Goddess Mythology Throughout the Ages
Mythological gods and goddesses have long symbolized the eternal heaven within human beings. This is how cultures connect to and move through life in a way that enables them to make sense of their surroundings and circumstances and move beyond what often is a hard physical reality.
Cultures throughout time have embraced and worshipped the image of a mother goddess for a variety of reasons. Mainly, she is looked to as a symbol for abundance, fertility, kindness, family, marriage, good harvests, and good fortune. Traits ascribed to these lovely beings, such as femininity and womanhood, have also represented hearth, home, family, fertility, compassion, strength, and loving-kindness throughout the centuries. Others, like the Norse giantess Hel and the Egyptian goddess Isis, represent the darker sides of life — the underworld, death, magic healing, and guiding the fates of men.
History of Goddess Worship
Goddess or woman worship began around the Paleolithic period (2.5 million years ago to 10,000 BCE), which is humanity’s longest recorded time on Earth. Archaeological digs unearthed artifacts dating back to this time period, the most frequent of which is Venus, believed to have been carved between 24,000 to 22,000 BCE.
The next period to follow was the Neolithic, in which more carved goddess figurines were unearthed and appear to date back 10,000 years. This era was when farming became standard practice, and figurines from this time period most likely represented fertility and offerings to ensure ample harvest.
The Egyptians were also at the forefront of goddess culture, beginning with their Nagada culture. Quite a few murals depict a goddess figure standing between two lionesses. Lionesses were a symbol of good motherhood. Earth, moon, sky, and primordial waters were also associated with the feminine and the care-giving powers therein. Egyptians worshipped many gods and goddesses, but the most prominent of the female figures in Egyptian mythology was Isis and Hathor. These traditions were then passed to other cultures.
Other archaeological digs scattered around the world also revealed the number of goddess figurines far outnumbering those of male gods, leading us to believe many early societies were mainly matriarchal.
Female mythological figures and symbolism are prominent in many cultures, and each deity may bear resemblance to the others, despite cultural differences. Here we’ll examine three goddesses and discuss the traits of each one.
Gaea (or Gaia)
Perhaps one of the most well-known goddess figures comes unsurprisingly from ancient Greek Goddess mythology. Gaea was referred to as the Greek “Mother Goddess,” whose physical representation embodied Earth and Life at their most fundamental: the elements. From here, the sky, the stars, and the Earth with all its rivers, mountains, and plains sprang to life, supported by her wisdom and grace. Born at the dawn of creation, she sprang fully formed from the void and was considered the great mother of all, including the Titans in her union with the God Uranus. It is also believed she gave birth to the sea gods and giants, and many other earthly creatures sprang forth from her.
Seen as the all-nourishing mother, Gaea was also credited as being the source from which divine inspiration arose, as well as an oracular divinity. Her following grew over time until she was honored universally in her many splendid temples around ancient Greece as a prophetess. Due to the motherlike nature of her representation, she presided over marriages, oaths, and the hearth or home. Her symbols — fruit and grain — perfectly embody her symbol of plenty, abundance, and caregiving.
Isis
Originally less of a well-known goddess, Isis’s link to the kingships in Egyptian culture slowly brought her to the forefront of Egyptian Goddess mythology, and she became one of the most widely worshipped deities, even still today. She embodied many life aspects simultaneously. In connection with the death, she was the principal deity associated with funeral rites. As a healer with magical abilities, she cured the sick and injured and brought the dead back to life. Like Gaea, Isis also symbolized motherhood and was considered a role model for all Egyptian women.
Unlike Gaea, Isis had parents. Allegedly the daughter of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, she married her brother Osiris, the king of Egypt. A supportive and loving wife, she was also attributed with teaching her female subjects the art of homemaking, including weaving, baking, and brewing beer.
Osiris was eventually murdered and hacked to pieces by a jealous sibling, Seth, and Isis mummified her former husband and restored his body to one whole again, but he was neither living or dead. Nine months later, she bore a son, Horus, and Osiris retreated to the underworld to become King of the Dead. Isis hid her son from his murderous uncle in the rushes along the Nile delta until he was fully grown and could avenge his father’s death.
A model wife and mother who used intelligence and kindness to defend the men her life when necessary, Isis’s special gift was one of the magical powers that superseded those of the other Egyptian deities, and her influence spread far enough for historians to wonder if early depictions of a maternal Isis nursing Horus influenced similar depictions of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child.
The most common physical manifestations of Isis are as a beautiful woman in a sheath dress, with the sun or cow’s horns on her head. Occasionally, a scorpion, a cow, or a sow represented her. Initially, the healer called upon for dead or ill kings, as her popularity spread with more and more temples dedicated in her honor around the world, her healing powers soon grew to encompass and benefit all Egyptians.
