BERFİN TIMOQ

Today, I will talk about Gaia. In Greek mythology, Gaia was the goddess of the earth, one of the primordial elemental deities. Gaia was the great mother of all creation. Although her name is never mentioned in Homer, she was the first goddess in Hesiod’s Theogony.

She was born at the dawn of creation. She was the first being that sprang front Chaos. She was the goddess of the earth, and itself. Then, she gave birth to Uranus (Heaven, Sky), Pontus (Sea) and Ourea (Mountains). When we look at the names of her children, we see that this is not an ordinary birth but a creation. This is written in Hesiod’s Theogony. In other words, these children that Gaia gave birth to are the story of how she created the world.

Mother of many beings

By Uranus, she then became the mother of a series of beings, Oceanus (Ocean), Phoebe, Mnemosyne (Memory, language, Thetys, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rheia, Themis, Cronos (Time), and Erebus (Darkness). She had nine daughters, they were muses. Uranos came to power over time, and Gaia was angry with Urano, who wanted to kill their children and imprisoned them in Tartaros. With her son Cronos, she rebelled against her husband Uranus and defeated him. She also bore Zeus and Titans.

Later when her son Kronos (Cronus) defied her by imprisoning these same sons, she sided with Zeus in his rebellion and she won the victory. But Zeus was more dangerous than Uranos and Kronos. Finally, she came into conflict with Zeus for she was angered by his binding of her Titan-sons in Tartaros. With her son Typhon, a titan, she rebelled against Zeus.  In the battle against Zeus, Typhon was defeated.

The resistance story of Gaia is like a summary of goddesses. If Gaia defeated Zeus, today’s history would be different. How did the goddess of everything become ineffective? The defeat of Typhon’s rebellion and Zeus’ victory changed everything. And Titans were killed by Zeus. Then, Typhoeus stole the snowy tools of Zeus, the tools of fire, and gave them to human beings. The future of the rebellion is now in the hands of human beings. We have a resistance inherited from Gaia.