Our Mother: The Feminine Principle in the Supreme Being

By Dr. Josef Ben Levi

Presented by Omni-U Virtual University 

“Does not wisdom call? And understanding put forth her voice?

These are the opening verses of the book of Proverbs, Chapter 8. The original name for the Book of Proverbs in Hebrew is (משלי), Mishali, i.e., “Examples.” Wisdom is calling out to the people to understand her- provided they meet her at the place of entry.

What is unique about this text is that “wisdom” in Hebrew is a feminine verb, (חכמה), Khokmah. [1] 

The term “understanding”  (תבונה),i.e., Tebunah, is the 2^nd person singular form of the root form (בינה)  Binah ,ie, “understand” which  is also a feminine verb. A third term in verse 10 reads: “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.” The term for  “knowledge” in Hebrew (דעת) – Da’at- is likewise a feminine term.

So, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are ALL feminine concepts in this most profound of texts in the Hebrew scriptures and Christian Old Testament. Of further significance is the fact that “wisdom calls” and “understanding puts forth her voice” and “she cries out…” All these terms are indicative of the feminine principle in the Supreme Being. The fact that this was a female deity  who was considered as Black, in today’s terms,  will be central to this discussion.

These concepts of  woman as Supreme spirit- and worshipped as such- were prevalent throughout the ancient world and in many societies and cultures.

Images of the Horned Goddess (who became Isis/Auset and Hathor/House of Horus in ancient Kemet,i.e.,ancient Egypt, have been found in caves in the Sahara desert. When the earlier fertile lands dried up, probably as a result of climate change, the African people spread out from the center and traveled to the regions of the Nile Valley. Wherever they settled, they brought with them the religion of the Black Goddess, the Great Mother of Africa. 

Great importance has always been given to the Queen-Mother across the continent of Africa. The original African Goddess was regarded as androgynous- both  feminine and masculine- the instrument of her fertility. Just as physical humanity began in Africa, so no doubt did our concepts and images of the sacred, who were obviously Black, originate there as well. 

Not only were the royal families of ancient Kemet/ Egypt matriarchal,  all the common people were also. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, circa 100 B.C., wrote that of the ancient Egyptians: “Among private citizens, the husband, by the terms of the marriage agreement, appertains to the wife and it is stipulated between them that the man shall obey the woman in all things.”

This is in contrast to the system of patriarchy prevalent in Western societies today. In fact, patriarchy divided life into higher and lower categories, labeled “spirit” versus “nature” or “mind” versus “Matter”- and typically in this alienated symbolism, the superior “spirit/mind” is male and/or white, while the inferior “nature/matter” is female and /or Black. This false dualistic symbolism arises from an enforced order of male dominance. This is what Ancestor Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers, Maa Kheru, refers to as “fundamental alienation.”

Frederick Engels pointed out that “monogamy arises from a transitional stage of polygyny, “when men have female slaves at their command; coupled with male supremacy, it is ‘supplemented by adultery and prostitution,” and is from the beginning monogamy for the women only.

The significant characteristic of monogamous marriage was its transformation of the nuclear family into the basic economic unit of society, within which a woman and her children became dependent upon an individual man…. this transformation resulted in the oppression of women that has persisted to the present day. As corollary to, or symptomatic of this transformation, the reckoning of descent was changed from “mother right and descent” (matrilineality) to “father right and descent” (patrilineality).

Throughout the world when an honest excavation of the foundations of spiritual dogmas exists, there will be found the sacred female. The fundamental deities of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam  at their foundations were feminine. Whether it is Mary for Christianity, Yahowah for Judaism, or Allah for Islam, at the base are feminine deities.

Among the original Christians the divine was seen as having both a masculine and feminine face. They related to the Divine Feminine as Sophia, the wise Goddess. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:6, “Among the initiates we speak of Sophia, for it is ‘the secret of Sophia’ that is ‘taught in our mysteries’. In Greek, the term for Sophia (Σοφίαν)- Sophian means “wisdom”. We get the word “sophisticated” from this term which means “worldly wise.” When initiates of the Inner Mysteries of Christianity partook of Holy Communion, it was Sophia’s passion and suffering they remembered. Among the original Christians, priests and priestesses would offer initiates wine as a symbol of ‘her blood’.

However, this is not the end of her. She comes back in the form of the Virgin in the Roman Catholic tradition. The Goddess reappears in the shape of a chaste and pure vessel chosen for God’s action. In the Christian tradition, this is an interesting development.

In the Old Testament, Genesis, God creates a world without a Goddess. In Proverbs, she is Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom who says: “When He created the world, I was there, and I was His greatest joy

The idea of the virgin birth comes into Christianity by way of the Greek tradition found in the Gospel of Luke – the only gospel that mentions the virgin birth.

In 431 CE,at the Council of Ephesus , Mary, Jesus’ mother, was deemed Theotokos (Θεοτοκοϛ)– ‘birth-giver to God’ deemed perpetual virgin and Queen of Heaven.

The Great Mother was the original one to cast out evil spirits. When the male is substituted for the female, there is a different psychology, a different cultural bias. The goddess of a religion may be absorbed into new theologies such as demons, monsters, dragons and serpents- one who dwells in darkness. For example, Tiamat of Sumer was transformed from a devoted mother into an evil breeder of dragons. She was replaced with the Babylon male deity, Marduk.

