Earth as mother

Use in the book

The opening question asks who could deny life to this female's womb when it gives birth, nourishes offspring, and sustains itself. Stones are like teeth and plants like hair. The comparisons join fertility with continued attachment: what grows from earth appears to Ficino to stand to it as a living body's outgrowths stand to that body. Their explanatory force depends on the preceding argument from nourishment and generation, not simply on a poetic preference for calling earth a mother. Higher spheres subsequently foster earth and water as they give birth. Maternal imagery thus coexists with a hierarchy of causes.

The later wind within earth's entrails belongs to a different argument. Ficino uses the alleged ability of enclosed wind to shake mountains to make a celestial soul's easy movement of subtle bodies less astonishing. The womb image argues for an indwelling life; the entrails image locates an ordinary physical comparison. These uses should not be flattened into one mythological doctrine.

Places to read

1. IV.1.2teeth, hair, womb, back, and offspring support the argument for the life of earth
2. IV.1.36earth and water give birth under the fostering of higher spheres
3. IV.2.19wind in earth's entrails illustrates the movement of massive bodies by something subtle

Translation in this edition

The English keeps “like its teeth” and “like its hairs,” preserving the explicit quasi. The subsequent “womb of this female” is the text's personifying question. Reading either as modern anatomy would mistake the mode of the argument.

alere

alere. Printed forms: alit.

To nourish or sustain offspring. The earth-as-mother question links bringing forth with feeding what has been born. References: IV.1.2. See Earth as mother.

dens / pilus

dens / pilus. Printed forms: dentes; pilos.

Tooth and hair. Stones are compared with teeth and plants with hair, with attachment to earth doing argumentative work. References: IV.1.2. See Earth as mother.

parturire

parturire. Printed forms: parturiunt.

To bring forth offspring. Earth and water's fertility is fostered by higher spheres, extending the maternal image within a causal hierarchy. References: IV.1.36. See Earth as mother.

venter / fetus

venter / fetus. Printed forms: fetus; ventrem.

Womb or belly; offspring brought forth. The maternal anatomy helps argue for earth's life; it is an explicit bodily image applied to the earth. References: IV.1.2. See Earth as mother.