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Within Indo-European spirituality, cow goddesses occupy a unique and venerated position, symbolizing fertility, prosperity, and the nurturing aspects of nature. They play a central role in the mythologies and religious practices across various Indo-European cultures. Their symbolism extends beyond the realms of agriculture and animal husbandry, intertwining deeply with concepts of marriage and the life-giving forces of rivers.
This text shows that – and how – the plethora of Indo-European cow-associated and -depicted goddesses all belong together, represent the same functions and constitute a category or classification of goddesses throughout the IE world. It also shows that this group of cow goddesses are intimately related to and a sine qua non for river goddesses, and vice versa – helping the reader understand the Indo-European worldview, social construction and perception of (parts of) feminine divinity.
To understand the original concept of the Indo-European cow goddess, the functional classification of later cow deities it gave rise to, why they all belong together, and the close bonds between the cow as symbol and Indo-European river goddesses, we must first take a closer look at the Proto-Indo-European and early Indo-European lifestyle, society and worldview.
Cattle – larger than life
Cows and cattle held a central place in the life and cosmology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and early Indo-European peoples, profoundly influencing their worldview and religious beliefs. For the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who were predominantly pastoral and semi-nomadic, cattle represented the very cornerstone of their economy and sustenance. Cattle were the primary measure of wealth and social status. Ownership of large herds signified prosperity, power, and influence within the tribe. This association with wealth extended into their linguistic heritage; the Proto-Indo-European word for cattle, péḱu, also came to mean ’wealth’ or ’livestock’ in various descendant languages (compare e.g. the Germanic rune and word fehu). In fact, the English word pecuniary – economic, financial, monetary etc – comes from this very word – peku. As both a vital economic asset and a powerful cultural symbol, cattle shaped their perception of wealth, society, and the divine. For them, cows and cattle were more than just economic assets; they were integral to their way of life, shaping their social structures, religious practices and cosmological view.
Home is where the women are is a saying probably as old as the Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves. In the pastoral and semi-nomadic Indo-European societies, women held a pivotal role within the village, particularly during the long periods of the year when men were away herding livestock on distant pastures. The women were responsible for most things on home-ground, not the least agricultural tasks, social cohesion, craft production and the vital dairy processing. No milk – no life was a fact in these groups.
Beyond the fence – the known & unknown
This division of labor created a symbolic association between women and the ’known world’ – the settled, cultivated, and domesticated spaces of life. This connection to the known and domesticated world, anchoring the domestic sphere, contrasted with the men’s engagement in and venturing into the “wild” or uncharted territories, represented by the open pastures, untamed landscapes and transient lifestyle of herding. While men represented exploration, protection, and the management of external threats, women embodied the principles of fertility, continuity, and domesticity.
Here we can draw a parallel to the symbolism of Midgård contra Utgård. Midgård is the world known by, inhabited by and suited for mankind. The known, the safe, the enclosed, the home, the village. Utgård is the wilderness, the unknown, untamed, a place where we don’t belong, somewhere we’re not really supposed to be – at least not too long – the home of chaos forces. This is why men in Indo-European cultures had to be blessed before leaving the village in the spring and undergo a thorough purification ritual when they returned with the cattle in late autumn. We also see this mirrored in the Irish story of Cú Chulainn having to have his inner fire quenched upon returning from his first cattle raid.
As guardians of the hearth and home, women were seen as the anchors of stability, continuity, and order – this order that Indo-European peoples valued so highly. Order, structure and beauty as opposed to the unknown, untamed and chaos forces constitutes the very framework of IE spirituality and worldview.
The world was conceptually divided into the familiar, secure domain of the community and the unpredictable, hazardous external environment. In these societies marriage therefore played a critical role in reinforcing this distinction – it was crucial for these peoples as it delineated the boundaries between the known, safe world of the community and the unknown, chaotic external realm. This institution was a cornerstone, establishing a structured and orderly environment essential for societal cohesion, cultural continuity, and economic stability, ensuring the survival and prosperity of the community amidst the challenges of a pastoral and semi-nomadic existence.
