• Conspire: (from spiritus, or spirit) to concur or work to one end; act in harmony; co-operate; to plot together; breathe together.

• Gaea Earth Mother Goddess of pre-classical Greece, creator of the Heavens.

• Gaean Conspiracy: a movement to connect the subsystems of Gaea into harmonious cooperation through mutual recognition of their identity as part of an evolving planetary deity.

  All of us are potentially a part of the Gaean Conspiracy. There's a little known scientific and thealogical premise which states that the Earth is an multi-systemic intellignet creature. In Theaology we call this planetary deity Gaea; and the Gaean Conspiracy movement seeks to reconnect our social, economic, scientific, religious and political systems into a harmonious co-creation with the enormous and ages old bio-geological system we name the Gaean System, from the Greek version of Her name. We recognize that this evolutionary process is Quickening, and that it will take place as our planetary being awakes to a more advanced, integrated and self-reflexive state of global consciousness. The next evolutionary step that we face as a species and as a planet is cooperating together to consciously coordinate this planetary harmony.

  The Gaean Conspiracy's Major Premise is that the Earth's rocks, plants, animals, air, oceans and oozing mantle are all interdependent systems in a giant biological superorganism -- a single living entity or being.

  A scientific principle with religious overtones, this hypothesis states what ancient Paleo-Pagans knew instinctively: that the Earth and all life upon it are an interpenetrating system of divine proportion. Earth's ability to resist entropy and to regulate temperature, oxygen, ocean salinity, and other qualities necessary for life indicates that She is a biological superorganism having consciousness. This dynamic Homeostasis (self-regulation) of living organisms and their environment is the interface that human beings are constantly threatening.

  An article written over four decades ago by Otter (now Oberon) Zell contained the first published description of the Earth as a living Goddess. It was called "Theagenesis: The Birth of the Goddess" and appeared in (Green Egg, Vol V. #40). Oberon's vision began with the fact that all life in the biosphere originated with a single organism, which has divided infinitely and mutated to form the incredible diversity of life that has evolved on this world so far. As a fertilized ovum divides over and over to finally make up the many organs of the human body, all life in the biosphere is part of a single living organism, of which we and the plants and animals are like the cells and perhaps, collectively, the organs of the Whole.

  James Lovelock, an atmospheric scientist, and Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, popularized the Scientific Theory of The Gaia Hypothesis. Lovelock discovered that the atmosphere of Gaea maintains a consistent composition that defied the expected behavior model of reactive gases through his observations of atmospheric fluctuations, and found a homeostatic balance of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide that is an anomaly in our solar system. Oxygen is a highly reactive gas that should combine with methane, a reducing gas, or react with the most common gas, nitrogen ( 78%) of Earth's atmosphere, and should fall to the ground, but oxygen remains at a constant 21%. Also the world's temperature has remained in a homeostatic balance despite a 25% warming of the sun over geological time, and the Oceans maintain a constant level of saltinity, when logically it should be saltier due to evaporation. Lovelock said, "It must take a lot of work to keep up such a wild disequilibrium."

  Therefore, there must be an agent that is doing this work. It arose over 3.5 billion years ago: the microbes and the plants and animals which interact with the seemingly solid organ of Gaea's crust. It's our biosphere, like a there it is, as a spider's web, the delicate miracle of life, the chemical and climatic thermostat of our biospshere, the Goddess.

  However, Gaea is not just the biosphere by itself. A living redwood tree is ninety-seven percent inanimate matter, as a snail includes its shell, so Gaea is the total organism, which is made up of Her crust, Her flowing mantle and Her radioactive metallic core. As the visage of the One of Whom we are a part and upon Whom we depend to survive, Her changing biosphere is a thin layer of expression on Her beautiful face !

  Gaea is more than merely alive, She is a conscious entity. Live organisms changes, and as something changes it either becomes increasingly disorderly as it moves towards Entropy, or it moves towards organization and greater complexity as it moves towards Order. In every untouched wilderness we see Gaea keeping Her house beautiful, balanced, and in order. Gaea resists entropy; we know it by the proliferation of species and the perfection of untampered ecosystems.