When the gnostic literature was discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, a whole other picture of early Kemetic/Egyptian.

Christianity, in the Coptic language, [2] provided another insight into the Divine Mother.

There is a particular Gnostic text known in scholarly circles as “The Gospel of Thomas”. Its proper title should be “The Secret Things According to Yohannas’’ rather than the “Gospel of Thomas”. That would be a more correct translation of its original title. The Greek word for “Gospel”, “Euangelaion” (εὐαγγέλιον), meaning “good news, good story” was NEVER used in the original Coptic title. Nor was anyone at that time aware of someone called “Jesus”! That’s because the “j” did not come into existence until the 17^th century. There were many males living at that time with names like “Isus”, “Iousus”, “Yeshua”, and “Yehoshua.” This text was written in Sahidic Coptic of Upper Kemet- ancient Nubia. Sahidic is one of six forms of Coptic. The other five being:Boharic, Fayumic, Lycopolitan, Oxyrhynchite, and Akhmemic. 

Sahidic is the oldest and closest to Classical Egyptian. This text has 114 sayings, hence its name  “The Sayings Gospel”. There is no immaculate conception, no death and resurrection, and no miracles found in this text. The Divine Feminine can be found in many ancient wisdom texts from the early Coptic period. Here is an example from the “The Secret Things According to Yohannas’’:

“Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, “see, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds will become first before you in the sky. If they say to you, ‘She is in the sea,’ then the fish will become first before you. But the kingdom is inside you and she is outside you. When you will Know Yourselves and you will be aware that you all are the children of the Father who lives. If you all will not Know Yourselves, then you all exist in poverty and you all are the poverty.”

Notice that the word “kingdom” in the Coptic text is referred to as “she”! The many examples of the Divine Feminine in the Coptic texts  are too numerous to cite herein.

There are other examples of the Divine Feminine from various Greek mythologies as well.

For example, in Greek mythology, Apollo killed Python, the oracle of Delphi. After the invasion of northern tribes and later the advent of Christianity, the Goddess survived despite persecution. The Goddess took on a new identity as The Madonna. There are multiple examples of the Black Madonna throughout Europe. They are located in Switzerland, Lithuania, Australia, Luxemburg, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Poland, Croatia, France, Czech Republic,and Italy, as well as in New Jersey and New York.

Upon the acceptance of male kinship, the woman was placed in a subordinate status and the principal position in the relationship was no longer held by the Goddess, but by a male Deity.

Mother Earth was associated primarily with agricultural societies. The human mother gives birth just as the earth gives birth to vegetation. She provides nourishment, sustains and perpetuates life. The woman and the earth were viewed as the same,i.e, they were related. The personification of the energy that gives birth to shapes and nourishes forms is female. This can be seen in the agricultural societies of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Europe. Archeologists have unearthed hundreds of early Neolithic figurines of the goddess.

Goddesses are ubiquitous. This, in a nutshell, is the conclusion one reaches from a perusal of the voluminous and still growing literature on the history of religion.

These Goddesses stood by the cradle of homo sapien-sapiens, and testified to their earliest known appearance in Europe, some thirty to forty thousand years ago.Evidence of this was provided by the discoveries in Aurignacian deposits of statuettes of nude women with enormous breasts and buttocks and protruding abdomens. These figurines represented women in a highly stylized and exaggerated form  in an advanced stage of pregnancy They were usually referred to as paleolithic Venuses and are generally regarded by students of prehistory as having had religious significance.

The earliest attested role of the goddess, therefore, was that of the spiritual mother who endowed her worshippers with her own mysterious qualities.

By 4,000 BCE goddess figures appeared in Ur and Uruk (Southern Iraq). Around the same time, there are also the Neolithic Badarian and Amratian cultures of ancient Kemet where goddess figures have been unearthed. The worship of the female deity survived into the classical periods of Greece and Rome.  It was not totally suppressed until the time the Christian emperors of Rome and Byzantium  closed down the last goddess temples about 500 CE.

Most writers refer to this deity as the Mother Goddess. She not only provided for human life but also a controllable food supply. Women were not only the bearers of children but the chief producers of food.  They made the earth valuable and became its possessors. Women had economic power, social power and prestige. In these early societies the Goddess reigned alone.

As has been illustrated above, the Divine Feminine principle has been around for millennia and had been suppressed, oppressed and repressed by intent. More research needs to be done on the subject of the Divine Feminine and her presence as a Black woman.

Let us conclude with the words of Silvanus, one of the gnostic writers of the past, from his “Dialogue of the Savior”:

“…Bring in your guide and your teacher. The mind is the guide, but reason is the teacher…Live according to your mind…Acquire strength, for the mind is strong…Enlighten your mind…Light the lamp within you.”

“Knock on yourself as upon a door and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on the road, it is impossible for you to go astray…Open the door for yourself that you may know what is…Whatever you will open for yourself, you will open.”

BlogNotes:

[1] In Hebrew the infinitive is “To be wise”. In Hebrew verbs can be nouns too, depending on the context.

[2] Coptic is the last form of the ancient Egyptian language. that had been suppressed.

Editor's Note:

Proverbs 4:7 KJV Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

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