A common space for harmonic peacemakers

Gaia The Living

Information

GAIA mother nature was the Protogenos of earth, one of the primal elements who first emerged at the dawn of creation, along with air, sea and sky.

Peter Paul Rubens - The Union of Earth and Water

Location: Earth
Members: 51
Latest Activity: on Wednesday

8 members like this

Ophelia and He Will Not Come

Gaia was the Protogenos of earth, one of the primal elements who first emerged at the dawn of creation, along with air, sea and sky. She was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods were descended from her union with Ouranos, the sea-gods from her union with Pontos, the Gigantes from her mating with Tartaros and mortal creatures were sprung or born from her earthy flesh.

As Gaia was the source from which arose the vapours producing divine inspiration, she herself also was regarded as an oracular divinity, and it is well known that the oracle of Delphi was believed to have at first been in her possession, and at Olympia, too, she had an oracle in early times. That Ge belonged to the theoi chthinioi, requires no explanation, and hence she is frequently mentioned where they are invoked. The surnames and epithets given to Ge have more or less reference to her character as the all-producing and all-nourishing mother (mater omniparens et alma), and hence Servius classes her together with the divinities presiding over marriage. Her worship appears to have been universal among the Greeks, and she had temples or altars at Athens, Sparta, Delphi, Olympia, Bura, Tegea, Phlyus, and other places.

In myth Gaia appears as the prime opponent of the heavenly gods. First she rebelled against her husband Ouranos who had imprisoned her sons in her womb. Then later, when her son Kronos defied her by imprisoning these same sons, she assisted Zeus in his overthrow of the Titan. Finally she came into conflict with Zeus, angered with him for the binding of her Titan-sons in the pit of Tartaros. In her opposition she first produced the tribe of Gigantes and later the monster Typhoeus to dethrone him, but both failed in both attempts. In the ancient Greek cosmology earth was conceived as a flat disk encirced by the river Okeanos, and topped above by the solid dome of heaven and below by the great pit of Tartaros. She herself supported the sea and moutains upon her breast.

Gaia was depicted as a buxom, matronly woman, half risen from the earth in Greek vase painting. She was portrayed as inseperable from her native element. In mosaic art, Gaia appears as a full-figured, reclining woman, often clothed in green, and sometimes accompanied by grain spirits —the Karpoi.

Discussion Forum

We Learn It Too Late - 103 Year Old Doctor Dr. Gladys McGarey on Life's Secrets

Started by bridget orman. Last reply by Carmen Elsa Irarragorri-Wyland Mar 14. 2 Replies 3 Likes

Speaking to the Water

Started by Rosmarie Heusser. Last reply by Rosmarie Heusser Dec 26, 2023. 3 Replies 3 Likes

WHY OUR FORESTS ARE IMPORTANT

Started by bridget orman. Last reply by Carmen Elsa Irarragorri-Wyland Mar 14, 2023. 1 Reply 0 Likes

A couple of pretty, fixed bicycle-views along the road

Started by Rosmarie Heusser. Last reply by Rosmarie Heusser May 26, 2022. 2 Replies 2 Likes

Wonderful mansions in the bird world

Started by Luna Arjuna. Last reply by Rosmarie Heusser May 12, 2022. 3 Replies 3 Likes

Big Bertha

Started by Eva Libre. Last reply by bridget orman Apr 25, 2022. 3 Replies 1 Like

Daffodil

Started by Eva Libre. Last reply by Carmen Elsa Irarragorri-Wyland Apr 3, 2022. 1 Reply 3 Likes

The Cailleach

Started by Eva Libre. Last reply by Carmen Elsa Irarragorri-Wyland Apr 3, 2022. 7 Replies 3 Likes

How Trees talk to each other

Started by Eva Libre. Last reply by Rosmarie Heusser Jan 8, 2022. 1 Reply 2 Likes

Dr. Stephan Harding - Part 1 / 10 - Gaia Theory & Deep Ecology

Started by Eva Libre Jan 1, 2022. 0 Replies 1 Like

View All

Comment Wall

Comment

You need to be a member of Gaia The Living to add comments!

Comment by David Sparenberg on October 8, 2011 at 5:09pm: THE FORETHOUGHT OF OTHERNESS

Sweet one please—do not try to teach me that to touch and hold hands is the same. I accept that all living creatures are expressions and extensions of one another. This even includes those elements the majority does not attribute life to. At other end of the life spectrum, extinction, genocide, ecocide, coalesce and the cul-de-sac stops at oblivion. A fierce clarity of heart and mind is needed to confront the degrees of death.

