For those who study in ancient religions and paganism and in neopaganism as well?

Question

How old is the belief of a mother and father deity? (Only a duo, i do not mean a series of deities, just two, and not Wicca, i would like to know if this belief is ancient or recent)

Answer 1

I'll try to find a link for you... the oldest I know of is in the Nile delta... they had both male and female dieties.

http://www.carnegiemnh.org/exhibits/egypt/godsreligion.htm

Current reconstructionists use archeological data to piece together ancient religions. In terms of the oldest, try this site for starters.

Answer 2

The belief in a mother and father deity goes all the way back to Paleolithic Times (about 40, 000 years ago). The moon was the first symbol of a mother deity, and the sun the first father deity. Later on, different names for each developed in different cultures. They are still used in many Pagan and Neo-pagan belief systems today.

The earliest known place of such deity worship was in the ancient civilization of Sumeria, which is now present day Iran.

Answer 3

I know of no religion outside of some modern neopagan faiths (such as Wicca) that work with only a god and goddess. Most cultures have pantheons. I also know of know of no culture that has a central couple in which the god is both son and lover. The Wiccan mythology is pretty unique, and the claims that such beliefs are ancient have little more than smoke and mirrors to back them up. (Seriously, sometimes its as blatant as "well, there's a woman painted on this ancient wall, so she must be the primary mother goddess.")

Answer 4

While all polytheistic religions have both male and female deities, Wicca is unique in having only a God and a Goddess, a duotheistic perspective. This is a very recent phenomenon. And if anyone tries telling you "the Gawdess!!!" was worshipped by paleolithic cultures, they're full of horse hockey--we have no friggin' clue what those cave paintings were actually for. We can only guess, and judging from how most modern indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures are structured, they were most likely either animistic or polytheistic, not duotheistic.

Answer 5

If you mean JUST the God and the Goddess, then it's slightly modern.
Most of the ancients had entire pantheons. I have yet to study an ancient culture that had only a mother and father. Not to say it doesn't exist, but I haven't come across it.

Answer 6

I have a friend who is an archaeologist, and has found artifacts in Northern Europe for an archetypal mother deity dating back about 10,000 years. She said the idea of a paternal deity is much more recent - probably only about 4-5,000 years old.

Answer 7

I think it's a fairly new idea as far as Paganism goes. Because ancient goddess religions thought of a goddess as the creator, given the fact that women are the ones who have children. But there's not much documentation other than in Wicca about a male and female divinity.

Answer 8

there are maximum of themes here that i don't comprehend which to handle first. the 1st area is that while you improve a valid factor with the different deities in WIcca, YHVH substitute into the only one that pronounced "You shall have not the different gods till now me." a minimum of Wiccans have adequate admire to maintain YHVH out of Wicca while they realised he did not play nicely with the others. additionally, Wicca has a God and a Goddess. the place's the Goddess? once you're employing a God as the two woman and male on the comparable time, then you definately are lacking a great bite of the factor of the duality of deity in Wicca. Secondly, what you're claiming in regard to Early "Christopagans" is fake. they had an umbrella term for what they have been, which coated a sort of issues. Gnostics. It substitute into taken via distinctive communities to indicate distinctive issues. finally, Christian Wicca is a build made up via people that are too afraid to easily leave a church that now not is sensible to them. If that is Wicca, then there's no % for the Jewish thought of the messiah, AKA the Christ. If that is Christian, then it ain't Wicca in view that Wicca is fertility faith that has not something to do with searching for redemption by way of a Christ determine. additionally defining it as Christian would not make it so and that i'm advantageous there are oodles of Christians which will back me up.

Answer 9

From what I've studied, the ancient duo of Mother Earth and Sky Father is as old as human imagination. In many, if not most, mythical systems, both ancient and otherwise, the pantheon of gods and goddesses stem from the union of this duo.

Peace to you.

Answer 10

As far as I can tell, it's recent and arose in the late 1800's/early 1900's. Most ancient religions honored the Gods in sets (pantheons). The idea that "all Gods are one God and all Goddesses are one Goddess" is new as well. (The ancient Egyptian form of monotheism, where all God/desses were considered aspects of a single Divine presence, is a slightly different thing.)

I recommend the book "The Triumph of the Moon" by Ronald Hutton for a non-Wiccan historian's take on the history of certain NeoPagan religious concepts.

Answer 11

"Venus" figures, like the famous Willendorf one, date back about 25-30K years and are genuinely prehistoric.

Male god figures occur in petroglyphs throughout Northern Europe and are distinguished by erect phalluses and, frequently, a horned helmet or headpiece. The earliest of these are about 8K years old, iirc.

Much was made, at one time, of Gimbutas' theories about a peaceful matriarchal pan-European Great Goddess cult subverted by the Sky Father cult of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, but that's been discredited for decades now.