The Gaea Thesis

Anon

In order the understand the nature of the All-Mother, we must first understand our own origins. Each of began our individual life as a single, fertilized cell or zygote. In the process of its innumerable divisions and multiplications, that cell kept dividing up and redistributing the very same protoplasm. That protoplasm which now courses through all of the several trillion cells of your adult body is the very same substance which once coursed through the body of that original zygote. For when a cell reproduces, the mother cell does not remain intact, but actually becomes the two new daughter cells. And this is why, no matter how many times a cell fissions in the process of embryological development, all the daughter cells collectively continue to comprise but one single organism. We may imagine that, should our cells have consciousness akin to our own, they may very well fancy themselves to be independent entities living and dying in a world that to them would seem to be merely an inanimate environment. But we know them to be in fact minute components of the far vaster living beings that we ourselves are.

Over four billion years ago, life on Earth began, as do we all, with a single living cell containing a replicating molecule of DNA. From that point on that original cell, the first to develop the awesome capacity for reproduction, divided and re-divided and subdivided its protoplasm into the myriad of plants and animals, including ourselves, which now inhabit this third planet from the Sun.

But no matter how many times a cell fissions in the process of embryological development, all the daughter cells collectively continue to comprise but one single organism. All life on Earth comprises the body of single vast living being - Mother Earth Herself. The Moon is Her radiant heart, and in the tides beat the pulse of Her blood. That protoplasm which coursed through the body of that first primeval ancestral cell is the very protoplasm which now courses through every cell of every living organism, plant or animal, of our planet. And the soul of our planetary biosphere is She whom we call Goddess/

"First life on my sources
First drifted and swam
Out of me are the forces
Which save it or damn
Out of man and woman
and wild-beast and bird
Before God was, I am"

These three streams of spirituality - Deep Ecology, Goddess Spirituality, and Neo-Paganism-have met and mingled with Native American, Hawaiian and other ancient spiritual teachings and fused somewhat with the more nebulous New Age Movement. What is struggling to be born from the blending of pathways is a truly planetary religious metaphor that will transcend all the tradition- specific patters in the same way the idea of Neo-Paganism absorbed and united a multiplicity of wildly differing but basically polytheistic religious groups in the 1960's and 1970's. Perhaps what we are looking for could be called Gain religion, because at the heart of our Unity is our identity as children of the same Mother -Gaea Herself; Mother Earth. It is said that it is a wise child that knows it's own Mother!

A brief digression on etymology here: Who is Gaea, that we would name a movement after Her? The name Gaea is the Greek name for the Earth Mother Goddess: She who was created by Light and by Love from the primal cosmic chaos. Pierced by the arrows of Eros, Gaea gave birth to all the plants, animals, gods and goddesses and of course the human race. So Gaea is the Mother of us all according to ancient Greek mythology.

From the moment that the people of Earth achieved the ability to observe the image or our planet spinning in all Her radiant blue and white splendor throughout the black velvet night, we have been impelled towards planetary identification. We must inevitably begin to think of ourselves as one planet, one people, one organism. The power of that image alone unites us, not to mention the concept that the past three-and-a-half billion years of terrestrial evolution resembles one vast embryogenesis. Something is developing, hatching, unfolding as a self-reflexive mind capable of contemplating its own existence. Gaea developed increasingly complex eyes and extensions of Her eyes/our eyes in order to contemplate Her own image. And now, having seen herself through our satellite eyes, She is awakening to consciousness. She has a face, an identity and now even a name, and so we inevitably come to identify ourselves through Her as Gain.

A Gain movement would be deeply committed to communication and education. Many tribal people and many of the old nature-based fold religions such as native Australians, Hawaiians, Siberians, Tibetans and Americans have come to the brink of extinction rather than to allow the mysteries of their sacred rites to pass outside of their tribes. Others have realized the need to become more eclectic if they are to survive.

The Gain movement is presently small and largely unrecognized, since it is anarchic and not evangelical, but it has tremendous potential in having no single head and presenting a genuine answer to so many of the world's problems. Its vision is, in fact, an idea whose time has come. Yet there are still many obstacles, and revolutions in consciousness rarely happen overnight. The greatest forces operating against a new Gain renaissance are inertia and apathy...the watchwords of the 70's and 80's. But winds of change are blowing and by the time the century turns we will see that once again Goddess is Alive and Magick is Afoot! "And you who think to seek for me, Know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, Unless you know the Mystery: That if that which you seek you find not within you, You shall never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire."