For many people, today is a time of reflection on childhood upbringing, celebration, and honor of mothers, grandmothers, and mother guardians in their lives. It’s a day of BBQs, gatherings, and festivities. However, what is the truth concerning the origin of this day? Is it the honor of mothers or Goddesses?
The worship of women go back centuries, decades, worlds…. you get the point. In fact, the first form of the worship of women began with the worship of the Gods. When The Watchers fell, a class of angels in which some came down to have sex with human women and produced therefore on the earth a race of Giants, it was because they became obsessed with human women and mankind’s ability to reproduce. They wanted to come down, get themselves wives, and have them children. In short, these Watcher angels began to worship the woman’s womb. In fact, in ancient cultures, women were worshiped as a way into heaven and thus are the beginnings of the sacred feminine.
Fast forward some and we can trace Mother’s Day back to the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome. However, it can actually be traced back further than this. Greece and Rome got their worship of the Gods from Egypt after plundering Egypt and taking the worship to Europe. The worship can also be traced back to ancient Babylon and ultimately from the direct worship of the Gods themselves. The honoring of the mother goddess can be traced, not only back to the Greek Goddess Rhea, but also back to Nimrod’s Mother-Wife Semiramis, and the Mother Goddess Isis of ancient Egypt. In fact, The Mother Goddesses, also known as The Queen of Heaven, have been worshiped in all cultures. For Greek and Rome specifically, mother goddesses were worshiped during the springtime with religious festivals. The ancient Greeks paid tribute to the Goddess Rhea, the wife of Cronus, known as the Mother of the Gods (Queen of Heaven) and the Romans held a three-day Roman festival in Mid-March called Hilaria, to honor the Roman Goddess Magna Mater, or Great Mother.
As Christianity spread throughout Europe, the honoring of the Mother Goddesses became disguised and the worship of the Mother Goddesses conformed to the honor of the “Mother Church”. In fact, the worship of the Gods and Goddesses, which in ancient times was simply called Paganism, became part of Christianity by the Council of Nicaea — the group of people who decided what doctrines should make up Christianity. By Christianity, I do not mean the original biblical practice of the saints, brothers, and prophets who did not call themselves Christians but were referred to as Kristianos meaning smeared ones – a derogatory term placed on them because they said they were smeared with the blood of the messiah. We’re talking about the Christianity that sprang from the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council after they decided to take pagan beliefs with biblical ones. To do this successfully meant to take what the pagans were already worshiping and change the names of the pagan gods to those that would appear to correlate with scripture, and to change the worship of the Gods and Goddesses to that which appeared in some way, biblical.
They disguised the worship of the Gods by conforming them to the worship of something that would appear more innocent. The ancient pagan festival of Ceres, Goddess of Agriculture (from which we get the word Cereal) became Thanksgiving; the ancient pagan festival of Saturnalia, celebration of the Winter Solstice, became Christmas; the ancient pagan festival of Ostara (or Eostre) representing the Spring Equinox became Easter, and The fourth Sunday in Lent, a 40-day fasting period before Easter (also pagan) became known as Mothering Sunday. To show appreciation for their mothers, the people often brought gifts or a “mothering cake” and over time, it began to coincide with the celebration of the Mother Church. Mothering Sunday and Mother Church eventually merged into a single holiday called Mother’s Day. On this day, the worship of the Goddesses continued in the form of honoring mothers. The day always falls on the second Sun-day of May, and like so many other holidays rooted in pagan sun-worship including Father’s Day which always falls on the third Sun-day of June, it was important that the day fell on a day in honor of the pagans most powerful god — The Sun.
The PBS Blog 