Archaeologists have studied the culture and traditions of our ancestors before the last Ice Age and even as far back as 30,000 years ago. From their excavations of Stone Age societies not only in Europe but throughout the Middle East many religious artifacts have been found including what is known as “Venus” sculptures. While some are more elaborate than others, they all depict a heavily pregnant woman usually nearly ready to give birth. But considering the concerns of early man, this type of religious art should not surprise us, for he was very concerned with fertility, a preoccupation that in the modern world, at least here in the West is no longer a central focus.
Mankind who in primitive times was at the whim of the weather and had to contend with the frigid temperatures of Europe during the Last Ice Age was almost completely preoccupied with survival and this entailed not only the proliferation of his own kind, but that of animals so that there should be an abundance available for hunting. There was also a great concern about the crops yielding their harvest which without modern irrigation was very dependent on adequate rainfall. All of these basic needs focused early man intently on fertility which not surprisingly became the chief goal of primitive religion.
But for primitive man, fertility was linked with the female of the species to the exclusion of the male as evidenced by the prolific number of Venus sculptures. And the reason for this was simple. Not being aware that the male had a role in reproduction, our ancestors had only observed that newborns came out of the womb of their mother, and so the ancients imagined that they were mysteriously formed within the female by some unknown process. One thing that early man did deduce was that as women only began to have children after they began to menstruate, somehow babies must have been made out of blood. And this is the origin of the traditional idea that blood is the symbol of life. Our ancestors would not have known the deeper significance of that association, namely that blood is responsible for carrying nutrients to the whole body, but they did observe that menstrual blood and babies came from the same place and that was enough to make an association between the two. The color red as a symbol of life has been seen extensively in many civilizations for this reason. The dead were often buried with red ocher as discovered in various excavations. Even in cultures that exist today such as in India, red has this significance as brides wear this color at their weddings.
Because women were considered to be solely responsible for the production of life, early religions began to formulate the idea of a Great Mother Goddess who was responsible for the fertility of the whole world, and they worshipped her and offered sacrifices to her accordingly to maintain her favor. Not surprisingly, because of the important role that women were perceived to have in fertility, they enjoyed a high status in society if not a little higher than at least equal with men. While many are familiar with the legendary Amazon myths about women warriors, some real civilizations that we may now call matriarchal include that of Catal Huyuk, an ancient city in Turkey that existed around 10,000 years ago. Archaeological digs have discovered that it was a society without social strata in which all the homes were more or less the same. Worship of the goddess was seemingly practiced as within the city a clay figurine of a naked female deity giving birth between two lionesses was unearthed.
Further East in Mesopotamia, other matriarchal societies existed including that of the Sumerians who were present up until the 3rd millennium B.C. They were a farming and agricultural people who inhabited the southern part of the Fertile Crescent. The Sumerians existed as a confederation of city states, generally counted as about 14 in the region who coexisted relatively peacefully in unwalled cities. And more than likely their peaceful cohabitation was in no small part linked with the strong influence of women in that civilization.
Now while mankind might have started off in matriarchal mode with the prominent worship of a female deity, this was obviously not to last forever. While originally the ancients were hunter-gatherers, as time went on some of our forebears developed into farmers while others became nomadic herdsmen. The latter probably evolved when some hunting communities had captured some prey still alive and very pregnant and proceeded to domesticate and raise the offspring. It was through this step that mankind began to learn about the male role in fertility perhaps noticing that one ram could sire many sheep. Needless to say, this greatly elevated the status of men in such societies over women. It became the origin of the custom of polygamy as the warrior head of the herdsmen would seek to take as many wives as possible to ensure that he could sire many children for himself. And it gave rise to the belief in a great male deity who might be thought of as the Great Father God.
While blood was the sacred color of matriarchal societies, it would be replaced by white in patriarchal cultures because of its link with male reproductive fluid. The white color of semen would go on to become the symbol of purity and sanctity, a legacy that has descended to us here in the West ever since. Again, the ancients might not have been able to see the same significance in the color that we do in modern times, but nonetheless their fertility based color association has ultimately greatly influenced the West from bridal gowns to the color of our living rooms. It was the Semitic tribes of Northern Mesopotamia who were a strong patriarchal society and as we trace our religion primarily through these peoples, their ideas have made a strong impact on our Western culture.
