title: Gaia's Gift: Earth, Ourselves and God after Copernicus
author:  Anne Primavesi 
description: <strong>'Anne Primacesi has a powerful message to deliver in her book </strong><em>Gaia's Gift</em><strong>; it is one that requires all of us to think again radically about who we are and where we have come from.'</strong> - <em>Church Times</em>
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  ## **PROLOGUE: Fairest of the Fair**
  
  For three million years Gaea turned in solitary splendor.
  
  Some of those who lived within her knew of a broader space outside the great
  wheel. Long before the creation of the angels avian beings flew the towering
  vaults of her spokes, looked out the clerestory windows, and knew the shape of
  God. Nowhere in the darkness did they see another like Gaea.
  
  This was the natural order of things
  
  God was the world, the world was a wheel, and the wheel was Gaea.
  
  Gaea was not a jealous God.
  
  No one had to worship her, and it never occurred to anyone to do so. She
  demanded no sacrifices, no temples, no choirs singing her praises.
  
  Gaea basked in the heady energies to be found near Saturn. She had sisters
  scattered through the galaxy. They too were Gods, but the distance between
  them enforced Gaea's theology. Her conversations with them spread over
  centuries at the speed of lig