Hel
Norse Goddess mythology is rife with impressive strong female deities, and none perhaps so intimidating as Hel. According to 13th-century Icelandic scholars, Hel is the daughter of the Norse god Loki and an impressive giantess named Angrboda. A giantess herself, her name means “hidden,” and scholars believe she was the original source of the phrase “go to hell.” Her family also included a wolf sister, “Fenrir,” and a serpent brother, “Jormundgand.”
Hel ruled over the identically named underworld of the dead and is often portrayed as rather cruel, harsh, and indifferent to the sufferings of both the living and the dead.
The Death of Baldur is one of the few remaining texts in which Hel is featured prominently. Baldur, a universally beloved god, was slain by Loki, Hel’s father, and Baldur was relinquished to Hel to become another member of her underworld kingdom.
In response, the other Norse gods sent a messenger to negotiate with Hel to release Baldur back to the land of the living. The messenger, Hermod, pleaded with Hel on behalf of his friend, claiming many in the known world were in tears over the loss of this figure. Hel refused to release her captive until everything in the cosmos wept over their loss, and Hermod traveled the world encouraging all beings to shed their tears in support of Baldur. Only one giant refused, who was most likely Loki in disguise. Baldur was not released from the underworld, and Hel kept him in her dark clutches forever.
Unfortunately, beyond this story and a few sparse texts, little more about Hel’s personality is known from the remaining Norse texts, but she was often described as appearing half black, half white. She struck a hard bargain and symbolizes the inevitability and indifference of death.
Connection Through Mythology
Mythology has connected human beings to each other and the deeper meanings are hidden in life since language was firstborn. When looked at from a metaphorical perspective, gods and goddesses become energies for humans to call upon and embody. As Joseph Campbell writes in his journal, “Myth makes a connection between our waking consciousness and the mystery of the universe. It gives us a map or a picture of the universe and allows us to see ourselves in relationship to nature … lastly, it also helps us pass through and deal with the various stages of life from birth to death.”
From Gaea, the “Mother of All,” to Isis, the diplomatic and deeply loving Queen, to Hel, the ruler of the underworld, goddess mythology portrays characteristics and archetypes of the ultimate woman in many bodies and remains a fascinating part of ancient and modern culture.
About the Author
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: How to Recover Parts of Our Soul?
“Every book…has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.” ~ Carlos Ruis Zafon
It has been said, “The best things in life are free.” We can all agree it’s nice to be surprised with a gift; but not just any gift. The gift that arrives in your life precisely when you are ready to receive it. The gift is clearly a message to you and for you.
In this case, the gift is Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman.
With graceful delivery of rarely discussed phenomena, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self combines shamanism and psychology to explain the effects of trauma that cause parts of the soul to leave the body and the process by which the part(s) can be retrieved.
Follow along as renowned psychotherapist, shamanic teacher, and author Sandra Ingerman delves into soul loss and retrieval.
What is Soul Loss?
Sandra Ingerman’s Abstract on Shamanism states that “there are many common symptoms of soul loss. Some of the more common ones would be dissociation, where a person does not feel fully in his or her body and alive and fully engaged in life. Other symptoms include chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress syndrome, immune deficiency problems, and grief that just does not heal. Addictions are also a sign of soul loss.”
For those who have lost parts of themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, “tremendous amounts of psychic energy” are unconsciously spent looking for the lost parts.
What Causes Soul Loss?
According to Ingerman, “The basic premise is whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain.”
This quiet occurrence, known as soul loss, takes the form of a perpetual feeling and experience of incompleteness and disconnection.
Ingerman says, “Anytime someone says, ‘I have never been the same’ since a certain traumatic event, and they don’t mean this in a good way, soul loss has probably occurred.”
Sandra Ingerman on Lost Soul Parts
Sandra Ingerman holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, professional mental health counselor, the author of more than ten books, and a board-certified expert on traumatic stress who was awarded the 2007 Peace Award from the Global Foundation for Integrative Medicine.
As a leading authority on soul loss and retrieval, Ingerman’s highly regarded career spans 35 years of conducting workshops and soul retrievals around the world.
For Ingerman, the leading practitioner of soul retrieval whose own spiritual journey to recapture her soul led her on various spiritual paths. The answer she found was in the ancient tradition of shamanism, which views soul loss as an important cause of illness and death.
The word shaman, originating from the Tungus Tribe of Siberia, means “one who sees in the dark.”
Soul Loss in Society
According to Ingerman, “A reflection of how much soul loss people are dealing with” is evident when “so many governments and businesses are valuing money over life.”
However, Western medicine has no framework for this kind of diagnosis because it only deals with imbalance when it appears on a physical and mental level.
Western medicine “treats chronic pain with pain medication, insomnia with sleeping pills, weight issues with diet and exercise, and most damagingly, may label soul loss as mental illness, and cover up the symptoms with psychiatric medications that may make things worse by slapping a Band-Aid on a wound that’s not healing underneath the bandage.”
