THINKING GAIA
by J.M. Lesage
“...Therefore, we may consequently state that: this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence - a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.” - Plato, Timeus, 4th century BCE
After watching the film 'The Happening', written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who directed 'Signs', 'Sixth Sense', 'Unbreakable' and 'The Village', the concept of a living Earth has been brought back into the mainstream media. Many are already saying that Shyamalan is putting an environmental message into the film and sending a contrived message that we are slowly destroying our own planet.
There hasn’t been much discussion about the scientific principle known as the Gaia Hypothesis for a while, but it has been a popular theory intermittently for the last 40 years as the concept of the Earth and all its components being a symbiotic system where everything affects everything else. The Earth was envisioned as being a living entity that could potentially turn against human beings if they intentionally harmed It. The hypothesis, created by former Nasa research scientist James Lovelock, determines that we could be experiencing that retaliation now.
Anima mundi is the World Soul, a pure ethereal spirit, proclaimed by some ancient philosophers to be diffused throughout nature. It was thought to animate all matter, in the same sense in which the soul animates humans. This world soul is usually conceived as a formative force, an active, intelligent, purposeful spiritual presence at work in the material world to guide and guard the course of planetary evolution.
In the Middle Ages the belief that Nature was alive still prevailed throughout Europe. This belief began to disappear during the eighteenth century Enlightenment when people started thinking that empirical observation was the only accurate tool for judgments about reality. Today many leading scientists think that science is returning to the understanding that we are all part of a living, conscious Earth.
Gaia , Gaea or Ge (the Greek common noun for 'land' is 'ge' or 'ga') 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 is Tellus ('telles' means 'earth') or Terra. In northern Germany she was Nertha, or Mother Earth.
Is our planet in fact that living Goddess?
Gaian thinking, the belief in a nurturing Earth Mother, is often a feature of modern Neopagan Goddess worship and the concept is ancient and universal. The idea that the fertile Earth itself is female, nurturing all life, was not limited to the Greco-Roman world. These traditions themselves were influenced by earlier cultures in the central area of the ancient Middle East.
In Sumerian mythology Tiamat is the primordial mother of all that exists and Ninurta is Mother Earth. The title 'The Mother of Life' was later given to the Akkadian Goddess Kubau, and hence to Hurrian (people who lived in northern Mesopotamia) Hepa, emerging later as the Hebrew Eve (Heva) and Phyrgian Kubala (Cybele).
The Irish Celts worshipped Danu, the Mother (River) Goddess, whilst the Welsh Celts worshipped Dôn.
In Pacific cultures, the Earth Mother is known under as many names, for example the Maori’s creation myth includes the Earth Mother Papatuanuku.
In South America in the Andes a cult of Pachamama still survives in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. The name comes from Pacha (Quechua for change or epoch) and Mama (mother). Pachamama is usually translated as Mother Earth, but a more literal translation would be Mother Universe.
In Indian religions, the mother of all creation is called Gayatri, a surprisingly close form of Gaia.
In Africa the Zulus have Mbaba Mwana Waresa (an African Demeter), the Xhosa people have Jobela. Dziva is the generally benevolent creatrix of the Shona people. We find Ala in Nigeria, as Earth Mother, Mawu the creatrix in Benin and many many more.
Gaian thinking suggests an alternative to the view that the world is mechanistic; that life has come about by chance and that nature is there to be exploited. The Gaian view may make it possible for more people of all walks of life to see themselves as significant parts of a harmonious interaction.
Could the whole earth as a single life-preserving entity
command our respect and even reverence?
Could an understanding of Gaia become the focus for what we have called religious, thus influencing change in the way we treat our planet?
The idea that Earth and its atmosphere are some sort of super-organism was first proposed by Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726–1797), although this was not one of his more accepted and popular ideas. As a result, no one really pursued this notion until some 200 years later. Lovelock put forth a similar idea in his 1979 book 'Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth'.
Lovelock wrote, "For me, Gaia is a religious as well as a scientific concept, and in both spheres it is manageable… God and Gaia, theology and science, even physics and biology are not separate but a single way of thought."
Lovelock’s original paper was published in 1969 but was widely ignored until 1975 when it began to be addressed by the scientific community, principally through open ridicule. But the concept did not go away and since then there has been three international Gaia Conferences - the last one held in October 2006.
The Gaia Hypothesis is a compelling new way of understanding our planet. The theory asserts that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings have evolved together as a single living system that affects the chemistry and conditions of earth’s surface. Some scientists now believe that this Gaian-system self-regulates global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity and other factors in an automatic feed-back manner. Earth’s living system
appears to keep conditions on our planet just right for life to continue.
Why then the fear at the possibility of a planetary life-form, a collective planetary mind, a non-anthropomorphic (the perception of a divine being or beings in human form) intelligent being identified with an entire planetary body?
Is it necessary to attribute human characteristics to deities?
In the past, many religions and philosophies have condemned anthropomorphism for various reasons. The Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570–480BCE) said "the greatest god" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind".
Are we not capable of conceptualising a non-anthropomorphic deity? (In fact there is no true antonym for the word anthropomorphic.)
The Gaia Hypothesis has been accused of a teleological prejudice as it implies the existence of purposeful intelligence behind the ecological earth-system. It has been regarded by many, but certainly not all, scientists as a sort of mysticism.
The idea of the earth as a living and loving entity is no reason for concern. In fact it should heighten our awareness of environmental responsibilities. It should inspire us to translate concern into practical strategies to preserve the environment and to meet the growing ecological crises.
The concept of a living/thinking Gaia helps us focus our attention on issues of life. It puts life itself back into the centre and it inspires us towards a reformation – in the sense of returning to a clean start - that produces a culture that is life-centered.
Gaia represents a way of learning, seeing, and knowing. It inspires us to develop modes of thinking and acting that are holistic and participatory. We are encouraged to develop and practice ecology of mindfulness, as well as a mindful ecological practice.
A living Gaia does inspire us to think of the spirituality of our planet and to explore some kind of eco-theology, a concept not unknown amongst Pagans, as a holistic naturalistic belief system is one of the characteristics of modern Pagan beliefs and religions.
“God sleeps in the mineral, dreams in the vegetable, stirs in the animal, and awakens in the fusion of the completed Man/Woman.”
Jelaluddin Rumi (1207- 1273), National Poet of Persia
|
