Gaea, the personified form of the Greek gê, ›earth‹ as seen alongside an equally Ancient Greek form of speech (logos), is, as you’d expect after a lifetime of hearing the term ›mother earth‹, the maternal figure heading up the word geology, here defined as ›a tale about a Goddess told behind her back‹, i.e., gossip, in sensu stricto (look see at ›god‹). Of course mothers, by definition, have children, which means they once had sexual relations with their consorts, each party treating the other the way lovers and married couples are wont to do, sometimes kindly, often cruelly, never without the power invested in them. Stress the word power, party on delightful occasion; obviously, where gods and goddesses are concerned, especially where they model our behavior, there’s plenty to gossip about. Gossip then, that is the subject of this book, seen in its earthly particulars, which are often as unpleasant to behold as they are compelling to dig up. In a culture that continues to picture the earth as mother, if, for the sake of our survival, we have any intentions of treating her differently than the way we treat our lovers (of treating our lovers differently than the way we treat the earth), we must first uncover the dirt we have on ourselves. The heap is always larger than the hole.weiterlesen