chapter 10 the monism of darkness and the dualism of limit and ...

MONISM OF DARKNESS - DUALISM OF LIMIT AND INDETERMINACY 65
some of the former ally with the latter in this titanic Fight and War.
Light wins; hence it reigns supreme and governs the World, but it also
reveres, and stands in awe of, Maternal Darkness 22 , the preceding but
hidden principle. Salient, integrated examples of such an articulation
are the Enuma Elish (the Babylonian Epic of Creation) and the
Hesiodic Theogony.
This basic structure varies in different places and people. The
crucial point of interest is that as we approach the Iranian Zoroastrian
world-model, the Struggle of Light and Darkness becomes all the
more intense, irreconcilable and in the end absolute as it comprises
even the very first principles in its convolution (Enuma Elish). There is
then no possibility of harmonious conjugation between the contrary
principles. In the Hittitic Epic of Kumarbi (and in the Song of
Ullikummi) recurring battles of gods are inscribed in the frame of
struggles for domination (as in the successions of kingship in the
Hesiodic Theogony), but the beginnings of things are not known 23 .
The Egyptian great War, by contrast, is a struggle between two
chthonic powers both potent but belonging to a more recent phase of
the theogonic series: the Osirian Horus and Seth represent the two
parties of Darkness, one that allies with Light in the constitution of
Cosmic Harmony, and another that opposes it.
7. The primary Greek experience coincided with the general
structure described above. Darkness gives birth to Light 24 and later
when her own aboriginal limitless Indeterminacy (àappleÂÈÚ›·) attains
limits through the working of her very offspring, the universal World
Order and Cosmic Harmony come into being. Primaeval Abyss’
chaotic condition includes not only the principle of mobility par
excellence, namely prolific fertility, but also the power of giving birth
to offspring characterized by limit and light, which limits and
brightens the infinity and darkness of its progenitor. Even in the epic
poem of Olympianism, the Iliad, the implicit cosmogony is one of the
Monism of Darkness, since it is She who is the very first principle. The
Titans are children of Heaven (OéÚ·Ó›ˆÓ˜ E 898) and (those that
fought with Cronos Ξ 279 against Zeus and his new order) lie in
Tartarus (Ξ 279) at the world’s extremities where the roots and outer
limits, the boundaries, of Earth and Sea exist (Θ 13-16, 478-481).
Among the Titans, Cronos and Iapetus are explicitly mentioned as