In the Gaia

The mythic emptiness out of which Gaia, the Earth personified, arose, generating several offspring, heaven and time included. Thereafter came darkness and light, day and night, good and evil. Flora and fauna were antecedent to man. In some sources the Earth is a huge disk floating in the world-sea, inhabited by different mothers. In Latvian mythology there is the Earth Mother, Forest Mother, Field Mother, Sea Mother, Wind Mother, Fire Mother, Milk Mother, and Ghost Mother. In archaic cosmologies, the fertility of women and the soil was the basis for tlife, which manifested in the form of a return to the lap of “mother earth” upon burial. Sabīne Šnē interprets Gaia to be a living being and a woman. She breathes, moves about, sees, listens and communicates. On Gaia, each of the two-legged anthropomorphic products of a utilitarian system look as if they were a mere grain of pollen, a microbe, a bacteria or a virus. The two are cohabiting units, interacting, complementing, and being at odds with one another.