Mother Nature
Origins
Images of women representing "mother" earth, and mother nature, are timeless... long before history was recorded, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Indo-European, and Iroquoian fertility cults in the millenia prior to the inception of patriarchial religions.
Algonquin legend says that "[b]eneath the clouds [lives] the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and men" (Larousse 428). (8) She is known as Nakomis, the Grandmother.
The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone tells the story of a mother who discovers that her daughter has been abducted by Hades, who drags Persephone into the underworld with him. Demeter, goddess of the harvest, whose name originally meant 'earth mother,' wreaked revenge upon the earth by refusing to provide any crops, so that the "entire human race [would] have perished of cruel, biting hunger if Zeus had not been concerned" (Larousse 152). (8) She would not permit the earth to bear fruit until she saw her daughter again, and so Hades was persuaded by Zeus to allow Persephone to live with her mother most of the year, and to dwell with him in his underground world for the rest of the year. However, the price humankind pays for this agreement, according to the myth, is that when autumn winds arrive, and the earth hardens and becomes covered in snow and frost, Demeter is without her daughter, and allows no fecundity or growth; in contrast, the spring and summer months are those of rejoicing, flowers in bloom, and the beginning of months of warmth and fertility.
In this Greek myth, Demeter, the earth mother, has the power to deny humankind fruits of the harvest; a mother so powerful and so vengeful is an ambivalent figure in myth and history. The metaphor of mother nature continues to permeate the imagination of painters and writers, whose perceptions shape their audiences' images of, and beliefs about, mother, nature and women in general.
"Save Mother Nature" Modern Campaigns
Mother Nature has increasingly been a symbol and idea backing several New Age campaigns to better our planet and to respect nature more in our busy modern lives.