  By being able to resist the natural entropy found in open systems implies consciousness or intelligence to influence it. Gaea's can correct the wild disequilibrium that Lovelock speaks of, and this is indicative of a feedback process eliciting a self-correcting response. She is able to maintain the exact conditions needed for life by sensing changes within it and changing them accordingly. This is the work of an operative intelligence.

  Lovelock was strongly criticized when he implied that Gaea's intelligence had purpose, a thing that is moving toward greater organization is evolving, by definition . As She is alive and evolving, we can watch for patterns and then ask some questions of our own: "What is She evolving into?" and How can we help?"

  A movement toward greater consciousness is one basic evolutionary pattern in biological organisms. The most recent evolutionary additions are the animals with the largest brains, and this progression is called encephalization A great deal of consciousness isn't needed to maintain a simple homeostasis, and our bodies maintain their chemical balance and inner temperatures with little, if any, attention from our conscious mind. But under certain circumstances a greater conscious effort is needed to maintain the balance - we consciously put a coat on or make a fire when it gets cold.

  The apocalyptic theologian Teilhard de Chardin, said the Earth was growing a new organ of consciousness, which he coined as the noosphere.

  In Gaean time, the noosphere is about two days old (ii), and is made up of creatures capable of sharing and spreading consciousness, and it can be thought of as Gaea's cerebral cortex. Gaea's neurons may be both the bodies of Humans and animals, and by extension the growing neural networks via our wondrous communications systems, themselves only seconds old, compared to the time the planet took to evolve this far, and this means Her consciousness is growing very rapidly.

  As a being becomes conscious, what does she do ? Many spiritual systems, have risen from the very fabric of this world, especially the older ones. Gaea's evolutionary thrust is reflected in the spiritual goals of Her self-realization.

  Awakening to whom you are in your entirety is to awaken to the realization of one's self by harmoniously integrating your inner parts. The next stage of planetary evolution will involve a reclamation of lost and severed parts and the integration of and the increased functionality of interdependent systems, based on models of modern psychology, systems thinking and spiritual enlightenment; and a continual self-examination and self-correction aiming toward complete identity as part of a planetary being.

  When a critical mass of the conscious aspects of Gaea realize the absolute importance of all the other Gaean components and unite with them, they'll come to the Uunderstanding, on a planetary scale, that there is no "Other," only a very large self that is highly diversified within, is a global process of epoch proportions which will extend far beyond our lifetimes.

  Put simply, this means:

GAEA IS TRYING TO WAKE UP!

All the sentient creatures as well as the interconnecting nerve fibers of the media and telecommunications networks comprise the Whole, or the noosphere. As we watch movies and documentaries about the animals, they also become a part of the network as we bring them into our consciousness. As the occipital nerve of our central nervous system influences our consciousness by bringing visual information to the brain, the international communications medium is a neural network that affects our global consciousness.

We are unaware of any visual input from the waking world when we're asleep. Instead, we dwell within archetypal realms. The process of awakening is reflected in an increasing ability, moment by moment, to connect quickly and directly with what is going on around us.

So, too, our planet is awakening through the noosphere's development. Once upon a time, war would occur in Europe without anyone in North America having any knowledge of it. Then, when the noosphere grew we could know, but with a time lag which buffered the reality of the war and our consciousness of it for a time. Now the planetary nervous system is awakening even more as information about significant events more quickly reachs a much larger body of consciousness. The experience is also a fuller one of sight and sound together. The noosphere is evolving, its body of consciousness self-organizing into an elaborate neural network.

When injured persons becomes unconscious, they aren't as aware of their wounds as they would be if they were conscious. As they come back towards consciousnes they first become aware of sensations and sounds, then they open their eyes to their surroundings, and try to sit up, only to find their body is racked with pain. They only then begin to remember who they are, where they are, and what happened. As they become aware of the situation as a whole, they begin connecting the sensory information of the outside world that impacts on their groggy consciousness.

Gaea is awakening now as Her various members realize they are part of the larger divine system. When the pictures of Earth from space were broadcast into the minds of Her children, She finally was able to see Her face in the mirror of our consciousness, and soon all the parts of Gaea will recognize each other as participants in a parallel growth heading for an Omega point> of 'coalescence and integrative harmony', which is when the global consciousness of this planet awakens to a realization of Her identity as a global being.