Over time various civilizations acquired a pantheon of deities and when one people conquered another people, there was often a blending of the gods and goddesses to expand the number of deities being worshipped. When the Akkadians, a Semitic tribe invaded Sumer in the late 3rd millennium B.C., there was a mixing of patriarchal and matriarchal pantheons. Usually though many deities were acknowledged only a handful were considered the supreme gods or goddesses ruling over all the others. In India the chief deities were Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer all male deities. However the blending of Akkadia and Sumer put both male and female deities at the top of the list as a result of the fusion of male dominated culture with a female dominated one. These three were Marduk, Inanna, and Tammuz where Inanna the great moon goddess was the only female of the three.
In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, Inanna and Tammuz were lovers, but when Inanna took a trip to the underworld she was unexpectedly killed by a rival to her position. As the fertility goddess, this had disastrous effects for the world, for her absence caused the crops to stop growing, the animals to stop mating, and essentially was bringing life to a halt. It had brought on what we know as winter. The dire situation was remedied by Inanna’s consort Tammuz who agreed to die and go to the underworld himself for six months of the year so that Inanna could return to the land of the living bringing life and fertility again for the other six months. It was a trade, and in this way he shared his life with her 50/50 ensuring the survival of the world. Consequently, Tammuz necessarily had to die every year in the early spring around late March or early April to trade places with Inanna. He became known as the dying god-king.
The concept of this dying god-king had precedent in matriarchal societies like Sumer in a yearly ritual where the reigning king was sacrificed in the spring to fertilize the goddess and ensure a good year of crops and animal and human progeny. As we can imagine over time as this practice became more regular it would have scared away would-be kings from taking the position, but a solution was found by sacrificing a criminal as a proxy for the king instead. Several days before the sacrifice the condemned man would be hailed as king and after his demise the original king would resume his role again until the following year.
Not unlike India and Old Babylon, Egypt had its principle group of deities as well. For the people of the Nile floodplain there also existed three principle beings who were actually a family consisting of father, mother, and son. Osiris was the legendary first king of Egypt supposedly around the time of 4000 B.C. He had been murdered by his brother Seth who usurped the throne. Seth had drown him and then cut him up into fourteen pieces. However his devoted wife Isis (who also happened to be his sister) searched for the remains of his body and singing a song resurrected him from the dead. Isis then conceived a son named Horus who hunted down Seth and restored his father to the throne of Egypt.
As a result of his resurrection, Osiris became the Lord of the Dead and the Afterlife. His wife Isis was hailed as the ideal mother and wife and a popular cult image emerged with Isis nursing her son Horus. The Egyptians like the Babylonians associated the myth of Osiris’ resurrection with the cycle of summer and winter and crop harvesting. A whole ritual evolved every year at the annual flooding of the Nile which was believed to be the tears of Isis weeping for her slain husband. Eventually, mystery religion initiates were made to identify with the resurrection of Osiris which for them symbolized purging themselves of past ills and entering new life.
Returning back to Mesopotamia, three principle deities figure prominently in another story of Sumerian origin which should be reasonably familiar to most people in the West. The Gilgamesh Epic is a story that dates to the 3rd millennium B.C., and besides chronicling the adventures of the legendary hero-king Gilgamesh tells the story of a Flood that covered the land of the two rivers. Most historians interpret it as a rendition of the historical flood of 4000 B.C. which submerged all the cities of Sumer and was catastrophic for the region. In all likelihood it is the original narrative upon which our Genesis account of the Flood is based as it bears a striking resemblance. At the beginning of the story, Ea one of the gods delivered a salvation message to Utnapishtim, the Noah figure in the story instructing him to build a ship to escape the floodwaters that were coming. He was told to make a boat as wide and long as it was tall, a cube shaped barge in which were to be seven decks. He was to construct it caulking the whole boat with pitch (bitumen) and when it was completed was to load it with his family and kin as well as the beasts and wild creatures of the field. When all was done according to instruction, the ship was loaded and the entrance was sealed. For seven days the storm raged submerging the mountains. Then while the flood was subsiding, the boat came to rest on a mountain and the Noah figure of the story opened the window and let out first a dove and then a swallow searching for dry ground, but as none were to be found the birds returned to the ship. Finally he let out a raven which never returned. In the end, Utnapishtim offered a sacrifice on the top of the mountain which was accepted as a sweet smelling aroma to the gods.
