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Mircea Eliade - The Great Goddess
Identifier
011433
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
New Ireland is a large island in Papua New Guinea, approximately 7,404 km² in area. It is the largest island of the New Ireland Province, lying northeast of the island of New Britain.
A description of the experience
Mircea Eliade – Patterns in Comparative religion
Very occasionally – and no doubt under the influence of a matriarchy – the supreme Divinity of the sky is feminine; thus Hintubuhet of New Ireland, who has all the attributes of the Supreme Divinity of the sky (passivity and so on), but is female. Sometimes a Great Goddess has been substituted for the primitive Supreme Being of heaven, as with the Todas, the Kavis of Assam and so on. In Southern India the supreme divinity of the sky plays almost no part, religious life being entirely taken up with the worship of female divinities – the grama-devata