That time of year has come when we celebrate motherhood, honouring the role mothers play in our lives and in the human story, and the qualities associated with motherhood. It’s a time to celebrate the feminine principle and recognize the unique biological role of the mother and how this connects with our cultural conception of femininity. The mother plays a unique physiological role in nurturing a child during pregnancy, and this nurturing role and uniquely close bond naturally tends to play out beyond the birth of the child and through their infancy. The bond between a mother and child is the stuff of legends.
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While the modern Mother’s Day holiday can be traced back to anti-war activists in the late 19th century USA, motherhood and its associated qualities have been celebrated across cultures throughout recorded history. This year, Americans are estimated to spend $25 billion over the Mother’s Day celebration. While capitalism may enjoy this phenomenon, it did not create it as the role of this holiday in our culture traces back far deeper into our history. It reveals something of our deeper nature that we feel a collective desire to show gratitude and reverence for mothers, motherhood and those associated nurturing qualities.
The qualities associated with motherhood and femininity include compassion, unconditional love, empathy and a desire to nurture and protect. These are not only qualities of mothers but aspects of ourselves that we express and experience in our personal relationships and life generally. We can also see these principles in action at different conceptual levels. For instance, we see the nurturing aspect of a community towards its members. For this reason, cultures throughout history have abstracted out the principles associated with motherhood and femininity. They have encapsulated them in deities or symbols which can then be used to explore and discuss the ideas, to educate and guide spiritual development.
There is a rich cultural tradition of associating femininity with water. The physical properties and behaviour of water can be seen to symbolically mirror the accepting, receptive and total embrace of the mother. Along with many traditional reasons for this connection, modern science even indicates to us that the ocean may be a mother to all life on earth and that our own evolutionary heritage comes from ocean life. This fits nicely with the existing symbolic framework and only serves to strengthen and enrich it.
This symbolic connection is an important one in the astrological tradition, where the Moon is associated with water and the feminine principle. The water sign of Cancer is seen to strongly embody the nurturing qualities of motherhood. We look at water and the qualities associated with femininity when symbolically breaking down a chart to form our interpretation. In the same way, we look at the other elements and the qualities associated with the masculine principle, such as assertiveness and intellect.
A day like Mother’s Day invites us to focus on love, to give attention to these aspects of life and show our gratitude to the women in our lives who embody them. Mother’s Day invites us above all to be loving and remember the nurturing and healing power that sharing our love with others has both for others and for ourselves. Mother’s Day reminds us to value our family bonds and to put into words every once in a while that love and respect which can easily go unspoken.
Happy Mother’s Day!Authored by: Ed Harrison Email address: [email protected] Edited by: Dadhichi Toth Email address: [email protected] To book a personal astrology consultation click HERE
