Return of the Goddess? Examples of the functioning of Magna Mater figure in Polish popular literature

Abstract

The article is divided into two parts. In the first one, the author discusses supporters and opponents of the Great Mother Goddess theory. According to many historians of religion and cultural anthropologists, the cult of a female deity combined with matriarchy as a social system was common during the Neolithic period. The concept of the Goddess, associated with a peaceful vision of Old Europe, was propagated by Margaret Murray, Robert Graves, Marija Gimbutas and many others. Thanks to the work of Carl Gustav Jung, however, it was popularized in the psychological contex as well (the archetype of the Great Mother). Despite the postulates of those who doubt in the existance of Magna Mater religion (like Aleksander Brückner and Maciej Szymkiewicz in Poland), this idea was championed by feminist movements and became part of the symbolic imagination, shaping contemporary popular culture.

In the second part of the article, the author presents how the character of Goddess functions in contemporary Polish literature (mainly in the pulp literature). She analyzes the works of Olga Tokarczuk, Barbara Srebro, Magdalena Kubasiewicz, Piotr Patykiewicz, Andrzej Sapkowski, and Anna Brzezińska. In their books, Magna Mater loses its sacred meaning. While Tokarczuk reconstructs her psychological significance, the other authors, like Brzezińska, reduce her to an “empty sign”.