Marriage – healing & frithyard
Marriage served as a means to establish trust and cooperation among individuals, to create formal alliances between family groups and to solidify bonds within the larger community. These contracts were crucial for resource sharing, mutual support, cohesion and maintaining peace. Having a clearly structured environment, social organization and economic stability & prosperity in place was vital for raising children, managing resources, and upholding traditions, and therefore also for ensuring the community’s long-term survival. In that sense these structures were also crucial for communal defense, for distinguishing and separating the known, safe realm from the unknown, chaotic external world and guarding the outer borders. With so many external threats you sure don’t need an internal one too. It’s much easier to divide and conquer a group without internal order and frith.
This is also the reason why marriage was intimately associated with healing, for the individuals and for the community in general. Beauty, order, cohesion and frith is the way things were intended, and healing is to try to go back to the way things are supposed to be. Marriage symbolized the union of complementary forces, reinforcing the balance and harmony within society. The word harmony by the way is cognate with phenomena and names like Xartus; the structured and beautiful cosmos, Ṛta; the Sanskrit/Vedic equivalent, aryan; kinsmen or ’those who belong together’ and (X)Áryomēn; the Indo-European god of, that’s right – belonging, marriage and healing! They all stem from an etymological root meaning ’to fit together’ or ’to put together’.
Gʷṓwinda – mother, provider & social order
The culture of our oldest ancestors, the Proto-Indo-Europeans and the early Indo-European peoples, was one of pastoral and semi-nomadic lifestyle, with cattle as its main economy and currency, placing extreme emphasis on the distinction between internal and external – the known and the unknown – and with marriage as both a unit for dividing labor and pooling resources effectively and functioning as the cornerstone of defence. Towards this background it should come as no surprise that a cow deity was one of the most important in their spirituality. We don’t know her exact name, but it has been reconstructed as Gʷṓwinda – ’cow-finder’ (suggested by Enrico Campanile based on both Govinda and the Vedic hapax govindú-), ’white cow’, ’shining cow’ or ’she who provides cows’.
Gʷṓwinda is a mother goddess, the perfect mother and wife, the most feminine of the feminine, a goddess of wealth and prosperity (i.e. cattle), granting material wishes and making sure there’s food on the table. She’s the giver of fertility, purity and healing (whose main symbol is obviously water), and protector of social order – maintained through marriage, kinship and controlled sexuality. Since cows most often were part of dowries and involved in wedding rituals, Gʷṓwinda’s role in the union and continuity of families and tribes becomes even clearer. The transfer of cattle as a dowry symbolized the transfer of nurturing and productive potential, paralleling the societal role of women in creating and sustaining new family units.
The domestication of cows mirrored the domestication of human relationships. Just as cows were tamed and integrated into human life, marriage represented the taming and integrating of sexual relations within a socially acceptable structure. In these cultural narratives, marriage was viewed as the domestication of sexuality and mankind itself, akin to the domestication of cattle. The cow (and cattle) is therefore a symbol for social order, frith, ’home-ground’, the known world under control, loyalty and intramarital love and sexuality.
This stands in stark contrast, direct opposition, to the horse goddess (Éḱwonā) and her symbolism. The horse – the second most important animal to the pastoralist Indo-European peoples – and specifically the mare, represents the wild, unknown, untamed, undomesticated, uncontrolled, outside of marriage and outside the enclosed and safe world. Taming the mare/horse gives the opportunity to create life, safety and order, and therefore sovereignty. The cow goddess nourishes, maintains and sustains this prosperity and life. Or perhaps – she rather is it.
The cow goddess is as mentioned also a mother goddess. The cow, with its abundant milk production, was seen as a maternal figure, embodying nourishment and care. Like a mother who feeds and nourishes her children, the cow provides essential sustenance through her milk, a primary source of nutrition for both young animals and humans. In agrarian societies, cow’s milk is often a staple food, symbolizing the nurturing aspect of motherhood, so the cow became a powerful symbol of nourishment and maternal care in Indo-European belief systems. Cattle were frequently used as metaphors for creation and the cyclical nature of life. They symbolized fertility, abundance, and the nurturing aspect of the earth. The image of a cow nurturing her calf is a powerful symbol of maternal care and protection, resonating with the broader cultural view of motherhood.