In the story, there are a number of gods involved. Several of them might be called the antagonist deities for they ordered the flood. But three deities were on the side of the Noah figure and not only revealed to him the plan of the devious gods but helped him to escape it. They include Ea, the bearer of the salvation message as well as Ishtar the great moon goddess who lamented over the destruction of all her people, and finally Shamash the sun god who told the Noah figure when to board the ark. Traditionally in these ancient agrarian societies, the sun-god was the Great Father God while the moon-god was the Great Mother Goddess associated with fertility. Though it is not commonly known, the crescent moon of Islam has its origin in the moon goddess worship of ancient agrarian Arabia. In the ancient world it was common to have religious observation of the seven visible planetary bodies including the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. With the Sun as father and the Moon as mother, it was also frequent to link Venus with the offspring of the two, the planet that we happen to call the “Bright Morning Star.”
A person who is even vaguely familiar with our Western religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition would perhaps see in all of these ancient myths and legends a certain similarity with elements of our faith. We see the concept of trinity, the idea of a god offering himself as a sacrifice for the benefit of the world, as well as resurrection. Though we haven’t discussed them, there are several other stories of the Near East and Mediterranean that describe the birth of a god through a virgin goddess among which are the popular Persian Mithra, the Phrygian Attis, and the Babylonian Tammuz who was mentioned earlier. As all of these stories bear a resemblance to the revelation we have in the Christian faith, we would do well to interpret them as a precursor to the information we have in the modern age, a divinely guided framework to prepare the world for the ideas we have in Christianity. And while we recognize familiar themes, perhaps there is more in these myths than meets the eye.
The father of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the patriarch Abraham who many will recall journeyed out of Mesopotamia when God called him to the land of Canaan. He was a citizen of Ur of the Chaldees, a city in which there was a confluence of the ideas of matriarchal Sumer and patriarchal Akkadia. Abraham himself was a Semite, but living in Ur he had the heritage of both strong male and female deities. In fact more than likely he was a polytheist just like his father Terah who worshipped the gods back in the Fertile Crescent. In fact a polytheistic belief in the family of Abraham continued still for some time after his departure from the Chaldees, for we know that Rachel the wife of his grandson Jacob had stolen the household idols from her father Laban before they fled from him in Paddan Aram.
By the time that Moses would begin writing the Pentateuch nearly 600 years later, the wind was blowing in the direction of monotheism. The great prophet sternly steered the Israelites in this direction of higher revelation, but in his drafting of the sacred writings he was nonetheless left with the legacy of the polytheistic stories of Mesopotamia. As we have seen, the story of the Flood was an inheritance from the distant past as was also the Creation story itself. Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and it may be that some of the narratives early in Genesis come from both Egypt and the Middle East. In any event, though Moses felt the need to modify them somewhat to fit the monotheistic framework he nonetheless preserved some of the polytheistic ideas in an implicit way.
Probably the best example of this is the generic name used in the Old Testament for God. It is the word “Elohim” which is not a singular but a plural word and literally translates as “gods.” Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures we have this plural word appearing for both the God of Israel and the gods of the gentiles. The word Elohim also translates as “mighty ones” or “divine beings” and has embedded within it a linkage with the original polytheism that existed near the time of the formation of Israel. That Moses didn’t see fit to modify the term to true singular was probably because it had been in common usage for centuries and he thought it ineffective to try to change it in any effort to drive home a rigorous monotheism.
In any event, it would seem fortuitous that he left the word alone for it would serve as an Old Testament indicator that in fact there was some plurality about God. Within the Christian framework this would mean the Trinity of three persons within one Supreme Being. So to a certain extent we can validate the “trinities” of polytheistic civilizations as a forerunner of our Christian concept. Though following the lead of the ancient precursors we may suppose that this Trinity that is introduced to us early on in Genesis also has some gender specification unlike what is commonly accepted today.
