Was the cult of Great Mother exchanged with Jesus?

Originally posted by medenaywe Yes,that's one of the points of this story.Other one is:Were Jesus&Mary contemporary followers of this cult most extended in ancient world those days?

AFAIK the early Christianity shared ground with the Roman state religion, /which, like the Greek one, had plenty of female goddesses that took aspects of the Great Mother archetypal image/, and with the Egyptian religion, /whose Isis is another Great Mother/, and the Anatolian Cybele, who was adopted in Roma as "Magna Mater" /which means exactly Great Mother/, so when Christianity was made an official religion, Virgin Mary just slid in the place of those female deities.

In other words, the Great Mother under different names, but with the same function, was widespread all over the Roman Empire, and were worshipped with gusto. Caligula is known to have relied on the Great Mother, in the face of Isis /but he called her "Great Mother", just like Cybele/, and legitimized her in Rome, and all his sisters were priestesses on Isis.

Was there ever truly a "cult of the the great mother goddess"?   My general impression is that the idea of a trans cultural "mother goddess" is largely a creation of the modern (post 1960s)  neo paganism or new age movements in the USA. 

Edited by Cryptic - 26-Jan-2012 at 16:51

The Virgin Mary was just another projection of the cult of the Great Mother/Inanna/Isis etc. She has all the signs of a Great Mother:
- being self-sufficient = the virgin birth, since no man is neccessary for it. She being ompregnated with teh word of god is only due to the change of society from matriarchal to patriarchal, hence God became male.
- giving birth of life = Jesus is the eternal life itself, the change from physical to spiritual life is only because the society became able to think in more symbolic way.
- taking care of females, birth, death = Mother Mary is seen as female-caretaker, called and prayed for women in labour.

All in all, the Great Goddess is one of the human cultural archetypes, those cultural matrixes that are filled with new content, but retain the old one. In some ways the Virgin was accepted because the cultural archetype pf the Great Goddess was so old and accepted one.

Originally posted by Nick1986 Actually INRI is the abbreviation of Jesus of Nazareth King (Rex) of the Jews. The bible itself verifies this

Let us compare,cult of Isis with cult of Mary:
http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
http://www.philipcoppens.com/saintesmaries.html

How did Rome spreed around it adopt all religions from occupied territories:
Cybele entered the Roman sphere at a crucial juncture in history. In 205-202 BCE at the close of the Second Punic War, the Romans narrowly defeated Carthage, their rival for control of the western Mediterranean region. Bloodied but victorious, the state felt it owed some measure of that victory to Cybele, since, according to Roman historical records, it was on the advice of an oracle that her worship had been imported to Italy.

Here is official version from Council of Nicaea:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15459a.htm


Edited by medenaywe - 27-Jan-2012 at 06:16

INRI means:From the First Her,mother's connection!-in my language.
It says different here:
http://www.thenazareneway.com/inri_the_inscription_explained.htm
and here intrigue grows up:The gospel writers were not concerned with the exact wording, but were concerned with the exact meaning.
http://www.onenesspentecostal.com/inscription.htm




Edited by medenaywe - 06-Feb-2012 at 04:30