Gaia
Gaia, by Anselm Feuerbach (1875)
Primordial Being of the Earth
Abode	Earth
Consort	Uranus, Zeus, Pontus, and Poseidon
Parents	Aether and Hemera or Chaos
Siblings	Eros, Tartarus,Uranus and Nyx
Children	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, a poetical form of Γῆ, "land" or "earth";^[1] also Gaea, or Ge) was the goddess or personification of Earth in ancient Greek religion,^[2] one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods, the Titans and the Giants were born from her union with Uranus (the sky), while the sea-gods were born from her union with Pontus (the sea).

Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.

Etymology [link]

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] In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (trans. as Ma-ga: Mother Gaia) contains also the root ga-.^[8][9]

Greek mythology [link]

Hesiod's Theogony (116ff) tells how, after Chaos, Gaia (i.e. Earth) arose as the everlasting foundation of the gods of Olympus. Gaia 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.^[10] Alternatively, Uranus was sired by Aether, the god of heavenly light and the upper air.^[11] Afterwards, as Hesiod tells it,

She lay with Heaven and bare deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire.^[12]

According to Hesiod, Gaia conceives further offspring with Uranus: the giant one-eyed Cyclopes, Brontes ("thunderer"), Steropes ("lightning") and the "bright" Arges; then the Hecatonchires, Cottus, Briareos and Gyges, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads. Uranus hides the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes in a secret place within the Earth (i.e. Gaia). This causes Gaia pain; so she creates a grey flint (or adamantine) sickle. When Cronus is born, he uses the sickle to castrate his father Uranus as he approaches Gaia to have intercourse with her. From Uranus' spilled blood and semen, Gaia generates the Erinyes, the Giants and the Nymphs called the Meliae.^[12]

From the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite.^[12] After Uranus's castration, Gaia, by Tartarus, gave birth to Echidna (by some accounts^[who?]) and Typhon.^[13] By her son Pontus (god of the sea), Gaia birthed the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia.^[14] Aergia, a goddess of sloth and laziness, is the daughter of Aether and Gaia.^{[citation needed]}

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^{[by whom?]} to be a son of Gaia, the earth goddess.

Gaia is believed by some sources^[15] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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).^{[citation needed]}

Gaia also made Aristaeus immortal.^{[citation needed]}

Oaths sworn in the name of Gaia, in ancient Greece, were considered the most binding of all.^{[citation needed]}

Children [link]

Gaia hands her newborn, Erichtonius, to Athena as Hephaestus watches - an Attic red-figure stamnos, 470–460 BC

Aion and Gaia with four children, perhaps the personified seasons, mosaic from a Roman villa in Sentinum, first half of the 3rd century BC, (Munich Glyptothek, Inv. W504)

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.

Genealogy of the Olympians in Greek mythology [link]

Interpretations [link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

Some modern sources, such as James Mellaart, Marija Gimbutas and Barbara Walker, claim that Gaia as Mother Earth is a later form of a pre-Indo-European Great Mother, venerated in Neolithic times. Her existence is a speculation, and controversial in the academic community. Some modern mythographers, including Karl Kerenyi, Carl A. P. Ruck and Danny Staples interpret the goddesses Demeter the "mother," Persephone the "daughter" and Hecate the "crone," as aspects of a former Great goddess identified by some^[who?] as Rhea or as Gaia herself. In Crete, a goddess was worshiped as Potnia Theron (the "Mistress of the Animals") or simply Potnia ("Mistress"), speculated^{[by whom?]} as Rhea or Gaia; the title was later applied in Greek texts to Demeter, Artemis or Athena. The mother-goddess Cybele from Anatolia (modern Turkey) was partly identified by the Greeks with Gaia, but more so with Rhea and Demeter.

Neopaganism [link]

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Many Neopagans worship Gaia. Beliefs regarding Gaia vary, ranging from the belief that Gaia is the Earth to the belief that she is the spiritual embodiment of the earth, or the Goddess of the Earth.

Modern ecological theory [link]

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.

See also [link]

	Greek mythology portal
	Hellenismos portal

• Bhumi
• Dewi Shri
• Earth Mother
• Gaia hypothesis
• Gaia philosophy
• Great Mother
• Titan
• Mother Nature
• Tellus Mater
• Terra (mythology)
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Modern Times (painting)

Notes [link]

References [link]

• Fontenrose, Joseph, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959; reprint 1980
• Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
• Kerenyi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks 1951
• Ruck, Carl A.P. and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth, 1994.
• Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Gaea"

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gaia

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