Cronus and the Birth of the Cosmos

Author: Orphica

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE; 1 CE–500 CE

Country or Culture: Greece

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

At the very beginning, there is simply creation, the divine matter of the universe brought into existence. Once this divine matter exists, it is necessary to sort it out and order it into different components. Because of this, at the same moment creation begins, Cronus and Ananke are brought into being. Cronus is time, a winged creature with the body of a serpent and the heads of a human, a lion, and a bull. He begins the process of organizing the universe, clarifying that this is the beginning of all things. Ananke is inevitability and fate, and her presence shows that all things will progress forward and an end will one day come.

To organize the universe further, Cronus creates a giant egg out of the divine matter. He and Ananke begin to circle the giant egg, squeezing it tightly with their bodies. Eventually, the force of their motion begins to separate the egg, and so also the universe, into its disparate atoms. When this force is great enough, the atoms become three elements. The lightest of the atoms become the bright light of the heavens, the heaviest float down to become the earth and the waters, and the remainder float between as the wind of chaos. Because all of these elements are set spinning by Cronus and Ananke, they still spin today, the stars and the universe in constant motion.

As the matter of the universe is split in this way, from the great egg also emerges Phanes, the deity of procreation and birth. Phanes has golden wings and a body entwined with a snake’s, and with his birth, day is created. Phanes gives further order and logic to the universe, for with his daughter Nyx (the deity of night), he sets in place the cycle of birth and death, of sunrise and nightfall, that comes to define existence.

At the moment of its creation, the universe is both confused and disordered, a mass of undifferentiated divine matter. It is Cronus and Ananke’s ordering of the universe that initiates the development of the organized cosmos of Greek myth, with Phanes giving power to all the deities to come and passing his scepter on to Zeus, the eventual king of the Olympian gods.

SIGNIFICANCE

The story of Cronus and the cosmic egg belongs to a theological tradition that is today called the Orphic cosmogony. Orphism seems to have first thrived in ancient Greece during the sixth century BCE, although most records of this practice come from secondhand sources composed as late as the second or third century CE. Unlike many other religions and cults in ancient Greece, Orphism focused on the individual soul, reincarnation, and the path to salvation. Orphic cults were dedicated to the mythological poet Orpheus, who in legend traveled to the underworld but later returned to the land of the living. The core of the religion was based on writings referred to by modern scholars as Orphica, poems supposedly written by Orpheus that tell of the gods and their origins.

Because most Orphic texts have been largely lost to time, the exact nature of the narrative of Cronus is somewhat unclear. Some retellings, for instance, describe the formation of water and earth as preceding the birth of Cronus. A number of renditions make it clear that Cronus directly created Aether, the personification of the divine air that the gods breathe, while others suggest that Aether emerged from the splitting of the cosmic egg. Within these narrative variations, however, the philosophy associated with Cronus and the cosmic egg remains relatively consistent.

For the Orphics, the cosmic egg was an important indicator that the physical universe reflected spirituality. Rather than being purely abstract ideas, the religious beliefs of the Orphics were rooted in the material reality of life itself. The cosmic egg, for instance, is a primordial substance that contains all the matter of existence, expressed in the physical nature of the earth. Cronus as time divides this matter into discrete components, but that does not mean the substances are no longer related. Instead, light comes along with darkness and life with death. This duality was an important philosophical concept within Orphism, and adherents believed that by following this philosophy and participating in the associated rites, they might eventually transcend such splits and come to understand the duality of their own natures. The Orphic emphasis on duality is further reflected in Phanes, who is often described as an androgynous being containing both male and female elements. So clearly rooted in the primordial substance of the cosmic egg and transcending divisions of gender, Phanes escapes the dualities inherent in the world even as he exists in it.

As was true of many ancient Greek theologies, Orphism seems to have shifted and evolved over time, as the Orphic philosophers and writers wrestled with the complicated philosophy and metaphors of the origin myths. Almost always, however, the different interpretations point directly back to Cronus and his cosmic egg. The mythological union of all matter and its inevitable split supply the foundational metaphor for a worldview as interested in life and reunification as it was in death and destined transformation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Chronus and Aeon.” Theoi Greek Mythology. Aaron J. Atsma, 2011. Web. 29 May 2013.

James, E. O. Creation and Cosmology: A Historical and Comparative Inquiry. Boston: Brill, 1997. Print.

Leeming, David Adams. Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Print.

“Orpheus and Eurydice.” Masterplots. Ed. Laurence W. Mazzeno. 4th ed. Vol. 8. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. 4229–31. Print.

Rice, David G., and John E. Stambaugh. Sources for the Study of Greek Religion. Atlanta: Soc. of Bib. Lit., 2009. Print.