There are many times and many places for the holding of hands, that human ritual of tender endearment and flowing warmth. Yet it should not be missed and certainly not forgotten to feel familiar with the smell of fresh earth after a spring rain, or sense throughout your toes and bones the cool slippery textures of wet fallen leaves, in the twilight-brisk of autumn.

Wondrously exciting to gaze into the beauty eyes of one trusted lover! But wondrous as well to follow the flight of a blue lotus butterfly in summer, or study the web of an orb spider, displaying the dewy jewelry of a slow arriving dawn. How in faded gray is first birth of golden issuing morning!

Not all life on this sacred planet is human. Thank Gaia for the forethought of otherness!

What an apparition to look forward to future children growing old, soulless, spiritually blind, never seeing the ripe red of an apple on branch of an apple tree; never uncovering in hoeing of a garden plot an earth worm in the pious ecstasy of fertilizing feeding. What a shattering horror to anticipate undead masses who worship more at pavement of a sprawling city than a flowing river—as if they could quench life’s thirst with a labyrinth of streets—and who feel more affinity for the polluting noise of a poisoning machine than for the quiet hum of a honey dreaming bee. What betrayal vital deep; what injustice by governance of delusion!

Look at me: One late summer evening in Bellingham, an hour or so before the start of silent night, I stood and watched a fat fuzzy moth launch its swollen body from low branches of a small yard tree. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a dragonfly swooped in and snatched the moth in mid flight. The raid was over before I recovered out of awe; I had never seen the like before. By far a cleaner death and better memory than a slick of oil on the dying cheeks and lips of coastal waters, or the fatal fiery crash of a speeding car.

Thank Gaia for the flowering antithetical of evolution; for the grasp in passion through instinct beyond only human skin; for the connection in love and partnership beyond only human hands!

If Gaia is a kind of goddess, as sister, wife or mother to some cosmic god, what of our tears and in what shape our prayers of thanksgiving?

While I place my hand in your, a living glove, I whisper, “Come! Just beyond the corner of time remains a patch of wood. There we can walk together in the scented tracks of wild deer, while we follow the intercourse of rooted rocks and the sweating sun. Sweet one—there is a memory of deep longing in my final words.”

David Sparenberg
8 October 2011

Comment by Nada Jung on October 5, 2011 at 10:58pm: Everything
in the universe
has a rhythm,
everything dances.

Comment by Irit Hakim-Keller on October 3, 2011 at 6:33pm: more about it - still not the whole answer...(have copied/pasted)

matthieu fellmann

Hello, I'm forester and I studie the roots system and more precisely the roots deformations during the plantation. We find exactly the same kind of trees when a part of roots were disturbe when planter put the young tree in th ground. During the first years after plantation there is no visible problem ; after, tree growth, especially the area part, and becomes heavier and with the unless of root tree held down. At least with the phototropism we have this shape.
Indeed, sometimes it's uses for the cane, but obviously not this size and not really sylvestris pine in this exemple.
The best thing may be to extract to the soil fews trees to observed their root system. I will be interested by the results.

Friday, July 29, 2011, 13:53:28

– Flag – Like – Reply

Irit Hakim
Matthieu,
how do you explain the symmetry of shape and direction?

Today, 19:12:3

Comment by Irit Hakim-Keller on October 3, 2011 at 5:07pm: yes,, it must be...

I shall share it , if I find the answer.

Comment by Irit Hakim-Keller on October 3, 2011 at 4:27pm: oooo what an idea :):):) well, it might be....but, I would think it has another reason...I wish to know it :)

Comment by Irit Hakim-Keller on October 3, 2011 at 3:56pm: still, there is a mystery. no one can tell WHY it had been done....

Comment by Nada Jung on October 3, 2011 at 3:37pm: Thank you for your research and the link, Irit.

Comment by Irit Hakim-Keller on October 3, 2011 at 3:24pm: have found this explanation-

http://news.discovery.com/earth/polands-crooked-forest-mystery-1106...

June 28, 2011 -- In a tiny corner of western Poland a forest of about 400 pine trees grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks - all bent northward. Surrounded by a larger forest of straight growing pine trees this collection of curved trees, or "Crooked Forest," is a mystery.

Planted around 1930, the trees managed to grow for seven to 10 years before getting held down, in what is understood to have been human mechanical intervention. Though why exactly the original tree farmers wanted so many crooked trees is unknown.