There is a straight line between the cow goddess and on the one hand cattle economy, dairy product dependency, the known and safe world, social order and the domesticated, and on the other hand marriage, motherhood, nourishing, caretaking, life-giving and a prosperous family and community. Many of the things the Indo-European peoples held in such high regard. Our oldest ancestors had a view of the community, the world and the divine where one huge and very important part was best symbolized with the essential cow and its characteristics. When we understand this culture, social structure, worldview and cosmogony or cosmology we can also understand that this perception and reverence gave rise to a plethora of Indo-European cow goddesses, closely related and each embodying these functions, characteristics and aspects. With the cow (goddess) having such a pivotal role millennia after millennia, with an agricultural and pastoral culture lasting all the way up until after World War II, over huge land areas – from Ireland in the west to India in the east – it’s no wonder that there was a whole herd of cow goddesses scattered all over the Indo-European world. With time and distance Gʷṓwinda became a category, classification or understanding of a bovine-providing, life-giving, bond-tying, land-securing goddess. A group, plethora, category, classification or understanding of this aspect of feminine divinity, yet strongly related, sharing characteristics, symbolism and many functions. The cow goddess is a classification or category of divinity rather than an individual deity, yet this category must be understood as having the same origin, from the same common bovine, marital and fertility concept – by the principle of the deification of abstractions so typical of Indo-European spirituality.
Rivers – arteries of lifeblood
This springs from the same source (pun intended) as the close kinship – or perhaps we even should say unity and sine qua non – between the Indo-European cow goddess, mother goddess and river goddess. Many of the world’s earliest civilizations arose along riverbanks due to the fertile land and abundant resources provided by rivers. And if you make a living from cattle herding, agriculture and fishing on a steppeland that stretches from Bulgaria to Kazakhstan it’s safe to say that the well-being of your family, tribe and livestock depends on the presence of rivers. With two of Europe’s three longest rivers – Danube in the west and the Ural River in the east – constituting the framework of your ’homeland’ and with five other giant rivers (Dniester, Don, Southern Bug, Dnieper and Kuban) and their hundreds of tributaries functioning as life-giving arteries providing essential water for agriculture, drinking and sustaining ecosystems around you, it’s even safe to say that you are the children of the rivers. Most Indo-European peoples actually even based the name they called themselves on the rivers Danube, Don, Donets, Dnipro, Dniester et al – compare for example Denmark/Dane, Danaans as the Greeks are called in the Iliad & Odyssey and Tuatha Dé Danann – ’the people of goddess Danu’ and the list goes on.
Rivers are the major fluvial systems of the European Western Steppe; they drain large catchments and their constant flow nourishes the land, making it fertile and productive, which directly supports human settlement and development. They are sacred because they are seen as the lifeblood of the land. This nurturing role makes rivers natural symbols of sustenance and fertility, underpinning the growth and prosperity of our ancestors.
Rivers are often seen as mothers of peoples; no water – no life! The environment of a river is akin to the mother’s life-giving flow and care, giving life to communities and often personified as nurturing female deities. The association of rivers with the mother role is a natural reflection of their life-giving, protective, and guiding qualities. And just like the river provides water essential for the fertility of the land and the health of both humans and animals, the cow (obviously associated with mothers) provides milk essential for nutrition – both sources of sustenance, vital for survival and prosperity. Just as mothers are central to the cycle of life and birth, rivers play a crucial role in cycles of renewal and regeneration in nature, the guarantor of life and food, the streams of the river synonymous with the milk flowing from the udders. The image of the cow is often used by Indo-European peoples as a metaphor for river-goddesses – not the least in Rig Veda – because the flow of the river is compared to the milk of cows, both of which gave esoteric knowledge to seers.
