Mother goddess

A mother goddess, used to refer to any goddess associated with motherhood, fertility, creation, or the bountiful embodiment of the Earth. Such earth goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.

There have been many different mother goddesses throughout history and in the present day, including such deities as the Hindu Kali Ma, ancient Greek Gaia and ancient Irish Anu. In some forms of Neopaganism, and in the Hindu idea of Shakti.

Examples of the mother goddess type of deity
Mother goddesses are present in the earliest images discovered among the archaeological finds in Ancient Egypt. One figure of a deity, depicted standing between two lionesses, exists among those on one of the earliest paintings found among the Naqada Culture. An association with animals seen as good mothers—the lioness, cow, hippopotamus, white vulture, cobra, scorpion, and cat—as well as the life-giving primordial waters, the sun, and the night sky and the earth herself—is drawn to the early goddesses of Egypt.

Even through the transition to a paired pantheon of male deities matched or "married" to each goddess, reached a later male deity dominated pantheon that arose much later, the mother goddesses persisted into historical times (such as Hathor and Isis). Advice from the oracles associated with these goddesses guided the rulers of Egypt and the tradition spread to other ancient cultures. The image of Isis nursing her son was worshipped into the sixth century A.D. and has been resurrected by contemporary "cults" of an Earth Mother.

Roman
Aphrodite's counterpart in Roman mythology, Venus, eventually was adopted as a Mother Goddess figure. She was seen as the mother of the Roman people, being the mother of Rome's ancestor, Aeneas, and the ancestor of all subsequent Roman rulers, and by the time of Julius Caesar's era, she was dubbed "Venus Genetrix" (Mother Venus).