Gaea
Gaea (pronounced /'geɪ.ə/ or /'gaɪ.ə/) ("land" or "earth", from the Greek Γαῖα; variant spelling Gaia) is a Greek goddess personifying the Earth.
Greek mythology
Hesiod's Theogony (116ff) tells how, after Chaos came into being, Gaea arose independantly, becoming the everlasting foundation of the gods of Olympus. Similarly, Tartarus, the bowels of the earth, sprung into being contemporaneously. Gaea, the earth, brought forth Uranus, the starry sky, her equal, to cover her, the mountains, and the fruitless deep of the Sea, Pontus, all of these out of her own self, without need of a partner. But afterwards, Hesiod tells, she lay with Uranus and bore the World-Ocean Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and the other Titans Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and Phoebe and lovely Tethys. Finally Cronos was born, who hated his father Uranus and plotted to destroy and succeed him, a story often found in Greek mythological literature. There were six male and female pairs of Titans in all.
Hesiod mentions Gaea's further offspring conceived with Uranus, first the giant one-eyed Cyclopes, builders of walls and creators of lightening, later assigned individual names: Brontes ("thunderer"), Steropes ("flasher") and the "brightener" Arges. Then he adds the three terrible hundred-armed sons of Earth and Heaven, the Hecatonchires: Cottus, Briareus and Gyes, each with fifty heads.
Uranus hid the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes in Tartarus so that they would not see the light, rejoicing in this evil doing. This caused pain to Gaea (Tartarus was her bowels) so she created grey flint and shaped a great flint sickle, gathering together Cronos and his brothers to ask them to obey her. Only Cronos, the youngest, had the daring to take the flint sickle she made, and castrate his father as he approached Gaea. From the drops of blood, Gaea brought forth still more progeny, the strong Erinyes and the armoured Gigantes and the ash-tree Nymphs called the Meliae. From the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite. Further investigation of Greek mythology reveals that just as Uranus had been deposed by his son Cronos, so was Cronos destined to be overthrown by Zeus, the son born to him by his sister-wife Rhea. In the meantime, the Titans released the Cyclopes from Tartarus, and Cronos was awarded the kingship among them, beginning a Golden Age.
After Uranus' castration, Gaea gave birth to Echidna and Typhon by Tartarus. By Pontus, Gaea birthed the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia. Zeus hid Elara, one of his lovers, from Hera by hiding her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityas, is therefore sometimes said to be a son of Gaea, the earth goddess, and Elara.
Gaea is believed by some sources (Joseph Fontenrose, 1959) to be the original deity behind the Oracle at Delphi. She passed her powers on to, depending on the source, Poseidon, Apollo or Themis. Apollo is the best-known as the oracle power behind Delphi, long established by the time of Homer, having killed Gaea's child Python there and usurped the chthonic power. Hera punished Apollo for this by sending him to King Admetus as a shepherd for nine years.
There exists a Homeric hymn to Gaea (written by a poet in the tradition of Homer, likely in the seventh century B.C.E.), in which Gaea is praised for the creation of all that lives on the earth, in addition to being the creator of the gods. In this work she is invoked as "mother", "nurse", and "mistress of life", clearly indicating an association with the creation and sustaining of life in the Greek mind. As well, this work acknowledges her union with Uranus, the starry sky god.
In classical art Gaea was represented in one of two ways. In Athenian vase painting she was shown as a matronly woman only half risen from the earth, often in the act of handing the baby Erichthonius (a future king of Athens) to Athena to foster. Later in mosaic representations she appears as a woman reclining upon the earth surrounded by a host of Carpi, infant gods of the fruits of the earth.
Interpretations
Etymologically Gaea is a compound word of two elements. "Ge", meaning "Earth" is found in many neologisms, such as Geography (Ge/graphos = writing about Earth) and Geology (Ge/logos = words about the Earth). "Ge" is a pre-Greek substrate word that some relate to the Sumerian Ki, also meaning Earth. "Aia" is a derivative of an Indo-European stem meaning "Grandmother". Some sources, such as authors Marija Gimbutas and Barbara Walker, claim that Gaea as the Mother Earth is a later form of a pre-Indo-European Great Mother who had been venerated in Neolithic times, but this point is controversial in the academic community. Belief in a nurturing Earth Mother is a feature of modern Neopagan "Goddess" worship, which is typically linked by practitioners of this religion to the Neolithic goddess theory. For more information, see the article Goddess.
