Gaia (mythology) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess

Protogenoi

In Greek mythology the Prôtogenoi are a genealogy of primordial Greek gods, the name literally means "first born" or "primeval" and are a group of deities born in the beginning of the universe....

in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans

Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....

were descended from her union with Uranus

Uranus (mythology)

Uranus , was the primal Greek god personifying the sky. His equivalent in Roman mythology was Caelus. In Ancient Greek literature, according to Hesiod in his Theogony, Uranus or Father Sky was the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth...

(the sky), the sea-gods from her union with Pontus

Pontus (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Pontus or Pontos was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god, one of the protogenoi, the "first-born". Pontus was the son of Gaia and according to the Greek poet Hesiod brought forth without coupling...

(the sea), the Giants from her mating with Tartarus

Tartarus

In classic mythology, below Uranus , Gaia , and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato In classic mythology, below Uranus (sky), Gaia (earth), and Pontus...

(the hell-pit) and mortal creatures were sprung or born from her earthy flesh. The earliest reference to her is Mycenaean Greek Linear B

Linear B

Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...

ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), "Mother Gaia."

Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra

Terra (mythology)

Terra or Tellus was a goddess personifying the Earth in Roman mythology. The names Terra Mater and Tellus Mater both mean "Mother Earth" in Latin; Mater is an honorific title also bestowed on other goddesses...

Etymology

The Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

word "γαῖα" (trans. as gaia or gaea) is a collateral form of "γῆ" (gē, Doric

Doric

Doric may refer to:* Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians* Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture* Doric mode, a synonym of Dorian mode* Doric dialect...

"γά" - ga and probably "δᾶ" da) meaning Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

, a word of unknown origin.Gaia was very early contracted to ga- under the suffix -ia like ma-ia (address to old ladies) and gra-ia (old woman). Aia is a poetic form of gaia meaning earth, land and in some texts probably cognates with Latin "avia" (grandmother). The combining form of geo- "γεω-" (geō-) is used in ancient Greek and modern international and English words such as geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

, geology

Geology

Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

, geometry

Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....

, etc.

Most scholars assert that the Doric form da meaning earth is the element of "Δαμάτηρ" (Da-matēr, Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

: "mother earth") and "Ποτειδάν" (Potei-dan, Poseidon

Poseidon

Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...

: "master of the earth") but this is debated. It is possible that da is a Doric vocative of "Δάν", Dan or "Ζάν", Zan (Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

), who was venerated in Creta as "Zeus Velchanos" (the boy Zeus), the local child of the Minoan

Minoan civilization

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...

Great Mother

The Great Mother refers to the concept of the mother goddess, including:*Great Mother, in the Mahayana and Vajrayana refers to Prajnaparamita, and the wisdom of the Madhyamaka...

. In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (trans. as Ma-ga: Mother Gaia) contains also the root ga-. Other Greek words for earth are "ἄρουρα" (aroura), from the Greek verb "ἀρόω" (aroō) meaning plough and "χθών" (chthōn

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...

), which usually refers to the interior of the soil, from the PIE

Pie

A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....

root *dhgem-.

Greek mythology

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

's Theogony
Theogony
The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...

(116ff) tells how, after Chaos

Chaos (mythology)

Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....

, arose broad-breasted Gaia, the everlasting foundation of the gods of Olympus

Twelve Olympians

The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal deities of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings. Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, and Artemis were children of Zeus...

. She brought forth Uranus

Uranus (mythology)

, the starry sky, her equal, to cover her, the hills (Ourea

Ourea

In Greek mythology, the ourea were progeny of Gaia, members of the Protogenoi, who were the first-born elemental gods and goddesses, children of Gaia:And she brought forth long hills, graceful haunts...

), and the fruitless deep of the Sea, Pontus

Pontus (mythology)

, "without sweet union of love," out of her own self through parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction found in females, where growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by a male...

. But afterwards, as Hesiod tells it,
Hesiod mentions Gaia's further offspring conceived with Uranus: first the giant one-eyed Cyclopes

Cyclops

A cyclops , in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead...

: Brontes ("thunderer"), Steropes ("lightning") and the "bright" Arges

Arges

Arges was one of the Cyclopes in Greek mythology. He was elsewhere called Acmonides or Pyraemon. His name means 'bright' and represents the brightness from lightning....

