earth divinity

English

Noun

earth divinity (plural earth divinities)

1. A god or goddess of the Earth, as opposed to the sky.
   • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 15:

     Anyhow we seem to perceive that from the early beginnings (in the Stone Age) of self-consciousness in Man there has been a gradual development - from crass superstition, senseless and accidental, to rudimentary observation, and so to belief in Magic; thence to Animism and personification of nature-powers in more or less human form, as earth-divinities or sky-gods or embodiments of the tribe[.]

   • 1922, Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 125:

     As such they were at first the natural places for rites intended to compel the earth; later they became definite sanctuaries of earth divinities.