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

76 CHAPTER 10
Chaos, as absolutely unordered, disorganized Indefiniteness, \AappleÂÈÚ›·.
(Reversion of the Hesiodic series Chaos-Night suggests that we are in
an Orphic environment). Light (as the brightness of day) is the
shining radiance of Phanes = Eros = Protogonus. The first generation
of Gods consist of the Titans, the second of the Olympians. To the
second belongs the World-Creation with Zeus as Creator, regulator of
the final, perfected, harmonious Ordering (in contradistinction to the
first elementary creation of Phanes, prefiguring the fully developed
cosmic order). The fact that anthropogony is mentioned last in a
separate place from the other cosmic processes probably relates to
Dionysus’ dismemberment by the Titans, their being in turn struck by
Zeus’ thunderbolt, and the fashioning of human species from their
blood. The Orphic basis of this Theogony is therefore undoubtable.
(The absense of so important a feature of Orphic cosmogony as the
Cosmic Egg is most probably to be accounted for from Irenaeus’
selection; in any case, wherever there is Phanes-Protogonus there is
also the Egg, presupposed and preexisting).
The Orphic Theogonic poetry that is philosophically commented
upon in the famous Derveni papyrus 32 contains the common
succession Ouranos-Cronos-Zeus with Night on top as Cronos’
mother. Three, in all likelihood successive, verses are as follows:
(KÚfiÓÔÓ) n˜ ̤Á’ öÚÂÍÂÓ
ΧΙV, 5
OéÚ·ÓeÓ EéÊÚÔÓ›‰ËÓ n˜ appleÚÒÙÈÛÙÔ˜ ‚·Û›Ï¢ÛÂÓØ
XIV, 6
âÎ ÙÔÜ ‰c KÚfiÓÔ˜ ·sÙȘ, öappleÂÈÙ· ‰b ÌËÙ›ÂÙ· Z‡˜.
ΧV, 6
There is also Protogonus who was the very first to be manifested in
the Aether and was later swallowed, according to the Orphics, by Zeus
when he (Zeus) was about to start, according to the preordained
decrees, the second and perfect Creation, that is to say the actualized,
definite and concrete hypostasis of the things prefigured in the earlier
elementary Creation by Protogonus (XIII, 4 sqq. XVI, 3 sqq.).
Ouranos was basically born from mother Night alone as a single
parent, and that is why he is named after the mother. Sometimes,
however, we find in theogonic Cosmogonies the phrase “X (female)