Someone gave me this card, which apparently came from some sort of role-playing game. It may have had something to do with D&D. Unfortunately, I don't have any information on the artist.
CARD URL: http://www.zaporacle.com/card/battling-devouring-mother-forces/
The Devouring Mother is the archetype of the devouring aspect of nature/the feminine. An addict* is an example of someone caught in the jaws of this all too real archetypal force. Parasites, which outnumber all other species four or five to one, embody this energy. People (individually or in collectives such as governments) can be parasites or predators and embody devouring mother energy. The battle with this archetype could be within, without, or both.
The Gorgon of Greek Mythology is an example of the archetype of the devouring mother. But this archetype is not merely found in ancient mythologies; you can find many personifications of it walking down a city street. It could be a coworker who wants to see you fail, an addiction that would like to consume your money and health, or a sexual vampire. In some cases, literal mothers may embody this archetype. For example, mothers who infantilize and over-protect their children to keep them helplessly dependent personify this archetype. As someone pointed out, there’s a difference of only one letter between “mother” and “smother.”
I use the excellent AI editing tool, Grammarly Pro, but when I used the common and concise noun “addict,” a smothering and infantilizing AI helicopter mother emerged trying to castrate my use of a blunt but accurate noun:
In 2024, when I revised this card, I searched online for this archetype and found almost nothing, not even a Wikipedia article. Both toxic masculinity and toxic feminity are real, but currently, one is emphasized far more than the other. The few online comments I could find about the Devouring Mother assumed it was only about literal human mothers rather than an archetypal force of nature that has so many other expressions. I’ve also found that when I talk about the archetypal feminine and masculine, even when I carefully explain that this does not equate to men and women and that we all have and need our unique combination of these elements, people will still accuse me of stereotyping men and women.
The Devouring Mother is a ubiquitous principle of nature, most dramatically embodied by the mating of the praying mantis, where the female devours the head of the male during copulation. Cancer can be viewed as a manifestation of the devouring mother. In human psychology, if a man or a woman lacks the archetypally masculine element of will to overcome an addiction or other self-destructive process that is consuming them, that is a manifestation of the Devouring Mother Archetype. As above, so below. You can find the Devouring Mother in human psychology as well as in the microbiological world.
Consider this an auspicious time to summon your will to defend yourself from the many forms of the devouring mother.
My two major works in published book form (both available free on this site) are relevant to the Devouring Mother Archetype. My sci-fi epic on the singularity, Parallel Journeys, includes an ultimate embodiment of this archetype.
This website is the product of tens of thousands of hours of work. Making all this content available free and without ads means this enterprise runs at a lifetime six-figure loss. That hurts my feelings as well as my finances! Please help out!
Listen to Zap Oracle SteamCast in your favorite apps.
Notice any glitches with the site? Please do us a favor and report these, along with the browser you were using, to our webmaster ([email protected]).
Quote of the Day
It may seem that washing dishes and cooking dinner are completely mundane activities, but if you apply awareness in any situation, then you are training your whole being so that you will be able to open yourself further, rather than narrowing your existence.