The story of the birth of Gaia

On the day Gaia was born, at exactly the same time, the Mother of the Universe created a new planet. She was the ninth daughter and being her last child to bear, she promised her the most beautiful world, one full of life. The mother of the Universe called it Earth. Gaia would be sent to be reborn there and rule as Goddess of the Earth. Before she left, they both embraced each other with love, and her mother told her: “Farewell, my youngest daughter, go to the most beautiful planet I ever created and make it grow in beauty, life and awareness of the Universe. Your duty will be to maintain the Balance between all forms, present and future, while it crosses the gates of the endless spiral of time” she said, and added “As we are all connected, what you all learn in your journey, I will learn too. To help you with your task, I will send you a creature. He is clever and industrious, and I have given him one drop of consciousness more than other living beings, just enough to have a glimpse in his dreams of the powers of the Universe. This will wake him up and make him aware of who he is and what his purpose is: to serve you, Gaia and to help all living beings to thrive in spirit and form. I will call him human because I formed him with a handful of rich soil, of hummus” And in saying so, The Mother of the Universe made Gaia the Goddess of the earth.

When Gaia arrived, she chose a place to be born: one of the forming continents, mostly still under water, and call it Africa. And there, on a day bathed in an orange sun, Gaia was reborn . For eons, Gaia worked to create the 10’000 forms of life that, in time, each of them, would give life to another 10,000. All different, but all of them with a special role/ purpose  that only them or their lineage could do on Earth.

Gaia remembered the words of her mother, the Queen of the Universe: “Keep the balance between all life forms while they grow, and don’t allow anyone to rule over the other.” So she wondered: “How could see keep all of them in balance? After careful thinking she decided she would make them all interconnected and dependent on each other, so they would keep the right balance for the benefit of all creatures. And she engraved this knowledge of inter-being  in the souls of all living creatures, from the mightiest to the tiniest, nearly invisible ones. And the Balance was maintained for millions of years. New ones came and others went , and all helped create even more beauty and life.. All of them had written in their souls the primordial knowledge of inter-being, so none of them would take too much or become too many. Life could grow in diversity and resilience for the benefit of all.

One morning, as Gaia’s mother promised, the human was sent to help Gaia. At the beginning, he was not very helpful really, but he was playful and had bright eyes full of wonder, so Gaia was pleased.“Great things may come from this little creature: I will make him a bit more clever to balance his immaturity…”, Gaia thought, and so she did without a worry…

And the Humans grew and grew. They were clever and very social and they learned to use stones and sticks to hunt, but the more useful thing they learned was how to use and control fire. In doing so, they could get free of the limitation of the energy created by their own bodies. They could steal the energy stored in trees and burn it to keep warm in the winter and eat all the foods that they couldn’t eat before. They also learned that they could use it to burn forest and hunt. And later they discovered they could clear land and plant their home garden. They would not need to keep moving anymore. They could settle around the garden and feed themselves and their families. So, emboldened by the new discoveries, they left the forest, stop roaming the plains, and built cities to live within its walls.

Gaia at this point grew a bit concerned because see had put the knowledge of interdependence and balance in Nature, in the forest and the rivers in the oceans and the mountains like a never ending quiet song that they could all feel when they were in the wild. What will happen, see wondered, when they live behind the walls of their cities? Will he forget they are part of an interconnected world? That they are here to help keep the balance? “He will surely not,” she thought, “He cannot be so stupid as to think that he doesn’t need all the other creatures and that he can leave alone! He must know that he doesn’t create the air he needs to breathe or the soil he needs for his crops or the wood he needs to warm himself. Others do it for him. He can ’t be so stupid!” She said to herself…

But stupid and mindless, the hairless monkey was. Not because he didn’t know about the fundamental law of the universe, but because once he moved to the cities, he stopped listening to the song of the forest and the oceans. There was so much noise, so many things he could create to entertain himself. Little by little he forgot to listen. Crop by crop, harvest after harvest. He grew in numbers, cutting more and more forest, and doing so, the song of Nature was lost to him. His hubris grew, and he felt powerful…

But as he lost the connection with Nature, he felt the deepest void in his soul, so he created religions and build many artefacts in his search for meaning and purpose. And the priest in those religions told him: ”You are different to all the rest of the creatures, you are the chosen one. You are here to rule over creation and to use it as your will. Nature is here to serve you, to be exploited and extract it’” And so he went on: he turned his cities into countries and his countries into empires. When he encountered other humans, he used his intelligence and his knowledge to kill them or enslave them for his own profit, like no other creature on this planet had done before. All he grew the knowledge of Technos, and he lost the Wisdom of Inter-being. Forest disappeared, and wild animals did too, leaving a Earth barren and encroached by humans, their crops and their food animals.

Gaia grew in sadness and despair, as no creature before has lived beyond the limits of the Earth. Only men had not only arrived to the limits, but foolishly they even overshoot them! “How could they believe they could get on with it? “ she wondered.

Gaia when silent, retreated to the deepest forest and to the deepest parts of the oceans where mystery and awe still lived. She only stayed in our dreams, in the old stories and the myths. She was deeply hurt too. She could feel a spark of anger growing inside her, making the Earth tremble and shake. Because, let me tell you, anger and destruction are not only the faculty of Men but part of the Universe itself, as much as it is Love and Creation

And there, in the depths of our world and our hearts, in our myths and our dreams, Gaia awaits for the time to return, once we have learned the lesson, by will or necessity.  

And therefore, my friends, that’s why we are here: to tell the stories that we will need very soon. To tell the story of the return of Gaia.