Feminine Symbol Mother Rain
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Water is the stuff from which life springs, from the first creature that climbed out of the seas to the most recent infant expelled from its innocence in amniotic fluid.Rock is hard and immovable. The running water erosion of Mother Rain is persistent and patient.
Time and again we turn to Mother Rain for comfort. We love the beach and the roar of waves replenished through Mother Rain’s cycles.
White noise machines mimic ocean sounds to soothe us to sleep, like infants hearing the regular pulse of mother’s heart. The waves are the numinous heartbeat of Gaia.
We build fountains in our gardens or place them on indoor tables to hear the soothing sounds of running water.
You Are Made of Water -- 70%
Like the human body, Gaia’s surface is three-quarters water. Water, like energy, is not gained or lost.
Lenntech explains, “There is the same amount of water on earth as there was when the earth was formed. The water that came from your faucet could contain molecules that Neanderthals drank . . . The overall amount of water on our planet has remained the same for two billion years.”
Mother Rain is too abundant when we witness the devastation of flooding, yet she holds in dire polarity the threat of world drought. The World Health Organization warns that one in every three people in the world does not have enough fresh water to meet his or her daily needs.
Water scarcity is getting worse.
Born of water, the human may die of drowning or dehydration. Mother Rain can kill us by giving us too much or too little -- another polarity.
Mother Rain and the Many Myths of Water Goddesses
The feminine symbol of water is honored in a profusion of myths. Among my favorites is that of Yemanja, a goddess in Brazilian candomble overlaid with the Catholicism of Virgin Mary myths. Apple Venus, now apparently defunct website, explained that Yemaja (alternate spelling “will rise from the water seated on a sea shell wearing a crown of pearls and starfish. Her kingdom is all the waters of the world.”
Yemanja has its roots in Nigerian mythology. Micha F. Lindemans notes, this feminine symbol is “The mother goddess of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. She is the patroness of birth and worshipped primarily by women.”
This is not the end of the history of Mother Rain. The spellings of Yemanja suggest she descends from an ancient feminine symbol – Sumerian Iannana.
Mother Rain Resolves Opposites in Mystery of Life - Death - Rebirth
At the same time, life and death are part of a continuum and not opposites at all. Rain falls. There may be destruction, even annihilation, in flooding. Then new life sprouts, nurtured by the decaying vegetation of death.
We drink today the molecules that furnished the running water erosion of the Grand Canyon.
The more deeply we dig into the archetypal meanings of this feminine symbol, the greater are the dialectical tensions. The notion of polarities flips into that of cycles, processes, and transformations of eternal duration.
You may read more about Mother Rain
- at Goddess Myths, for a thorough collection of water goddesses feminine symbols.
- in this article that about Iris, Greek goddess of the rainbow.
- in the myth of Talaya . . . Canaanite Rain-Goddess, the dew or rain personified.
Return from Mother Rain, feminine-symbol, to Jungian Archetypes Index Page.
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