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To Gaea, mother of all life and oldest of gods, I sing,
You who make and feed and guide all creatures of the Earth, Those who move on your firm and radiant land, Those who wing your skies, those who swim your seas, To all these you have given birth; Mistress, from you come all our harvests, our children, Our night and day, Yours the power to give us life, yours to take away. To you, who contain everything, To Gaea, mother of all, I sing. 
Photo by Maniraj Madishetty on Unsplash
Earth was Gaea, a goddess, who teaches justice to those who can learn the natural virtues of:
In virtually every hunter-gatherer society discovered from the Paleolithic past, the Earth has been the primary deity worshipped before all others. Our ancestors believed that the world and all its features—rivers, trees, clouds, springs, mountains—were regarded as alive, endowed with spirit and sensibility every bit as real as those of humans—an invisible force inherent in all parts of the universe. All sentient beings have spirits, and before harvest, ceremony asked for permission for the taking of life. Generally, our ancestors were all Indigenous. They perceived themselves as being deeply bound together with other people and with the surrounding non-human forms of life in a complex interconnected web of life, dependent on each other for life. The Irish poet, Lavelle, was sighted in the book The Interpreters, as implying during the Irish Revolution that the more the world develops its technological superstructure, the farther it gets from its natural roots. He further elaborates by saying, “If all wisdom was acquired from without, it might be politic[al] for us to make our culture cosmopolitan. But I believe our best wisdom does not come from without, but arises in the soul and is an emanation of the Earth spirit, a voice speaking directly to us dwellers in this land.” As dwellers in the land, we have a responsibility to care for the place where we live. We are only one of many living creatures who depend on what the place provides them for existence. To become dwellers, we must relearn how our ancestors practiced the laws of Gaea. For us to know where we live on the Earth fully and honestly, it is crucial to understand place; the immediate specific place where you live—the soil in which you can grow your food, the rock formations that make up the hills and valleys, where you get your drinking water, which way the winds bring clear skies or rain clouds and snow; the common insects, birds, mammals, plants and trees that grow where you live. It’s also useful to know when you can plant and expect to harvest your garden or foraging for herbs, etc. It is also important to know what the carrying capacity or limits are to your place’s resources such as land and water so they will not be stressed or depleted. Natural regions are bioregions. They are defined by the givens of Nature. The boundaries of a bioregion are determined by natural characteristics rather than human dictates. They are distinguishable from each other by particular attributes of flora, fauna, water, climate, soils, and landforms. They are also identified by human settlements and cultures those qualities have given rise to. The boundaries are not rigid, but flexible and fluid, depending upon the inhabitants of the bioregion who are closest to the land. They originally were the Indigenous people who were still in touch with their ancient cultures that for centuries knew the Earth as sacred and its wellbeing as imperative. But it also included the settlers—farmers, ranchers, hunters, hikers, fishers, foresters, ecologists, botanists who spent their lives focused on what the bioregion in which they lived or worked provided. They were familiar with the natural characteristics of systems on the land which allowed for life to flourish or to perish. For these settlers to understand the caring capacity for all the biota of a bioregion, it takes the realization that the human must learn to be responsible in their practices of not depleting resources life is dependent upon. The bioregional paradigm stands in contrast to the industrio-scientific paradigm in scale, economy, civil governance, and society. In scale: region and community vs. state and nation. In economy: conserve, stabile, self-sufficient, cooperative vs. exploit, change/progress, world consuming, competing. In civil governance: decentralized, complementary, diverse vs. centralized, hierarchal, uniform. In society: symbiotic, evolving, multi-culture vs. polarizing, growth/violence, monoculture. It is through the bioregional paradigm we become dwellers in the land. References: • “Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision,” by Kirkpatrick Sale, Sierra Club, 1985 • “What is Bioregionalism?” By Peter Berg, Planet Drum Foundation, 2014
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