BIRTH

BIRTH . The mystery associated with birth forms a central motif in every religion. The motif may be appreciated in its irreducible physical form or may become a highly abstract symbol or ritual. Religiously, birth is not regarded as merely a physiological process, or even a ritualized physiological event, but is associated with the evolution and transcendence of spiritual powers or the soul. Transmuted through myth, ritual, and symbol, the concept of birth becomes a major cipher for understanding existence and expressing wonder at creation.

Most religions explore the motif of birth through these three areas of myth, ritual, and symbol. Mythic narratives about important births or mythic figures who give birth are found in most religious traditions, and these myths shed light on the theological and ethical importance of rituals surrounding birth and rebirth. The ritual concerning physical childbirth itself makes this physiological event a religious experience. A third important motif is symbolic rebirth. Many religions speak of the central transformations in the religious life as rebirth. Whether as a collective initiation or as a solitary conversion, members of most religions are expected to undergo a second birth, which sometimes closely duplicates the first, physiological birth. At other times it is intended to undo the inadequacies of the first birth, so that there is an opposition between physiological birth and spiritual or social rebirth. This kind of second birth can often involve great tension or even hostility between women and men. This second birth can be so abstract that the way in which it duplicates one's first birth is unclear.

Primal Religions

Statues of pregnant women dating from the Paleolithic period are important as indicators of the earliest attachment of religious significance to birth. Found in archaeological sites from Spain to Russia, these statues date from about 25,000 bce on. Since they are found in the remains of old settlements and dwellings, they are thus assumed to be part of domestic religion. Although the exact use and significance of these figures cannot be determined, it seems undeniable that they reflect and express concern with birth specifically and with feminine energy in general as central existential and religious symbols.

For the Neolithic period, the evidence for a religion centered on goddesses and for a matrifocal society in Old Europe between 6500 and 3500 bce is convincingly presented by Marija Gimbutas (1982). According to Gimbutas, the appropriate collective title for the goddesses is "the Goddess-Creatrix in her many aspects." Among the most important of these aspects is "the life-giving goddess, her legs widely parted" (p. 176). Reliefs of this goddess found in the temples of the Anatolian village of Çatal Hüyük (excavated and reported by James Mellaart) have become especially well known. Contemporary interpreters of this culture have suggested that one may contemplate the impact of entering a religious sanctuary and finding the large, central, elevated image of the Great Birth-Giver with widely parted legs. Such sanctuaries were common in Çatal Hüyük for at least a millennium. In addition, according to Gimbutas, the schematic diagram for this birth-giving goddess was widespread in Old Europe.

The religious significance of birth in primal religions can also be studied in the context of the present ethnographic data. Rituals surrounding first and second birth have been minutely described and analyzed for many societies. Small-scale societies provide reference points for many classic analyses of birth and rebirth ritual. The links between these rituals of birth and mythologies about birth have not been thoroughly studied, but many small-scale societies also possess a significant mythology concerning births.

Physiological birth is the occasion for rituals in almost all small-scale societies. The well-known pattern for transition rituals—withdrawal, seclusion, and return—is evident in the activities surrounding physiological childbirth. In this case there is an especially close connection between physiological requirements and ritual elaboration. Other transition rituals do not carry the same physiological necessity for withdrawal and seclusion, which strengthens the hypothesis that the experience of giving birth is the model upon which other transition rituals are based. This observation also intensifies the impression that the religious meaning of birth extends far beyond physiological childbirth, which is nevertheless one of the most powerful and pervasive root metaphors of religion.

The pattern of withdrawal, seclusion, and return can take many forms and can include other ritual details. The withdrawal may begin some time before the actual delivery, or it may begin only with the onset of labor, as among the !Kung of southern Africa. The seclusion may be short and solitary, an unusual pattern found among the !Kung and, among them, only for uncomplicated deliveries. Usually the woman giving birth is secluded with appropriate relatives and helpers. Though there are exceptions, as among the inhabitants of Tikopia and the Marquesas, one of the most reliable generalizations that can be made about childbirth seclusion in primal religions is the absence of men. Usually their absence is not merely an accident or a practical arrangement but rather a deeply felt religious requirement. However, the woman's husband may participate vicariously in childbirth through practicing couvade, a series of work and food taboos, physical symptoms, and seclusion. These practices are especially associated with South American Indians. While male absence from childbirth is a general requirement, exceptions are sometimes made in special circumstances such as a difficult delivery; then the shaman or the father may attempt to help the delivery.

