earth. Has it always existed as long as this Earth has been a home for humans? The "Mother Earth" or "The Mother of Life" came into Hebrew as "Eve" that we all know from the Bible. In Norse mythology she is Jord (Mother of Thor), Hlodynn or Fjorgyn. The Irish Celtic "Great Mother" was called "Danu", while the Welsh Celts worshipped Don. You can trace their cultures by place-names, very often rivers, such as "Don" and "Dnepr". 

I would like to mention something interesting from the Norse mythology. The goddess Frigga is Odin's wife. She is also the mother of many strong and powerful Gods. She is the daugther of Fjorgyn, a daughter of the "Mother Earth". She was the stepmother of the war-god Tyr because Tyr was the son of Odin from a former relationship. But Tyr seems to be a whole lot of older than Odin. His name can be traced backwards from Norse, through germanic and at last to the indo-european root word -dyews.

This word means "Day" or "Heaven" and might mean that he is a younger variant of the ancietn Indo-European "Sky Father". His godly attributes were probably later taken over by firstly Thor, and then lately Odin. This happening could point to a phenomena where older gods were degraded to sons when new mythology were written, and it is likely that new mythologies were written when new cultures of mankind took over for the older ones. When a new God was about to take the stage, he had to be seen as the origin of the other Gods to be able to gain respect and power. Same goes with Frigga. She was a daughter of Fjorgyn, the Earth, and she had several handmaids. Some of them was Hlin, Var, Eir, Gna and Fulla. Eir was skilled in medicin, and maybe she was the same goddess that gave Ireland its name, Eire. Var has the same attributes as the ancient Indo-European goddess Varuni, and might be a variant of her. I can't stop thinking that these handmaidens probably were older and degraded goddesses from a former culture. Odin (a Father Sky) and Frigge (a Mother Earth) came together and had a son called Balder. Balder was married to Nanna Nepsdaughter (the daughter of the great Earth Mother).

The Sacred Marriage between Mother Earth and Father Sky, or the interplay between the Sun and the Earth that is creating our weather patterns, is the magic of fertility called Life.

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