Hesiod's separation of Rhea from Gaea was not rigorously followed, even by the Greek mythographers themselves. Modern mythographers like Karl Kerenyi or Carl A. P. Ruck and Danny Staples, as well as an earlier generation influenced by Frazer's The Golden Bough, interpret the goddesses Demeter the "mother," Persephone the "daughter" and Hecate the "crone," as understood by the Greeks, to be three aspects of a former Great Goddess, who could be identified as Rhea or as Gaea herself. In Anatolia (modern Turkey), Rhea was known as Cybele. The Greeks never forgot that the Mountain Mother's ancient home was Crete, where a figure some identified with Gaea had been worshipped as Potnia Theron (the "Mistress of the Animals") or simply Potnia ("Mistress"), an appellation that could be applied in later Greek texts to Demeter, Artemis or Athena.
In Rome the imported Phrygian goddess Cybele was venerated as Magna Mater, the "Great Mother" and identified with Roman Ceres, the grain goddess who was an approximate counterpart of Greek Demeter, but with differing aspects and venerated with a different cult.
Carl Gustav Jung suggested that the archetypal mother was a part of the collective unconscious of all humans, and various Jungian students, eg. Erich Neumann and Ernst Whitmont have argued that such mother imagery underpins many mythologies, and preceeds the image of the paternal "father", in such religious systems. Such speculations help explain the universality of such mother goddess imagery around the world.
In Other Cultures
The idea that the fertile earth itself is female, nurturing mankind, was not limited to the Greco-Roman world. These traditions themselves were greatly influenced by earlier cultures in the Central area of the ancient Middle East - Sumerian mythology likely made an impact on Greek thought, for instance. Fertility goddess figurines found worldwide often suggest reverance for a divine, potent mother deity. The famous Venus of Willendorf is an example of what may potentially be an artefact from a earth goddess cult, though this theory is strongly contested. Mythographers often find correlating goddesses in the world's mythologies; however, these correlations are often incomplete or even imposed.
In Neopaganism
Many Neopagans actively worship Gaea. Beliefs regarding Gaea vary, ranging from the popular Wiccan belief that Gaea 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 Gaea is the goddess of all creation, a Mother Goddess from which all other gods spring. Gaea is sometimes thought to embody the planets and the Earth, and sometimes thought to embody the entire universe. Worship of Gaea is varied, ranging from prostration to druidic ritual. Because of the decentralized nature of Wicca and other Neopagan groups a standard mode of worship and theology of Gaea within these traditions is impossible, and indeed not required.
Some who worship Gaea attempt to get closer to Mother Earth by becoming unconcerned with material possessions and become more in tune with nature. Others who worship Gaea recognize Gaea as a great goddess and practice rituals commonly associated with other forms of worship. Some common forms of worship may include prostration, attempting to reach a greater connection to the earth, shamanistic practices, tithing, praising and praying, creating inspired works of art dedicated to the goddess, burning oils and incense, rearing plants and gardens, the creation and maintaining of sacred spaces, and burning bread or spilling drink as offerings. Other forms of worship may indeed be common, as worship of Gaea is very broad and can take many forms.
Members of the New Age movement also have deep reverance for the earth, and are thus another group that are eager to include Gaea, though often with a more ecologically minded bent. As well, Gaea in this movement takes a much smaller role than in Neopagan religion. The understanding of Gaea in both Neopaganism and the New Age movement is almost wholly divorced from it's Greek mythological roots - what is kept is the name, which is useful in that it is a direct reference to the earth. This reference has different meanings for different devotees.
In Modern Ecological Theory
The mythological name was revived in the early 1970's by scientist James Lovelock for his Gaea hypothesis, supported by Lynn Margulis, and now part of Gaea theory. 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. This concept is most clearly elucidated in Lovelock's 1988 work The Ages of Gaia. The use of the name "Gaia" (Lovelock prefers that transliteration of the name) is not purely coincidental - though he stresses that the earth is not conscious, Lovelock uses language that suggests that the earth (Gaia) is self-interested and capable of acting to fulfill those interests. He suggests that should human impact on the biosphere become too great, the earth will react to regulate that impact; however, he stresses that this regulation is not conscious, but a natural system. In some Gaea theory approaches (often times offshoots of Lovelock's theory) the Earth itself is viewed as an organism with self-regulatory functions. Further books by Lovelock and others popularized the Gaea Hypothesis, which was widely embraced and passed into common usage as part of the heightened awareness of planetary vulnerability of the 1990s.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Fontenrose, Joseph. Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins. University of California Press, 1959.
- Kerenyi, Karl. The Gods of the Greeks. 1951
- Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth. Prentice Hall, 1998. ISBN 0-13-716717-8
- Ruck, Carl A.P. and Staples, Danny. The World of Classical Myth. 1994.
- Southgate, Christopher, et al. God, Humanity and the Cosmos. Trinity Press International, 1999. ISBN 1-56338-288-1
External links
- Theoi Project, Gaia references to Gaea in classical literature and art
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