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GREEK CREATION MYTH.
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Cosmic rule flowing from the creative principle of Chaos.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Cosmic rule flowing from the creative principle of Chaos. Zeus as master of the universe. The male principle. The female principle. Transfer of cosmic power from the creative female to the active male. Gaia. The Titans and Monsters. The gods in the Theogony; development of the human personality. Arrival of demigods and human beings.
Paper Introduction:
However one explains the way in which Zeus becomes master of the universe--and the fact that ultimate rulership is specified as male undoubtedly has parallels in the whole of recorded human experience--it is necessary to see that the transition of cosmic rule flows from a creative principle as the fundamental element of the cosmos to an active principle. The creative principle from Chaos is not inactive, but it belongs to a class of action different from that undertaken in a specific context. As a matter of logic, the cosmos had to be born and made into an environment before it could be acted in or upon.
Creation, the female principle, precedes action. It starts from the absence of any context; it is no coincidence that Gaia is the sibling of Chaos (Campbell, 1987, p. 3). Unfolding creation constructs a context in which action, the male princ
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It is in this way that ambiguity becomes the given of lifeexperience. That birth introduces not only desire but also eternal andproblematic contingency into sexual encounter, whether between human beingsor between the gods and humans. It starts from theabsence of any context; it is no coincidence that Gaia is the sibling ofChaos (Campbell, 1987, p. That is animportant aspect of the transfer of cosmic power from the creative femaleto the active male. According toCampbell, the wife, not the child, is the real enemy of ultimate power.That would be because the wife (at least while the activity is all takingplace in the cosmic realm) is presumably an equal sexual partner andequally sentient and conscious. Rather, they survive cosmic time and define humanexperience, not least (though not solely, as existential anxiety attests)in the shape of the battle of the sexes. Interpretation. Unfolding creation constructs a context inwhich action, the male principle, may proceed. (1987). If the creative principle is to be guaranteed it must also becontrolled, and real control requires absolute, unchallenged power. 1:31). Oxford University Press. Zeus does not appear to swallow all of his sister/niece/wives;swallowing Metis seems to confirm the cosmic lordship asserted by hisvictory over Kronos. Hesiod's Theogony. In both cosmic and humanexperience, individuation, as the developmental psychologists might haveit, proceeds apace and overtakes all efforts to confine it. 14). That being so, it follows that the fact of cosmic malesupremacy does not necessarily legitimate it. He says thatthis birth "repeats the pattern" (p. For all who were born from Gaia and Ouranos were the most terrible of children, and their father hated them from the first; when any of them first would be born, he would hide them all away, and not let them come up to the light (Hesiod, 1987, p. As amatter of logic, the cosmos had to be born and made into an environmentbefore it could be acted in or upon. 1-26.Caldwell, R.S. However, the details andpersonalities of the narrative are not important merely as plot points.Everything these personalities do has decisive meaning for the verystructure of cosmic experience, which in turn imparts meaning to thestructure of human experience. Thus far the Greek creation myth. Hesiod refers to Gaia as "safe foundation of all / immortalswho possess the peaks of snowy Olympos" (Hesiod, 1987, pp. Nothing about the triumph of the male principle means that contingencymay not get in the way of the cosmos, even one ruled by Zeus. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Information Group, Inc. But it turns out that mere commitment to creativity guarantees neitherits integrity nor obedience. The violence of Kronos's "cunning" castration of Ouranos, togetherwith the discarding of male organs, could be taken as enough of an outrageagainst cosmic nature to justify any retribution Ouranos might conceive.The birth of Aphrodite, goddess of sexual desire, from Ouranos's genitals,has a certain logic about it, according to Campbell (p. (1987). The fact that the Titans and monsters are monstrous is bad enough, buttheir psychophysical character is not the threat to Ouranos; their veryexistence is. But the meaningfulopposites are not so much physical as logical, and more than thispsychological. Exploitation of contingency, along with the beginningsof the (male) principle of action, is introduced with the creation ofimagination, via "the youngest, crafty Kronos" (Hesiod, 1987, p. San Francisco, California: Harper SanFrancisco.Hesiod. 