origins of the universe
According to mythology, everything was created out of the initial ‘void’ called Chaos. Out of this void came Gaia, the Earth as well as Eros, The Abyss, and Erebus, representing love, the abyss and darkness. Gaia then gave birth to Uranus, the sky and they had offspring together, creating the first of the titans. The earlier ‘beings’ in Greek myth were not entirely seperate and individual entities, as many of them were, and represented, physical things or concepts. The titans however were different. Gaia and Uranus gave birth to 12 titans, 6 males and 6 females. The most terrible of these children was Cronus whom the Greeks saw as cruel and chaotic and who has often been associated with time, hence the english word chronological. Cronus grew jealous of his father's power, and with the permission of his mother, he took a sickle and castrated his father. Cronus then took his sister Rhea as his consort and they ruled as king and queen over the world and the other titans.
For more information on the Titans, follow this link : http://www.crystalinks.com/titans.html
The cruel titan king heard a prophecy however that he would be overthrown by his own son just as he had done to Uranus. Cronus became obsessed and paranoid, and in an attempt to defy the prophecy he decided that he would eat all of his children as soon as they were born. One by one he swallowed them until his wife Rhea had had enough, and with help from Gaia she hid one of the children, Zeus and raised him in secret, giving Cronus a stone wrapped in child’s blankets which he swallowed, thinking it was his son. When Zeus was fully grown he fed his father a drugged drink, causing him to throw up, releasing all his other children that had been trapped there all along. This new generation of gods, led by Zeus were to be called the Olympians, as Greek legend places their home at the top of mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece. The Olympians rose up and waged war with the titans for kingship over the gods. The Olympians won the war and the Titans were banished to Tartarus, a prison in the deepest, darkest part of Hades (Hell).
All the gods patronised certain parts of nature or concepts and thus, with the Olympian gods in power, Earth came to be as it was in the Ancient Greek world.
For more information on the Titans, follow this link : http://www.crystalinks.com/titans.html
The cruel titan king heard a prophecy however that he would be overthrown by his own son just as he had done to Uranus. Cronus became obsessed and paranoid, and in an attempt to defy the prophecy he decided that he would eat all of his children as soon as they were born. One by one he swallowed them until his wife Rhea had had enough, and with help from Gaia she hid one of the children, Zeus and raised him in secret, giving Cronus a stone wrapped in child’s blankets which he swallowed, thinking it was his son. When Zeus was fully grown he fed his father a drugged drink, causing him to throw up, releasing all his other children that had been trapped there all along. This new generation of gods, led by Zeus were to be called the Olympians, as Greek legend places their home at the top of mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece. The Olympians rose up and waged war with the titans for kingship over the gods. The Olympians won the war and the Titans were banished to Tartarus, a prison in the deepest, darkest part of Hades (Hell).
All the gods patronised certain parts of nature or concepts and thus, with the Olympian gods in power, Earth came to be as it was in the Ancient Greek world.