April 25, 2011
Personal Journal - GAIA
In class, we briefly talked about Gaia, whom I had never heard of, and I wanted to learn more about what she represents.
Gaia was the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth, the Greek version of "Mother Nature," or the Earth Mother, of which the earliest reference to the term is the Mycenaean Greek ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), "Mother Gaia". Gaia is a primordial deity in the Ancient Greek pantheon and considered a Mother Titan or Great Titan. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra Mater or Tellus.
Gaia is the titan personifying Earth and these are her offspring as related in various myths. Some are related consistently, some are mentioned only in minor variants of myths, and others are related in variants that are considered to reflect a confusion of the subject or association.
- Through parthenogenesis
Many Neopagans actively worship Gaia. Beliefs regarding Gaia vary, ranging from the common Wiccan belief that Gaia is the Earth (or in some cases the spiritual embodiment of the earth, or the Goddess of the Earth), to the broader Neopagan belief that Gaia is the goddess of all creation, a Mother Goddess from which all other gods spring. Gaia is sometimes thought to embody the planets and the Earth, and sometimes thought to embody the entire universe. Worship of Gaia is varied, ranging from prostration to druidic ritual. Unlike Zeus, a roving nomad god of the open sky, Gaia was manifest in enclosed spaces: the house, the courtyard, the womb, the cave. Her sacred animals are the serpent, the lunar bull, the pig, and bees.
The mythological name was revived in 1979 by James Lovelock, in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth; his Gaia hypothesis was supported by Lynn Margulis. The hypothesis proposes that living organisms and inorganic material are part of a dynamic system that shapes the Earth's biosphere, and maintains the Earth as a fit environment for life. In some Gaia theory approaches the Earth itself is viewed as an organism with self-regulatory functions. Further books by Lovelock and others popularized the Gaia Hypothesis, which was widely embraced and passed into common usage as part of the heightened awareness of environmental concerns of the 1990s.
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