We are going through a global religious reformation in the 21st Century, whether people recognize it or not. We have transited from the Iron Age into the Space Age and for two hundred years our Iron Age religions have been fracturing in the face of modernity. Enlightenment thinkers tell us to abandon religion and spirituality altogether, but they are not getting the big existential questions right either, leading to a crisis.
In the West, many Christians are leaving the faith while many others are examining it deeply, seeking to find a deeper, truer, Christianity than today’s Orthodoxies. Archaeological discoveries of lost and heretical Gospels have ignited massive interest in the earliest roots of the faith, particularly in the first three centuries when beliefs about Jesus were wildly diverse.
Yet we rarely hear a discussion about the Divine Mother in the founding years of Christianity and her ultimate exclusion from the Orthodox Church.
It’s like the scholars don’t see Her hiding in plain sight.
Heretical Gnostic texts overflow with references to the Divine Mother of God and many early followers of Jesus had a trinity of Mother, Father, and Son. This Trinity comes directly from Egypt along with the entire concept of the Resurrection and the iconography of Madonna and Jesus. The religion of Isis, Osiris, and Horus was the single most popular religion in the Roman Empire for its entire history and its influence on Christianity cannot be denied.
The Roman Empire was wide open for religious invention and innovation. It was a time of enthusiastic syncretization and invention of new gods. Christianity was invented as Romanized Judaism and is half pagan/half Jewish, though Orthodox Christians hate to admit it.
Jewish monotheists syncretized the distinct Israelite gods El and Yahweh into the monotheistic God of the Bible named Elohim, which is plural and means “all the gods.” They divorced the Israelite goddesses Asherah, Astarte, and Anat so that the Father could rule alone.
Meanwhile, over in Alexandria, Egyptian and Greek religions were formally syncretized. The great Gods Zeus and Osiris were combined to form Serapis who encompassed all the great Father Gods of the region. In the late Pagan era, Sol Invictus was invented as the supreme Solar God and encompassed Serapis.
The single most important difference between Jews and Pagans was the presence of the Divine Mother, and Isis was always the greatest rival to early Orthodox Christianity. The last Pagan temple to succumb to violent Christian mobs was the temple to Isis at Philae, Egypt in AD 550.
She was at the heart of popular culture and widely beloved, all the pleasures of life belonged to Her; festivals full of music, dance, and beauty, beer, wine, and feasting, drugs, magic, and especially sex, all were the province of the Great Goddess.
Just as the Fathers were syncretized so too were the Mothers. The goddesses always had fluid identities by nature, but in the Alexandrian religion under the Ptolemaic Pharaohs, an official process of linkages was made between Isis and every other great goddess in the Mediterranean.
Isis was most importantly linked to the Greek Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Mysteries of Isis were universally seen as the same and were practiced across the entire Roman Empire by Emporers and common folk alike.
The great Isis was formally linked to the Magna Mater Cybele, both Greek and Ephesian forms of Artemis, the love goddess Aphrodite, Rhea, Athena, Astarte, Atagartis, and all the important goddesses of the era. She was worshipped across the Empire from England, Paris, Rome, Anatolia, Palestine, and across North Africa.
Through an elaborate theological exercise of Russian nesting dolls, it was Isis who emerged as the All Mother, containing all forms and contradictions; the Mother and the Daughter, the Virgin and the Harlot, life, death, and renewal.
There was clearly a debate over the role of the Divine Mother among the early Christians. The patriarchal and misogynistic Orthodox eventually won the day and threw her out, leaving us with a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but her imprint remains all over the faith.
All the symbols, titles, and imagery of the Virgin Mary were lifted directly from Isis, yet the Mother of God is explicitly Not Divine in Orthodox traditions.
I encourage anyone interested to read R.E. Witt’s scholarly treatise, Isis in the Ancient World, for a full account of Isis in the Roman Empire and Her relationship with the early Church.
It seems like the 21st Century should be a perfect time to reignite this discussion. The traditions of the Divine Mother were deep and profound and in the late Roman era, the Mysteries of Isis had serious philosophical and theological foundations. These traditions embraced the full cycle of life and faced death with open eyes, they celebrated nature and sexuality, empowered women with authority, utilized psychedelic plant drugs, and even had transgender priests.
Everything we are fighting about in the Culture Wars is right there and many of the issues that are troubling today’s congregations can be reframed inside a discussion of the traditions of the Divine Mother.
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This brings us to the story of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the seminal moment in the birth of Christianity, and arguably the most important event in the history of Western Civilization.
Is the story true?
I believe that many early Christians would have seen Jesus’ story through the lens of the Divine Mother and read the details precisely how I describe them here.
I don’t offer this argument as proof of anything, since we can’t say that the Gospels are anything other than literature, but we can say that there are many valid interpretations of the texts.
I invite a discussion…
This interpretation of the Resurrection:
tracks with the Gospels
tracks with Science
tracks with the Koran
tracks with the Mysteries of Isis
tracks with Common Sense
What do you think?
Edward,
After majoring in biology and chemistry and then teaching mostly biology as a career, I learned to be skeptical about many of the things I was taught in the community church I attended. As a 14 year old, I even led a youth group discussion with the minister present asking questions that would have been considered heretical in many churches in 1957. I became interested in comparative religions when I took an elective class in college. After retiring from teaching, I became a pulpit supply in the Presbyterian Church and traveled the North Country to preach. The preparation gave me an opportunity to explore ideas, but I always stuck to the Gospels when I whittled down my sermon into 12-15 minutes, but inserted some humor and science into my Children’s sermons.
Your depth of research is phenomenal! I find the concept of Divine mother, son, and the ideas to explain resurrection fascinating! Thank you!
Totally agree. Guru Hodge is giving an inspiring interpretation to the role of the Feminine Principle in our Spiritual evolution..