Everything about Gaia Mythology totally explained
Gaia (or /ˈgaɪə/) ("
land" or "
earth", from the
Ancient Greek Γαîα; also
Gaea or
Ge (Modern Greek
Γῆ) is the primal
Greek goddess personifying the
Earth.
Gaia is a
primordial and
chthonic deity in the Ancient Greek
pantheon and considered a
Mother Goddess or
Great Goddess.
Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was
Terra.
In Greek mythology
Hesiod's
Theogony (116ff) tells how, after
Chaos, arose broad-breasted Gaia the everlasting foundation of the
gods of Olympus. She brought forth
Uranus, the starry sky, her equal, to cover her, the hills, and the fruitless deep of the Sea,
Pontus, "without sweet union of love," out of her own self through
parthenogenesis. But afterwards, as Hesiod tells it, she lay with her son,
Uranus, and bore the World-Ocean
Oceanus,
Coeus and
Crius and the
Titans
Hyperion and
Iapetus,
Theia and
Rhea,
Themis,
Mnemosyne, and
Phoebe of the golden crown, and lovely
Tethys. "After them was born
Cronus the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire."
Hesiod mentions Gaia's further offspring conceived with Uranus: first the giant one-eyed
Cyclopes:
Brontes ("thunderer"),
Steropes ("lightning") and the "bright"
Arges: "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 so that they wouldn't see the light, rejoicing in this evil doing. This caused pain to Gaia (Tartarus was her bowels) so she created grey flint (or
adamantine) 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 Gaia to have intercourse with her. And from the drops of blood and semen, Gaia 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. For this, a Greek
etymologist urged, Uranus called his sons "Titans," meaning "strainers" for they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, for which vengeance would come afterwards; for, 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's castration, Gaia gave birth to
Echidna and
Typhon by
Tartarus. By Pontus, Gaia 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 Gaia, the earth goddess, and Elara.
Gaia also made
Aristaeus immortal.
Gaia is believed by some sources (Joseph Fontenrose 1959 and others) 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 Gaia'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.
Oaths sworn in the name of Gaia, in ancient Greece, were considered the most binding of all.
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).
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 (
see example below under Interpretations).
Family tree
Gaia is the titan of 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
Etymologically Gaia 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". The full etymology of Gaia would, therefore, appear to have been "Grandmother Earth" .
Some sources, such as anthropologists
James Mellaart,
Marija Gimbutas and
Barbara Walker, claim that Gaia 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 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.
Hesiod's separation of Rhea from Gaia wasn't 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 Gaia herself. Such tripartite goddesses are also a part of
Celtic mythology and may stem from the
Proto-Indo-Europeans. In
Anatolia (modern
Turkey), Rhea was known as
Cybele, a goddess derived from
Mesopotamian
Kubau,
Hurrian Kebat or
Kepa. The Greeks never forgot that the Mountain Mother's ancient home was
Crete, where a figure some identified with Gaia 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" or as
Mater Nostri, "Our 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. Her worship was brought to Rome following an
Augury of the
Cumaean Sibyl that Rome couldn't defeat
Hannibal the
Carthaginian until the worship of Cybele came to Rome. As a result she was a favoured
divinity of Roman
legionaries, and her worship spread from Roman military encampments and military colonies.
In other cultures
The idea that the fertile earth itself is female, nurturing mankind, wasn't limited to the Greco-Roman world. These traditions themselves were greatly influenced by earlier cultures in the
Central area of the
ancient Middle East. In Sumerian mythology
Tiamat influenced Biblical notions of
The Deeps in
Genesis 1. The title "The mother of life" was later given to the
Akkadian Goddess
Kubau, and hence to Hurrian
Hepa, emerging as Hebrew
Eve (Heva) and Phygian Kubala (
Cybele). In
Norse mythology the Great Mother, the mother of
Thor himself, was known as
Jord,
Hlódyn, or
Fjörgyn. The Irish
Celts worshipped
Danu, whilst the Welsh Celts worshipped
Dôn. Dana played an important part in Hindu mythology and hints of their names throughout Europe, such as the
Don river, the
Danube River, the
Dnestr and
Dnepr, suggest that they stemmed from an ancient Proto-Indo-European goddess . In
Lithuanian mythology Gaia -
Žemė is daughter of Sun and Moon. Also she's wife of
Dangus (
Varuna). In Pacific cultures, the Earth Mother was known under as many names and with as many attributes as cultures who revered her for example
Māori whose
creation myth included Papatuanuku, partner to Ranginui - the
Sky Father. In South America in the
Andes a cult of the
Pachamama still survives (in regions of
Bolivia,
Peru,
Ecuador,
Argentina and
Chile). The name comes from Pacha (Quechua for change, epoch) and Mama (mother). While ancient Mexican cultures referred to Mother Earth as
Tonantzin Tlalli that means "Revered Mother Earth".
In Indian religions, the Mother of all creation is called "
Gayatri", a surprisingly close form of Gaia.
Only in
Egyptian Mythology is the reverse true -
Geb is the Earth Father while
Nut is the Sky Mother.
Carl Gustav Jung suggested that the
archetypal mother was a part of the
collective unconscious of all humans, and various Jungian students, for example
Erich Neumann and
Ernst Whitmont have argued that such mother imagery underpins many
mythologies, and precedes the image of the paternal "father", in such religious systems. Such speculations help explain the universality of such mother goddess imagery around the world.
The Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines have been sometimes explained as depictions of an
Earth Goddess similar to
Gaia
In Neopaganism
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. In her hand the narcotic poppy may be transmuted to a
pomegranate.
Some who worship Gaia attempt to get closer to
Mother Earth by becoming unconcerned with material things and more
in tune with nature. Others who worship Gaia recognize Gaia as a great goddess and practice rituals commonly associated with other forms of worship. Many sects worship Gaia, even more than worship
Themis,
Artemis, and
Hera. 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 Groves. Other forms of worship may indeed be common, as worship of Gaia is very broad and can take many forms.
In modern ecological theory
The mythological name was revived in 1969 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 planetary vulnerability of the
1990s.
In Literature
Gaia (Gaea) is referenced through the re-naming of a character in
Ayn Rand's
science fiction novella, "
Anthem."
Gaia, a preternaturally beautiful and highly skilled teenaged girl born without the fear gene, is also the protagonist of Francine Pascal's young adult series, "Fearless."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gaia Mythology'.
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