After childbirth, the seclusion for the woman continues usually for at least a few days and frequently for a month or more. During this seclusion period, both mother and child receive special treatment and are subject to special restrictions. In most cases, during the entire period of the withdrawal, seclusion, and return, normal routines of eating, working, and human association are disrupted. Normal activities or associations may be restricted to protect either the mother and child or those with whom the mother comes in contact or both. On the other hand, the mother may also be indulged with special foods, a lighter workload, and the solicitous companionship of her friends and relatives. Generally, some ritual elaboration of physiological childbirth seems to be universal among the women of primal cultures.

Almost all of the observances of childbirth outlined above are found among the Aboriginal Australians. The ethnographic literature on these groups concentrates heavily on the second birth, or initiation, as the important birth. In fact, many analyses of Australian Aboriginal religion suggest that physiological birth is the low point in the life cycle relative to membership in the sacred or religious community, and that this situation begins to change only with a second or so-called real birth during initiation. For the birth-giver, however, childbirth is definitely a religious experience that also serves to advance her ritual status. She experiences and practices all the rituals associated with participation in a sacred ceremony and thus emulates models from the mythic Dreaming that sanction her experience and behavior.

For members of many primal religions, birth is believed to be something that must be reexperienced at least once, especially by men. Frequently, for this purpose, boys are forcibly removed from their familiar surroundings, isolated from women, subjected to painful ordeals and physical operations, and taught secret lore that only men may know (although, in fact, women often surreptitiously find out these secrets). When the boys are reintegrated into the society, they have become "men" through the agency of their male initiators.

Though there are exceptions, as among the Mende of West Africa, this process of a prolonged and tedious rebirth is more typically expected of males than of females. Some scholars analyze this male rebirth ritual as a symbolic gesture whereby boys enter the masculine realm and are freed of the feminine world in which they had previously lived. The second-birth ceremonies of Australian Aborigines may also be seen as experiences that serve as a transition from profane to sacred status. This analysis suggests that the second symbolic birth is the real birth, and that male initiation is needed to accomplish what women cannot do when they give birth. This analysis stresses the differences and tensions between the two modes of birth—that given by women and that given by men—and focuses often on male-female tension and hostility in the culture. However, other analyses emphasize the continuity between first and second births and see the second birth as a duplication rather than an undoing of the first birth. More significantly, the male initiators finally experience vicarious childbirth in a kind of delayed couvade as they duplicate the pattern of childbirth. This kind of analysis stresses the extent to which the ceremonies of male second birth are based on awe of, not scorn for, the women's accomplishment in giving birth.

Aboriginal Australian male ceremonies of second birth give clear evidence for the dual meaning of second birth as both a transformation of boys into men and as a birth-giving experience for men. During the ceremonies, boys are carried about by men in the same way that women carry babies. After the initiation operation, the boys are taught a new language, and the men engage in the same purificatory and healing practices as do women after childbirth like the mythic sisters of the Dreaming. The operation itself is symbolic of severing the umbilical cord. In other ceremonies, a trench, symbolizing a uterus, is dug on sacred ritual ground and boys are made to lie in it until the proper time for their emergence, which is indicated by the correct sequence in the dance dramas conducted by the men. In some ceremonies, men ritually wound themselves and correlate their blood with the blood that flows in childbirth.