In the first chapter of Genesis we find the Creation story which summarizes the making of man. We learn that God made man in his own image and the image was both male and female. Preserved for us right in the initial verses of the Old Testament is the idea that there is somehow both male and female in the Godhead. Yet interestingly, it is most common in modern Christianity to refer to all the members of the Trinity as male.
We can think about the implications of both genders in the Godhead from a point of reason. That we observe male and female in the created world may be an expression of a spiritual reality of mixed genders within God himself. Paul’s epistle to the Romans would support this notion for he says that “God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” Essentially this is to say that God has designed the physical world to mirror spiritual realities if not for anything else than to teach mankind about spiritual things by way of analogy, through what he can tangibly relate to. The ancient Hermetic saying is “as above, so below.” What is true in heaven is reflected on earth.
That the basic societal unit of man is a family, we should also by way of symmetry expect to see this reality reflected within God. As our basic family structure is comprised of father, mother, and child so there is good reason to believe that the Holy Trinity is also in the same pattern. From the standpoint of mystical theology, it is understood that at the dawn of creation, the Unmanifested God manifested forth in an instantaneous sequence of Father, Mother, and Son. The One became Two, male and female, and the Two brought forth the Eternal Son. For this reason the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians that Jesus is the “firstborn over all creation.” All things that have been made within the universe were created by him and through him so that we correctly say that the Divine Son is the Elder Brother of all creation, while the whole creation are the children of the Divine Father and Mother.
Some of the ancient religions were perhaps more correct in their beliefs than we give them credit for as this specific gender information was found not only in that of Old Babylon but also in Egypt. In both cultures the principal deities included two male and one female being, and specifically in Egypt those deities were envisioned as a family of father, mother, and son. What is particularly relevant about the legend of Osiris, Isis, and Horus is that the father and mother deities were said to be siblings. This was not uncommon in the ancient world where it was often the case where a half-brother and half-sister were married. This was the case with the patriarch Abraham whose spouse Sarah was his half-sister. They both shared the same father but a different mother. In any event the intimacy of siblings in the Egyptian family only underscores how both the Divine Father and the Divine Mother have come from the same substance as the Two came forth from the One at the moment of Creation.
What should be clear at this point is that what is now being described as the Divine Mother or God the Mother is none other than the Holy Spirit who for centuries has remained an enigma, one of the most mysterious members of the Trinity. Though many following the orthodox mainstream refer to the Holy Spirit with a masculine pronoun, this has not stopped a good number from referring to this member of the Trinity as an “It” or worse yet, some kind of impersonal “force” The development of this topic thus far has purposed at redirecting the gender of the Holy Spirit from masculine to feminine, and while we have relied mostly on ancient parallels, reason, and mystical theology for that claim up until this point, it is now time to provide additional evidence from the Bible.
Unlike English, many languages assign genders to their nouns as a more specific way of declination. This is true of most of the European languages as it is also of languages of the Middle East. In German for example, a dog is masculine while a cat is feminine. Other nouns are neuter in that language like house or child. In Hebrew, not surprisingly the gender for the word that is translated as Spirit throughout the pages of the Old Testament is decidedly feminine. It is the word “Ruwach” and it translates as “breath” or “wind” as also do the words for spirit in other languages like Greek and Latin.
Similarly the concept of the Spirit was also referred to at times in the Old Testament under the banner of a term rendered as the “Glory of the Lord” or the “Divine Presence.” This word was used when the Israelites were in the desert after having made their exodus from Egypt and the Glory of the Lord appeared in the form of a cloud. Such a brilliant manifestation of God was also present in Solomon’s temple when after he had completed it he proceeded to make a magnificent dedication of the edifice to God. It was said that the Glory of the Lord filled the temple and was so overwhelming the priests could not perform their duties. In Hebrew this concept of the “dwelling presence of God” is understood as “Shekinah” and is also of the feminine gender.
