Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, a 1988 interview with
Bill Moyers, links the image of the Earth or Mother Goddess to symbols of
fertility and reproduction. For example, Campbell states that, "There have
been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source... We
talk of Mother Earth. And in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess
Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere". Campbell continues
by stating that the correlation between fertility and the Goddess found its
roots in agriculture.
Bill Moyers: But what happened along the way to this
reverence that in primitive societies was directed to the Goddess figure, the
Great Goddess, the mother earth- what happened to that?
Joseph Campbell: Well that was associated primarily with
agriculture and the agricultural societies. It has to do with the earth. The
human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants...so woman
magic and earth magic are the same. They are related. And the personification
of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female.
It is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, and
in the earlier planting-culture systems that the Goddess is the dominant mythic
form.
Campbell also argues that the image of the Virgin Mary was
derived from the image of Isis and her child Horus: "The antique model for
the Madonna, is Isis with Horus at her breast".
