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Gaia as Goddess

graphic from

I will sing of
well-founded Gaia,
Mother of All,
eldest of all beings,
she feeds all creatures
that are in the world,
all that go upon the goodly land
and all that are in the paths of the sea,
and all that fly:
all these are fed of her store.

--Homeric Hymn, 7th Century B.C.

It is not too difficult to see a connection betwene the traditional conception of the Earth Goddess and scientist James Lovelock's "Gaia-hypothesis"; the idea of the Earth as a single living superorganism [James Lovelock, Gaia - a new look at life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1979].

It should be pointed out however that Lovelock's own theories, profound and revolutionary as they are, are still essentially materialistic and in a sense reductionistic. He is strongly opposed to any actual personification of Gaia. The whole thing is nothing but a poetic metaphor he says; like calling a ship "she" [Ibid pp.ix-x]. The idea of Gaia as a spiritual being, or even a Divine being, an actual living Goddess, we owe not to Lovelock himself, but to the various Neo-Pagan, "New age", Alternative, and ecologically minded people who have popularised, and in so doing modified, his theory.

So, if Lovelock is concerned with Gaia's outermost nature - with the living Earth conceived of in a purely mechanical, cybernetic sense (e.g. the daisyworld simulation) - then the more Alternatively minded people are concerned with her innermost nature - with the very Soul or Divine Presence of the Earth.