“THE ORIGINAL BLACK MOTHER
It is possible that the religious ideas of ancient Crete and Egypt originated in black Africa. During 7000 to 6000 B.C., the
Sahara was a rich and fertile land, and a great civilization flourished there. Images of the Horned Goddess (who became Isis
of Egypt) have been found in caves on a now-inaccessible plateau in the center of what is now the Sahara desert. When the
earlier fertile land dried out, probably as a result of climatic change, the people spread out from this center, and wherever they
settled they brought with them the religion of the Black Goddess, the Great Mother of Africa.
Great importance has always been given to the Queen-Mother across the continent of Africa. The original Black
Goddess was regarded as bisexual, the instrument of her own fertility; she was the ancient “witch” who carried a snake in
her belly. Africans worshiped her many manifestations. The creator of the gods of Dahomey, for example, was Mawu-Lisa,
imaged as a serpent; Mawu-Lisa was both female and male, self-fertilizing, seen as the earth and the rainbow. Africans
believed that the earth is ultimately more powerful than the sky and its gods; the sky can withhold rain, but earth is the source
of the life force itself. The Gaia hypothesis of modern environmental science confirms this ancient concept: The sky, with all
its dramatic life-giving movement, is in fact created by the earth—the envelope of air and moisture surrounding us is really the
earth’s “breathing.” As in the ancient African beliefs, the sky gods are creations of the Mother Earth; she breathes them out,
and can breathe them back in again.”