Follow rivers – the flow of healing, purification & renewal
Now, this stream or flow is important for more reasons than ’just’ the life-giving water and nourishing milk symbolism. Water is obviously one of the most fundamental and ubiquitous elements on our planet and its significance extends far beyond its physical properties. Throughout history, water has always held a special place in human consciousness and has been revered and worshiped as a symbol of purity and renewal. When Indra defeats the demon the waters rush onto the earth, like a mother cow eager to suckle her young (Rig Veda 10.9). The rivers of earth are therefore seen as being necessary to creation and as having a heavenly origin. Rivers inherently symbolize purification because of their role in the natural environment. Very often they, their tributaries, curves and bends were described as body-parts of the goddess: a portion of the river is her forearm, one is her calf, while another is her neck or her marrow. Flowing water cleanses and renews by carrying away debris, sediments and impurities. This physical process of washing away dirt and pollutants translates metaphorically to the cleansing of the spirit and mind in human experience. Flowing rivers purify both body and soul – immersion in or sprinkling with river water is believed to wash away sins, impurities and negative energies..
The earliest Indo-European peoples and their language made a clear distinction between things that moved and things that weren’t. The former were animate – ensouled – and the latter were inanimate – they were pure matter. This lingual distinction gave two ’genders’ – animate and inanimate nouns. There was a very important difference between stagnant water – *wódr (which gave e.g. our word ’water’) and fresh or flowing water – *ap or *hḗkʷeh (sharing root with e.g. ’swiftness’, and which later transformed into ’aqua’ et al.) Only the latter – that which flows – was seen as animate, divine and possessing the purifying and renewing effect. In Rig Veda we see how, prior to Indra’s heroic deeds slaying the life-blocking monster, a condition where ’the waters stood still’, but as soon as the dams open – ’like bellowing milk-cows, streaming out, the waters went straight down to the sea’. Rivers are for instance also called mâtaras, ‘mothers’ and given the epithet of mâtrǐtamâs – the superlative form of mâtar – ‘the mothers par excellence’ in the Vedic glossary and Veda texts. In Avesta, the Iranian collection of sacred texts, rivers are called matarô, ’mothers’, or matarô ģitayô, ‘living mothers’. Once again we see the connection between cow, mother and river. The flowing life-giving liquid; perhaps both the ’breaking’ amniotic fluid and the nutritious milk flowing out from the udder.
As mentioned before, marriage was considered both purifying and healing for the couple and for society in general. By ’putting things in order’, ’returning to the way things should be’ and creating a beautiful structure, definitely. But also as a catharsis, washing off the past and the spiritual pollution, and by separating and removing the individuals from the potentially dangerous liminal state they were in as unmarried adults. In wedding rituals all over the Indo-European world there was a ritual bath for both bride and groom – preferably in a sacred river (!) or spring – as a rite of separation, symbolic death of the child and purification. The sacred drink, itself closely related to the cow and river goddess (covered in other publications on this platform), was added to the bath water as additional purifying and sanctifying effect. River water was used in rites of purification – very often involving prayers to cow goddesses (!) while taking the bath – for preparing for sacred activities. And rivers were (are!) offered to and in, as votive offerings for their purifying, life-bringing and renewing functions.
The symbolism and functions of the original Indo-European cow goddess giving a classification or category of deities, and the Ariadne’s thread directly linking her (them) to the mother goddess and the river goddess can impossibly have passed anyone by. But now follows a large amount of interesting examples to further illuminate this concurrent development over time and space.
Cow goddesses roaming the Indo-European world
Cow goddesses are scattered throughout the Indo-European world, portrayed as maternal figures creating the world, granting wishes, nurturing and protecting. In the primordial Proto-Indo-European myth Gʷówindā raises the twins Manus and Yemos, who later create the physical and chthonic realms. Just like Yemos she is also sacrificed, and her body becomes the world’s animal life. This can be compared to the Persian primordial bovine goddess Gavaevodata, ’the one/first cow’, described as ‘white, bright like the moon’ and who becomes the progenitor of fauna.
