Gaea, known as Mother Earth or Mother Nature (the noun for 'land' in Greek is 'ge' or 'ga' Filipino translation "Inang Kalikasan") was an early earth goddess born from Chaos, the great void of emptiness within the universe.

Mother Earth being the primordial element from which all the gods in Greek Mythology originated was worshiped throughout Greece, but subsequently went into decline and was later supplanted by other gods. In Roman mythology she was known as Demeter, goddess of the Harvest, whose name originally meant 'earth mother' and later even Terra or 'earth'.

The personification of Mother Earth into Mother Nature, was widely popular in the Middle Ages throughout Europe and can be traced to Ancient Greece for its origins. Pre-Socrates Greek philosophers had invented nature when they abstracted the entirety of phenomenon of this world into a single name and spoken of as a single object: Natura.

Mother Nature is the maker of the forests and even the seasons. She can control all, and is said to kill those who cut down her forests.

Every description fits her as having very long, black or brown hair that covers her face. Her feet never touch the ground as she can ride along with the wind. Some descriptions say she has an ugly face, and that's why she has such long hair covering it.

Some say she is a young beautiful girl; her skin is white as snow, her hair like a flowing river and her eyes brown like bark.



History

The word nature comes from the Latin word, natura, meaning birth or character. In English its first recorded use, in the sense of the entirety of the phenomena of the world, was very late in history in 1662; however natura, and the personification of Mother Nature, was widely popular in the Middle Ages and can be traced to Ancient Greece in origin. The pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece had invented nature when they abstracted the entirety of phenomena of the world into a single name and spoken of as a single object: Natura. Later Greek thinkers such as Aristotle were not as entirely inclusive, excluding the stars and moon, the "supernatural", from nature. Thus from this Aristotelian view - nature existing inside a larger framework and not inclusive of everything - nature became a personified deity, and it is from this we have the origins of a mythological goddess nature. Later medieval Christian thinkers did not see nature as inclusive of everything, but thought that she was created by God, her place lay on earth, below the heavens and moon. Nature lay somewhere in the middle, with agents above her (angels) and below her (demons and hell). For the medieval mind she was only a personification, not a goddess. The modern concept of nature, all inclusive of all phenomenon, has returned to its original pre-Socratic roots, no longer a personification or deity except in a rhetorical sense, a bow to her illustrious traditions.

The ancient Wicca religion looks to Mother Earth as a role model.