PART
2 – Ch.XII.2
(The
principal prehistoric divinities of
XII. 2. Gaia.
Beside
the supreme power of the Sky (Cer), as a shining and creative force, the
primitive cult also worshipped the telluric productive force of the Earth (
Gaea represented,
according to antique theological ideas, the divinity of nature in feminine
form, the mother who gives birth and educates.
As a
divinity, Gaea had different names in the public cult, according to the
different dialects of the primitive tribes, pastoral and agrarian (Eschyl, Prometheus v.210).
But her
honorific principal title was Ma, Mater (Eschyl, Supplices, v.890: Ma Ga as Matter Terra), Mater (Varro, L.L. V.64) and Parens,
while her oldest attributes were Pammateira (Homer, Hymn. in Terram Matrem, v.1), Pammator (Eschyl, Prometheus, v.90), or Mother of
all, and protomantis (Eschyl,
Supplices, v.117), the first prophetess, only literary attributes in fact,
showing in their forced form the early authors’ attempts to assimilate to Greek
language some archaic Pelasgian words. The names Pammitera, Pammitor and protomantis,
applied exclusively to the divinity Gaea, are just simple imitations of the
word Pament, which belongs to the
Pelasgian idiom.
The
origin of this divinity, as a principle and a personification, was at the north
of the Lower Danube, the place where Homer
and Hesiod place the genesis of the Gods, at the ancient
river called ‘Okeanos potamos (Homer,
Iliad, XIV.v.201) or Istru, where was the holly island of Gaea, with the golden apples (Pherechydis,
Frag. 33).
At the
point where the mountains of Banat are separated from the Serbian ones, and the
Danube enters the dangerous straits of the Carpathians, downstream of the town
today called Moldova, rises in the middle of this river a rock with a
particular shape, and near it stretches an island of a considerable size. This
rock and island had a very important role in the prehistoric religion, and they
have even today the name Baba Caia,
meaning the Old Mother Gaia [1].
[1. Varro (L.L.c.64) tells us that with the Romans, Caius and Caia were the same names as Gaius
and Gaia). During the Roman epoch, a
mountain is mentioned in
This
rock from the middle of the
(We
shall reproduce in the last parts of this book the figure of this rock and the
antique legends of Gaea from the
In the
Roman cult in
Numerous
traces of the cult of Pament as a divinity are found even today in the
religious beliefs and practices of the Romanian people.
In the
most difficult situations of human life, help is solicited from Cer (Sky) and
Pament (Earth). The most terrible curses are made by invoking the Earth. She is
the protective mother of the human beings, from the first moments of life, to
beyond the grave [2].
[2. “Usually, when the hour of birth
comes, the future mother is laid down on the floor, so that the earth, as mother of all, to receive
first the newborn (Reteganul, Colectiune manuscrisa, III,
p.9).
In a lamentation from
Earth, earth, from today onwards,
Be a parent, do not make
haste, to rot me … (Mangiuca, Calindariu pe 1882, p.134).
Pray to that earth, when you’ll
go to your grave … (Burada, Datinele popl rom at funerals, p.95)
Who is breaking the oath, the earth doesn’t receive him … (Iarnic-Barsan,
Doine, p.258)].
Gaea’s
image, or the Earth’s, was represented, as Suidas
tells us, as a woman holding in her hand a bucium
(tympanon).
We find the same image in Romanian incantations.
The
earth personified as a divinity appears here under the name of “Mother of God”,
holding in her hand a golden “bucium”
which, when it echoes in the four corners of the world, all the goddesses are
coming together, and the earth rocks.