This “covering up” can lead to the deep unhappiness that many have come to consider as “simply ordinary.” Eventually, this prolonged dissociation produces a nameless void that shows itself through “a loss of meaning, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and genuine connection.”
This spiritual void, which is always present and always trying to get your attention, operates as the incessant yearning of your soul wanting to incorporate all of its highest qualities, all of God’s essence, all of you.
Simply put, the soul is always trying to reconnect with that from which it came.
Ingerman imparts, “If you are truly in your body (your whole soul present), you cannot place money over life. Planetary soul loss causes so much of the behavior we are currently seeing, behavior that no longer honors the beauty and importance of life.”
Signs of Soul Loss
The following checklist can help identify symptoms of soul loss:
- You have a difficult time staying “present” in your body
- You feel numb, apathetic, or deadened
- You suffer from chronic depression
- You have problems with your immune system and have trouble resisting illness
- You were chronically ill as a child
- Memory gaps of your life after age five where you sense that you may have blacked out significant traumatic experiences
- Struggle with addictions, for example, to alcohol, drugs, food, sex or gambling
- Find yourself looking to external things to fill up an internal void or emptiness
- Have difficulty moving on with your life after a divorce or the death of a loved one
- You suffer from multiple personality syndrome
Having read this book with no prior knowledge of soul loss or retrieval, I found the concepts quite sobering.
Within situations of physical and emotional abuse, negation, and trauma, many experiences in life can be too difficult to bear. Soul loss is an understandable response to spiritual woundedness and deep fragmentation of one’s soul essence that would lead to an internal dissociation from natural balance.
What is Soul Retrieval?
During the soul retrieval process, the shaman moves into an altered state of consciousness to travel to realities outside of normal perception (non-ordinary reality), also known as hidden spirit worlds, to retrieve the lost part of the soul.
In some cases, there is reluctance of the soul to return, or the soul may not even know a separation has occurred. While in most cases, the soul does want to return. It is, however, important to note when the “soul returns, it comes back with all the pain it experienced when leaving.”
Once the lost soul is located, the shaman will “acknowledge the former pain and gently negotiate the soul’s return to the body.” The shaman then brings the soul back to normal reality and (literally) blows the missing soul part back into the body through the head or heart.
If a person is trained in shamanic journeying, they can ask their spirit guides to perform a soul retrieval on their behalf. Or anyone can ask for a healing dream where one sets the intention to request a soul retrieval to be performed during the dream state.
If these two processes do not create change or healing, then working with a trained shamanic practitioner is recommended.
Although Ingerman is very clear that you should not try to practice soul retrieval based solely on the reading of this book, in an exclusive interview, Ingerman and I discuss what can be done when someone suspects soul loss has occurred.
Shamanic Healing Practice Interview
BJB: What can someone do if they suspect soul loss has occurred but do not have immediate access for soul retrieval with a Shaman?
SI: If a person has soul loss, they can work with a shamanic practitioner long distance. Most shamanic practitioners perform long-distance healings these days.
I have been training Soul Retrieval practitioners since the late 1980’s. I have a website where I have an international list of shamanic practitioners who have sent me case studies. Of course, no shamanic practitioner can ever promise a cure, but I know their work, and I trust them.
BJB: Is there a healing exercise the person can do to begin to address and/or heal the root cause of the soul loss?
SI: Nature is our greatest healer. A person who feels they have lost their soul can walk or lie down on the ground and reflect on what is the root cause of their soul loss.
You can also do automatic writing. This includes listening to spiritual music while writing the following question on a piece of paper: “What is the root cause of my soul loss?”
You then close your eyes and allow your hand to write. This is a powerful way to let your soul and intuition give you the truth of the cause of your soul loss and other information that is important for you to know.
BJB: What has been the most surprising or unexpected part of your work as a Shaman?
SI: All of my Shamanic work is a surprise.
The helping spirits never give expected responses to the questions I ask them. This is true also when I perform the healing journey for a client. I am always given information I did not expect or would rationally think of on my own.
Also, in my 35 years of working with clients, I continue to be surprised by the miraculous effects of the work.
The Most Important Factor in Personal Healing
Soul retrieval is not a quick fix. Sandra Ingerman states, “If the person has done a lot of personal work, the soul retrieval might be the end of the work. If not, the soul retrieval would be the beginning of the work.”
No matter where you may find yourself, at the beginning or near the end of working through an issue, the most important factor in all healing work is you.
You have to be willing to do the work that is necessary to participate in your own healing. You will have to be willing to look at yourself with new eyes, from a new shamanic perspective, and as an embodiment of completion and wholeness while knowing that willingness is the impetus for great change, which always begins with the heart.
For more information on Sandra Ingerman’s work, log onto SandraIngerman.com.
You can also learn more by watching this interview on Gaia.com with Jill Kuykendall on soul retrieval.
