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Articles
Primordial Gods 1 Greek primordial deities 1 Chaos 3 Aether 7 Gaia 10 Uranus 16 Hemera 22 Chronos 23 Erebus 25 Nyx 27 Ophion 31 Tartarus 33
Titans 37 Titan 37
Titanes 41 Oceanus 41 Hyperion 44 Coeus 46 Cronus 47 Crius 52 Iapetus 53
Titanides 55 Tethys 55 Theia 59 Phoebe 60 Rhea 62 Mnemosyne 66 Themis 67
Sons of Iapetus 71 Atlas 71 Prometheus 75 Epimetheus 85 Menoetius 86
The Twelve Olympians 87 Twelve Olympians 87
Males 93 Zeus 93 Poseidon 108 Hermes 117 Apollo 134 Ares 163 Hephaestus 172
Females 179 Hera 179 Demeter 191 Aphrodite 201 Artemis 217 Athena 230 Hestia 247
Extra Olympians 251 Dionysus 251
Personified Concepts 268 Muse 268 Nemesis 277 Moirai 281 Cratos 295 Zelus 296 Nike 297 Metis 299 Charites 302 Oneiroi 307 Adrasteia 309 Horae 311 Bia 315 Eros 316 Apate 319 Eris 319 Thanatos 323 Hypnos 328
Greek Sea Gods 330 Greek sea gods 330 Cetus 333 Nereus 334 Thetis 336 Amphitrite 344 Triton 348 Proteus 352 Phorcys 356 Pontus 358 Oceanid 359 Nereid 360 Naiad 364
Chthonic Gods 369 Chthonic 369 Hades 372 Persephone 380 Hecate 400 Iacchus 416 Trophonius 418 Triptolemus 420 Erinyes 421
Other Deities 424 Glycon 424 Pan 427 Selene 435 Asclepius 437 References Article Sources and Contributors 442 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 459 Article Licenses License 467 1
Primordial Gods
Greek primordial deities
Greek deities series Titans and Olympians Aquatic deities Chthonic deities Personified concepts Other deities Primordial deities
•• Aether •• Hemera •• Ananke •• Nyx •• Chaos •• Phanes •• Chronos •• Pontus •• Erebus •• Tartarus •• Eros •• Thalassa •• Gaia •• Uranus
In Greek mythology the Primordial deities are the first entities or beings that come into existence. They form the very fabric of the universe and as such are immortal. These deities are a group of gods from which all the other gods descend. They preceded the Titans, the descendants of Gaia and Uranus.
Genealogy and nature Although generally believed to be the first gods produced from Chaos, some sources mention a pair of deities who were the parents of the group. These deities represent various elements of nature. Chaos has at times been considered, in place of Ananke, the female consort of Chronos. The female members are capable of parthenogenesis as well as sexual reproduction. The primeval gods are depicted as a place or a realm. The best example is Tartarus who is depicted as the Underworld, Hell, and a bottomless abyss. His sibling Erebus is also depicted as a place of darkness, pitch-black or a vast emptiness of space. Their mother, Chaos is depicted as an empty void. Other siblings that include Gaia are depicted as Mother Nature, or as the earth. Pontus or Hydros are depicted as the oceans, lakes, and rivers. Chronos is depicted as time and of eternity. Greek primordial deities 2
Hesiod According to Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC): • Chaos (Void, Air, arche) - genderless (sometimes poetically female) • Erebus (Darkness) – male and Nyx (Night) – female • Aether (Light) – male and Hemera (Day) – female • Gaia (Earth) – female • Uranus (Heaven) – male • The Ourea (Mountains) – male • Pontus (Water, the Seas) – male • Tartarus (the great stormy Hellpit, which was seen as both a deity and the personification) – male • Eros (Procreation) - male
Other sources • Ananke (Compulsion) – female • Chronos (Time) – male • Hydros (Primordial Waters) - male • Thesis (Creation) - female • Phanes (Appearance) or Himeros or Eros elder (Procreation) or Protogonos (the First Born) – male (sometimes described as a hermaphrodite but addressed as male) • Phusis (Nature) or Thesis (Creation) – female • The Nesoi (Islands) - female • Thalassa (Sea) – female • Ophion (Serpent; often identified with Uranus, Oceanus, Phanes, or Chronos) - male
Alternatively attested genealogy structures The ancient Greeks proposed many different ideas about primordial deities in their mythology, which would later be largely adapted by the Romans. The many religious cosmologies constructed by Greek poets each give a different account of which deities came first. • The Iliad, an epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War (an oral tradition of 700 or 600 BC) states that Oceanus (and possibly Tethys, too) is the parent of all the deities.