Gaia

**Gaia, Goddess of the Earth\***

Gaia possesses incalculable aspects, her manifestations mercurial and immeasurable. She is the dripping sweetness of raw honey, the north wind’s bitter chill, the swamp’s fetid mist, the roaches scuttling around the floor drain, and the maggots writhing on a carcass. She is the imposing mountains, boundless seas, blistered deserts, tangled jungles, and frozen tundra. She is airborne contagions, cleansing waters of the cold spring, the lover’s warm depths, the rumble of earthquakes, the cancerous lump growing inside you, the unstoppable tidal forces, and the infant suckling upon the breast. She is the faint light of distant stars, prismatic nebulae, blinding pulsars, devouring black holes, and the infinite vacuum of space. She is the pattern in cobwebs, the toxins of plants and mushrooms, the wolves’ predatory instinct, and the endless cycle of night and day, dawn and dusk. She is the physicalities of stubble, breast milk, bodily waste, orgasmic fireworks, nagging migraines, the salty taste of sex on the tongue, and the inescapable decline of old age.

Gaia is the remorseless Vis Vitae - life and death as an end unto themselves. She is the embodiment of the true wilderness, of all desolation and mindless creatures. She is the elemental force above and below. Gaia comprises the physical Universe as we know it, and encompasses the entirety of physical reality. The parts of her essence we experience in the Illusion are harnessed and constrained by Malkuth. But those who wander deep enough into the forests or trek the most remote mountain areas will find the forgotten pathways leading into the true wilderness. Into Gaia's dark embrace.

To understand Gaia, one must first understand her ruthlessness and capricious nature. In her realm, only the strongest survive, yet only until they grow old, weak, and are torn to pieces by the younger generations. Sympathy and empathy hold little meaning, existing only in order to ensure one's own survival. Gaia creates merely to later destroy, like a mad toymaker who sadistically compels her creations to fight each other and then demolishes the lone victor. Things perish, molder away, and are soon reborn; an eternal cataclysm of repetitive cycles in a world devoid of purpose and meaning. The randomness and waste are staggering - out of thousands of acorns, only one becomes the oak tree, only the lone sperm out of millions grows into the child. There is an endless sacrifice to nature's dark mother.

Gaia invades our world, striving to destroy all we've created.

Her grass and weeds crack open asphalt, her rain makes buildings rot, and the sea ceaselessly erodes coastal cities.

Out in the Cosmos, she rips apart entire planets and celestial bodies. Her every breath ignites stars into supernovae, destroying their circling worlds.

Gaia is unfettered, uncontained. Neither the Demiurge, Astaroth, Mankind, nor any of the other gods have succeeded in mastering her completely. We have succeeded in building our bastions, defying her hunger, and utilizing parts of her to serve our own ends. But we are little more than fleas living on a famished beast. Her strength, thoughts, and wishes remain distant and so utterly alien they cannot be comprehended. Even so, she is the basic instincts coursing through our veins, driving us. The instincts to devour, to live on, to kill, and to be transformed.

\**Information taken from the Kult: Divinity Lost Playbook*