We humans who are aware of this process have a ringside seat, for we are Her eyes and ears and Her voice and hands. With our modern scientific instruments and global communication, we are in a unique position to understand the Change of the Quickening's direction, and to help or thwart it at our own liberation or peril. Asking and perhaps discovering the answers to the direction Her evolutionary thrust is moving we become partners in it.

Teilhard de Chardin observed, "Man is not the center of the universe, as once we thought in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful--that arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life."(iii)

But what expression is being carved on the face of the Goddess Gaea ? In our rush towards planetary realization, we are beginning to create the paralysis of "Greedlock" in earnest.(iv) Since everything on this planet is part of Gaea, what in the world is She doing to Herself? Is destruction or our own habitat part of Her plan? Is She trying to get rid of us because we are a failed experiment? Or are we an inoculation hurrying Her own awakening? If we are She, and we are also destroying the most living aspect of Her, does that mean She is involved in self-destruction? If so, WHY ?

GAEA IS REACTING TO A DEEP PSYCHIC WOUND

I return to using a model based upon human beings. People come a pychologogist, a magician or a healer often to deal with self-destructive activities they are unable to stop like drinking, eating, scratching themselves raw, ruining their relationships, hurting their children. They don't want to be doing these things and they aren't fully conscious of why they do them. Our mainstream culture promotes this kind of addictive self-destruction, and it's ubiquitious.

The behaviors were, in every case, the result of one or more wounds that had been glossed over, forgotten, discounted or distorted by the patient. An unhealed wound of any magnitude thwarts the evolutionary progression of those so afflicted. Until the wound is healed, the organism cannot go on to become what it is meant to be.

Human addictive destruction of the biosphere is possibly a systemic reaction on the part of Gaea to escape Her wounds. It's a sign that alot has gone awry, and they are the symptoms of a a self sabotage reflex, a circuit breaker - a negative conspiracy against Ourselves. If this is so, then what are those wounds ?

The wounds Gaea sustained are a result of Her children turning away from Her. If her children were the arrow pointing the way to unification, then we are surely missing the mark. Which is one definition of sin. Instead of unity, we ahve sowed our separation from Nature, resulting in a fragmentation of Her energy. Culture has severed us from the planetary Soul, much as the mind was "severed" from planetary body, and the ongoing condition results from the wounds She suffered. As a result, we are living with a biospheric amnesia, and Gaea is living in a state of partial dissociation. The noosphere has become the neurosisphere of Theodore Roszak...

The forced imposition of patriarchal dominator values that destroyed the religions and cultural models that revered the Earth, was the original infliction of this wound. It has been a 6,000 year process of separation of human beings from Nature (long for us, but moments to Gaea). In this time we have moved away from biological models for our cultural structure by replacing them with mechanistic ones. Powerful technology was the result, but one that is out of step with Gaea. They take us away from Her and from ourselves as biological beings, by the culture that promotes them, and how we choose to use them. However, we are utterly dependent upon Gaea this so this separation is not actually possible. But in reality, our individualistic separations are an illusion that, unfortunately, has us firmly in its grip. Joanna Macy points out:

"Trying to escape from something that we are dependent on breeds a love-hate relationship with it. This love-hate relationship with matter permeates our culture and inflames a twofold desire--to destroy and to possess. These two impulses , craving and aversion inflame each other in a kind of vicious circle."(v)

So, our mainstream culture is compelled to compulsively seek to possess and destroy the very deity that gives us life. We are each part of Gaea. Her wound is our own wound. As we are separated from Mother Nature, we are simultaneously separated from our own nature. Our self-destruction is her destruction. As the face of our planet breaks out in biospheric acne, our social systems break down, our economic systems decline, our political systems wage war and our immune systems fail. Our despair is Her despair. Her pain is our Doom (Fate, Wyrd, Destiny). But as we are microcosmic reflection of Her, so is our visions and our hope. Herein lies the good news.

WHAT CAN WE DO ?