| Gaia | |
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Gaia, by Anselm Feuerbach (1875) |
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| Primordial Being of the Earth | |
| Abode | Earth |
| Consort | Uranus, Zeus, Pontus, and Poseidon |
| Parents | Chaos |
| Siblings | Eros, Tartarus and Nyx |
| Children | Uranus, Cronus, Pontus, the Ourea, Hecatonchires, Cyclopes, Titans, The Gigantes, Nereus, Thaumus, Phorcys, Ceto, Eurybia, Aphrodite, and Typhon |
| Roman equivalent | Terra |
Gaia ( /ˈɡeɪ.ə/ or /ˈɡaɪ.ə/; from Ancient Greek Γαῖα "land" or "earth"; also Gæa, Gaea, or Gea;[1] Koine Greek: Γῆ) was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus (the sky), the sea-gods from her union with Pontus (the sea), the Giants from her mating with Tartarus (the hell-pit) and mortal creatures were sprung or born from her earthy flesh. The earliest reference to her is Mycenaean Greek Linear B ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), "Mother Gaia."[2]
Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.
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The Greek word "γαῖα" (trans. as gaia or gaea) is a collateral form of "γῆ"[3] (gē, Doric "γά" - ga and probably "δᾶ" da[4][5]) meaning Earth,[6] a word of unknown origin.[7]Gaia was very early contracted to ga- under the suffix -ia like ma-ia (address to old ladies) and gra-ia (old woman).[8] Aia is a poetic form of gaia meaning earth, land and in some texts probably cognates with Latin "avia" (grandmother).[9] The combining form of geo- "γεω-" (geō-) is used in ancient Greek[10] and modern international and English words such as geography, geology, geometry, etc.
Most scholars assert that the Doric form da meaning earth is the element of "Δαμάτηρ"[11] (Da-matēr, Demeter: "mother earth") and "Ποτειδάν"[12] (Potei-dan, Poseidon: "master of the earth") but this is debated.[13] It is possible that da is a Doric vocative of "Δάν", Dan or "Ζάν", Zan (Zeus), who was venerated in Creta as "Zeus Velchanos" (the boy Zeus), the local child of the Minoan Great Mother.[14] In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (trans. as Ma-ga: Mother Gaia) contains also the root ga-.[15] Other Greek words for earth are "ἄρουρα" (aroura), from the Greek verb "ἀρόω" (aroō) meaning plough[16] and "χθών" (chthōn),[17] which usually refers to the interior of the soil, from the PIE root *dhgem-.[18]
| Greek deities series |
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| Primordial deities | |
| Chthonic deities | |
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Hades and Persephone, |
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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 (Ourea), 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 god 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 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 adamantine) 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 and the armoured Gigantes and the ash-tree Nymphs called the Meliae.
From the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite. After Uranus's castration, Gaia, by Tartarus, gave birth to Echidna (by some accounts) and Typhon. By her son Pontus (god of the sea), Gaia birthed the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia. Aergia, a goddess of sloth and laziness, is the daughter of Aether and Gaia.
Zeus hid Elara, one of his lovers, from Hera by hiding her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityos, is therefore sometimes said to be a son of Gaia, the earth goddess.
Gaia is believed by some sources[19] to be the original deity behind the Oracle at Delphi. Depending on the source, Gaia passed her powers on to 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.
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 immortal.
Oaths sworn in the name of Gaia, in ancient Greece, were considered the most binding of all.
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.
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 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 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". Her worship was brought to Rome following an Augury of the Cumaean Sibyl that Rome could not 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.
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.
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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