Time, Human Consciousness and Hesiod's Theogony
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A number of years ago I remembered making a connection between Zeus' defeat of his father, Cronos, and the emergence of human consciousness.
Cronos, ruler of the Titans during the "golden age" had learned that that his son, Zeus, was fated to vanquish him.
"For he had learned from Earth and starry Heaven
That it was fated for him, powerful though he was,
To be overthrown by his child, through the scheming of Zeus."- Hesiod's Theogony, 467-469
Disturbed by this knowledge, after the birth of each of his sons he
"Swallowed them all down as soon as each
Issued from Rheia’s holy womb onto her knees, With the intent that only he among the proud Ouranians
Should hold the title of King among the Immortals. "- Hesiod's Theogony, 464-466
Rheia, his wife, suffered immeasurable grief. She snuck away to Lyctos where in the dark of Mount Aigaion, she birthed her youngest, Zeus, and hid him in a cave.
She gave to her tyrant husband a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow in place of her precious one which he did without hesitation.
Meanwhile, Zeus, hidden away from his Father's wrath, matured into boyhood and began to flex his glorious muscles.
Overcome by Earth's clever suggestions,
"A great devious Cronos, gulled by Earth’s
Clever suggestions, vomited up his offspring,
[Overcome by the wiles and power of his son]
The stone first, which he’d swallowed last."- Hesiod's Theogony, 497-500
After which Zeus, having freed the other titans that his grandfather Ouranos had bound in Tartarus, was gifted by them as a sign of their gratitude the mighty thunderbolt, which he used to subdue his father and claim his seat as Ruler of Gods.
Now, what does any of this have to do with human consciousness?
The english words, "chronology", "chronic", "chronometer" are derived from the greek Cronos, which means time. Now, Cronos, the ruler of the world during the golden age, ate each of his sons out of jealousy of being overturned by one of them.
That represents the structure of time, in which each passing moment is devoured by the subsequent one.
Without sufficiently developed consciousness, the entire world is governed by this primordial time. Everything develops according to causes which themselves are blind as to the past or the future. The flow of time with its causal determinism is unbroken (i.e the development of a star, of galaxies, of planets, etc. is governed by material causes each of which is fully determined by the previous one).
Zeus represents the human archetype.
Zeus, with the help of his mother, is able to disrupt the tyranny of primordial time. With sufficient consciousness, the mind is able, through an awareness of the past and the future, to shape the world according to what it perceives as good, not what time already had determined for it.
Whenever we act in a way that weighs the evidence of the past with the probability of the future, we are doing something that even the Greeks (I think) recognizied as having incalculable value. We are doing something that not even stars and galaxies can do. We are shaping time, hence the worship of Zeus.
Of interest, it is directly after the myth of Zeus' defeating his father that Prometheus, the myth containing the first humans, appears.
