Gaia Pammetor, Maternal Love and the Construction of Female Divinity in Contemporary Paganism

Abstract

This paper argues that diverging representations of Gaia can be found on Pagan websites. She is portrayed as divine ‘Mother of all’ the cosmos, as (divine) living being who feeds and contains us, and as loving Mother Goddess. Each representation is rooted, respectively, in ancient Greek myths, in Ecofeminist elaborations of Lovelock’s Gaia Theory, and in certain Christian representations of the Virgin Mary’s motherhood. This paper shows how the issue of the representation of Gaia is relevant to broader issues of contemporary representation of female divinity.