Reader

“As Mother, the Goddess is the birther, caretaker and sustainer of all that She brings forth. She is the embodiment of maternal concern, protectiveness, nurturance, tenderness and love. She bestows her blessings, pours out Her nourishment, much as we expect Her human counterparts to do. But the Great Mother is not only benevolent and tender. She does not only pour forth the sustenance upon which the world depends. To see Her fully, to image this great a Mother, is also to see Her as depriver and destroyer. She is the gorgon who terrifies and petrifies the, earth who is fertilized by blood, the vulture who feeds on the dead. She gives birth to Her children but She also devours them. She is the Goddess of Life but also the Goddess of Death.

The Great Mother is essentially bi-valent, embodying both a 'good' and a 'terrible' aspect. Even the most benevolent of Her images have a darker, more savage side or a destructive 'sister.' Yet this ambivalence is not a static either/or; it expresses one of the most profound and deeply held beliefs of the Old Religion—that life is essentially a process, 'becoming' instead of 'being,' and that this process follows a cyclical pattern that endlessly repeats itself. Just as autumn and winter inevitably follow summer and then give rise to a new spring, just as decaying fruit produces from its dying the medium that enables the hidden seeds within it to sprout, so it was a 'given' to the ancients that the Mother of All embodied this basic and implacable natural way. So the Goddess created life, sustained it, destroyed it, and took it back into Herself in death, only to recycle what She had killed back into new life once more.”
― Kathie Carlson