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Rooted in mythopoeia (the creation of myth) and gnosis (direct spiritual insight), mythopoeic matrignosis invites mother-centered ways of knowing and remembering. It invites us to immerse into the symbolic, the ancient, the embodied—not to anatomize, but to sense. It asks us to re-enter the stories we inherited and locate the missing mother, to feel her heartbeat beneath the narrative, to recover meaning that was once hidden.
What if medicine began not with the severing of a cord, but with its remembering?
Across centuries of philosophical, religious, and medical history, the mother has too often been made to vanish. Her wisdom, her presence, her body and power were omitted from the canon of knowledge and replaced with abstraction, masculine heroics, and conquest over nature. But healing has never truly belonged to the gods of dominion. It has always been held in the hearts and arms of mothers, wrapped in love from one generation to the next, kept alive in dreams, in rites of passage, in the body’s innate knowing.
This is a story about Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. But more so, it is a story about the healing goddesses who preceded him and the mother who was taken from him. It is about maternal wisdom lineages long buried beneath the floor of Western consciousness. And it is a call to re-mother mythology, to bring the maternal back to the center of the stories that shape our understanding of what it means to be human.
Excavating a Symbol
Asclepius is often revered as the founding figure of Western medicine. His rod, entwined with a single serpent, has become a global emblem for health and healing. His name appears in the Hippocratic Oath still ceremonially recited by physicians today. He was said to perform miraculous cures, restore life, and pass healing knowledge to his descendants. And yet, for all his prominence, few know that his story begins not with wholeness, but with rupture.
His mother, a mortal woman, was murdered by his father, the god Apollo, in a jealous rage. Her womb was cut open and the unborn child removed, bypassing the sacrality of birth and severing the earliest bond. This violent extraction—one of mythology’s first cesareans—brings Asclepius into the world through death, not life. Raised not by kin but by the centaur Chiron, teacher of heroes, his bond with his mother is thwarted before it has a chance to form.
What does it mean that the archetypal healer of Western mythology enters the world as his mother exits it? What are we to make of a foundational story of medicine born through violence, disconnection, and loss?
These questions linger and invite a necessary reimagining.
The Missing Mother as Origin Wound
Many scholars have described the “missing mother” as a structural absence at the heart of Western thought. From religious scripture to philosophical treatises and scientific paradigms, the maternal figure is either obscured or eliminated. This cultural amnesia is not just symbolic; it has real implications.
We see this erasure in how women’s bodies are studied or neglected. In how physiologic birth is controlled, surveilled, and pathologized. In how postpartum is idealized, maternal caregiving devalued, and the labor of mothering taken for granted. All these speak to a deeper forgetting: the displacement of mothers as central to human thriving.
The myth of Asclepius mirrors this pattern. Healing emerges, yes, but from an unhealed wound. And that wound, still open, reverberates through overmedicalized births and clinical detachment from maternal care. It is a wound not only of flesh and blood, but of memory.
Remembering Our Motherlines
In most writings, Asclepius’s mother is called Koronis. But some scholars suggest her true name was Arsinöe—The Luminous—a name so powerful it was concealed. What must she have embodied to be silenced in such a way?
Asclepius, neither of Olympus nor of the underworld, came to represent sacred earthly healing. But notably, his lineage bypasses maternal origins. Though he is eventually surrounded by female figures such as Epione, his wife, and daughters whose names invoke health and remedy, this divine family seems to overwrite rather than honor the matristic healing traditions that preceded them. His story reflects a shift from community-held, mother-rooted healing toward an isolated, masculinized figure of redemptive power.
Earlier traditions tell a different story. The Mesopotamian goddess Bau, later known as Gula, was once the patroness of healing, depicted with dogs and stars, symbols of devotion and transformation. Over time, her powers and names, including titles like “Great Healer” and “Lady of Health,” were gradually absorbed into the mythology of Asclepius. Her presence, once revered by whole societies, was subsumed.
Traces of these motherlines extend even further back. In Neolithic sites such as Çatalhöyük, red ochre birth rooms, ancestral burials beneath the hearth, and goddess figures flanked by animals reflect a cosmology where birth, death, and regeneration were part of a seamless, sacred whole. Healing in these cultures was rooted in kinship, community, and reverence for the mother—not separation from her.
Throughout world mythology, serpents have long been entwined with goddesses as symbols of fertility, life force, and regeneration. They appear beside them in sacred groves, coiling through trees, in spinning spirals of thread, or as the very form of the goddess herself. Far from symbolizing evil, the serpent once signified the cyclical power of creation and the deep intelligence of embodied life.