Not only is there a gender suggestion in the Hebrew language regarding the Holy Spirit, within the name of God itself there is evidence of both genders as we might expect. The word Elohim as the generic term for God was the ancient way to refer to the Deity among all of the Semitic peoples. But Moses as the great prophet received a special revelation from God in learning the way that he wanted to be known to the Israelites. It is the name that in English we commonly translate as “the LORD” but properly in Hebrew it is often rendered as YAHWEH or JEHOVAH. Actually we cannot be sure of the actual pronunciation as ancient Hebrew did not have vowels in written form. In any case we do know that the consonants spelled YHWH and is technically known as the Tetragrammaton. This special name for God irrespective of how it is pronounced reveals the nature of God as the “Self Existent One” or plainly the One who eternally exists. It is a name that gets to the heart of who God is. Like nouns, consonants in the Hebrew language have gender. The Y (Yodh) is masculine, while the H (He) is feminine. The W (Waw) is neutral. Some have suggested that the first part of the name, perhaps YAH may be thought of as the masculine part of God while the WEH or second part of the name engenders the feminine. However one breaks down the letters, we can infer from the name that both male and female subside within the “Self Existent One.”
Moving on from the support of Hebrew gender declinations, we may also consider feminine imagery employed by God throughout the bible. In a number of places the Lord did not hesitate to cast himself in maternal imagery. Two expressions of this are found in Isaiah including one from chapter 49 in which God asks, “Can a mother forget her baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” In chapter 66, the Lord assures Israel, “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.” Then in other places we have images of a mother bird caring for her young such as in Psalm 91 where the Lord promises that “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” In Deuteronomy 32 the same motherly bird motif is depicted in the image of an eagle. In that verse, the Lord beautifully illustrates how “He guarded Israel as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions.”
Now considering passages that specifically relate to the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit, we have one fairly compelling text from the New Testament and which are the words of Jesus himself. The passage of Luke 7:33-35 has Jesus recalling how the Pharisees had labeled John the Baptist a devil despite the fact that he didn’t indulge in the normal pleasures of bread and wine. After the reference to John, Jesus commented on how he also was criticized as a drunkard and glutton for eating and drinking as men normally would. Then Jesus uttered what superficially appears as a mysterious summarization of the whole affair. Despite what the Pharisees said about both him and John, Jesus asserted that “Wisdom is justified by her children.” In this allusion, he is associating both John and himself as children of this enigmatic feminine Wisdom which doesn’t seem to have a context in Luke’s gospel.
In actuality he was making a reference to a Being called “Wisdom” in the book of Proverbs. In the early chapters of that book, Wisdom is referred to as a feminine Entity. More than just a personification of what we might call knowledge, Wisdom associates herself fairly directly with God in the beginning before the Creation was brought forth. Chapter 8:22-30 are fairly explicit in this regard where for example this feminine Being asserts that “the Lord possessed [her] in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.” The passage concludes with her reiterating that she was with him from the beginning “as one brought up with him” as if to say that they shared a common origin. By making reference to this mysterious figure of Proverbs, Jesus essentially supports the idea that she is the Holy Spirit and his Divine Mother.
As a final biblical consideration regarding the femininity of the Holy Spirit, we would do well to recall that at Jesus’ baptism, all three members of the Trinity were present. Jesus as the Divine Son was physically in the water while the Divine Father was in the form of a voice from heaven while the Holy Spirit or Divine Mother descended in the form of a dove. This delicate and gentle bird was often linked with female deities in the ancient Near East and appropriately appeared under this form at the Baptism of the Lord. Even in modern times we regard this creature in a feminine context to further support the Holy Spirit as the female member of the Trinity.
