The Mythos
Creation. It is a touchy subject, and for very good reason. Who among us can say for certain that he, or she, knows how the universe was created, or how it came to be. None of us, and certainty on this matter is, in my humble opinion, a sign of stupidity. But we all have beliefs, theories, and concepts of the beginning that make sense to us, and religion often tries to put these instinctual feelings about such things into context that often includes the Gods as architects of the universe we live in.
The Greek religion is no exception, and the Gods of the Greeks are placed into a context of continuity that echoes not only the creation of the world, but the rise of civilization in the land we call Greece. The best known, and perhaps most often cited stories concerning the creation are those of Hesiod, the poet who wrote Theogony and Works and Days, two beautiful works that illuminate much about the way the Greeks saw the world around them, but also about the man Hesiod himself.
Hesiod, of course, is not the only writer to allude to the creation in the Graeco-Roman sphere of literature and religion. From Homer to Ovid, the creation and the parts played by the Gods in it are common enough, and not all agree on the way it happened. So one has to decide on a theme that best suits one's own ideas and then explore them from there. Hesiod, for me, is the one that best fits, but I also have some fondness for some of the Orphaeo-Pythagorean ideas and those tend to make their way into my ideas about cosmogony and theogony.
The story I am about to retell I retell not for detail, for I am no mythologist, but to illustrate what I consider to be the symbolic events that account for the universe as it exists today, a universe that is far from finished.
The eternal cosmos has always existed, and within it the eternal beings we call Gods have lived their eternal lives. The eternal realm is like a great egg, its flow like that of a great magnetic field that moves in great arcs from North to South within and out to the North again. These directions have no real meaning in eternity, but they do to us, so I use them to describe something in a way that makes sense. But the cosmos is also multidimensional, and the Gods exist as part of all the dimensions of space, and at the lowest dimensional levels, the Gods sense a stirring they did not recognize.
Here, at the very core of the cosmos, the Gods find Chaos, that eternal state of disorder that is opposite to the ultimate order of the ultimate reality at the highest dimensional levels, and the chaos exists at the lowest four levels of the universe. But this Chaos is not needful, not at such an expanse, and the Gods choose to interact with it and drive it back into the lowest level of reality, where all becomes none and none becomes all. Where South becomes North.
The Gods decide to act, and so the work begins, and into the universe we know come the Gods.
In Theogony, Hesiod uses the paradigm of human life and human birth as a means to convey this, and so in the beginning the three primordial Gods are born into the cosmos, self generated, these are Ge, Nyx, and Eros. Others too are said to be born, Tartaros, Aether, Erebus, etc. But these do not concern me as much as the primal three and the other who is said to have been brought forth by Ge, Ouranos, the starry sky.
If the Chaos was formless tumult, all potential and no form, then the presence of the Gods began the process of imposing order. Space, as we know it, physical form, a la matter and energy, and the interactions between them were set in motion by Nyx, Ge, and Eros.
As new work is required, new Gods emerge, and in the myths are born to the other gods. Ouranos is born, and to Ouranos and Ge the Titans, and to the Titans the great Olympians, each a successive regime in heaven, but if one looks carefully one sees that the Gods themselves are always present to one extent or another.
In the Aether one sees echoes of the Sky Gods and Gods of the Sun. One sees in Tartaros the first echo of the God we call Hades. In Rhea we see Demeter, and in Phoebe we see Selene. We see too that the forms of the earlier Gods tends to be almost amorphous compared to the vast detail we see in the tales of the Olympians, and one can say that this is due to the stories of the Primordial Gods are essentially echoes of creation to us, none of us was present. But also there is time, as the civilization, or one should say culture, of the Indo-European Tribes travelled and changed over time, the stories of their Gods were carried over into new iterations of their theological conceptions.
It is unclear where the Titans come from, historically, but one can surmise that it is a possibility that they are echoes of how the Gods were worshipped by the Tribes before they settled into a civilized (city dwelling) life.
In the beginning, the world was chaos, and the great chasm was all that existed. From the great chasm flew mighty Nyx, the night, on her black wings. From the great chasm rose Eros, the most beautiful. From the great chasm walked Ge, the broad breasted. Other spirits too arose from the great chasm, and these were Erebus, the darkness, and Tartaros, the deep. The power of Eros was already at work, and Nyx and Erebus mate to bring forth bright Aether and Hemera, the day. Many dark and powerful forces too did they unleash upon the world such as dreams, sleep, death, destruction, and disorder.
Gaea, for her part, brought forth Ourea, the mighty mountains, the Pontus that encircled the earth, and Ouranos, the starry sky, who would become her mate. Together they bring forth the mighty Hekatoncheires and Cyclopes, and the formidable Titans, Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronus, the usurper.
Ouranos hated the Cyclopes and Hekatoncheires for their sheer destructive power and ugliness of spirit. Brute forces were these, and the earth herself shook from their force, but he feared the Titans most, for of these children he knew, for it had been foretold, one would rise who would take his place as ruler over the earth. Imprisoned without birth they were, kept within the earth that was their mother until Ge, the blessed earth, could bear it no more. She pleaded with her children to help her, but only Cronus, the youngest, had the heart to do as she bade him.
