Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [94]
—HESIOD, Theogony
How do you get Creation from castration?
The Egyptians managed Creation out of masturbation. The Mesopotamians envisioned freshwater and salt water having sex. The Greeks go that one better and base their chief Creation account on a rather painful story of the violent castration of a god.
The most important Greek Creation myth, an elaborate account of the violent birth of the gods, is found in Hesiod’s Theogony. It is a story filled with crude and bizarre twists, acts of outright brutality, and—as in the other Near Eastern myths—feuding families that span generations. Translator and scholar M. L. West even argues that this “succession myth” was not the “product of Hesiod’s savage fancy,” but a Greek version of earlier texts, including the Babylonian Enuma Elish.
Whatever its mythic origins, this Greek Creation story centered on primordial forces awakening out of Nothingness and bringing alive a succession of gods, giants, monsters, and finally, the seemingly divine figures who all possess suspiciously human failings.
The Creation begins in a state of emptiness called Chaos—literally, “a yawning (or gaping) void”—out of which the five original “elements” simply appear and are then personified as the first gods:
Gaia (also Ge or Gaea), the primordial earth goddess
Tartarus, both a god and the bleak, deepest region of the underworld located within the earth
Eros, the force of love, later transformed into a god of love, who, in Hesiod’s words, “overcomes the reason and purpose in the breasts of all gods and all men”
Erebus, the realm of darkness associated with bleak Tartarus
Nyx, the female personification of night
Bursting with powerful life-force, the primal goddess Gaia, or Earth, is “broad-breasted, the secure foundation of all forever” as she gives birth to Uranus, the “star-studded heaven” and the divine personification of the sky. Free from the taboo of incest, as were other ancient gods, Uranus becomes his mother’s consort and “beds” her. The notion that sky and earth were once beings united in a sexual embrace is a common ancient idea, as in the Egyptian tale of earth god Geb and sky goddess Nut, or the Sumerian deities An and Ki.
Fertile Gaia next bears the mountains, the seas, and the nymphs, who were associated with the trees, springs, rivers, and forests. Gaia and Uranus then produce a terrible trio of sons called Hecatonchires (“the hundred-handed”), monsters who each have three heads. In the next of their curious litters are three more children known as the one-eyed Cyclopes.*
Gaia and Uranus also gave birth to a dozen children known as the Titans, the first generation of gods who preceded the later gods of Olympus. Of monstrous size and strength, they provide the source of the word “titanic.” They were:
Oceanus, a sea god whose waters encircled the earth, and his sister/mate Tethys
Hyperion, sometimes called the sun, and his mate Theia (who together produce the sun, moon, and dawn)
Themis (called Law) and Rhea, two more earth goddesses
Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory
Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, and Phoebe, four Titans with no specific roles
Cronus, the youngest and craftiest, described as the “crooked schemer”
Siring so many extraordinary children was quite an achievement, but Uranus wasn’t happy with his brood. He feared that these children might rise up and overthrow him—a common theme in Greek and other Near Eastern myths. So, Uranus made an interesting decision—perhaps the result of some deep, dark male-fantasy impulse—to lock himself in perpetual intercourse with Gaia so that nothing could emerge from their union. Pressed down upon Gaia,