The Mother

Since always, the mythologies of all cultures have associated woman with the earth, with the moon, or sometimes with the serpent. The relation of woman to the earth comes from the resemblance between the seed that enters the earth and the seed that enters the womb of the woman. In both forms, the seed makes a plant or a child. For this we have in the mythologies the figure of the Mother Goddess, symbolized as small statues of a rather fat woman. In almost all the museums of Turkey they show us these statues, which date from the Neolithic era and even earlier. The Neolithic era is the era when man began to build houses, to sow, to plough the earth, to settle in one place without being obliged to be a nomad in order to hunt and to live in natural caves. As the earth gives wheat, woman gives her milk to make her child live. For this reason, in the languages that use gender (feminine or masculine) the earth is feminine, and in Turkish the earth is known as 'Mother Earth' (Toprak Ana).

Again in the Neolithic era, when they buried, they put the body into the earth in the form of the baby as it was in the foetus of its mother, that is in the 'hocker' form, which consists of having the legs close to the belly. Burying in this position gives us to understand that there was the hope of being born in the other life just as one is born in this life thanks to 'Mother Earth'. Again it is for this reason that woman is blessed as the earth is blessed. The sterile woman who cannot have children is considered as a field where not even grass grows. Another resemblance of woman is with the Moon. In many cultures the moon was called the Queen or the Mother Goddess of the sky. The most typical relation between the moon and woman is the cycle of the moon around the world, which lasts a month, with the menstruation of the woman which occurs once a month. In antiquity the Mother Goddess was symbolized by the horns of the cow. The horns of the cow are like the half moon of Rosh Hodesh. In many poems they paint woman as if she were the face of the moon (Ay Yüzlü), because the moon is the symbol of beauty.

The resemblance of woman to the serpent comes from the legend of Eve, who was seduced by the serpent, which had the form of a woman called Nahash. But on the other hand this resemblance in different cultures is interpreted with a bad reputation, saying that woman is a serpent. With all these resemblances, woman was always the shadow on earth of the Mother Goddess who is in the sky. The Sumerians called this goddess Inanna; in Babylon she was called Ishtar; in our lands she was called Cybele; in Ephesus, Artemis; in Greece, Demeter (Deus Mater — Mother Goddess). These cults of the Mother Goddess meant that, according to some historians, the community was matriarchal, that is governed by the mother, which with time changed to being patriarchal, that is governed by the father. But be that as it may, the mother was always the mistress of the hearth, of the house, of keeping order in the family, of being the Holy Blessed woman of humanity, and she never lost her worth to be adored.