[1] • Alcman (c. 600 BC) made the water-nymph Thetis the first goddess, producing poros "path", tekmor "marker" and skotos "darkness" on the pathless, featureless void. • Orphic poetry (c. 530 BC) made Nyx the first principle, Night, and her offspring were many. Also, in the Orphic tradition, Phanes (a mystic Orphic deity of light and procreation, sometimes identified with the Elder Eros) is the original ruler of the universe, who hatched from the cosmic egg.[2] • Aristophanes (c. 456–386 BC) wrote in his Birds, that Nyx is the first deity also, and that she produced Eros from an egg. Philosophers of Classical Greece also constructed their own metaphysical cosmogonies, with their own primordial deities: • Pherecydes of Syros (c. 600–550 BC) made Chronos ("time") the first deity in his Heptamychia. • Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) wrote that Aphrodite and Ares were the first principles, who wove the universe out of the four elements with their powers of love and strife. • Plato in (360 BC) introduced the concept in Timaeus, the demiurge, modeled the universe on the Ideas. Greek primordial deities 3
References
[1] Homer, Iliad (Book 14)
[2] PHANES: Greek protogenos god of creation & life (http:/ / www. theoi. com/ Protogenos/ Phanes. html)
External links
• Theoi Project – Protogenoi (http:/ / www. theoi. com/ greek-mythology/ primeval-gods. html)
• Theo Project - Protogenoi Family Tree (http:/ / www. theoi. com/ Tree1. html)
Chaos
Chaos
Children [1] Gaia, Tartarus, Erebus, Nyx, and Eros
Chaos (Greek χάος khaos) refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth. The motif of chaoskampf (German for "struggle against chaos") is ubiquitous in such myths, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon. The same term has also been extended to parallel concepts in the religions of the Ancient Near East.
Terminology
Greek deities series Titans and Olympians Aquatic deities Chthonic deities Personified concepts Other deities Primordial deities
•• Aether •• Hemera •• Ananke •• Nyx •• Chaos •• Phanes •• Chronos •• Pontus •• Erebus •• Tartarus •• Eros •• Thalassa Chaos 4
•• Gaia •• Uranus
Greek χάος means "emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss", from the verb χαίνω, "gape, be wide open, etc.", from Proto-Indo-European *ghen-, cognate to Old English geanian, "to gape", whence English yawn. Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context of cosmogony. Hesiod's chaos has often been interpreted as a moving, formless mass from which the cosmos and the gods originated, but Eric Voegelin sees it instead as creatio ex nihilo,[2] much as in the Book of Genesis. The term tohu wa-bohu of Genesis 1:2 has been shown to refer to a state of non-being prior to creation rather than to a state of matter.[3] The Septuagint makes no .chasm, cleft", in Micha 1:6 and Zacharia 14:4" ,גיא use of χάος in the context of creation, instead using the term for Nevertheless, the term chaos has been adopted in religious studies as referring to the primordial state before creation, strictly combining two separate notions of primordial waters or a primordial darkness from which a new order emerges and a primordial state as a merging of opposites, such as heaven and earth, which must be separated by a creator deity in an act of cosmogony.[4] In both cases, chaos refers to a notion of a primordial state contains the cosmos in potentia but needs to be formed by a demiurge before the world can begin its existence. This model of a primordial state of matter has been opposed by the Church Fathers from the 2nd century, who posited a creation ex nihilo by an omnipotent God.[5] In modern biblical studies, the term chaos is commonly used in the context of the Torah and their cognate narratives in Ancient Near Eastern mythology more generally. Parallels between the Hebrew Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish were established by H. Gunkel in 1910.[6] Besides Genesis, other books of the Old Testament, especially a number of Psalms, some passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Book of Job are relevant.[7] Use of chaos in the derived sense of "complete disorder or confusion" first appears in Elizabethan Early Modern English, originally implying satirical exaggeration.[8]
Chaoskampf
Further information: Dragon, Sea serpent, and Proto-Indo-European religion#Dragon or Serpent The origins of the chaoskampf myth most likely lie in the Proto-Indo-European religion whose descendants almost all feature some variation of the story of a storm god fighting a sea serpent representing the clash between the forces of order and chaos. Early work by German academics in comparative mythology popularized translating the mythological sea serpent as a "dragon." Indo-European examples of this mythic trope include Thor vs. Jörmungandr (Norse), Tarhunt vs. Illuyanka (Hittite), Indra vs. Vritra (Vedic), Θraētaona vs. Aži Dahāka (Zorastrian), and Zeus vs. Typhon (Greek) among others.[9]
