Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of the mother. The word “nature” comes from the Latin word, “natura”, meaning birth or character. In English, its first recorded use (in the sense of the entirety of the phenomena of the world) was in 1266. “Natura” and the personification of Mother Nature were widely popular in the Middle Ages. As a concept, seated between the properly divine and the human, it can be traced to Ancient Greece, though Earth (or “Eorthe” in the Old English period) may have been personified as a goddess. The Norse also had a goddess called Jörð (Jord, or Erth). The earliest written usage is in Mycenaean Greek: Ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), “Mother Gaia”, written in Linear B syllabic script (13th or 12th century BC). In Greek mythology, according to Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia, “Demeter would take the place of her grandmother, Gaia, and her mother, Rhea, as goddess of the earth in a time when humans and gods thought the activities of the heavens more sacred than those of earth.” Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius opens his didactic poem De rerum natura by addressing Venus as a veritable mother of nature. Lucretius uses Venus as “a personified symbol for the generative aspect of nature”. This largely has to do with the nature of Lucretius’ work, which presents a nontheistic understanding of the world that eschews superstition. In Basque mythology, Amalur (sometimes Ama Lur or Ama Lurra) was the goddess of the earth. She was the mother of Ekhi, the sun, and Ilazki, the moon. Her name means “mother earth” or “mother land”. The Algonquian legend says that “beneath the clouds lives the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and human”. She is otherwise known as Nokomis, the Grandmother. In Inca mythology, Mama Pacha or Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting. Pachamama is usually translated as “Mother Earth” but a more literal translation would be “Mother Universe” (in Aymara and Quechua mama = mother / pacha = world, space-time or the universe). Pachamama and her husband, Inti, are the most benevolent deities and are worshiped in parts of the Andean mountain ranges (stretching from present day Ecuador to Chile and Argentina). In the Mainland Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, earth (terra firma) is personified as Phra Mae Thorani, but her role in Buddhist mythology differs considerably from that of Mother Nature. In the Malay Archipelago, that role is filled by Dewi Sri, The Rice-mother in the East Indies.
Appearance List Literature: De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) (c. 50 BCE) by Lucretius; Naturae Laudatio (Hymn to Nature) in Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524 CE) by Boethius; Roman de la Rose (c. 1230–1275) by Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun (allegorical Lady Nature appears); Le Livre de la Nature (c. 1350) by Evrart de Conty; The Faerie Queene (1590–1596) by Edmund Spenser (includes allegorical figures of Nature); Religio Medici (1643) by Sir Thomas Browne (references “Mother Nature”); Mother Nature: A Study of Animal Life and Mankind (1873) by Alfred Brehm; Mother Nature (1890) by Jules Claretie. Comics: Airboy Comics vol. 5 #11-12, vol. 6 #8, vol. 7 #3, Pep Comics #31, Supermouse #14
Description Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of the mother. The word “nature” comes from the Latin word, “natura”, meaning birth or character. In English, its first recorded use (in the sense of the entirety of the phenomena of the world) was in 1266. “Natura” and the personification of Mother Nature were widely popular in the Middle Ages. As a concept, seated between the properly divine and the human, it can be traced to Ancient Greece, though Earth (or “Eorthe” in the Old English period) may have been personified as a goddess. The Norse also had a goddess called Jörð (Jord, or Erth). The earliest written usage is in Mycenaean Greek: Ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), “Mother Gaia”, written in Linear B syllabic script (13th or 12th century BC). In Greek mythology, according to Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia, “Demeter would take the place of her grandmother, Gaia, and her mother, Rhea, as goddess of the earth in a time when humans and gods thought the activities of the heavens more sacred than those of earth.” Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius opens his didactic poem De rerum natura by addressing Venus as a veritable mother of nature. Lucretius uses Venus as “a personified symbol for the generative aspect of nature”. This largely has to do with the nature of Lucretius’ work, which presents a nontheistic understanding of the world that eschews superstition. In Basque mythology, Amalur (sometimes Ama Lur or Ama Lurra) was the goddess of the earth. She was the mother of Ekhi, the sun, and Ilazki, the moon. Her name means “mother earth” or “mother land”. The Algonquian legend says that “beneath the clouds lives the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and human”. She is otherwise known as Nokomis, the Grandmother. In Inca mythology, Mama Pacha or Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting. Pachamama is usually translated as “Mother Earth” but a more literal translation would be “Mother Universe” (in Aymara and Quechua mama = mother / pacha = world, space-time or the universe). Pachamama and her husband, Inti, are the most benevolent deities and are worshiped in parts of the Andean mountain ranges (stretching from present day Ecuador to Chile and Argentina). In the Mainland Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, earth (terra firma) is personified as Phra Mae Thorani, but her role in Buddhist mythology differs considerably from that of Mother Nature. In the Malay Archipelago, that role is filled by Dewi Sri, The Rice-mother in the East Indies.
