The Gaia Hypothesis – A Goddess Reborn
“What if Mary is another name for Gaia?
Then her capacity for virgin birth is no miracle,
It is a role of Gaia since life began.
She is of this Universe and, conceivably, a part of God.
On Earth, she is the source of life everlasting and is alive now;
She gave birth to humankind and we are part of her.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Ages of Gaia.
By
The Green Agenda
Anyone who has studied the
global green movement has no doubt heard of "Gaia."
Believers in Gaia, or ‘Gaians’ as they often refer to themselves, claim that the earth is a sentient super-being, an ancient goddess spirit, deserving of worship and reverence.
Sir James Lovelock, in his book,
Gaia: A New Look at Life, states:
“All of the lifeforms on this planet are a part of Gaia — part of one spirit goddess that sustains life on earth. Since this transformation into a living system, the interventions of Gaia have brought about the evolving diversity of living creatures on planet Earth.”
Gaians teach that the "Earth Goddess," or Mother Earth, must be protected from destructive human activity.
It is this belief that fuels the environmental movement, sustainable development, and a global push for the return of industrialized nations to a more primitive way of life.
Gaians claim that “we are part of Nature and Nature is part of us, therefore God is part of us, and God is everywhere, and everything is God.”
In reality, Gaia is actually a revival of the “Earth-goddess” found in many ancient pagan religions. The current Gaia Cult is a cunning mixture of science, paganism, eastern mysticism, wicca and feminism.
While researching this subject, I have been astounded by how many prominent environmental leaders, politicians, scientists, and religious leaders profess a literal belief in Gaia.
Gaians appear to have infiltrated every level of power at the United Nations and risen to prominent positions in many Governments. I strongly believe that they are the most dangerous and devious cult on the face of the planet.
“Still more important is the implication that the evolution of humans, with his technological inventiveness and his increasingly subtle communications network, has vastly increased Gaia's range of perception. She is now, through us, awake and aware of herself. She has seen the reflection of her fair face through the eyes of astronauts and the television cameras of orbiting spacecraft. Our sensations of wonder and pleasure, our capacity for conscious thought and speculation, our restless curiosity and drive are hers to share.
This new interrelationship of Gaia with man is by no means fully established; we are not yet a truly collective species, corralled and tamed as an integral part of the biosphere, as we are as individual creatures. It may be that the destiny of mankind is to become tamed so that the fierce, destructive, and greedy forces of tribalism and nationalism are fused into a compulsive urge to belong to the commonwealth of all creatures which constitutes Gaia.” – James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life (1972)
The modern Gaia hypothesis was originally formulated by James Lovelock. Dr. Lovelock is one of the world's most famous and influential scientists. He has degrees in numerous areas, including medicine, chemistry and physics.
Lovelock worked for NASA during the 1960's as a consultant to the Viking spacecraft project. His task was to develop methods for detecting life on Mars. He claims that while searching for suitable methods, he realised that conditions that allowed life to exist on Earth could not occur ‘naturally.’ The system is so well balanced and yet so dynamic that life itself is acting like a self-regulating sentient super-organism. He famously told NASA that there was no possibility of life existing on Mars and they should cancel their mission.
Lovelock called his sentient, super-organism “Gaia,” after the ancient Greek Goddess of the Earth.
In Greek Mythology, it was Gaia that “brought Order Out of Chaos,” a theme commonly quoted in Gaian texts.
Lovelock believed that humans were a key part of this organism. He claimed that humans had evolved to a point where they had become Gaia’s “global brain” and “she is now through us awake and aware of herself. She has seen the reflection of her fair face through the eyes of astronauts and the television cameras of orbiting spacecraft.”
However, he also believed that humans were abusing the planet environmentally, jeopardizing the organism as a whole, "as though the human race is a cancer."
In his latest book,
The Revenge of Gaia, Lovelock claims that Gaia is now fully awakened, and she is angry. Lovelock writes:
“Just as the human body uses a fever to fight off an infection, Gaia is raising Her temperature to expel a harmful parasite — humans. Unless humans renounce their destructive ways and rejoin the diverse community of living beings in Gaia’s loving embrace then Gaia will be forced to act in order to secure Her supreme reign.”
In the book Lovelock also claims, that on the current trajectory,
“the human population will be reduced to a few breeding pairs by the end of this century.”
Lovelock rose to further global prominence when, in the late 1970s, he suddenly discovered that CFC’s were “destroying the Earths protective ozone layer.” He led a campaign which resulted in an international ban on these chemicals.
Lovelock was also one of the first and most vocal proponents of the Global Warming theory.
To a suspicious mind it may appear that controlling and eliminating CFC’s was a test case for the big prize — controlling and eliminating fossil fuels, thus removing the cause of Gaia’s pain, the modern industrial society.
