Mother, and to her as to no other divinity worshipped by mankind,
was offered a spontaneity of devotion and a willing
acknowledgment of dependence. Thus far in the history of mankind
no temples dedicated to an undefined and undefinable God had been
raised. The children of Mother Earth met in the open air,
without the precincts of any man-made shrine, and under the
aerial canopy of heaven, acknowledged the bounties of the great
Deity and their dependence upon her gifts. She was a beneficent
and all-wise God, a tender and loving parent--a mother, who
demanded no bleeding sacrifice to reconcile her to her children.
The ceremonies observed at these festive seasons consisted for
the most part in merry-making and in general thanksgiving, in
which the gratitude of the worshippers found expression in song
and dance, and in invocations to their Deity for a return or
continuance of her gifts.

Subsequently, through the awe and reverence inspired by the
mysteries involved in birth and life, the adoration of the
creative principles in vegetable existence became supplemented by
the worship of the creative functions in human beings and in
animals. The earth, including the power inherent in it by which
the continuity of existence is maintained, and by which new forms
are continuously called into life, embodied the idea of God; and,
as this inner force was regarded as inherent in matter, or as a
manifestation of it, in process of time earth and the heavens,
body and spirit, came to be worshipped under the form of a mother
and her child, this figure being the highest expression of a
Creator which the human mind was able to conceive. Not only did
this emblem represent fertility, or the fecundating energies of
Nature, but with the power to create were combined or correlated