Many primal religions focus on mythic births and birth-givers. No mythological system among primal religions is devoid of female personalities and activities that focus on birth and rebirth. Among the Aborigines of Australia, there are several well-known mythologies of birth-givers, who are also models for current ritual practices that both women and men engage in. Ronald M. Berndt has reported on two major myth cycles in Kunapipi (Melbourne, 1951) and Djanggawul (Melbourne, 1952). The Djanggawul epic concerns a brother and two sisters who travel together; the sisters are perpetually pregnant and constantly give birth, assisted by their brother. The other epic concerns two sisters, the Wawalag, one of whom is pregnant and gives birth. The sisters reveal their experiences to men through dreams that become the basis for the men's ritual drama that accompanies second birth. In some Aboriginal mythologies, the ritual process of second birth is itself identified with the great All-Mother or Birth-Giver.

Indian Religions

In the Indian religious context, especially in Indian folk religions, childbirth remains an occasion for religious observances. These rituals follow familiar patterns of withdrawal, seclusion, return, and disruption of normal daily routines. Usually both women and men take part in some birth observances, though the rituals are much more extensive for women. Indian childbirth practices are characterized by uniquely Hindu notions and practices of ritual purity and pollution and are colored by the highly patriarchal character of the Indian family.

The childbirth rituals of an Indian village have been described in a study by Doranne Jacobsen (1980). Though restrictions on food and activity during pregnancy are minimal, with the onset of labor the woman giving birth is separated from others. It is believed that during labor and for a short period immediately following childbirth, the woman and her baby are in a highly polluted and polluting state, similar to the state of people in the lowest untouchable classes. Anyone who contacts the mother and child contracts this pollution, so the two are carefully isolated. Only the midwife, who belongs to a very low class because of the polluting nature of her work, and one married female relative stay with the woman. This childbirth pollution extends to a lesser extent to all members of the husband's family. They also observe some of the restrictions incumbent upon one in a state of pollution and undergo purificatory practices.

The delivery is followed by a series of ceremonies gradually reintegrating the woman and child into the ongoing life of the village. On the evening of the birth girls and women gather in the courtyard of the house to sing. After three days, the level of pollution is lessened when the woman is given purifying baths; she then begins to have limited contact with her household. After ten days, in an important women's ceremony, the woman and her baby leave the house momentarily for the first time, and the mother blesses the family water pots and water supply. For the next month, the woman is still in a transitional state, participating in some of the family's activities, but not cooking or participating in worship services for the deities. Usually the pollution period ends about forty days after the birth, when the mother performs a ceremony at the village well at night, symbolically extending her fertility to the village water supply and completing her reintegration into the community.

This transition period in the woman's life is significant not only for her but for her entire family and community. Both male and female members of her husband's family, who often make the young wife's life very difficult, recognize the new mother's ritual status and must change their behavior appropriately. For the new mother herself, the forty-day seclusion is not so much a period of liability and deprivation as a period of healthful rest and indulgence. She receives special foods, attention, and a new, respected status in her husband's family, especially if she has just given birth to her first son. These rituals surrounding childbirth support and validate women's vital role in a society that often expresses ambivalence toward women and projects strong male dominance.

Second symbolic birth is important in some Indian castes and some religious groups. During the Vedic period (c. 1500–900 bce) and in those castes that are still heavily involved in rituals and privileges having Vedic antecedents, second birth is an important affair. During Vedic times it was important in its own right; in contemporary Hinduism it is more important because of the privileges associated with being eligible to undergo a second birth.

The upper levels of Hindu society call themselves "twice-born"; their second birth gives them privileges, status, and responsibilities unavailable to the rest of the population. The privileges include the right to study the Vedic sacred texts and to practice religious ceremonies derived from Vedic models. The visible symbol of this status is a cotton cord worn by men across the left shoulder and resting on the right hip. A boy's second birth occurs when he is invested with this sacred thread, receives a sacred verse from his mentor, and undertakes, for at least a few moments, the ascetic discipline of a religious student.

The ancient texts regarding this initiation ceremony regard it as a second birth conferred by the male preceptor. The preceptor transforms the boy into an embryo, conceiving him at the moment when he puts his hand on the boy's shoulder. The preceptor becomes the boy's mother and father and symbolically carries him in his belly for three nights; on the third day the boy is reborn as a member of the privileged twice-born group. After his initiation the twice-born man can perform further sacrifices, which also begin with an initiation involving return to embryonic status and rebirth. Some Indian cultic traditions that still rely heavily on initiation continue to employ these motifs. For example, some Buddhist initiations begin with a series of rites in which the neophyte, deliberately compared to an infant, is washed, dressed, decorated, taught to speak, given a name, and so on.

