Mokosh, Slavic Mother Earth Goddess

There are seven primordial gods in Slavic mythology, and only one of them is female: Mokosh. In the pantheon in the Kievan Rus state, she is the only goddess at all, and so her specific role in Slavic mythology is vast and varied, and, more aptly perhaps, foggy and damp. Mother earth and house spirit, tender of sheep and spinner of fate, Mokosh is the supreme Slavic goddess.   Key Takeaways: Mokosh Associated Deities: Tellus, Ziva (Siva), Rusalki (water nixies), Lada  Equivalents: St. Paraskeva Pianitsa (Christian Orthodox); loosely comparable to the Greek Titan Gaia, Hera (Greek), Juno (Roman), Astarte (Semitic)Epithets: Goddess Who Spins Wool, Mother Moist Earth, Flax WomanCulture/Country: Slavonic Culture, Eastern and Central EuropePrimary Sources: Nestor Chronicle (a.k.a. Primary Chronicle), Christian-recorded Slavic talesRealms and Powers: Power over the earth, water, and death. Protector of spinning, fertility, grain, cattle, sheep, and wool; fisherman and merchants.  Family: Wife to Perun, lover to Veles and Jarilo Mokosh in Slavic Mythology In Slavic mythology, Mokosh, sometimes transliterated as MokoÃ… ¡ and meaning Friday, is Moist Mother Earth and thus the most important (or sometimes only) goddess in the religion. As a creator, she is said to have been discovered sleeping in a cave by a flowering spring by the spring god Jarilo, with whom she created the fruits of the earth. She is also the protector of spinning, tending sheep, and wool, patron of merchants and fishermen, who protects cattle from plague and people from drought, disease, drowning, and unclean spirits.   The origins of Mokosh as mother earth may date to pre-Indo-European times (Cuceteni or Tripolye culture, 6th–5th millennia BCE) when a near-global woman-centered religion is thought to have been in place. Some scholars suggest she may be a version of Finno-Ugric sun goddess Jumala. In 980 CE, Kievan Rus emperor Vladimir I (died 1015) erected six idols to Slavic gods and included Mokosh in 980 CE, although he took them down when he converted to Christianity. Nestor the Chronicler (11th century CE), a monk at the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv, mentions her as the only female in his list of seven gods of the Slavs. Versions of her are included in the tales of many different Slavic countries.   Appearance and Reputation   Surviving images of Mokosh are rare—although there were stone monuments to her beginning at least as long ago as the 7th century. A wooden cult figure in a wooded area in the Czech Republic is said to be a figure of her. Historical references say she had a large head and long arms, a reference to her connection with spiders and spinning. Symbols associated with her include spindles and cloth, the rhombus (a nearly global reference to womens genitals for at least 20,000 years), and the Sacred Tree or Pillar. There are many goddesses in the various Indo-European pantheons who reference spiders and spinning. Historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian has pointed out that the Latin word for tissue textere means to weave, and in several derivative languages such as Old French, tissue means something woven.   The act of spinning, suggests Matossian, is to create body tissue. The umbilical cord is the thread of life, transmitting moisture from the mother to the infant, twisted and coiled like the thread around a spindle. The final cloth of life is represented by the shroud or winding sheet, wrapped around a corpse in a spiral, as thread loops around a spindle. Role in Mythology Although the Great Goddess has a variety of consorts, both human and animal, in her role as a primary Slavic goddess, Mokosh is the moist earth goddess and is set against (and married to) Perun as the dry sky god. She is also linked to Veles, in an adulterous manner; and Jarilo, the spring god.   Some Slavic peasants felt it was wrong to spit on the earth or beat it. During the Spring, practitioners considered the earth pregnant: before March 25 (Lady Day), they would neither construct a building or a fence, drive a stake into the ground or sow seed. When peasant women gathered herbs they first lay prone and prayed to Mother Earth to bless any medicinal herbs.   Mokosh in Modern Usage Saint Paraskeva Pyatnitsa with Scenes from Her Life, 15th century Collection of the State Museum of History, Moscow. Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images With the coming of Christianity into the Slavic countries in the 11th century CE, Mokosh was converted to a saint, St. Paraskeva Pyanitsa (or possibly the Virgin Mary), who is sometimes defined as the personification of the day of Christs crucifixion, and others a Christian martyr. Described as tall and thin with loose hair, St. Paraskeva Pyanitsa is known as lnianisa (flax woman), connecting her to spinning. She is the patroness of merchants and traders and marriage, and she defends her followers from a range of diseases. In common with many Indo-European religions (Paraskevi is Friday in modern Greek; Freya Friday; VenusVendredi), Friday is associated with Mokosh and St. Paraskeva Pyanitsa,  especially Fridays before important holidays. Her feast day is October 28; and no one may spin, weave, or mend on that day.   Sources Detelic, Mirjana. St. Paraskeve in the Balkan Context. Folklore 121.1 (2010): 94–105.  Dragnea, Mihai. Slavic and Greek-Roman Mythology, Comparative Mythology. Brukenthalia: Romanian Cultural History Review 3 (2007): 20–27.  Marjanic, Suzana. The Dyadic Goddess and Duotheism in Nodilo’s the Ancient Faith of the Serbs and the Croats. Studia Mythologica Slavica 6 (2003): 181–204.  Matossian, Mary Kilbourne. In the Beginning, God Was a Woman. Journal of Social History 6.3 (1973): 325–43.  Monaghan, Patricia. Encyclopedia of Goddesses Heroines. Novato CA: New World Library, 2014.  Zaroff, Roman. Organized Pagan Cult in Kievan Rus’. The Invention of Foreign Elite or Evolution of Local Tradition? Studia Mythologica Slavica (1999).