From the earth Ge produced an iron sickle, rough but deadly, and at the appointed hour as Ouranos returned from his works to the bed of his wife, Cronus attacked and castrated his father, flinging the excised members into the Pontus, the drops of blood that fell upon the earth producing the ghastly Erinyes, spirits of retribution. The Age of Ouranos was over, the Age of the Titans was at hand.
The Greek religion is no exception, and the Gods of the Greeks are placed into a context of continuity that echoes not only the creation of the world, but the rise of civilization in the land we call Greece. The best known, and perhaps most often cited stories concerning the creation are those of Hesiod, the poet who wrote Theogony and Works and Days, two beautiful works that illuminate much about the way the Greeks saw the world around them, but also about the man Hesiod himself.
Hesiod, of course, is not the only writer to allude to the creation in the Graeco-Roman sphere of literature and religion. From Homer to Ovid, the creation and the parts played by the Gods in it are common enough, and not all agree on the way it happened. So one has to decide on a theme that best suits one's own ideas and then explore them from there. Hesiod, for me, is the one that best fits, but I also have some fondness for some of the Orphaeo-Pythagorean ideas and those tend to make their way into my ideas about cosmogony and theogony.
The story I am about to retell I retell not for detail, for I am no mythologist, but to illustrate what I consider to be the symbolic events that account for the universe as it exists today, a universe that is far from finished.
In The Beginning:
The eternal cosmos has always existed, and within it the eternal beings we call Gods have lived their eternal lives. The eternal realm is like a great egg, its flow like that of a great magnetic field that moves in great arcs from North to South within and out to the North again. These directions have no real meaning in eternity, but they do to us, so I use them to describe something in a way that makes sense. But the cosmos is also multidimensional, and the Gods exist as part of all the dimensions of space, and at the lowest dimensional levels, the Gods sense a stirring they did not recognize.
Here, at the very core of the cosmos, the Gods find Chaos, that eternal state of disorder that is opposite to the ultimate order of the ultimate reality at the highest dimensional levels, and the chaos exists at the lowest four levels of the universe. But this Chaos is not needful, not at such an expanse, and the Gods choose to interact with it and drive it back into the lowest level of reality, where all becomes none and none becomes all. Where South becomes North.
The Gods decide to act, and so the work begins, and into the universe we know come the Gods.
In Theogony, Hesiod uses the paradigm of human life and human birth as a means to convey this, and so in the beginning the three primordial Gods are born into the cosmos, self generated, these are Ge, Nyx, and Eros. Others too are said to be born, Tartaros, Aether, Erebus, etc. But these do not concern me as much as the primal three and the other who is said to have been brought forth by Ge, Ouranos, the starry sky.
If the Chaos was formless tumult, all potential and no form, then the presence of the Gods began the process of imposing order. Space, as we know it, physical form, a la matter and energy, and the interactions between them were set in motion by Nyx, Ge, and Eros.
As new work is required, new Gods emerge, and in the myths are born to the other gods. Ouranos is born, and to Ouranos and Ge the Titans, and to the Titans the great Olympians, each a successive regime in heaven, but if one looks carefully one sees that the Gods themselves are always present to one extent or another.
In the Aether one sees echoes of the Sky Gods and Gods of the Sun. One sees in Tartaros the first echo of the God we call Hades. In Rhea we see Demeter, and in Phoebe we see Selene. We see too that the forms of the earlier Gods tends to be almost amorphous compared to the vast detail we see in the tales of the Olympians, and one can say that this is due to the stories of the Primordial Gods are essentially echoes of creation to us, none of us was present. But also there is time, as the civilization, or one should say culture, of the Indo-European Tribes travelled and changed over time, the stories of their Gods were carried over into new iterations of their theological conceptions.
It is unclear where the Titans come from, historically, but one can surmise that it is a possibility that they are echoes of how the Gods were worshipped by the Tribes before they settled into a civilized (city dwelling) life.
In the beginning, the world was chaos, and the great chasm was all that existed. From the great chasm flew mighty Nyx, the night, on her black wings. From the great chasm rose Eros, the most beautiful. From the great chasm walked Ge, the broad breasted. Other spirits too arose from the great chasm, and these were Erebus, the darkness, and Tartaros, the deep. The power of Eros was already at work, and Nyx and Erebus mate to bring forth bright Aether and Hemera, the day. Many dark and powerful forces too did they unleash upon the world such as dreams, sleep, death, destruction, and disorder.
Gaea, for her part, brought forth Ourea, the mighty mountains, the Pontus that encircled the earth, and Ouranos, the starry sky, who would become her mate. Together they bring forth the mighty Hekatoncheires and Cyclopes, and the formidable Titans, Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronus, the usurper.
Ouranos hated the Cyclopes and Hekatoncheires for their sheer destructive power and ugliness of spirit. Brute forces were these, and the earth herself shook from their force, but he feared the Titans most, for of these children he knew, for it had been foretold, one would rise who would take his place as ruler over the earth. Imprisoned without birth they were, kept within the earth that was their mother until Ge, the blessed earth, could bear it no more. She pleaded with her children to help her, but only Cronus, the youngest, had the heart to do as she bade him.
From the earth Ge produced an iron sickle, rough but deadly, and at the appointed hour as Ouranos returned from his works to the bed of his wife, Cronus attacked and castrated his father, flinging the excised members into the Pontus, the drops of blood that fell upon the earth producing the ghastly Erinyes, spirits of retribution. The Age of Ouranos was over, the Age of the Titans was at hand.