"Through all the transformations of religion," writes the historian Will Durant, "the Mother Goddess has remained. After the Cretan Rhea came Demeter, the Mater Dolorosa of the Greeks; after Demeter, the Virgin Mother of God."

Long before the Virgin Mary, Ishtar, the mother goddess of Babylon, was addressed as "The Virgin", "The Holy Virgin", and "The Virgin Mother".

Cybele, the great goddess of Phrygia, was known in ancient Rome as Magna Deum Mater ("The Great Mother of God"). During her feast in Rome, the image of the great mother was carried in triumph through the crowds that hailed her as Nostra Domina ("Our Lady").

The Egyptian goddess Isis, venerated as the "Sorrowing Mother" and the "Loving Comforter", was represented in pictures and statues as holding her divine child Horus in her arms. Statues of black Madonnas, worshipped in certain French cathedrals during the Middle Ages, have proved upon examination to be basalt statues of Isis!

Throughout the Roman world, devout litanies hailed Isis as Regina Coeli ("Queen of Heaven"), Stella Maris ("Star of the Sea"), and Mater Dei ("Mother of God"). When Christianity came to Egypt, Isis was transformed into Miriam.

Similarly, the Church of Rome, in the fifth century of our era, attached the remnants of the cult of the Greek goddess Artemis to Mary, and transformed the mid-August harvest festival of Artemis into the feast of the Assumption.

Thus, behind a façade of ever-changing names and cults, the mother goddess lives on!