The Great Mother

The Great Mother
An Analysis of the Archetype

Cover of the first edition
Author	Erich Neumann
Original title	Die große Mutter. Der Archetyp des grossen Weiblichen
Translator	Ralph Manheim
Country	Germany
Language	German
Subject	Mother goddesses
Published	1955 (Princeton University Press)
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	379
ISBN	(paperback) 0-691-09742-9 (hardcover)
LC Class	55-10026

The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (German: Die große Mutter. Der Archetyp des grossen Weiblichen) is a book about mother goddesses by the psychologist Erich Neumann. The dedication reads, "To C. G. Jung friend and master in his eightieth year". Although Neumann completed the German manuscript in Israel in 1951,The Great Mother was first published in English in 1955. The work has been seen as an enduring contribution to literature inspired by Jung.

As a brief introduction to a fraction of the book's narrative and analysis, presented here is an abbreviated abstract of a diagram Neumann identifies as "Schema III". Around a circle, or Great Round, various mother and related entities drawn from the history of religions were placed. From these were selected the following six representatives:

Neumann, employing the values of traditional cultures, describes the different positions as: Kali, the terrible Mother (sickness, dismemberment, death, extinction); the witches; Lilith, the negative Anima (ecstasy, madness, impotence, stupor); Isis, the good Mother (fruit, birth, rebirth, immortality); Mary (spiritual transformation); and, Sophia, the positive Anima (wisdom, vision, inspiration, ecstasy). They are grouped in three polar opposites: the Mother axis; the Anima axis; and the vertical transformation axis.

Following the theme of his The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949; 1954), Neumann first tracks the evolution of feminine archetypes from the original uroboros (primordial unconsciousness). These archetypes become articulated from the "Great Round". "The psychological development [of humankind]... begins with the 'matriarchal' stage in which the archetype of the Great Mother dominates and the unconscious directs the psychic process of the individual and the group." Eventually, from the symbolic Great Round, new psychic constellations are articulated, e.g., the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Increasingly, opportunities may open for various forms of spiritual transformation. In this process, the ancient cultures involved provide avenues for the gradual liberation of the individual ego consciousness, and his or her awareness of self. The "rise to consciousness" through a semi-unconscious social process affecting the group becomes institutionalized as ritual. Later more individual paths may evolve to augment the process of spiritual transformation.