However, throughout his long career Lovelock has zealously promoted his Gaia theory. Two of his most recent publications are titled “Homage to Gaia” and “A Book of Hymns to Gaia.”
The Gaia hypothesis was eagerly accepted by the emerging New Age movement in the 1970s, as it combines neatly with eastern mysticism and neopagan theology; but “science” was needed to convince biologists.
For these people, Gaia was made palatable by Lovelock's Daisyworld model, a mathematical and scientific theory designed to refute the criticisms of Darwinism.
Just as evolution eliminates the need for a divine creator, the Daisyworld model provided a theory of evolving life on earth that incorporates natural selection with a sentient lifeforce. It eliminates a personal yet separate God and makes humans a part of the divine spirit that is Gaia.
Interestingly, climatology was the first branch of science to actively endorse the Gaian theory that Earth was a single, self-regulating system.
Steven Schneider, Professor of Climatology at Stanford, organised the first international scientific conference to discuss “the implications of Gaia.”
It was Schneider who later became the most vocal climatologist supporting Global Warming and once famously stated:
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
The Gaia hypothesis, absent the spiritual connotations, has now been accepted into mainstream science and renamed the Gaia theory. It can be found in most environmental science textbooks.
As mentioned previously, the Gaia theory found its greatest resonance with the New Age movement, who were entranced by the mystical side of Gaia. They found it easy to conceive that humans can have a spiritual relationship with Gaia.
A connectedness to nature and the belief that humans are a part of this collective consciousness called Gaia appeals strongly to their worldview.
A simple google search for 'gaia pagan' will reveal thousands of organisations proudly proclaiming themselves to literally be pagan priests and disciples of the great Goddess Gaia. There are dozens of Gaia Groups in most major cities.
Wicca, which is said to be the fastest growing religion in the United States, is intimately connected with Gaia worship. In fact, many Gaians call themselves witches and warlocks.
The feminist movement has also warmly embraced the concept of a Gaia Goddess. For many of these proponents, an integral part of Goddess worship is its prevalent theme of anti-masculine, anti-male statements.
In this philosophical world-view, since Goddess worship is good, then by necessity, any use of masculine terminology in reference to God or any prominence of men in culture or society is generally discouraged.
The prominent self-proclaimed ‘feminist witch,’ Miriam Starhawk stated:
"The symbolism of the Goddess has taken on an electrifying power for modern women. It has exposed the falsehoods of patriarchal history and given us models for female strength and authority."
Gaians teach that the Divine Earth must be protected from all threats no matter what the cost.
The United Nations Global Biodiversity Assessment explicitly refers to Christianity as a faith that has set humans apart from nature and stripped nature of its sacred qualities.
“Conversion to Christianity has therefore meant an abandonment of an affinity with the natural world for many forest dwellers, peasants, fishers all over the world... The northeastern hilly states of India bordering China and Myanmar supported small scale, largely autonomous shifting cultivator societies until the 1950's. These people followed their own religious traditions that included setting apart between 10% and 30% of the landscape as sacred groves and ponds.”
While condemning Christianity and Islam as the root of all environmental evil, the document goes on to praise Buddhism and Hinduism as they "did not depart as drastically from the perspective of humans as members of a community of beings including other living and non-living elements."
Al Gore, in his book Earth in the Balance, echoes this view:
"Prehistoric Europe and much of the world was based on the worship of a single earth goddess, who was assumed to be the fount of all life and who radiated harmony among all living things. Much of the evidence for the existence of this primitive religion comes from the many thousands of artifacts uncovered in ceremonial sites. These sites are so widespread that they seem to confirm the notion that a goddess religion was ubiquitous through much of the world until the antecedents of today's religions, most of which still have a distinctly masculine orientation...swept out of India and the Near East, almost obliterating belief in the goddess. The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity as late as the fifteenth century in Lithuania."
Gore then quotes deChardin:
"'The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth..."
Gore is also fond of quoting an old Native Indian saying:
“Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our Mother. What befalls the earth, befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know — the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.”
Gaia worship is at the very heart of the Global Green Agenda.
Sustainable Development, Agenda 21, the Earth Charter, and the Global Warming theory are all part of the Gaians mission to save "Mother Earth" from her human infestation.
Gaians have succeeded in uniting the environmental movement, the New Age movement, Eastern religions, the United Nations, and even the leaders of many Christian denominations behind this vile new form of paganism.
"The earth is not dead matter. She is alive.
Now begin to speak to the earth as you walk.
You can speak out loud, or just talk to her in your mind.
Send your love into her with your exhalation.
Feel your heart touching upon the heart of the planet.
Say to her whatever words come to you:
Mother Earth, I love you.
Mother Earth, I bless you.
May you be healed.
May all your creatures be happy.
Peace to you, Mother Earth.
On behalf of the human race, I ask forgiveness for having injured you.
Forgive us, Mother Earth"
- “Prayer to the Earth,” Student Textbook
