Khaos: Primal Goddess of Greek Myth (2024)

"Verily at the first Khaos [Air] came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos ... From Khaos (Chaos) came forth Erebos (Darkness) and black Nyx (Night)."

"At the beginning there was only Khaos [Air]; Nyx (Night), dark Erebos (Darkness), and deep Tartaros (the Pit). Firstly, black-winged Nyx lays a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebos, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros (Desire) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mates in deep Tartaros with dark Khaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race [the birds], which was the first to see the light."

"And he [Epicurus] says the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [the entwined forms of Khronos (Chronos, Time) and Ananke (Inevitability)] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature.

As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither (Aether)] and the most rarefied Wind [probably Khaos (Chaos, Air)], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge) [Gaia], both the dry land and the fluid waters [Pontos the Sea]."

"Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together.

No Titan [Helios the Sun] as yet poured light upon the world, no waxing Phoebe [Selene the Moon] her crescent filled anew, nor in the ambient air yet hung the earth, self-balanced, equipoised, nor Amphitrite's [the Sea's] arms embraced the long far margin of the land.

Though there were land and sea and air, the land no foot could tread, no creature swim the sea, the air was lightless; nothing kept its form, all objects were at odds, since in one mass cold essence fought with hot, and moist with dry, and hard with soft and light with things of weight.

This strife a God (Deus) [perhaps Khronos (Chronos) or the primordial Eros], with nature's blessing, solved; who severed land from sky and sea from land, and from the denser vapors set apart the ethereal sky; and, each from the blind heap resolved and freed, he fastened in its place appropriate in peace and harmony.

The fiery weightless force of heaven's vault flashed up and claimed the topmost citadel; next came the air in lightness and in place; the thicker earth with grosser elements sank burdened by its weight; lowest and last the girdling waters pent the solid globe.

So into shape whatever god it was reduced the primal matter and prescribed its several parts. Then first, to make the earth even on every side, he rounded it into a mighty disc, then bade the sea extend and rise under the rushing winds, and gird the shores of the encircled earth."