: "Strength and might and craft were in their works." Then he adds the three terrible hundred-handed sons of Earth and Heaven, the Hecatonchires: Cottus, Briareos and Gyges, each with fifty heads.

Uranus hid the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes in Tartarus

Tartarus

so that they would not see the light, rejoicing in this evil doing. This caused pain to Gaia (Tartarus was her bowels) so she created grey flint (or adamant

Adamant

Adamant and similar words are used to refer to any especially hard substance, whether composed of diamond, some other gemstone, or some type of metal. Both adamant and diamond derive from the Greek word αδαμας , meaning "untameable"...

ine) and shaped a great flint sickle, gathering together Cronus and his brothers to ask them to obey her. Only Cronus, the youngest, had the daring to take the flint sickle she made, and castrate his father as he approached Gaia to have intercourse with her. And from the drops of blood and semen, Gaia brought forth still more progeny, the strong Erinyes

Erinyes

In Greek mythology the Erinyes from Greek ἐρίνειν " pursue, persecute"--sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" -- were female chthonic deities of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath"...

and the armoured Gigantes

Gigantes

In Greek mythology, the Giants were the children of Gaia, who was fertilized by the blood of Uranus, after Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus...

and the ash-tree Nymphs called the Meliae
Meliae
In Greek mythology, the Meliae or Meliai were nymphs of the ash tree, whose name they shared. They appeared from the drops of blood spilled when Cronus castrated Uranus, according to Hesiod, Theogony 187. From the same blood sprang the Erinyes, suggesting that the ash-tree nymphs represented the...

.

From the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

. After Uranus's castration, Gaia, by Tartarus

Tartarus

, gave birth to Echidna

Echidna (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Echidna was half woman half snake, known as the "Mother of All Monsters" because most of the monsters in Greek myth were mothered by her...

(by some accounts) and Typhon

Typhon

Typhon , also Typhoeus , Typhaon or Typhos was the last son of Gaia, fathered by Tartarus, and the most deadly monster of Greek mythology. He was known as the "Father of all monsters"; his wife Echidna was likewise the "Mother of All Monsters."Typhon was described in pseudo-Apollodorus,...

. By her son Pontus

Pontus (mythology)

(god of the sea), Gaia birthed the sea-deities Nereus

Nereus

In Greek mythology, Nereus was the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia , a Titan who with Doris fathered the Nereids, with whom Nereus lived in the Aegean Sea. In the Iliad the Old Man of the Sea is the father of Nereids, though Nereus is not directly named...

, Thaumas

Thaumas

In Greek mythology, Thaumas was a sea god, son of Pontus and Gaia. He married an Oceanid, Electra . The children of Thaumas and Electra were the Harpies and Iris, the goddess of rainbows and a messenger of the gods; according to some, also Arke.Thaumas was also the name of a centaur...

, Phorcys

Phorcys

In Greek mythology, Phorcys , a primordial sea god, generally cited as the son of Pontus and Gaia. According to the Orphic hymns, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea were the eldest offspring of Oceanus and Tethys. Classical scholar Karl Kerenyi conflated Phorcys with the similar sea gods Nereus and Proteus...

, Ceto

Ceto

In ancient Greek, the word ketos - Latinized as cetus - denotes a large fish, a whale, a shark, or a sea monster. The sea monsters slain by Perseus and Heracles were each referred to as a cetus by ancient sources. The term cetacean originates from cetus. In Greek art, cetea were depicted as...

, and Eurybia. Aergia

Aergia

Aergia is a goddess in Greek mythology, a personification of sloth and laziness. She is the daughter of Aether and Gaia. She is said to guard the court of Hypnos in the Underworld. Aergia is simply the transliteration of Latin Socordia or Ignavia...

, a goddess of sloth and laziness, is the daughter of Aether

Aether (mythology)

Aether , in Greek mythology, is one of the Protogenoi, the first-born elementals. He is the personification of the upper sky, space, and heaven, and is the elemental god of the "Bright, Glowing, Upper Air." He is the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air that mortals...

and Gaia.
Zeus hid Elara

Elara (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Elara was the daughter of King Orchomenus and mother of Tityos. She was one of Zeus' lovers and he hid her from his wife, Hera, by placing her deep beneath the earth. This was where she gave birth to Tityos, a giant who is sometimes said to be the son of Gaia, the earth goddess,...

