Chronos

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.
—B. Banzai

I was thinking about the first day of the new year, and how today of all days represents new beginnings. Which got me thinking about the very first beginning.

The Start
The origins of the universe can be described in numerous ways, depending on one’s point of view. For the Ancient Greeks, part of the creation story involves the union of Uranos and Gaia—that is to say, the sky and the earth. Cosmologists may characterize the same union as the moment of the appearance and expansion of three dimensional space (the Universe, the heavens) to accomodate the matter (the stuff that would eventually form into worlds, stars, galaxies, etc.) and energy exploding forth from the big bang. But in order for any of it to occur within our own proto-universe/first-principle/singularity, time had to be conceived. And so in the caldera of the birthing universe, God separated the firmament from the waters, and Gaia bore Uranos many sons and daughters, but the most important was Chronos.

Chronos was the youngest child of that union, and they all came to be called the Titans. But Uranos was fearful of his children, as they might turn against him someday and overthrow him. So he kept them contained deep within Tartarus—the very womb of Gaia, Mother Earth—and he filled her with himself to block their only way of escape.

The Middle
Excruciatingly locked in an embrace of procreation with no hope of release, Gaia called silently to her children to end her torment and drive out Uranos. They heard. From the strongest metals found deep within the earth, the Titans fashioned a sickle. Chronos, the last child conceived, but the first to be born, turned toward the only way out, and struck at his father. As the Gaia pushed the Titans forth, Chronos swung his sickle, castrating Uranos. His testicles fell into the sea. The churning foam would eventually bring forth Aphrodite and her son Eros (which could be thought of as the strong and weak gravitational forces of attraction, causing the coalescence of the heavenly bodies). And Chronos came to embody the flow of time and the relentless, revolutionary change it eventually brings to all, from the powerless to the most mighty.

Free from the despotic rule of their father, the Titans grew and lived on the green fields of Mother Earth. Chronos took Uranos’ throne and the Titan Rhea as his wife. But Chronos was too much like his father, and feared for his own eventual dethronement. But instead of containing his children in the womb of Rhea, he contained them within himself by swallowing them whole.

The End
Rhea turned to her mother. Gaia had by now taken up with Pontus, the beautiful sea, who treated her much better than Uranos ever did. Rhea asked her mother for her advice. So when the time came, Rhea gave birth to Zeus. Then she did as her mother instructed. Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to her husband. He swallowed it without a second thought. Zeus was taken to a hidden cave and eventually grew to manhood. And Chronos was eventually usurped by Zeus, who had allied himself with the Cyclopses and the Cubewanos—the Hundred Limbed Ones—whom Chronos had banished deep within the caves of the earth, and where Zeus had come to play as a boy.

And Chronos again came to embody the flow of time and the revolutionary change it eventually brings to all. The great cosmic wheel turns, and the direction of the Fates’ shuttle changes at a moment’s notice betwixt warp and wheft. Good times can change to bad, and then change to good again.

And the next time you see one of those ridiculous cartoons of the baby and the old man with the sickle for the celebration of New Year, remember that now you know what’s really going on in that picture.

Happy New Year from the Mercuriosity Shop!

Some of you may notice that the bearded “Father Time” himself has posed for my third transverse glamour lens photo, sporting a pointed pilgrim’s hat and his billowing, outstretched cloak. And he agreed to have his story told, citing “some mistakes were made during his youth”. One can clearly see the chilling open space in his ribcage where the children were kept.

Posted by Ned at janvier 01, 2003 08:22 PM