But one of the most famous examples is Hera, the Greek goddess of lawful marriage, mothers, family, fertility, childbirth and the nurturing aspects of womanhood. She’s a matronly figure, veiled as a married woman, and as such she’s ’the mother of many of the gods’ (not the least Hephaestus and Ares); by Alcaeus of Mythilene she is called ’the origin of all’ and by Empedocles she’s referred to as Pheresbios – life-giving.
One of her sacred animals is the cow, and in Homer’s works she is constantly referred to as ’cow-eyed Hera’, ’cow-faced Hera’ and ’white-armed’ (remember this as we move on). Plutarch titles her Zeuxidia; ’yoking the oxen’, and the fact that the marriage between her and Zeus was nicknamed ’cow and bull’ in antiquity shows that the link between Hera and the cow was very strong and present. So strong in fact, that in the myth the Milky Way itself consists of Hera’s flowing breast milk. Hera’s activity as goddess of marriage established the patriarchal bond of her own subordination – another straight line to the domestication of cows and its synonymity with marriage’s importance for an ordered society.
Hera’s Roman equivalent is Juno. The first part of this word has to do with heifer, a young cow who hasn’t yet had a calf. She’s honored as a (savior) mother, and aligned with the trifunctional Indo-European worldview she was invoked by women about to give birth (third function). If we turn the reasoning around it was offerings of milk and flowing water that were made to seek her protection and favor – gifts both symbolically aligned with, and appropriate for a cow (goddess). It should also be remembered that when Juno’s husband Jupiter (the Roman equivalent of Zeus, representing cosmic order, contrasted with Juno’s social order) cheats with Io – priestess of Hera and considered just another form of Hera/Juno herself – he turns her into a white cow to hide her from Hera and escape her wrath. Transformed into a cow, she then wanders along many rivers and seas, symbolizing the journey of life and spiritual purification, and later crosses the path between the Propontis and the Black Sea, which gave it its name Bosporus – ’cattle passage’. In this same myth the earth-goddess Gaia also features. Gaia too is occasionally identified with Hera, and is related to the Vedic earth-goddess Prithvi, also associated with the cow.
Now, some more of Hera/Juno’s epithets and titles are Nymphevomenē, ‘led as a bride’, Nymphē, ’bride’, Pheresbios, ‘life giving’, and Imbrasē, a name she’s given after the river (!) Imbrasus. During her famous feast Hecatombaia, meaning ’one hundred oxen/cattle’, the main priestess of Hera was carried on a chart drawn by white-heifers to the sanctuary. In the Daedala festival the citizens of Plataia maintained from prehistoric times the processional wedding ceremony, where a puppet named Hera was married with Zeus. The puppet was washed in the river (!) Asopos and it was then carried on a cow-drawn chart to the top of Kithairon. In a festival in Aegina the image of Hera was carried on a chart drawn by white heifers, and in a festival in Nauplia Hera bathed in a spring just like the bride who took her bride-bath.
Vedic cows & rivers – the grass root examples
Let’s move southeast. Sarasvatī is the goddess and personification of the mythologized and deified north-Indian river, frequently highlighted in the Vedas, but whose actual geographical identity has unfortunately been forgotten. This river and goddess – meaning ’keeper of celestial waters’ and cognate with the Avestan/Persian Haraxvatī, ’region rich in rivers’ – played a very important role in the Vedic religion and there is much maternal and cow imagery about this river goddess.
Best of mothers, best of rivers, best of goddesses – Sarasvatī, we read in Rig Veda. She is portrayed as white and dressed in white garments, white being the color of sacred cows. One of her titles or aspects is Gomathi, ’repository of cattle/wealth’. She gives forth milk and clarified butter (RV 1.164.49), she is prayed to for children (RV 2.4.17), for a safe pregnancy (RV 10.184.2) and is the best of mothers (RV 2.41.16) who causes the success of all prayers (RV 6.3.8), i.e. grants wishes as mentioned above.