76). It is thisthat enables Kronos to become the king of the gods (Campbell, 1987, p. In that regard, Campbell compares theunfolding of the generations of the gods in the Theogony to the unfolding,or more exactly development, of the human personality from procreation,through birth, and toward full psychological individuation (Campbell, 1987,pp. Campbell says"he cannot kill his children" (p. 87-1 3.Campbell, J. 39) of a birth of an aspect ofexperience from its opposite. 16), whereas Ouranos confines his childrento their mother's womb, Kronos confines his to his own body. Hesiod's theogony. Offspring generate motive power in Ouranos and conflict in Gaia,and suddenly the creative principle itself becomes involved with affectingcontingent outcomes. (1987). Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Information Group, Inc. Zeustakes the absorption of the female principle one step further than Kronosdid when, to imprison his offspring, he swallows his wife. Indeed, the emergence of the Titansintroduces consciousness and contingency into the Creation well before thearrival of Zeus. Hesiod's Theogony. Thus she enablesKronos to attack and castrate (as he thinks) Ouranos, though Ouranos'sblood striking her is enough to result in the birth of a race of giants andnymphs on the earth. Caldwell (Trans.). Over the narrative course of the Theogony, the increasing contingencyof the cosmos--separate and apart from the meaningful arrival of humanbeings and/or demigods such as Perseus--seems to be devolving not so muchtoward radical individuation as back toward Chaos. Campbell focuses on the physical element ofsemen, or the sea foam, that generates Aphrodite. Gaia, who cannotescape the creative principle of her nature, chooses to see the product ofher creativity blossom rather than suppressed by Ouranos. R.S. However one explains the way in which Zeus becomes master of theuniverse--and the fact that ultimate rulership is specified as maleundoubtedly has parallels in the whole of recorded human experience--it isnecessary to see that the transition of cosmic rule flows from a creativeprinciple as the fundamental element of the cosmos to an active principle.The creative principle from Chaos is not inactive, but it belongs to aclass of action different from that undertaken in a specific context. The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments: King James Version. With each new god, goddess, or class of being that thecreative principle introduces over the course of the Theogony, the originalfoundation of creation becomes increasingly diffuse, increasinglycontingent, as if the offspring of creation down the generations cannotadhere to their mother's (and soon enough grandmother's) original intent.In any case, they do not. 4 ;Campbell, 1987, p. Zeus's conquest of the universe helps explain, forexample, the intractability of the idea that, whatever contingencies mayarise in human experience, male strength and privilege in human culture andhistory are a matter of cosmic inevitability and rightness. For Aphrodite is a personifiedcontradiction, generated out of anger and, as often as not, generatingbetween sex partners psychoemotional cleavage as powerful as thepsychophysical intimacy that the partners seek. 37). Meanwhile, the originalactors in the cosmos resist any meaningful change, which implies arelinquishment of ultimate power. Refinement of motive, exploitation, and craft continue as thegenerations of cosmic creation continue, and it is Kronos's fate to beoutdone by Zeus. It becomes necessary for the male tooutthink the female partner in order to retain that all-important controlof creation and the behavior within it. In the process, it confronts other powers and other selves,ineluctably creating and/or journeying toward and through uncertainties andambiguities. 38). 89-91). 123), is another. Possibly this has something to do with anidiosyncratic cosmic vision and the fact that she herself transitions fromusing parthenogenesis to as it were old-fashioned procreation as her methodof structuring the cosmic context. The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959-1987. ButGaia's creation is not perfect, and as it develops, deviance becomes therule, not the exception. Campbell likens this scheme of behavior to whatdevelopmental psychology refers to as increasing individuation (p. But another way of interpreting thisunwillingness to kill his children, which gets closer to the idea ofeventual male dominance of the cosmos, is that Kronos absorbs the femaleprinciple, which as Gaia's faithfulness to her all-too-often unattractivechildren demonstrates, is adherence to the creative rather than destructiveprinciple. This comes about because of the existence of existenceitself. 