Now having reviewed evidence for a female element within our Christian deity based upon parallels with ancient religions, the bible, and some deductions from reason, it is also relevant that we consider the testimony of the Early Church in its creeds, apocryphal writings, and other practices. The ancient church formulated several creeds within the first few centuries including the very popular Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed, the latter which is generally recited every Sunday in the Roman and Orthodox liturgies. Both have been the measure of orthodoxy for the entire church from at least the 4th century when Christianity became legalized and received the support of the Empire. At that time it was considered very important to “iron out” a common faith for the people, and the creed which came to us from Nicea did just that. The lengthy section about the Divine Son speaks of many aspects of Christ but like the Apostle’s Creed it mentions the role of the Holy Spirit in the incarnation of the Savior. Specifically it states that he was “incarnate of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary” somehow indicating that the Holy Spirit had some role to play in Jesus’ formation within the womb of his mother. The early fathers apparently realized that this miracle was not the work of the Divine Father but of the Spirit, and seemingly it was because of the maternal role of the Holy Ghost. If this is not clear in the Nicene Creed it is fairly concrete in the Apostle’s Creed which in its confession of Jesus Christ declares that he “was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.” Within this statement are two ideas which the writers of the creed apparently desired to tie together. That he was conceived of the Holy Spirit is to say that the Son of God at the beginning of all things proceeded from the Divine Mother. This is an allusion to the manifestation of the Holy Trinity in the first instant of creation, while the reference to Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary is obviously a phrase meant to communicate how the Son of God eons of ages later took on flesh in the world.
On the subject of the Creeds it is perhaps important to mention that the Roman Church and the Orthodox have split on a number of issues since the Great Schism in 1054, and one of these points is the controversial Filioque Clause of the Nicene Creed. This clause is a small insertion into the discussion of the Holy Spirit as recommended by some medieval theologians who felt that there was an injustice paid to the Divine Son in the original wording. As the creed descended to us from Nicea it pronounced that “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.” The pious theologians suggested that it was somehow slighting the Son to say that the Holy Spirit also did not proceed from him and so they rewrote the line to say “we believe in the Holy Spirit … who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” But Eastern Christianity protested that this was a violation of the intentions of the early fathers who undoubtedly worded the original for a good reason. And in fact, they are very right to put their foot down on the matter because the original wording reflects the logical procession of the Trinity as it manifested forth at the dawn of creation. First came the Father and then the Mother followed by the Son. The creed as it was first written then reflects that the Holy Spirit could only proceed from the Father because the Son was sequentially the last to manifest forth. Though the Roman theologians of the Middle Ages were certainly well intentioned, their alteration to the creed as it was handed down in the 4th century does violence to an ancient theological understanding as it would errantly imply that a mother could proceed from a child. The Orthodox seemingly more fastidious about tradition knew better than to tamper with this old teaching and insisted it be left alone.
Outside of the internal evidence within the creeds about the Motherhood of God, we have plenty of additional support for the femininity of the Holy Spirit in the testimony of the Early Fathers as well as the non-canonical writings that were in circulation in the first few centuries which undoubtedly reflect the popular mindset of early Christians. The great St. Augustine is quoted as saying in as late as the early fifth century that there were Christians in his day who believed that the “Holy Spirit was the “mother of the Son of God and wife of the Father.” And this is precisely the relationship within the Godhead that we are suggesting.
Among the many writings that were in circulation in the early centuries of the church and reflect this notion are those pertaining to the ministry of St. Thomas who according to tradition was the apostle to India. The apocryphal Acts of Thomas, has many references to the Mother throughout the text. In one episode where Thomas has been present at a wedding feast, he glorified and praised God, “the Father of truth, and the Mother of Wisdom.” Then in a few narratives from the work there are references invoking the “Compassionate Mother” and other similar epithets especially when celebrating the Eucharist or administering the sacrament of Confirmation when it is understood that the Holy Spirit has an important role in effecting the graces that are transmitted through those sacraments. In one section, Thomas is quoted as referring to her as the “Holy Dove” which as we have previously mentioned is a feminine symbol which was also present at the Baptism of the Lord. In addition to these citations, there is a fairly clear Trinitarian allusion in what is known as the Hymn of the Soul, a poetic section found within the Acts of Thomas. It refers to “your father the king of kings and your mother the ruler of the East and your brother.”
And speaking again of the Baptism of Jesus, the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews a now lost work that we only know about through quotations from the early church fathers relates similar sentiments about the Holy Spirit. One quote mentions a feminine Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism and said: "My Son, in all the prophets was I waiting for you that you should come and I might rest in you." In another quote presumably about the Transfiguration Jesus is said to have remarked, "Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away to the great mountain Tabor."