The early cult of Asclepius subtly retains echoes of these matristic traditions. His healing sanctuaries were built into the earth. Those who sought healing were led underground into dark, dream-laden spaces to lie on a stone slab called a kline —the root of our word clinic. There they would rest, awaiting a vision from Asclepius. The god often appeared in the form of a snake or dog—animals associated with healing and transformation. Testimonies describe wounds licked by dogs, miraculous surgeries performed in dreams, and fertility restored by serpent visions. These rites, infused with symbolism and somatic meaning, were not only healing practices, but remnants of an older, more integrated medicine.
Mythopoeic Matrignosis
To reclaim maternal wisdom, I propose a process I call mythopoeic matrignosis.
Rooted in mythopoeia (the creation of myth) and gnosis (direct spiritual insight), mythopoeic matrignosis invites mother-centered ways of knowing and remembering. It invites us to immerse into the symbolic, the ancient, the embodied—not to anatomize, but to sense. It asks us to re-enter the stories we inherited and locate the missing mother, to feel her heartbeat beneath the narrative, to recover meaning that was once hidden.
This is a process of restoring memory. Through dream, image, story, and relational reverence, we reweave maternal knowledge into our lives in the present. Mythopoeic matrignosis does not seek to erase the father. Rather, it aims to restore equilibrium to mothering, fathering, caregiving, community and culture by re-centering the vital importance of mothering and honoring the origins from which our deepest belonging emerges.
Returning to the Root of Care
Modern medicine has brought extraordinary advances and life-saving interventions. We rightly honor the skill, science, and dedication of physicians, researchers, and caring practitioners. And still, to become more complete it must look inward and backward. The lineage of medicine in the West was shaped not only by discovery, but by absence—by who and what was left out. Women have long been excluded from medical research, their bodies treated as deviations from a male norm. This is not simply an oversight; it is a systemic injustice. Women deserve more than adaptation—we deserve to be centered in research, care, and the shaping of medical knowledge itself.
To re-mother medicine is to heal not just the stories we tell, but the structures we inhabit. It means transforming a system that has too often misunderstood, dismissed, or pathologized the natural rhythms of women’s lives. It means reclaiming the study of the female body as essential to the health of all bodies. It means valuing mothering as expertise and placing maternal wellbeing at the heart of cultural care. In systems driven by profit and speed, birth becomes a managed event, postpartum a private struggle, and mothering invisible labor. But healing, like mothering, unfolds in cycles and stages. It requires time, trust, and relationship.
Research shows that babies thrive in environments of warmth, responsiveness, and continuous care. These conditions are just as vital for mothers. A society that supports maternal wellbeing fosters a positive social climate, which is the first—and perhaps most essential—layer of our evolved nest. This includes not only affectionate care but also a communal sense of belonging and mattering.
Research shows that babies thrive in environments of warmth, responsiveness, and continuous care. These conditions are just as vital for mothers. A society that supports maternal wellbeing fosters a positive social climate, which is the first—and perhaps most essential—layer of our evolved nest. This includes not only affectionate care but also a communal sense of belonging and mattering.
Mothering Futures
When mothers feel held in a climate that recognizes their worth, their capacity to care grows outward. Maternal care nourishes not only children but the very structures of emotional, cultural, and ecological wellbeing. This care is not peripheral; it is central to our collective health.
This is the medicine we need now. Not a system built on separation and detachment, but one grounded in presence, trust, and renewal. Mythopoeic matrignosis offers one way to tend healing and remembering. It is not only a reweaving of ancient stories, but a reorientation of modern life toward care-driven wisdom that begins in the mother-child bond. It calls us to listen to mothers not as secondary figures, but as culture makers, healers, and central stewards of human flourishing.
A thriving society cannot be built on the exclusion of mothers. It must be shaped in relationship with us. The wisdom cultivated through lifecourse matrescence, the ongoing transformation that arises through mothering, is essential not only to the wellbeing of families but to the development of empathy and relational attunement. This care extends beyond the self, beyond kin, to community and to the natural systems that sustain life.
When mothers are supported both in their caregiving and in their wider callings, they generate the creative and connective wealth needed to nourish future generations. To provision mothers is not a sentimental gesture or an act of charity. It is a social responsibility and a cultural imperative.
Let us remember that the future of medicine begins where all life begins: in the care and consciousness of mothers. And let us not forget—the future is open. Now is the time to shape new stories, reweave ancient ones, and create a living mythology that honors the lifeworld and the mother at the heart of it all.
This article is based in Dr. Weappa’s 2018 publication titled The Motherlines of Asclepius: Ancestral Female Healers in the Origins of Medicine.
Weappa, J. S. (2018). The Motherlines of Asclepius: Ancestral Female Healers in the Origins of Medicine. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 9(1). Retrieved from https://jarm.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jarm/article/view/40476
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Our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing, our Evolved Nest, begins with a Welcoming Social Climate (Community). We were never meant to go it alone. Learn more about allonurturers (village care) and more components of our baselines for wellness in the Evolved Nest’s Learning Center.