This leads us to another Vedic (and Proto-Indo-European) river and cow goddess – Dānu, who of course gave rise to river names like the Danube, Don, Donets, Dnipro et al. This was because she was carried along with the Indo-European peoples as a title rather than a unique personality, being applied to river goddesses in each new land. We see this not the least in the most ancient Irish/Celtic mother and river goddess Danu, and several British rivers named Don etc. Dānu is the giver of fertility to the land, and she ’lays down with her son like a cow with her calf’ (RV 1.32.9).
Most readers of this essay most likely know about the sacred river Ganges, personified and deified as goddess Ganga, whose water has been used for purification and sanctifying for millennia. This river is the very symbol of purity and fertility. In the Vedas (and later scriptures) it is described as fertile, purifying and forgiving – all characteristics of the mother – and is ’the cow that gives much milk’. Ganga is also often – albeit mainly in folk tradition – depicted as riding on a cow or white bull (in contrast to the crocodile/fish she’s using as her vehicle in Rig Veda).
Devotees bathe in the Ganges while also invoking the deities Surabhi and Aditi for blessings. The former is a cow and mother goddess whose name means ’the fragrant one’ or the ’sweet-smelling one’. Perhaps this is rather an epithet, because she’s also called Kamadhenu – the ’cow from whom all that is desired is drawn or ’the cow of plenty’, again relating to she who grants wishes. She’s also called Matrika – ’mother’. She is closely related to the (non-erotic) fertile Mother Earth – Prithvi – who is often described as a cow in Sanskrit. Surabhi is a divine cow, a source of life and sustenance associated with the nourishing and purifying aspects of water, a provider of milk and abundance, and fulfilling desires.
The latter is a goddess of loving motherhood – ’all the gods’ – fertility and the land itself. Just like in so many other places in the Vedas, the love between cow and calf is used to explain the love in nature – Aditi is personified as a cow and loving mother – ’kill not her, the sinless inviolate cow’. In RV 8.101.13 we read that she has ’been seen within the world, like a bridled cow’, obviously yet again showing us the domesticated, intramarital and controlled sexuality of the wife and mother. It continues to say that she’s ’advancing to the ten regions spread out like arms’, where we once again get to see the metaphor of the river and the cow as body parts (parts of the land) depicted.
Throughout the Vedas we see the cow goddesses denoting sustenance of life, non-erotic fertility, motherly nature and marriage. In a wedding hymn/rite in the Atharva Veda (14.1.42) we read ’O Bṛihaspati, this bride I have procured for myself. Offspring be to thee, and abundance of cows’, a verse associated with the promise of progeny and an increase in cattle, emphasizing the role of cows in the context of marriage and family prosperity. In a wedding hymn/rite from the Rig Veda the couple is wished ’blessing on this bridal bed, blessing on this bride, blessing on the groom. May they with sons be rich in wealth, in cattle, and in both together.’ Indo-European life, social order, marriage and cows cannot be separated.
Co(w)ming back to Europe – Germanic & Celtic deities
Let’s shepherd our cattle herd back along the rivers northwest into Europe. The Norse/Germanic Audhumbla (Auðumbla) might not be a goddess per se, although she does unite the two warring groups in the mythology (initiating order & reconciliation), by nourishing Ymir, ancestor of all the giants, and bringing into the light Búri, progenitor of the æsir. And most of all she is the primeval cow. Being ’hornless’ (i.e. female bovine and domesticated), ’rich in milk’, nourishing the primordial being Ymir with this milk and giving birth to the world she can’t be seen as anything else than a mother, symbolizing the maternal qualities of care and nourishment. Meanwhile, in Nafnaþulur she’s called ’the noblest of cows’. We have the cow and we have the mother. But what about flow and rivers? Well, in Gylfaginning ’the High One’ says that her teats produced four rivers of milk. This could possibly mirror the Christian worldview of Snorri Sturluson, with four rivers flowing out of Eden (Gen 2:10), but the image itself is much older.
