ender and loving
parent--a mother, who demanded no bleeding sacrifice to reconcile her to
her children. The ceremonies observed at these festive seasons consisted
for the most part in merry-making and in general thanksgiving, in which
the gratitude of the worshippers found expression in song and dance, and
in invocations to their Deity for a return or continuance of her gifts.

Subsequently, through the awe and reverence inspired by the mysteries
involved in birth and life, the adoration of the creative principles in
vegetable existence became supplemented by the worship of the creative
functions in human beings and in animals. The earth, including the power
inherent in it by which the continuity of existence is maintained, and
by which new forms are continuously called into life, embodied the idea
of God; and, as this inner force was regarded as inherent in matter, or
as a manifestation of it, in process of time earth and the heavens, body
and spirit, came to be worshipped under the form of a mother and her
child, this figure being the highest expression of a Creator which the
human mind was able to conceive. Not only did this emblem represent
fertility, or the fecundating energies of Nature, but with the power
to create were combined or correlated all the mental qualities and
attributes of the two sexes. In fact the whole universe was contained in
the Mother idea--the child, which was sometimes female, sometimes male,
being a scion or offshoot from the eternal or universal unit.

Underlying all ancient mythologies may be observed the idea that the
earth, from which all things proceed, is female. Even in the mythology
of the Finns, Lapps, and Esths, Mother Earth is the divinity adored.
Tylor calls attention to the same idea in the mythology of England,

"from the days when the Anglo-Saxon called upon the Earth, 'Hal wes thu
folde fira modor' (Hail, thou Earth, men's mother), to the time when
mediaeval Englishmen made a riddle of her asking 'Who is Adam's mother?'
and poetry continued what mythology was letting fall, when Milton's
Archangel promised Adam a life to last

'... till like ripe fruit thou drop
Into thy Mother's lap.' "(4)

4) Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 295.

In the old religion the sky was the husband of the earth and the earth
was mother of all the gods.(5) In the traditions of past ages the fact
is clearly perceived that there was a time when the mother was not only
the one