by Chris Westerley

Created on: May 31, 2010

Mati Syra Zemlya, which in Russian means Moist Mother Earth, is the Slavic personification of the Great Goddess, the Earth Mother. Sometimes she was referred to in the various Slavic languages simply as Mother Earth (e.g. Mati Zemlya, Matka Ziemia).

Her cult is thought to have arisen in the Don valley. Places of worship were marked with standing stones, often breast-shaped.

According to legends, a small island rose up out of the primeval ocean. A duck landed on the island and laid an egg. The egg rolled off the island and split into two halves. The lower half formed Mati Syra Zemlya, the Earth, and the upper half formed the sky.

Mati Syra Zemlya is also known as Mokosh, wife of the sky god Svarog ("mok" is the root of words for "wet" or "moist" in a number of Slavic languages). Nestor in his "Chronicle" of A.D. 980 makes reference to worship of Mokosh.

Mati Syra Zemlya was the goddess of fertility and midwivery. She was said to spin flax during the night and was also believed to spin the web of life and death. By being buried in the ground, a dead person was returned to the bosom of the Great Mother.  

She was revered as the goddess of justice and prophecy.Slav peasants would call on her as a witness in their legal disputes. Placing a clod of earth on the head while swearing an oath made the oath legal and binding.   

A ritual to Mati Syra Zemlya took place in the fields at dawn in August. A libation of hemp oil was poured out to the east, south, west and north,each time accompanied by a prayer for protection against evil and the destructive forces of nature.

Embroidered towels used in northern Russia during various sites of passage as late as the 19th century portray her with raised hands and a sun disk on her forehead. The Tree of Life grows out of her body and she is surrounded by horses, stags, and birds.

She was often portrayed with black skin, associating her with the blackness of rich fertile soil. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that as paganism was stamped out by Christianity, worship of the Goddess continued in front of the images of the Black Madonna that are so prevalent in the icons of the Russian Orthodox Church.She also became transformed into Saint Paraskevia, keeping her holy day of Friday and her associations with flax and linen. Later, Mati Syra Zemlya was assimilated into the concept of "Mother Russia".

References

Mike Dixon-Kennedy
Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth
ABC-CLIO Inc., 1998

Harald Harman
The soul of Mother Russia: Russian Symbols and Pre-Russian Cultural Identity
ReVision magazine, 2000

http://www.winterscapes.com/slavic.htm

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