Other writers including Aphrahat, the great Persian early church father of the 4th century plainly expressed his belief in the femininity and motherhood of the Holy Spirit. In his homilies he speaks of “God his father and the Holy Spirit his mother.” And this should be no surprise to us because Aphrahat as a member of the Church of the Near East spoke and wrote Syriac, which like Aramaic, Hebrew, and the other Semitic languages all attach the feminine gender to the word for spirit.
Now we’ve taken a look at the testimony of the Early Church in terms of its creeds and other writings, but it is also useful to focus on what we might call the non-verbal elements of primitive Christianity which paint a similar picture. That is, we can examine the artwork, symbolism, and liturgical practices in the Early Church for some clues regarding a belief in a feminine member of the Trinity. In terms of practices, there is perhaps one standing tradition in most of the liturgical churches to represent the Trinity under three different symbols around the altar. Many would recall that in a typical Roman Catholic Church, the altar is flanked by candles which burn throughout the service. In addition to this, there is usually a crucifix hanging on the wall behind the altar and if not present a small one is on the altar itself. Finally, it is common to have bouquets of flowers or plants on the floor immediately in front of the altar or perhaps somewhere conspicuously behind it. Obviously the cross represents the Divine Son and is an easy symbol to identify. The candles which are the source of light present in the service represent the Divine Father, an idea that is found within the Bible itself where for example James says that “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” By process of elimination we have a link between flowers and the Holy Spirit which like the dove we have considered is a token of femininity and another evidence for the gentle and delicate member of the Holy Trinity.
But perhaps more compelling than this liturgical image is the artwork and symbolism of the nascent church. Many Christians are familiar with what is popularly known as the fish symbol which even today has a following on car bumpers as a sign of Christian pride and identity. In the early church this image often served as a secret code to identify Christian meeting places like the catacombs and other locales when the threat of persecution was very prevalent. While it is common to view the fish symbol in conjunction with the miracles of Jesus and the prevalence of the image within the gospels, the use of this sign is older than Christianity itself and has some very different connotations.
In actuality, what we call a fish is really a geometric shape formed by overlapping two circles. The shape is originally of pagan origin and is known as the Vesica Pisces or the “bladder of a fish” because of its oval type form. Not surprisingly it had a link with fertility as one of the overlapping circles represented god or the male figure while the other circle signified the goddess or female figure. What we call a fish then is the joining of the two circles or the offspring of god and goddess, a divine child. The implication for early Christianity is obvious, for the divine offspring would represent Jesus Christ the Son of the Divine Father and Mother. This Vesica Pisces was also originally associated with the genitalia or the womb of the goddess because of its oval shape, and probably for this reason early depictions of Christ depict him as an infant within the Vesica which represented the womb of Mary, and symbolically the coming together of heaven and earth in the body of Jesus as God and Man together. It was extremely common to see the Vesica Pisces or overlapping circle motif within the churches of Medieval Europe as this ancient logo survived in artwork well after its original significance had faded from memory.
As a final reference to the world of Christian art, it is worth mentioning that even in the Middle Ages and a time period in which God was strongly viewed as completely paternal, religious reliefs within some Catholic Churches suggested mixed genders within the Deity. A 14th Century fresco in a small Catholic Church southeast of Munich, Germany depicts a female Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity, according to Leonard Swidler of Temple University. The woman and two bearded figures flanking her appear to be wrapped in a single cloak and joined in their lower halves showing a union of old and new bodies of birth and rebirth.
