Heart of the Matter

More about Heart of the Matter

Inspired by the last line in the paragraph below within the book, Earthdance, by Elisabet Sahtouris.

Many still take the live Earth concept, named Gaia after the Earth goddess of early Greek
myth, more as a poetic or spiritual metaphor than as a scientific reality. However, the name
Gaia was never intended to suggest that the Earth is a female being, the reincarnation of the
Great Goddess or Mother Nature herself, nor to start a new religion (though it would hardly
hurt us to worship our planet as the greater Being whose existence we have intuited from
time immemorial). It was intended simply to designate the concept of a live Earth, in
contrast to an Earth with life upon it.

(a wee bit more, for your interest)

Actually, Gaia, or the Roman form, Gea, was an earlier name for our planet than Earth. It
was lost in the wandering of words from ancient Greek through other languages to English.
In Greek, our planet has always been called Gaia in its alternate spelling Ge, which we see in
English words taken directly from Greek, such as geology, the formation of the Earth;
geometry, the measurement of the Earth; and geography, the mapping of the Earth. In accord
with our own practice of calling planets by the names of Greek deities in their Roman
versions, we really should call the Earth Gea. Greek, like English, has always used the same
word for Earth-as-world and Earth-as-ground -- the ancient Ge that became the modern Gi,
pronounced Yee. The English word Earth came from an ancient Greek root meaning working
the ground, or earth- ergaze -- which evolved into the name of the Nordic Earth goddess,
Erda and then into the German Erde and the English Earth. Thus even the word Earth implies a female deity.