27- 85.National Publishing Company. By parthenogenesis the Earth Gaiacreates Ouranos, the sky, as well as Ourea, or mountains, and Pontos, thesea. Newburyport, Massachusetts: Focus Information Group, Inc. 36), the ocean, and his siblings, all of whom become the Titans, andnone of whom, it appears, were children of whom a father could be proud.Indeed, some were monsters, from the one-eyed Kyklopes to the hundred-handed Gyges. 3). 15).The self-destruction implied by violation of taboo speaks for itself.Ouranos seeks to confine his children but is outdone by the crafty Kronos,in what, for want of a better comparison, could be called an Oedipalenactment of patricide, which is itself a taboo, and which does not preventcrafty Kronos from trying to suppress his own offspring. Attempts toeliminate ambiguity and imperfection from the creative process are asfruitless for the gods, including Zeus, as are similar attempts toeliminate ambiguity from human experience. Hesiod's text is that Zeus"deceived her [Metis's] mind with a / trick of wily words" (Hesiod, 1987, . But by now the manipulation of that principle is lodged in maleconsciousness, and it is linked to the principle of action, for after allthe confined offspring have had to manipulate their way out of paternalsuppression. Ultimately Kronos starts a self-defeatingconfinement, for the offspring that are in part his creation and that hecannot bring himself to kill turn out to have their own opinions about howtheir creaturely experience should unfold, thank you. Introduction. Hesiod's Theogony. Aphrodite is oneexample; Pandora, who causes endless trouble and who Campbell indicates isan aspect of Ouranos's revenge against his Titan sons (Hesiod, 1987, p. The context had to be apresent fact, and it had to be acted upon through the behavior of cosmicpersonalities, before any mere mortal could come to a conclusion about whythe facts of given experience are as they are (or anyway seem to beimmutably as they are). 9 ).Indeed, the offspring that Ouranos create seem to bluster into the cosmosalready carrying contingency and ambiguity with them. It must be noted that the appearance of offspring is, in thecosmic era, itself a first-time creation, and among the first lords of theuniverse novelty is not necessarily a cosmic benefit. Creation, the female principle, precedes action. Begin with the hypothesis that the Creation may havebeen benevolent, or even a positive good, as the Hebrew Bible declares(Gen. By way of cosmic upheaval and male craft, the male standard assertsitself as a given in human experience. 33-4). But that does not preventcontingency, resistance, and subversion from asserting themselves as well.The gods' special cosmic status overwhelms the incest taboos that are acommonplace of human civilization, but the incestuous cosmic offspring thatresult foster ambiguity and tension that are not resolved in cosmic time--not even by Zeus. Just as with the usual course of human development comes anincreasing consciousness of ambiguity and contingency, so the course of theTheogony show increasing contingency. 36) andproves to be a match for the sheer weight of Ouranos's srength. (1987). Campbell attributes this feature ofcosmic contingency to the fact that creation proceeded from an incestuousmating between mother (Gaia) and son (Ouranos) and that this pattern wasrepeated down the generations of the gods since "at this early point ofcosmic history, he knows of no alternate behavior" (Campbell, 1987, p. According to Campbell (p. 16) and thus explains his deviation fromOuranos's suppression method. Even the efforts of the Creatorfall before the energy embedded in the urge to break out of confinement.Or, to put it another way, the creation--the thing created, male and female--continually seeks a way to realize its own creative power, its ownselfhood. ReferencesCaldwell, R.S. (2 ). From that point ofview, Zeus's victory over Kronos represents the victory of the principle ofcreation over the behavior of the creator. Confinement of offspring, i.e.,of the creative principle, can be broadly interpreted as a taboo of itsown. However, the authentic power of the sea only emerges when Gaia (earth)mates with Ouranos (sky), producing "deep-whirling Okeanos" (Hesiod, 1987,p.
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