ABSTRACT
Mick Gold (1984, 15) related an allegory published in Germany in 1495, in which the conflict between respect for the Earth and the commercial interests of mining was dramatised in the form of a vision. A hermit fell asleep and dreamed that he witnessed a confrontation between a miner and Mother Earth – ‘noble and freeborn, clad in a green robe, who walked like a person rather mature in years’. Her clothing was torn and her body pierced. Several gods who accused the miner of murder accompanied her. In his defence, the miner argued that Earth ‘who takes the name of mother and proclaimed her love for mankind’ in reality concealed metals in her inwards parts in such a way that she fulfilled the role of a stepmother rather than a true parent. Thus, Gold concluded that in these early stages of capitalism, nature’s image was changing from something to be respected (the mother) into a source of wealth that needed to be forced into revealing things (the selfish step-parent).