However, though the theme of second birth occurs in the Indian contexts, many of the great soteriological themes of the Indian tradition do not rely on metaphors of birth and rebirth. Neither Hindu yoga nor the Buddhist Eightfold Path are a process of second birth; neither Hindu brahman nor Buddhist nirvāṇa results from second birth. They destroy delusion and result in insight and understanding. Images of maturation and death, rather than images of birth and rebirth, more accurately describe this attainment of an otherworldly attitude.

In the Indian context both stories of mythic birth and images of great birth-givers are ambiguous. The two most familiar birth stories, that of the Buddha and that of Kṛṣṇa, are highly unusual. Rather than serving as paradigms of birth-giving, they tell of the extraordinary futures awaiting the infants Buddha and Kṛṣṇa. Goddesses are numerous and important, but they are never simple mother goddesses. Though the creative power of the goddesses is stressed, none of the great goddesses of Hindu mythology experiences a pregnancy and delivery with which a human female could identify, not even Pārvatī, the wife of Śiva and the mother of two of his children. But the veneration of symbols of male and female sexuality is widespread. Temple reliefs of goddesses, naked, hands on hips, knees turned outward to display their sex, recall the Creatrix of Çatal Hüyük. As Sakti, vital energy, she is the energy that fuels the entire phenomenal world. Moreover, without the touch of her energizing dancing feet even the greatest god, Śiva, is a mere sava or corpse.

Monotheistic Religions

In the ancient Near East, the concept of monotheism involved the suppression of the goddess as the legitimate symbol of divine creativity and resulted in her replacement by a solitary sovereign, an abstract and nonsexual, though male, creator. Many mythologies from the third millennium onward display an increasing attempt to present males as primordially creative, even as the first birth-givers. They become pregnant and give birth, despite their anatomical limitations. Even if they are not directly involved in birth-giving, they are depicted as performing creative acts. Perhaps the most dramatic account of this reversal occurs in the creation epic of ancient Mesopotamia (mid-second millennium bce). The older generation of gods are the primordial parents Apsu and Tiamat. After Apsu is killed by younger gods, Tiamat engages in battle against the younger gods. The battle is a confrontation between Marduk, a young male hero, and Tiamat, the Original Mother. He kills her and creates the cosmos out of her lifeless body. The gender identification of the two protagonists, though often ignored, is extremely significant. It is also found in one of the most important myths of Western culture, the creation of the female (Eve) out of the male (Adam).

Against this mythological background, physiological childbearing is not an especially important or religiously valued activity in monotheistic religions. The pains of childbirth are explained as punishment for Eve's curiosity and disobedience; the most noteworthy birth, Jesus' virgin birth, can no more be a model for ordinary women than can the births of the Buddha or Kṛṣṇa. Throughout the centuries, though women have been exhorted to bear children and even have been declared saved by their childbearing (1 Tm. 2:15), their childbearing has neither been given value by significant religious rituals nor been utilized as a significant symbol in the mythological system. In the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, childbirth has nevertheless been surrounded by folk rituals, taboos, and superstitions. Even in modern secular societies, the activities surrounding childbirth are highly ritualized, as has been pointed out by several anthropological analyses of modern Western cultures. These rituals are changing at present, as indicated by the growing popularity of home births, birthing centers, and so on, and by much more direct participation of fathers in the childbirth process than is found in most other societies.

In the context of these Western religious traditions, mothering as an activity has been a more significant religious symbol than birth itself, as is evidenced by the madonna-and-child imagery that is popular in Christian piety. Scholars are beginning to notice aspects of motherly energy in the symbolism of the divine. Yahveh of the Hebrew scriptures is also depicted as a mother eagle. The word for his mercy (raḥamim ) derives from the word meaning "womb" (reḥem ); some suggest that the phrase "merciful father" could be translated as "motherly father." The words for his spirit may be masculine or feminine, while the word for his wisdom is definitely feminine, as is shekhinah, the term for his presence on earth. In medieval times Christ was depicted as being motherly and feminine. Anselm, in his ontological proof of the existence of God, pictured Christ as a mother hen, an image that appears in the Bible (Mt. 23–37, Lk. 13–34).