Essay on Social Disorganization Theory - 2441 Words

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The Social Disorganization Theory evolved further when, David Bordua started his research in 1959 trying to replicate Lander’s research. His goal was to clear up criticism brought forth from Lander’s outcomes during his research study. Lander and Bordua were trying to prove identical outcomes with their study however; they used a couple of different variables to get their findings. For example, Lander used foreign born and non-white individuals for his study who also were homeowners, while Bordua used everyone in the population and included people who rented their home. Another difference is that Lander was using a census from the 1940s’ while Bordua chose to do his research based on the 1950s’ census. Bordua used the data from the Detroit, Michigan juvenile court as the basis of his research. He ended up with the same general conclusions as Lander’s 1954 research and mostly contradictory to Shaw and McKay’s 1954 studies. 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The Greatest Pieces Of English Literature - 972 Words

William Shakespeare has written some of the greatest pieces of English literature but some doubt he is the one responsible for it. There are some scholars who believe the conspiracy that Shakespeare did not write the work attributed to him and the true author is someone else, due to the anti-stratfordians who propose theories of who could be the real author, this once small talk has turn into a well- known conspiracy theory, although little to none evidence is all we have on a man named William Shakespeare, the possibility of determining the truth behind this is more likely impossible to find out, his work is a great piece of English literature that will stay as â€Å"his† work until further and stronger evidence says otherwise. The fact of the matter is, William Shakespeare is the true author, as far as we know. There is actually little known of the man we call Shakespeare. What is known about Shakespeare comes from registered records, court records and marriage certificates. 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The Social Position of Women free essay sample

An analysis and evaluation of the role of sexuality and race in defining the social position of women during the years 1607- 1890. This paper considers the status of women as a reflection of their sexuality and race. It looks at the social status of women in the period of slavery in the southern U.S., and highlights the differences between slaves and slaveholders. Women of the Victorian era, Colonial times, American Revolution and Native American women are also discussed. Women have always maintained a different social position than men, and it has usually been based on their gender and sexuality. Women attain these positions in a wide variety of ways, from using marriage as a stepping-stone, to creating their own roles defined by their sexuality. For example, Mary Jenkins Chambers, the mistress of a planter household, had worked her way into the highest echelons of southern society through the time-honored fashion of marrying up. We will write a custom essay sample on The Social Position of Women or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In 1831, while still a teenager, she married Joseph Hart, only to become widowed before her twenty-first birthday. In 1834, she married Elijah Barnett, whom she also outlived, and she married her final husband, Asa Chambers, of Montgomery County, at the age of forty-one in 1856. As the owner of twenty-one slaves and eight hundred acres of land, Chambers was one of Montgomery Countys wealthiest men (Bynum 16). In the South, being a white woman in Southern society meant confronting the issue of slavery sometime during your life. Because the institutions of the family and slavery were interlocked, white women occupied an important place in the cultural and economic life of southern society. Wives of slaveholders served as conduits for the transmission of power and property from one generation to the next. As caretakers of the family, they also oversaw much of the daily workings of the slave system. Finally, as the repository of a southern code of honor that regarded them as symbols of racial and sexual purity, white women maintained the racial distinctions that were crucial to the continued hegemony of white men (Bynum 64). The planters wives served as a beacon of gentility, and looked the other way when their husbands sired mulatto children with the slave women. Their place in society was accepted and secure, as long as they kept their mouths shut.