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Ancient Beliefs

From the time that man could wrap his thumb around a tool, he wondered about his existence. Therefore, he worshipped. The events that ruled the human life at this time, hundreds of thousands of years ago, were very simple: the rising of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, the miracle and mystery of birth and death, the life-giving plants that grew from the ground. The importance of these "simple" events is reflected in ancient spirituality.

Life--a miraculous and incomprehensible phenomenon--literally poured forth from women's bodies. The earth also gave life--to plants and animals, and therefore, to people. Because they had the power to create and sustain lif e, women and the earth and all things spiritual were linked together. In digs of pre-historic civilizations, archeologists have found fire pits surrounded by stone, clay, and bone figurines of women with burgeoning thighs, bulging bellies, and huge breasts--all things that these ancient people saw as characteristics of strong mothers. These figurines have been dated from 40,000 to 10,000 BCE, and have been found in almost e very ancient site imaginable.

A Willendorf Goddess figurine, possibly the most famous ancient fertility symbol

This is not the only evidence to show that ancient people saw the spirit as a mother earth goddess. Cave paintings from the same time periods show women forming living things out of dirt, grain growing from women's stomachs, and women giving birth, with the umbilical cord still attaching mother and baby. Archeologists have also uncovered a written manuscript from Sumeria that matches the Hebrew creation story almost exactly--except for the fact that, in this account, Eve is created first. This manuscript has been dated to the very beginning of written history, about five thousand years ago.

After the stone age ended, people continued to worship mother goddesses. However, the pantheon of gods and goddesses that they worshipped continually increased in number. Societies began to worship specialized gods and godd esses. By the time Abraham was born in the Sumerian city-state of Ur, his people were worshipping close to 10,000 gods! Their pantheon ranged from general gods and goddesses of the sun, moon, and earth to goddesses of jewelry and gods of writing tablets.

These polytheistic, nature- and goddess-worshipping societies developed all over the world. However, even though they developed independently of each other, their worship had numerous similarities. Besides the fact that the y all worshipped earth goddesses and a large pantheon of other deities, each of these societies held rituals on or close to the solstices and equinoxes, recognizing the cycles of the earth and their importance to all living things. Many held a goddess-go d myth that had the goddess mating with the god in the summer, the god dying in the fall, and then being reborn from the goddess in the winter. Even though most of these societies never had the opportunity to contact each other, their rituals were close to identical in some cases. They are also the rituals and ideas that the religion of Wicca is based on.