Second birth has remained a central motif in monotheistic religions, especially in Christianity. Physiological birth by itself is insufficient to initiate a person into complete membership in the religious community, which is accomplished by the second and real birth. In Judaism and Islam the circumcision ritual does not stress, or even recognize, circumcision as rebirth. In Judaism it is simply "entry into the covenant," and is the first religiously significant event, but is not modeled on an earlier birth.

In Christianity, the necessity of second birth has been especially strong. The contrast between the "Old Adam" and the "New Man" is deeply built into the Christian symbol system. Transition from one birth to the other is a necessary individual experience, verified in baptism, or more recently, in the psychological experience of being "born again." Inasmuch as baptism is performed by a traditionally all-male clergy, the ritual resembles the second births performed by men in other religions. However, rebirth is not a duplication of physiological childbearing but instead emphasizes the need to die to the "old life." In Christianity, everyone, whether female or male, needs to be individually reborn. In this way the Christian understanding of true rebirth departs significantly from other traditions. However, this rebirth occurs through the ritual agency of a male clergy and is almost always understood as a rebirth into the graces of a male monotheistic deity. Perhaps in no other context is the need to be reborn so strongly felt yet so strongly removed from the arenas of feminine symbolism and replication of female activity.

See Also

Couvade; Initiation; Prehistoric Religions.

Bibliography

Literature about rituals of birth and rebirth as well as the mythology and symbolism of the Great Birth-Giver is scattered in many sources. Only rarely, or not at all, are such materials easily found in a few sources. Two classic discussions of transition rituals are Mircea Eliade's Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth (New York, 1958) and Arnold van Gennep's The Rites of Passage (Chicago, 1960). More recent books that include significant comparative discussions of birth rituals include Martha Nemes Fried and Morton H. Fried's Transitions: Four Rituals in Eight Cultures (New York, 2001) and Sheila Kitzinger's Women as Mothers: How They See Themselves in Different Cultures (New York, 1978).

The Old European religion is discussed in Marija Gimbutas's The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500–3500 B. C. (Berkeley, 1982) and in Anne Barstow's "The Prehistoric Goddess," in The Book of the Goddess: Past and Present, edited by Carl Olson (New York, 1983). The ceremonies of birth and rebirth among Aboriginal Australians are summarized in my essay "Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians," in Unspoken Worlds, edited by Nancy Auer Falk and me (San Francisco, 2001), where Doranne Jacobson's "Golden Handprints and Red-Painted Feet: Hindu Childbirth Rituals in Central India" can also be found. Rebirth ceremonies are described in David G. Mandelbaum's Society in India, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1970), and Abbé Jean Antoine Dubois's Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, 3d ed. (1906; reprint, Oxford, 1968). The many qualities of Hindu goddesses and mythic birth-givers can be seen in N. N. Bhattacharyya's The Indian Mother Goddess, 2d ed. (Columbia, Mo., 1977), and in The Divine Consort, edited by John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (Berkeley, 1982).

Shifts in the core symbolism of the ancient Near East become apparent when the older worldview is first studied. Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer present a moving portrait in Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth (New York, 1983). The prebiblical shifts in symbolism are presented by Thorkild Jacobsen's The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven, 1976), and the struggle to enforce the biblical shift in symbolism is discussed by Raphael Patai's The Hebrew Goddess (New York, 1967). For symbolism of second birth in Christianity, see Marion J. Hatchett's Sanctifying Life, Time and Space (New York, 1976) and Joseph Martos's Doors to the Sacred (New York, 1982). Finally an older source containing much valuable information, including chapters on Palestine and the church, is E. O. James's The Cult of the Mother Goddess (New York, 1959).

Rita M. Gross (1987 and 2005)