Mat Zemlya (Matka Ziemia or Matushka Zeml'ja) is the
Earth Mother
A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or the ...
and is probably the oldest deity in
Slavic mythology.
She is also called Mati Syra Zemlya meaning ''Mother Damp Earth'' or ''Mother Moist Earth''. Her identity later blended into that of
Mokosh.
Mythology
In the early
Middle Ages, Mati Syra Zemlya was one of the most important
deities
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...
in the Slavic world. Slavs made oaths by touching the Earth, and sins were confessed into a hole in the Earth before death. She was worshipped in her natural form and was not given a human personage or likeness. Since the adoption of
Christianity in all Slavic lands, she has been identified with
Mary, the mother of Jesus.
An example of her importance is seen in this traditional invocation to Matka Ziema, made with a jar of
hemp oil:
::East – "Mother Earth, subdue every evil and unclean being so that he may not cast a spell on us nor do us any harm."
::West – "Mother Earth, engulf the unclean power in thy boiling pits, and in thy burning fires."
::South – "Mother Earth, calm the winds coming from the South and all bad weather. Calm the moving sands and whirlwinds."
::North – "Mother Earth, calm the North winds and clouds, subdue the snowstorms and the cold."
::The jar, which held the oil, is buried after each invocation and offering is made at each Quarter. (Slavonic mythology 1977:287)
Old Slavic beliefs seem to attest some awareness of an ambivalent nature of the Earth: it was considered men's cradle and nurturer during one's lifetime, and, when the time of death came, it would open up to receive their bones, as if it were a "return to the womb".
The imagery of the ''terre humide'' ("moist earth") also appears in funeral lamentations either as a geographical feature (as in Lithuanian and Ukrainian lamentations) or invoked as ''Mère-Terre humide'' ("Mother Moist Earth").
Cultic practices
Up until
World War I and the fall of the
Russian Empire, peasant women would perform a rite to prevent against plague by plowing a furrow around the village and calling on the protection of the Earth spirits by shrieking.
Related characters
The Slavic ''
bogatyr''
Mikula Selyaninovich, or Mikula the Villager, is closely connected with Mat Zemlya.
[Leonard Arthur Magnus,]
The Heroic Ballads of Russia
. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company, Limited, 1921, pp. 23-26.[Dixon-Kennedy, Mike (1998). ''Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend''. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 189-191. .]
See also
*
Māra in Latvian folklore
*
Mother Russia
*
Mother Earth
Mother Earth may refer to:
*The Earth goddess in any of the world's mythologies
*Mother goddess
*Mother Nature, a common personification of the Earth and its biosphere as the giver and sustainer of life
Written media and literature
*Mother Earth ...
Footnotes
Notes
Further reading
* Pushkina, V.. "ОБРАЗ МАТЕРИ - СЫРОЙ ЗЕМЛИ КАК ЭКСПЛИКАЦИЯ АКСИОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ ДОМИНАНТ ВОСТОЧНЫХ СЛАВЯН"
In: Аксиологический диапазон художественной литературы : сборник научных статей. - Витебск: ВГУ имени П. М. Машерова, 2017. pp. 290-293.
External links
Day of the Divine Mother of Herbs
{{Slavic mythology
Agricultural goddesses
Fertility goddesses
Slavic goddesses
Earth goddesses
Creator goddesses
Supernatural beings identified with Christian saints