Ouranos
The Primordial Sky Father
In Hellenic Religion, the sky god is Zeus, but in the mythos of the Greeks, he is not the first to hold that title, the first would be Ouranos, the starry sky.
As I have discussed already, I believe that the theogonic mythos as described by the poet Hesiod does not really convey the birth of Gods and Goddesses, but their evolution in the human consciousness. We perceive the changes that the cosmos has undergone, and in that sense the changes reflected in the gods and their works, and in our limited human way, we assign to them not an evolution, but a separate existence. This is certainly not a universal idea among Hellenes, but it is one that I have noticed is gaining some followers.
In thise theory of theogony, the Gods have essentially always been there, but as they have worked their wonders on the cosmos, as they acted, so they were noticed by nature, left their imprint, if you will, and we human beings, and indeed all of nature, takes note of this, and as reasoning creatures we interpret what we see and feel of them in different ways, thus the varying forms that the Gods have taken throughout the world and throughout history.
Ouranos, then, is Great Father Sky, and he is the first impression of the great deity that today is known by the name of Zeus among those of us who follow along the Olympian path.
As the myths tell us, the first Gods came, and they worked their wonders. Gaea brought forth Ouranos, who in this sense is seen as her offspring, and then she mates with him, Earth mates with Sky, and to them are born the multitude of forms of the earth. The mountains and valley, rivers and lakes, the very world on which we walked is their spawn. But they also bring forth others, the Titans they will be called in Myth, and amongst these is Kronos, who is also Sky Father in a new form. But Sky father is jealous of his position, you could say that he resists the change that is inevitable in him, and myth tells us that he prevents the Titans from being born, keeping them inside Gaea until she can bear this no more. Gaea betrays Ouranos to Kronos, calling on her children to stop this tyranny, and Kronos takes up the challenge.
Ouranos comes home, as he does every night, and as he enters their bed chamber and seeks to make love to his wife, Kronos reaches for him and with an iron sickle that Gaea provides him, quickly cuts off his testicles and tosses them away into the Pontus, parthenogenetic child of Gaea who is here the primordial Sea Father. From the foam that arrises around the testicles is born Love, the goddess we know as Aphrodite.
Looking at this anthropomorphicaly, it is a rather disturbing picture. The children of Ge are alltrapped within her, and Ouranos seeks to mate with her again and from within her reaches Kronos to take off his testicles. Yuck! But looked at metaphorically, as Myth must be looked at ultimately, we see a great cosmic change. The Earth is solidified and separate from the sky. Kronos is turbulent and strong, and in this sky it is that the primordial elements of life are formed, released into the sky by the earth, mixed with the waters of the Pontus, and in the end, in the time of Zeus, are catalyzed into something else, something capable of producing life. Ouranos has become truly a father rather than just an enveloper of the earth. He has become Kronos, king of the Titans.
But what is the character of this most primordial of the aspects of Great Sky Father. He is by no means a nice person, looked at mythologically and from a human perspective. He is tyranical, selfish, and an usurper of one of the great powers of the cosmos, Gaea, and in the end he gets what he deserves. Ouranos is called first to use violence, because he violently opposes the birth of his children, the first to do evil, because of his acts against them. He is, in essence, his own worst enemy, and in his case, it is his intransigence that is that enemy, his unwillingness to change and share his domain. Gaea, however, would share her domain freely.
Ouranos is not a deity that one sees much activity around, because Zeus is the appropriate receiver of offerings and sacrifices today, but I do sometimes think of him, or rather, Zeus in this aspect. Like Nyx, Eros, and Ge, Ouranos is not likely to become central to Hellenism any time soon, and that is how it should be, for today belongs to the Olympian aspects of the mighty Gods.