, one of his lovers, from Hera

Hera

Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...

by hiding her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityos

Tityos

Tityos was a giant from Greek mythology.-Story:Tityos was the son of Elara; his father was Zeus. Zeus hid Elara from his wife, Hera, by placing her deep beneath the earth. Tityos grew so large that he split his mother's womb, and was carried to term by Gaia, the Earth. Once grown, Tityos...

, is therefore sometimes said to be a son of Gaia, the earth goddess.

Gaia is believed by some sources to be the original deity behind the Oracle

Pythia

The Pythia , commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BC...

at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

. Depending on the source, Gaia passed her powers on to Poseidon

Poseidon

, Apollo or Themis

Themis

Themis is an ancient Greek Titaness. She is described as "of good counsel", and is the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom. Themis means "divine law" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in place", from the verb τίθημι, títhēmi, "to put"...

. Apollo is the best-known as the oracle power behind Delphi, long established by the time of Homer, having killed Gaia's child Python

Python (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in Greek sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent. He presided at the Delphic oracle, which existed in the cult center for his mother, Gaia, "Earth," Pytho being the place name that was substituted for the earlier Krisa...

there and usurped the chthonic

Chthonic

power. Hera punished Apollo for this by sending him to King Admetus

Admetus

In Greek mythology, Admetus was a king of Pherae in Thessaly, succeeding his father Pheres after whom the city was named. Admetus was one of the Argonauts and took part in the Calydonian Boar hunt. His wife Alcestis offered to substitute her own death for his.-Mythology:Admetus was famed for his...

as a shepherd for nine years.

In classical art Gaia 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 (see example below). 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 (see example below under Interpretations).

Gaia also made Aristaeus

Aristaeus

A minor god in Greek mythology, which we read largely through Athenian writers, Aristaeus or Aristaios , "ever close follower of the flocks", was the culture hero credited with the discovery of many useful arts, including bee-keeping; he was the son of Apollo and the huntress Cyrene...

immortal.

Oath

Oath

An oath is either a statement of fact or a promise calling upon something or someone that the oath maker considers sacred, usually God, as a witness to the binding nature of the promise or the truth of the statement of fact. To swear is to take an oath, to make a solemn vow...

s sworn in the name of Gaia, in ancient Greece, were considered the most binding of all.

Children

Gaia is the personification of the 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.

Interpretations

Some sources, such as anthropologists James Mellaart

James Mellaart

James Mellaart is a British archaeologist and author who is noted for his discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He was also expelled from Turkey suspected of involvement with the antiquities black market and was involved with the so-called Mother goddess controversy in...

, Marija Gimbutas

Marija Gimbutas

Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...

and Barbara Walker

Barbara G. Walker (author)

Barbara G. Walker is a U.S. author and feminist. She is an influential knitting expert and the author of several classic encyclopedic knitting references...

, claim that Gaia as the Mother Earth is a later form of a pre-Indo-European

Neolithic Europe

Neolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...

Great Mother

The Great Mother refers to the concept of the mother goddess, including:*Great Mother, in the Mahayana and Vajrayana refers to Prajnaparamita, and the wisdom of the Madhyamaka...

who had been venerated in Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

times, but this point is controversial in the academic community. Belief in a nurturing Earth Mother is often 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

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

.

Hesiod's separation of Rhea from Gaia was not rigorously followed, even by the Greek mythographers themselves. Modern mythographers like Karl Kerenyi

Karl Kerényi

Károly Kerényi was a Hungarian scholar in classical philology, one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology.- Hungary 1897–1943 :...

or Carl A. P. Ruck and Danny Staples, as well as an earlier generation influenced by Frazer

James Frazer

Sir James George Frazer , was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion...

's The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer . It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes...

, interpret the goddesses Demeter

Demeter

the "mother," Persephone

Persephone

In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....

the "daughter" and Hecate

Hecate

Hecate or Hekate is a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and crossroads.She is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod's Theogony...

the "crone," as understood by the Greeks, to be three aspects of a former Great goddess

Great Goddess

Great Goddess refers to the concept of an almighty goddess, or to the concept of a mother goddess, including:*Great Goddess, anglicized form of the Latin Magna Dea*Great Goddess, anglicized form of the Sanskrit Mahadevi, the Shakti sum of all goddesses...

