(Photo: Michael Balog | Unsplash)
Yoga Journal’s archives series is a curated collection of articles originally published in past issues beginning in 1975. This article about the Divine Mother first appeared in the July-August 1993 issue of Yoga Journal.
The mother, as C. G. Jung noted more than half a century ago, is the single most significant archetype, or energy-laden image, we hold in our psy...
The narrative positions the maternal archetype as a fundamental, universal reality that is systematically marginalized by dominant patriarchal theological structures centered on the Father/Creator. This dynamic suggests a pattern of spiritual and cultural distortion where the generative, nurturing aspect of divinity is suppressed in favor of abstract, distant concepts.
The transition from the primal Earth Mother archetype to later religious figures like the Virgin Mary and the Hindu avatars demo...