Boann (or Boand) is the Irish goddess of river Boyne (Bóinn). The earliest reference to the Boyne dates from the 2nd century CE by Ptolemy, who calls the river Buvinda, the original form of which would have been *Bóu-vinda, so Boann is the ’Cow-White (river goddess)’ or ‘the Bovine Wise (river goddess)’. She causes cows to give milk three times a day, and she is honored and given offerings of milk down by river Boyne, further linking her and her cow aspect to the river’s life-giving properties. Boann commits adultery, an ’illegitimate affair’ with the Dagda, resulting in a son out of wedlock – going against social order, the laws of marriage and her cow-like nature. To purify herself of ’the pollution’ of childbirth, and of the betrayal and guilt she secretly goes to her husband Nechtan’s sacred well (Nechtan itself meaning clean, pure and white, from the root ’to wash’). But the well is restricted area – as sacred space so often is to those unworthy, within Indo-European spirituality – reserved and granted access only to Nechtan and his cupbearers (for the sacred drink), and the waters well up against her for defiling it and destroys her, creating the river Boyne in the process. Once again it all has the cow, the mother, rivers and purification in common.
Continuing along the Celtic path we find goddess Brigid – a ’home goddess’ (i.e. the domestic) and member of the Tuatha Dé Danann (i.e. river goddess Danu’s children). She travels the land with a white, red-eared cow, she has two oxen, is associated with healing and domesticated animals and is ’famous for her protecting care’. The link to the cow, the mother and the river is quite clear.
The Romano-Celtic goddess Verbeia, honoured in a single inscription engraved on an altar near Ilkley in Yorkshire, is understood as being the personification and deification of river Wharfe (on which Ilkley is situated). Her name stems from the Old Irish root ferb – ’cattle’, and her name is understood as ‘She of the Cattle’, which would link her to both the river and other cow-shaped water-goddesses, such as the mentioned Boand, ’the Gallo-Romanic Gaulish Damona, whose name stems from Proto-Celtic *damo – bull/cattle and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dmh2o-, ‘the tamed one’, i.e. domesticated, and also Borvoboendoa, the healing spring-goddess envisaged in the form of a cow whose name means ‘the Seething White Cow’.
Gʷṓwinda – birthing a category & view of feminine divinity
In Slavic folklore we find stories about mothers who turn into cows, and stories about boys who are chased away, but who find a cow who nourishes them. In ancient Greek mythology we have another illustration of the difference between the cow and horse symbolism, when Poseidon seduces Melanippe (meaning ‘black mare’) and she gives birth to twins. Following her mare nature, she exposes them on a mountain, where they are eventually found by a cow, who raises them.
The list goes on and on in an ever-flowing stream. Panta rei, as Heraclitus said; no man ever steps down in the same river twice. The cow goddesses of all the Indo-European branches are not the same, and they don’t have the same names. But some things will never be washed away. The cow goddesses occupy a unique position and play a central role in the mythologies and religious practices across the Indo-European cultures. Their functions and symbolism extend beyond animal husbandry, intertwining deeply with concepts of marriage, motherhood, healing, bond-tying and the life-giving water of rivers. They all come from somewhere – the culture, lifestyle, economy, worldview and view of divinity of our oldest ancestors, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, manifest in their beloved goddess Gʷṓwinda. The white shining one who provides cattle. And this plethora of cow goddesses all belong together, very close relatives in direct descent in an Indo-European function/feature category or classification of feminine divinity. You can take the cow out of the river, but you can’t take the river out of the cow.
Mother of cows, mother of people
Whose holy purity blesses all
Where you are the clouds shed abundant rain, and thence we live;
thence the moisture spreads to the grain, and the universe exists.
Where you are there is a sweet, white river
as of milk, a source of delight, container of life,
bestowing health, wealth, fortune, nourishment & progeny –
all good things.
Whose poured-out healing flow,
like Nekter,
sparks, protects and extends life.
Whose stream of blessings –
the shining gift of the shining cow –
is everflowing, easily milked,
feeding the Tree, feeding us.
Mother of cows, mother of people
where you are order, strong bonds and frith grows
like meadow flowers around you.
Like the holy grass we put on the altar.
May these our libations
water those flowers
water that grass
that you may abound in fodder,
that you may be rich in milk,
that we also may be rich.
Praise to you, honor to you, love to you.
