Potnia Theron : the mother goddess in ancient mediterranean mythologies as a paradigm of man-animal relationship.

by Andreea-Maria Lemnaru

The purpose of my talk will be to provide a mythological support for the ecofeminist movements, through the analysis of the correlation between ancient representations of women, nature and animals in ancient mediterranean symbolic networks.
The figures of various mother goddesses concieved as protectors of nature and animals will be analyzed, with a special emphasis on the triple moon and woman figure, Hecate, Artemis and Selene with their mystery cults in Greek religion on the one hand, while I will focus on the Phrygian Cybele and the Egyptian Isis as various personnifications of wilderness and sacralized nature one the other hand. The evolution between the cult of these goddesses and their replacement by a single male god will be considered as a paradigmatic change in mediterranean societies' ontology and relationship to nature and animals, from sacralization to reification and common systematic exploitation, to enlight the link between phallocentrism and anthropocentrism in ancient mediterranean mythologies.


Biography :
Andreea-Maria Lemnaru is a PhD researcher in Comparative philosophy of religion at Paris Sorbonne University (Centre Léon Robin)-Labex Resmed (Laboratoire d'excellence Religions et Sociétés dans le Monde Méditerranéen) under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Gouriant and Philippe Hoffmann. She is especially working on the influence of religious representations and experience on philosophical paradigms, and currently writing a doctoral thesis about the influence of mediterranean paganisms (especially hermeticism, mystery cults and magic) on neoplatonism with the aim to study the relationship between reason and religion.