Download or read book The Faces of the Goddess written by Lotte Motz and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indeed, human motherhood was held in such low esteem that Eskimo women were forced to give birth completely alone, with no human companionship and no helpful deities of childbirth. Likewise, while various Mexican goddesses ruled over healing, women's crafts, motherhood, and childbirth, and functioned as tribal protectors or divine ancestors, none of them either embodied the earth itself or granted fertility to the crops: for that the Mexicans looked to the male gods of maize and of rain. Nor were the rituals of these goddesses nurturing or peaceful.