Γαῖα [Gaia]
Homeric Hymn XXX to Gaea (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.) :
"To Gaia (Gaea, Earth) the Mother of All. I will sing of well-founded Gaia (Earth), mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all the creatures that are in the worlds, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly : all these are fed of her store. Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honour! He has all things abundantly : his fruitful land is laden with corn, his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them: their sons exult with everfresh delight, and their daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus is it with those whom you honour O holy goddess (semne thea), bountiful spirit (aphthone daimon). Hail, Mother of the gods (theon mater), wife of starry Ouranos (Uranus, Heaven); freely bestow upon me for this my song substance that cheers the heart!"
Gaea (the Earth) hands her newborn son Erichthonius over to the foster-care of the goddess Athena. Gaia is depicted as a crowned woman partially risen from the earth. Athena, wearing the snake-trimmed aegis cloak, receives the infant.
Gaia is one of the most important deities in ancient Greek mythology. She is knownas the “Earth Mother” and is the originator of all… Gaia is one of the oldest ancestors of the Greek gods and goddesses other than the goddess known as Chaos, which she was birthed from at the beginning of time.
Gaia , born from Chaos, gave birth to the sky, Ouranos, whom she also later married. Together, they produced the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hecatoncheires, among others. This lineage illustrates Gaia’s vital role in the genealogy of the gods, establishing her as a central figure in Greek mythology.
Chaos was the very first of all, the origin of everything. She is personified as a female. Chaos was the primal feature of the universe, a shadowy realm of mass and energy.
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Two things stand out to me from this brief history of Gaia’s lineage.
Feminine energy & the Womb. Believed by the builders, dreamers, architects, the artists of the ancient world to BE our life source. Our Earth. Not created, but BIRTHED into existence through the cosmic womb.
What a great Goddess to begin with. The one whom we are all birthed from. Mother Earth. Gaia. Ge, Gaea, Chthon.
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Birth is what actually began my journey into the consciousness I occupy now. & Maybe mine was just as unexpected as the beginning of time.
My daughter, emerged from my own inner chaos. At the time, & a young age of 24, I felt that was wrong, unnatural to the way things were “meant to happen.” Come to find out, I was just raised in the wrong religion — the one that worships a blonde male and his father as the creators of humanity. As the “shepherds” of peace, of perfection.
How does modern religion completely invalidate the existence of the earth in the first place, as her own sacred Goddess. A strong, sturdy and soft surface for us to continue to receive all of our needs. A world where we do not need a human hand, but only a womb, which the world itself naturally poseses. And if a womb is one that only belongs to the female, then cosmic space, energy, from which all life comes, would be the biggest female of all, and that women would be - Chaos.
How perfect is that. That our entire life, our entire existence, emerges not from love, or light, or good deeds, but darkness - “a shadowy realm of mass and energy,” the unknown.
The Womb. The Woman.
Could it be that humanity found that too biologically correct to simply continue believing? Too simple maybe?
Ahh… far too complicated to control.
Ahhhh… far too favorable for the feminine.
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I didn’t quite expect this branding to gift me anything, but in the short weeks I have been dedicated to building this “frame” to display my designs, I am learning quite a lot about who I am. About where my intuitive beliefs about the world and it’s existence might come from.
It’s incredibly empowering to choose to learn about these things outside of a societal framework where they were strategically taught - school.
School, to me, reframed the Greek’s original beliefs about life into a history lesson - not a current lesson. Or at least that’s how Greek mythology always felt to me-clearly- made up- make believe. But isn’t everything? Made up? Simply, believed?
Everything created or used today has been made up by a human. Your recipe you follow for dinner, your route you drive to school or work, every single human construct that exists today was made up by man. & I think that’s what maybe gives women the disadvantage. Women don’t exploit to create, we use what’s within us to birth into existence. We create from within while the man creates from without, because they don’t have the vastness of energy inside of them ready to use whenever they choose. And maybe that’s why men tried so hard to establish themselves as the makers of the modern world- because they felt their place in the true origin story of our existence was lacking.
And well. it is.
Now, I am not anti-male, or anti-masculine. In fact, I am the opposite, and that is why I like to study the things I do now. Because in our modern world, & the way the masculine operates today, I do not particularly prefer. It screams - insecurity, fear, this feeling of “less than,” so we have to do more.
To me, that is not masculine, that is childish.
The Masculine has a very important place in our origin story. For masculine energy is what maintains what the feminine has already formed.
Masculine energy should be there to support, to hold, to carry and nourish what the Earth has already provided. To give life to, to react with the feminine to birth what is already within the womb of the world.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
If the energies we hold in our Earth actually acted as they were always meant to?
This first article makes me excited to learn even more about the Greek gods and goddesses. To see how the Greek’s believed the world worked and operated.
Stay tuned… <3
