Eros

He who draws together

I have already spoken of the two original domains of the universe, that is, that the first deities to act upon the cosmos, to bring form to it, were Gaea and Nyx and therefore founded the two domains we call light and dark, Objective and Abstract. The third god to work his miracles upon the cosmos was Eros, he who draws things to each other.

Eros is called the most beautiful, and because of his power to bend and draw things together, he is linked most closely with the domain we call Love, and in the mortal plane, that is where he is placed, but there what we have is an angelos of Aphrodite, an aspect of her that works her will, but in the Eros referred to by Hesiod as one of the first, we have a primordial power that we can interpret as gravity and attraction.

All things that are have eros, gravity, and all things that can, love. The two forms of this deity are best described, in my opinion, as separate from each other. One, the primordial power that aids in what we call creatin, the second an aspect or angel of the great goddess love. But the two are mythologically confused, and in their attributes easily confusing, because what the primordial Eros does to matter, causes it to be attracted to itself, the angelic Eros does to human beings in lust and emotional attractions.

So, what is cosmic is also human, and what is so human to us, is also cosmic. The Gods, you see, work on both scales, and they do so simultaneously. If the deity we call Eros is acting as both the Primordial and the Angelic Eros, than we have a clear example here of one deity becoming subordinate to another in one or more aspects of itself, and we see that in more places.

But for Eros, the two forms are very different, not only in their scale, but in their inherent effect on the human condition. Gravity is a given, it is part of the nature of the universe, and it is therefore something that is very much taken for granted, but on the human level, the Angelic Eros is a different matter all together for Eros is there a very prevalent part of our nature, of our very being, we therefore partake of Aphrodite's gift through Eros, the angelos.
What is an Angelos?

The word Angelos means Angel in the modern vernacular, but the form of angels I am talking about are not really a separate race of divine beings who work for the gods, they are in essence fragments of the gods themselves. The Erotes (cherubic angels that inspire love) are then fragments of the divine goddess Aphrodite, aspects of her, but unlike other aspects, they do not really receive worship, they simply are spirits of nature or of the parent deity.

In this sense, the erotes are aspects of Aphrodite, but the erotes alone do not account for the Eros that is more than a simple angel, their is the Eros that received real worship and veneration by the people, and especially in places where men and young men congregated, such as the gymnasium or baths. This Eros was, indeed, the individual, the Eros of Hesiod who was here seen as a force of love, attraction, sex, and very importantly, of homosexuality and ll that implies.

The Gay Eros?

The term gay is a modern convention. For all the homoeroticism of ancient Greece, all the known acceptance of the male homosexual, and the various forms that took in ancient times, people did not seem to seek out identifications particular to a sexual preference the way we do today. Men, even those who prefered the company of young men, would marry and have families. The traditional man was very very likely to have had a past that included a sexual relationship with his mentor, who in return taught him a great many things about life, his place in society, and athletics. So Eros is not a gay god, or a god of gays, but a god who represents in his male sexuality and desires the much more open way in which the Greeks seem to have viewed sex.

Eros is, to me, first and foremost that mover, that power of the cosmos that suffuses all things and draws them together. That power that bends and causes distortion but does not break the fabric of space.

There are other associations in Orphic and Pythagorean theology that equate Eros with a power known as Phanes, but I do not really walk that path.