, who could be identified as Rhea

Rhea (mythology)

Rhea was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, in Greek mythology. She was known as "the mother of gods". In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, the Great Goddess, and was later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of the Olympian...

or as Gaia herself. Such tripartite goddesses are also a part of Celtic mythology

Celtic mythology

Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure...

and may stem from the Proto-Indo-Europeans

Proto-Indo-Europeans

The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...

. In Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

(modern Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

), Rhea was known as Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...

, a goddess derived from Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

n Kubau

Kubaba

Kubaba is the only queen on the Sumerian King List, which states she reigned for 100 years – roughly in the Early Dynastic III period of Sumerian history...

, Hurrian Kebat or Kepa

Kepa

Kepa may refer to:*Kepa Blanco, Spanish footballer*Kępa, Polish placename*Kippah, Jewish skullcap...

.

The Greeks never forgot that the Mountain Mother's ancient home was Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

, where a figure some identified with Gaia had been worshipped as Potnia Theron
Potnia Theron
Potnia Theron is a term first used by Homer and often used to describe female divinities associated with animals...

(the "Mistress of the Animals") or simply Potnia

Potnia

Potnia , Ancient Greek for "Mistress, Lady", title of a goddess. The word was inherited by Classical Greek from Mycenean Greek with the same meaning and it was applied to several goddesses. A similar word is the title Despoina, "the mistress", which was given to the nameless chthonian goddess of...

("Mistress"), an appellation that could be applied in later Greek texts to Demeter

Demeter

, Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

or Athena

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...

.

In Rome the imported Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges , changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the...

n goddess Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...

was venerated as Magna Mater, the "Great Mother" or as Mater Nostri, "Our Mother". Her worship was brought to Rome following an Augury of the Cumaean Sibyl

Cumaean Sibyl

The ageless Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy.The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world...

that Rome could not defeat Hannibal the Carthaginian until the worship of Cybele came to Rome. As a result she was a favoured divinity

Divinity

Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power or deity, or its attributes or manifestations in...

of Roman legionaries

Legionary

The Roman legionary was a professional soldier of the Roman army after the Marian reforms of 107 BC. Legionaries had to be Roman citizens under the age of 45. They enlisted in a legion for twenty-five years of service, a change from the early practice of enlisting only for a campaign...

, and her worship spread from Roman military encampments and military colonies.

Neopaganism

Many Neopagans

Neopaganism

Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...

actively worship Gaia. Beliefs regarding Gaia vary, ranging from the common Wicca

Wicca

Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...

n 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

Serpent (symbolism)

Serpent in Latin means: Rory Collins :&, in turn, from the Biblical Hebrew word of: "saraf" with root letters of: which refers to something burning-as, the pain of poisonous snake's bite was likened to internal burning.This word is commonly used in a specifically mythic or religious context,...

, the lunar bull

Bull (mythology)

The worship of the Sacred Bull throughout the ancient world is most familiar to the Western world in the biblical episode of the idol of the Golden Calf. The Golden Calf after being made by the Hebrew people in the wilderness of Sinai, were rejected and destroyed by Moses and his tribe after his...

, the pig, and bees. In her hand the narcotic poppy may be transmuted to a pomegranate

Pomegranate

The pomegranate , Punica granatum, is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing between five and eight meters tall.Native to the area of modern day Iran, the pomegranate has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times. From there it spread to Asian areas such as the Caucasus as...

Modern ecological theory

The mythological name was revived in 1979 by James Lovelock

James Lovelock

James Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling...

, in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth; his Gaia hypothesis

Gaia hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...

was supported by Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis was an American biologist and University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles, and her contributions to the endosymbiotic theory, which is now generally accepted...

. The hypothesis proposes that living organisms and inorganic material are part of a dynamic system

System dynamics

System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with internal feedback loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire system. What makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying complex systems is the use...

that shapes the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

's biosphere

Biosphere

The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...

, 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

Gaia hypothesis

, which was widely embraced and passed into common usage as part of the heightened awareness of environmental concerns

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...

of the 1990s.

External links

Theoi Project, Gaia references to Gaia in classical literature and art

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Etymology

Greek mythology

Children

Interpretations

Neopaganism

Modern ecological theory

See also

External links