Two Faces of the Mother of Worlds

“Two mothers who gave rise to the Universes’ endless course,
Two forces flowing from a source above the world,
And by the power of generation
who revealed to us light and darkness —
We praise you!
Today, amid winter, amid the howling of the gale —
The Heavenly Cow and the Goat from the Depths!
As day gives way to night, as heat yields to cold,
May evil perish, may all barriers fall,
And may the Light of Freedom and the flame of Love
fill our world, where Nav and Yav
have woven together — Sedunya and Zemun!”

Since ancient times, different peoples have, in various forms, held the notion that the World was brought forth by two polar maternal principles. Not merely created by two polar creators, but indeed engendered by Two Mothers.

Eve and Lilith in Chaldean-Semitic mythology, Danu and Domnu among the Celts, Hathor (sometimes Bast) and Sekhmet among the Egyptians, Audumla and Heidrun among the Scandinavians, Zemun and Sedunya among the Berendei, and so on — all reflect this experience.

Each of the faces has a multitude of manifestations, and all goddesses are, in one way or another, manifestations of the light and dark aspects of the Mother.

It is to the Duality of the Great Mother that worlds owe their most profound polarity. The duality of the Father is far more superficial, more peripheral.

Indeed, if, when speaking of the Polarity of God, mythologies mean the mere good and evil, Light and Darkness — an existential, quantitative distinction (since darkness is merely the absence of light) — then, when they speak of the twofold nature of the Mother, they point to an essential, qualitative difference (although it is also often expressed by the epithets Light and Darkness, in this case Darkness is no longer simply the absence of light, but an independent substance).

Apparently, descent from one or another Face of the Mother determines even deeper differences in the nature of beings than does belonging to different peoples of the World Tree.

The light face of the Mother is the Great Goddess in her classical sense, as, for example, Lada among the Slavs, Frigg among the Scandinavians, Don among the Welsh, Demeter among the Greeks, and so on. This is the Goddess from whom light and maternal love for all things proceed, in the guise of Mother-Earth who gave birth to all living beings, who nourishes and protects them.

The Dark Face is the Wrathful Goddess of Death — not merely a Goddess of the Dead (not merely the Germanic Hel, or Marena among the Slavs), but Death itself, destruction, absorption into non-being. Such is Angrboda among the Germans (who begot all the principal causes of the worlds’ ruin), Morrigan among the Irish (in all her three faces — Badb, Macha and Nemain — striving for bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed).

Paradoxically, however, this Face is also maternal, for death and birth are two sides of the same process.

Both Faces wield considerable power — over beings, since all that exists was begotten and will be destroyed, and over the very order of things.

The nature of the Light Mother engenders love and care in people, while the nature of the Dark Face fosters exploitation and consumption.

At the same time the dual mother often manifests herself in Three faces. Such are the Three Norns, the Three Moirai, the three faces of the Morrigan. The threefold nature of the Mother does not contradict Her duality; on the contrary, it is a consequence of the binary polarity of the Maternal principle in relation to the Paternal. The three phases of the Moon — Waxing, Full and Waning — the threeness of the lunar course are consequences of the Becoming, the Flourishing and the Fading of Fertility, and at the same time of the Birth, Accumulation and Application of Wisdom.