Now the all important question that should be addressed at this point is why if there really is a female member of the Trinity that such information is not mainstream and part of the Orthodox teaching of the church. It is certainly a very valid question and like many things has a few facets in the answer. Probably the most obvious one has to do with language which we discussed earlier. Different languages assign gender to nouns each in a unique way. What may be feminine in German is masculine in French and vice versa. In the ancient world, the Semitic languages clearly tied a feminine gender to spirit. Not only Hebrew but related tongues including Aramaic and Syrian did the same. However, the word spirit is assigned a neuter gender in Greek and a masculine gender in Latin. Though the center of the Christian religion was originally in Palestine with an Aramaic language basis, within a few centuries the center of gravity would strongly switch westward into the Greco-Roman world where the concept of spirit was either neutral or masculine. Not surprisingly, those texts that are still available to us in support of a female Holy Spirit have some association with the Near East and Semitic languages whereas Greek and Roman writers have for reasons of language limitation generally referred to the Spirit in the masculine. So clearly one component of the loss of this ancient knowledge was simply the result of speech.
But another reason to which we can attribute this loss of information may have had to do with the Early Fathers’ desire to distance themselves from the many fertility cults that were in existence all over the Mediterranean at that time. As has been mentioned earlier, there was no lack of goddesses in ancient religions, some who were associated with dying gods and others who had offspring through virgin birth. Many of these cults involved members in what was construed as immoral sexual practices and certainly the leaders of the Early Church would have wanted to keep its prospective members from thinking of the Christian faith as just one more fertility cult. In this way, it might have appeared to be in the best interest of the new religion to allow a feminine Holy Spirit slip through the cracks.
However, it should be acknowledged that there have been consequences to losing this doctrine that are easily recognizable. As stated earlier, the Holy Spirit has become one of the more mysterious members of the Trinity so that many people haven’t known how to think of her. Frequently she has been thought of as a force or as an “it.” Others have thought of her as a personification of some attribute of God like the love between the Father and the Son. Clearly the absence of the Divine Mother has led to ambiguity and confusion which has been a disservice to the members of the Christian faith.
But perhaps the biggest consequence of losing this tenet of the faith is the vacuum of the female element in the Godhead. Within the human heart is a longing for both Father and Mother, and the absence of a decidedly Mother figure within out Deity has created a sense of loss within the souls of even the most devoted members of the faith. Up until the time of the legalization of Christianity within the empire and its subsequent position as the official religion of the state, there was no lack of goddesses to admire for their maternal virtues. Isis of Egyptian fame was extremely popular within the empire as she was considered the ideal mother and wife. Many images were seen of her nursing her son Horus, but when Christianity supplanted paganism, Isis was to go away and leave a void within the hearts of many.
However this was not the end of maternal devotion within the religion of the empire, for no sooner did Isis and Horus slip under the surface then there arose an increased devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Divine Son Jesus. The Pagan image of mother and child became replaced with the Christian image of mother and child, and both within the Roman and Orthodox churches Mary has ever since had the place of the premier saint engendering the highest respect of all who call themselves Catholic. Whether through the recitation of the rosary or through special services in her honor, countless souls have petitioned for her powerful intercession to God to help them in their spiritual journey and with life in general.
Over the centuries this feeling of devotion to Mary as a semi-divine figure would only grow, for it was at the Council of Ephesus in 431 that she was afforded the title of Theotokos or “God-bearer” a term that would also earn her the acclamation “Mother of God.” Undoubtedly Mary has filled the female vacuum within the Godhead in a practical way for many people throughout the centuries, though unquestionably this honor has been abused especially by those in poor Catholic countries where she has more or less been elevated to the same level as God himself.
That Mary has filled the void for many souls throughout the ages seems clear, though it can obviously be argued that it was at times an excessive devotion that was inappropriate. Nonetheless, we may believe that in God’s Providence, he allowed Mary to take on this special role as the earthly representative of the Divine Mother in an age that would not accept a true female Deity. Mary herself prophesied after she was visited by the angel Gabriel that “all generations will call me blessed” as she was somehow made privy to the knowledge that she would be God’s special agent meeting a need in an age of a purely paternal Deity. Perhaps from God’s point of view, she has achieved and continues to fulfill this practical purpose. But the age is now coming to a close, and if in the past God’s children were not ready for this knowledge, at last it is time to embrace the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother of all creation. For the age before Christ was the Age of the Father, and the age that is now ending is the Age of the Son, and the Age we are entering is the Age of the Mother, the Holy Spirit who will bring both men and women to a higher ideal of equality and harmony such as has not been seen in the very long history of men.