About

Who We Are
Helpful Vocabulary
Video Resources
Suggested Reading
- Past Books, Videos, and Essays for Discussion Club

Who We Are

The Gaian Way was founded by Erik Assadourian in 2019 (after many years of thinking and writing about the need for a deeper environmental way). It is now an active living community with several events online each month and three local guilds that meet regularly for nature meditations.

Erik Assadourian is a sustainability researcher and writer who was affiliated with the Worldwatch Institute from 2001 until 2017, when the institute went into hibernation. He co-authored over a dozen books and directed and co-directed seven. He focused especially on the need for cultural change to move humanity beyond consumerism. This brought him to grapple with overconsumption and its effects on humans and Earth, with economic degrowth, and many other topics. And in time Erik realized that only through a culture fully oriented on sustainability will humans be able to survive the changes wrought over the past two centuries of our cancerous development. This led him to write on what an Earth-centric education would look like; to create an eco-expansion for Settlers of Catan (Catan: Oil Springs) that helps players question fossil fuel use and continued growth; and even develop a reality TV show (Yardfarmers) that normalizes multigenerational households, economic degrowth, and low-consumption life paths for Millennials in the overdeveloped United States.

But most importantly this path led Erik to weave Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory, and other modern sustainability scientific findings and ancient philosophical wisdom into a new philosophical path, the Gaian Way. With the community that has formed around Gaianism, Erik and other seekers are crafting a new way, one that recognizes our connection with and utter dependence on the living Earth, and one hopefully that can help us navigate the society-disrupting environmental challenges that used to be on the horizon, but are now here. Erik also convenes the Middletown Gaian Guild in Middletown, Connecticut, and is a member of the Gaian Leadership Council.

Bart Everson is a Gaian, the convener of the Crescent City Gaian Guild, and a member of the Gaian Leadership Council. He helped found the Green Party of Louisiana as well as Friends of Lafitte Greenway, the Earth-Based Spirituality Action Team of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the Earth-Centered Special Interest Group of POD Network, and the Greater New Orleans Interfaith Climate Coalition. He is the author of Spinning in Place: A Secular Humanist Embraces the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year. More at BartEverson.com.

Robinne Gray has lived in the Chesapeake Bay watershed since 2008. She spent her childhood in the desert southwest (Salt River watershed), and lived for many years in the Finger Lakes region of central New York (St. Lawrence Seaway watershed). For fun, Robinne studies natural history and botany and enjoys hiking and paddling explorations around the mid-Atlantic region. Robinne is a member of the Gaian Leadership Council.

Krista Hiser is the convener of the Gaian Guild of Hawaiʻi. She is a professor at Kapi’olani Community College in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi where she teaches writing, rhetoric, and a course on climate literature. Her favorite Gaian practices are working less, meditating at her sit spot at Waiakeakua, and reading.

Jeremiah Jones is the Gaian Way’s Partnership Coordinator. He is also studying architecture at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. When he’s away from his studio desk, he works on guerrilla gardening, rewilding his backyard, and growing his family farm into a Gaian ecovillage.

Helpful Vocabulary

Gaia: the name given by the ancient Greeks for the Great Mother, a primordial entity who is the source and sustainer of all life. Modern scientists borrowed the name of Gaia as a poetic metaphor for the reality of the Living Earth: nothing less than the coevolutionary, interconnected, planetary ecosystem.

Gaian Way: The philosophical path that recognizes Gaia as a living holobiont, made up of countless organisms, a being that we are part of, and that gives us our purpose, and that we are utterly dependent on for our survival.

Gaianism: The set of religious beliefs and practices (such as meditations and fasting) that have stemmed from this philosophical path.

Gaian: 1) A practitioner of Gaianism; 2) All beings who live and depend on Gaia.

Gaian Community: The community that has formed as Gaians have come together to share their beliefs and seek camaraderie and mutual support.

Gaian Guild: The geographically based communities that form when organized by a committed Gaian. More on Guilds here and here.

Video Resources

Below are several videos that help you better understand the Gaian Way:

A presentation that Erik Assadourian gave at the Ecological Spiritualities Conference at the Harvard Divinity School
An interview with Erik Assadourian and Rachel Donald of Planet: Critical.
A presentation that Erik Assadourian gave at the Systems of Sustainable Consumption-Knowledge-Action Network conference, which explores how the Gaian Way supports a low consumption lifestyle and redirecting one’s life energy away from overconsuming to healing Gaia and our relationship with Gi.
An interview between Erik Assadourian and Michael Dowd in his Post-doom interview series.
A concise overview of Gaian Practices by Bart Everson.

Want more videos? Subscribe to the Gaian Way YouTube channel.

About

Who We Are

Helpful Vocabulary

Video Resources

Suggested Reading

Past Books, Videos, and Essays for Discussion Club