This myth was ultimately transmitted into the religions of the Ancient Near East (most of which belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family) most likely initially through interaction with Hittite speaking peoples into Syria and the Fertile Crescent.[10] The myth was most likely then integrated into early Sumerian and Akkadian myths, such as the trials of Ninurta, before being Depiction of the Christianized chaoskampf disseminated into the rest of the Ancient Near East. Examples of the storm : statue of Archangel Michael slaying Satan, represented as a dragon. god vs. sea serpent trope in the Ancient Near East can be seen with Baʿal vs. Quis ut Deus? is inscribed on his shield. Yam (Canaanite), Marduk vs. Tiamat (Babylonian), and Yahweh vs. Leviathan (Jewish) among others. Chaos 5
There is also evidence to suggest the possible transmission of this myth as far east as Japan and Shintoism as depicted in the story of Susanoo vs. Yamata no Orochi.[11] The exact route of this particular transmission is unknown. The chaoskampf would eventually be inherited by descendants of these ancient religions, perhaps most notably by Christianity. Examples include the story of Saint George and the Dragon (most probably descended from the Slavic branch of Indo-European and stories such as Dobrynya Nikitich vs. Zmey Gorynych) as well as depictions of Christ and/or Saint Michael vs. the Devil (as seen in the Book of Revelation among other places and probably related to the Yahweh vs. Leviathan and later Gabriel vs. Rahab stories of Jewish mythology). More abstractly, some aspects of the narrative appear in the crucifixion story of Jesus found in the gospels.[12]
Greco-Roman tradition For Hesiod and the early Greek Olympian myth (8th century BC), Chaos was the void from which Nyx emerged.[13] Chaos was also personified as a primal deity in Greek mythology, as the first of the primordial deities and the god of the air. Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus. Ovid (1st century BC), in his Metamorphoses, described Chaos as "a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap."[14] Fifth-century Orphic cosmogony had a "Womb of Darkness" in which the Wind lay a Cosmic Egg whence Eros was hatched, who set the universe in motion.
Alchemy The Greco-Roman tradition of Prima Materia, notably including 5th and 6th centuries Orphic cosmogony was merged with biblical notions (Tehom) in Christian belief and inherited by alchemy and Renaissance magic. The cosmic egg of Orphism was taken as the raw material for the alchemical magnum opus in early Greek alchemy. The first stage of the process of producing the Lapis Philosophorum, i.e., nigredo, was identified with chaos. Because of association with the creation in Genesis, where "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2), Chaos was further identified with the element Water.
Alchemy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Raimundus Lullus (1232–1315) wrote a Liber Chaos, in which he identifies Chaos as the primal form or matter created by God. Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) uses chaos synonymously with element (because the primeval chaos is imagined as a formless congestion of all elements). Paracelsus thus identifies Earth as "the chaos of the gnomi", i.e., the element of the gnomes, through which these spirits move unobstructed as fish do through water, or birds through air.[15] An alchemical treatise by Heinrich Khunrath, printed in Frankfurt in 1708, was entitled Chaos.[16] The 1708 introduction to the treatise states that the treatise was written in 1597 in Magdeburg, in the author's 23rd year of practicing alchemy.[17] The treatise purports to quote Paracelsus on the point that "The light of the soul, by the will of the Triune God, made all earthly things appear from the primal Chaos."[18] Martin Ruland, in his 1612 Lexicon Alchemiae, states, "A crude mixture of matter or another name for Materia Prima is Chaos, as it is in the Beginning." The term gas in chemistry was coined by Dutch chemist J. B. Van Helmont in the 17th century, directly based on the Paracelsian notion of chaos. The g in gas is due to the Dutch pronunciation of this letter as a spirant, also employed