Goddesses

General Characteristics

The stories indicating how African goddesses came to be worshipped suggest that they entered human consciousness often through prophecy or are self-existing like the Gods. However, as a manifestation of the African mother image, goddesses possess a direct and logical connection for their existence and attributes through the act of human creation by females. Therefore, because African goddesses teach sacred lessons to human beings, they are archetypes of the divine woman.

African goddesses are most associated with the process of human creation in terms of womanhood, motherhood, fertility, childbirth, and pregnancy. African goddesses are often linked to the symbolism of sacred vessels, bowls, and other containers that signify the womb so they oversee the initiation of birth. In doing so, the womb and menstrual blood (which are sacred waters) cause goddesses to be keepers of great bodies of water. With the advent and rise of the masculine divinity system, many gendered attributes are assigned to goddesses, although some of them indicate a quixotic nature of female Gods. In addition, many goddesses are wives or consorts of Gods. Often African goddesses are depicted as powerful, but also as elegant and majestic in stature.

The extent of human reverence over time is indicative of this perception. People celebrated African goddesses by holding festivals in their honor, establishing shrines for worship, developing temples and priestess societies (initiations into sacred mysteries), performing ritual dramas, wearing symbols, celebrating their “birthdays,” and planting crops in their names. In African societies where goddesses are powerful, women tend to be influential (in terms of matrilineal structures, property transference, bride price, and polygny). Two of the most discussed examples of African goddesses come from Northeast and West Africa.

Isis and Maat in Egypt

In Northeast Africa, Egypt (Kmt), Egyptian goddesses such as Nut (Nit, Net, Nekhebt) existed thousands of years before the Christian era. She is understood to have existed before anything else had been created. Nut then created the cosmos and put Ra into the sky. The ancient Egyptian [Page 293]goddess who captured the imagination of initiates from Africa and beyond was Isis (Auset). As the wife of Ausar and the mother of Horus, she is also believed to have been in existence at the time of creation; thus, she symbolizes sunrise (rebirth and regeneration). Although nature, agriculture, healing, and law are her domain, she is most associated with the resurrection mythologies surrounding her divine marriage to Ausur. Using magical words, Goddess Isis searched for her dead husband's scattered body, resurrected him, and produced the divine son, Horus, with him. Thus, she is the quintessential symbol of the divine wife and mother. Goddess Isis is often found depicted as a seated sacred mother nursing her child. She is represented among the first of numerous Black Madonna figures of the ancient world. She was worshipped widely in North Africa, Syria, Palestine, Nubia, and Rome until the 6th century.

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