Know all the mythology and legends of Chaos. Learn with us all the symbolism of this god and how it is still in force today.
Chaos and creation
Chaos: Whether the universe was created from a rainbow serpent, the blood of the moon, descending into the dark depths of the ocean, from clouds or from a void, the resulting life it created is something that cannot be disproved.
.What is chaos?
In Greek mythology, chaos was the beginning of all things. The word means abyss, void, and vast emptiness in Greek. In creation myths, it is the primordial or formless state or the gap created by the separation of heaven and earth. The deities Chaos, Gaea, Tartarus and Eros were said to have emerged from Chaos. Also known as Khaos, it is seen as the lower atmosphere surrounding the earth in certain sources.
Origin
The Orphic Hymns of about the 2nd century A.D. first introduced the term. Orpheus suggested that the universe was compressed into a giant Cosmic Egg, which erupted and formed the gods, as well as Phanes, the primordial god, and Uranus, the son of Nyx (night). In Orphic cosmogony, the ageraos (never aging) and Cronus (time) arose first, followed by the creation of Aether (air) and Chaos.
Chronos and Aether then created the Cosmic egg. In the sixth Orphic hymn, Chaos contracts into the Cosmic Egg. The concept of the cosmic egg appears in the creation myths of several religions, including Hinduism, Finnish legends and even in Dogon mythology (a primitive tribe of Mali).
Hesiod’s Theogony introduces the concept as a formless, moving mass and the origin of the gods and the cosmos. The concept is also mentioned in the Bible, in the book of Genesis. The spirit of God was said to move through the universe when it was in a state of watery disorder. The Roman poet Ovid was responsible for the more modern understanding of the word. He saw Chaos as the disorganized mass in which the universe was, before creation.
In Greek philosophy
Greek philosophers generally believed that the void, although abstract, still possessed cosmological characteristics. They did not mention any personal god who was responsible for the creation of the universe, but rather focused on the sequence of events that came about through their own impetus.
Hesiod’s vision suggested that it was not something definite and that it could represent formless matter and infinite space. The cosmos grew from a beginning, he postulated. Anaximander, a Greek philosopher (610 – 546 BC), claimed that the origin was apeiron, meaning unlimited or infinite. He believed that it was a perpetual substance from which everything originated and would return. After Anaximander, Heraclitus saw primary chaos or continuous change as the true basis of reality.
In Alchemy
Blessed Raymond Lull identified the concept of alchemy as God-created matter or primary form. The Swiss alchemist, philosopher and occultist Paracelsus identified the earth with Chaos. In 1708, a treatise on alchemy called Chaos was published, which supported the idea that the universe came from a primal void.
In Kabbalah
According to the primordial theory of Kabbalah, there are five worlds. The sources cite the sefirot of Tohu or the attributes of chaos as the cause of the diversity in these worlds. However, they exist outside of the five worlds, as they are an unstable and shattered plane of reality. The sefirot of Tohu are independent of each other and therefore have no structure or order.
Chaoskampf
Chaoskampf is a ubiquitous legend of a hero in battle who fights a chaos monster, usually in the form of a dragon or serpent. The myth supposedly refers to the battle between the powers of chaos and the creator god. When the deity triumphed over chaos, the result was an ordered world.
Modern chaos
The modern scientific meaning of the term differs from the ancient Greek concept. It is a reference to systems that have parameters guided by numerous hidden laws that can easily change and are therefore difficult to describe. The scientist Ilya Prigogine was instrumental in the development of Chaos theory.
He believed that it could be included in the laws of nature and disagreed with the view that it was completely unpredictable. Scientists no longer deal with the concepts of order and chaos, but of superorder, where chaotic and random refer to everything that cannot be identified.
Who or what created life on earth will forever arouse the curiosity of mankind. Were we created out of nothing, by a god or gods, or perhaps we traveled to this planet from a distant galaxy, recreated Chaos and started the cycle all over again?
Chaos as the first progenitor
However, many others claim that, in the beginning, Chaos was all there was, the dark majesty and mystery of creation incarnate. And it was from Chaos that the first three primordial gods arose: the Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the underworld) and the (Love), the most beautiful among the immortal gods. Gaia would become the Mother of all that is beautiful in the world; Chaos would not be so fortunate. By herself, she would give birth to two more children: Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). It is true that their sexual union would produce luminous offspring; Aether (the Divine Air) and Hemera (the Day). However, the progeny of Night, the daughter of chaos feared by Zeus himself, would end up being a series of sinister and unfortunate children.
Chaos in other cosmologies
At a later stage of history, speculations of all kinds would arise about the role of Chaos in the original creation. First, some would begin to doubt her primacy, because Hesiod sang that even she was born. Out of Darkness or Mist, some would say; out of the union between Chronos (Time) and Ananke (Necessity) others would claim.
However, a third group, grouped around the ritual worship of the mythological poet Orpheus, would devise an even more unique cosmogony. According to them, along with Aether and Erebus, Chaos was one of the three sons of Cronus. She was a master artist who managed to shape an egg from the formless Aether. And from this egg hatched Phanes (or Protogenos), a bisexual deity who proceeded to mate with herself to give birth to everything in existence.
Gently parodying the story, in his comedy “The Birds,” Aristophanes states that in the beginning there were only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus and deep Tartarus. Then Night, impregnated by the wind, laid an egg in Erebus, from which the golden-winged Eros was born. And then, in Tartarus, Eros mated with Chaos, who subsequently gave birth to the race of birds.
Chaos in philosophy
With the advent of philosophy, Chaos became more of a concept than a deity, described as “a formless heap” and “a coarse and undeveloped mass” by the Roman poet Ovid. It was then that it began to be associated with notions such as confusion and disorder, from which the modern English term “chaos” derives. But by then, metaphorical images succumbed to more rational worldviews, and mythology gave way to religion and science.
