In the context of religious cosmogony,Chaos (Ancient Greek:χάος,romanized: kháos) refers to the division of reality outside or in contrast to the ordered cosmos. As such it refers to a state, place, or time beyond the known, familiar, and reliable world, often said to be inhabited by strange, ominous, or demonic beings.[1]
According to thecreation of the universe (the cosmos) inearly Greek cosmology, Chaos was the first being to exist.
Greekkháos (χάος) means 'emptiness, vast void,chasm,abyss',[a] related to the verbskháskō (χάσκω) andkhaínō (χαίνω) 'gape, be wide open', fromProto-Indo-European*ǵʰeh₂n-,[2] cognate toOld Englishgeanian, 'to gape', whence Englishyawn.[3]
It may also mean space, the expanse of air, the nether abyss, or infinitedarkness.[4]Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 6th century BC) interpretschaos as water, like something formless that can be differentiated.[5]
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Hesiod and thepre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context ofcosmogony. Hesiod's Chaos has been interpreted as either "the gaping void above the Earth created when Earth and Sky are separated from their primordial unity" or "the gaping space below the Earth on which Earth rests".[6] Passages in Hesiod'sTheogony suggest that Chaos was located below Earth but aboveTartarus.[7][8] Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such asHeraclitus.
InHesiod'sTheogony, Chaos was the first thing to exist: "at first Chaos came to be" (or was),[9] but next (possibly out of Chaos) cameGaia,Tartarus, andEros (elsewhere the nameEros is used for a son ofAphrodite).[b] Unambiguously "born" from Chaos wereErebus andNyx.[10][11] For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have borne children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy", beyond which lived theTitans;[12] and, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus's thunderbolts.[13]
The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception ofimmortality.[14] The main object of the first efforts to explain the world remained the description of its growth, from a beginning. They believed that the world arose out from a primal unity, and that this substance was the permanent base of all its being.Anaximander claims that the origin isapeiron (the unlimited), a divine and perpetual substance less definite than the common elements (water,air,fire, andearth) as they were understood to the early Greek philosophers. Everything is generated fromapeiron, and must return there according to necessity.[15] A conception of the nature of the world was that the earth below its surface stretches down indefinitely and has its roots on or aboveTartarus, the lower part of the underworld.[16] In a phrase ofXenophanes, "The upper limit of the earth borders on air, near our feet. The lower limit reaches down to the "apeiron" (i.e. the unlimited)."[16] The sources and limits of the earth, the sea, the sky,Tartarus, and all things are located in a great windy-gap, which seems to be infinite, and is a later specification of "chaos".[16][17]
InAristophanes's comedyBirds, first there was Chaos, Night, Erebus, and Tartarus, from Night came Eros, and from Eros and Chaos came the race of birds.
At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus. Earth, the air and heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light. That of the Immortals did not exist until Eros had brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage Heaven, Ocean, Earth, and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being. Thus our origin is very much older than that of the dwellers in Olympus. We [birds] are the offspring of Eros; there are a thousand proofs to show it. We have wings and we lend assistance to lovers. How many handsome youths, who had sworn to remain insensible, have opened their thighs because of our power and have yielded themselves to their lovers when almost at the end of their youth, being led away by the gift of a quail, a waterfowl, a goose, or a cock.[18]
InPlato'sTimaeus, the main work of Platonic cosmology, the concept of chaos finds its equivalent in the Greek expressionchôra, which is interpreted, for instance, as shapeless space (chôra) in which material traces (ichnê) of the elements are in disordered motion (Timaeus 53a–b). However, the Platonicchôra is not a variation of theatomistic interpretation of the origin of the world, as is made clear by Plato's statement that the most appropriate definition of the chôra is "a receptacle of all becoming – its wetnurse, as it were" (Timaeus 49a), notabene a receptacle for the creative act of the demiurge, the world-maker.[19]
Aristotle, in the context of his investigation of the concept of space in physics, "problematizes the interpretation of Hesiod's chaos as 'void' or 'place without anything in it'.[20] Aristotle understands chaos as something that exists independently of bodies and without which no perceptible bodies can exist. 'Chaos' is thus brought within the framework of an explicitly physical investigation. It has now outgrown the mythological understanding to a great extent and, in Aristotle's work, serves above all to challenge the atomists who assert the existence of empty space."[19]
ForOvid, (43 BC – 17/18 AD), in hisMetamorphoses, Chaos was an unformed mass, where all the elements were jumbled up together in a "shapeless heap".[21]
Before the ocean and the earth appeared—before the skies had overspread them all—
the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste.
It was a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight;
and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap.[22]
According to theFabulae (c. 2nd century AD), attributed toHyginus: "From Mist (Caligo) came Chaos. From Chaos and Mist, came Night (Nox), Day (Dies), Darkness (Erebus), andAether."[23][c] AnOrphic tradition apparently had Chaos as the son ofChronus andAnanke.[24]
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Since the classic 1895 German workSchöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit byHermann Gunkel, various historians in the field of modernbiblical studies have associated the theme of chaos in the earlier Babylonian cosmology with theGenesis creation narrative.[25] One locus of focus has been with respect to the termabyss /tohu wa-bohu inGenesis 1:2. The term may refer to a state of non-being before creation[26] or to a formless state. In theBook of Genesis, the spirit of God is moving upon the face of the waters, displacing the earlier state of the universe that is likened to a "watery chaos" upon which there ischoshek (which translated from the Hebrew is darkness/confusion).[14] This model of a primordialstate of matter has been opposed by theChurch Fathers from the 2nd century, who posited acreationex nihilo by an omnipotentGod.[27]
Some scholars, however, reject the association between biblical creation and notions of chaos from Babylonian myths. The basis is that the terms themselves in Genesis 1:2 are not semantically related to chaos, and that the entire cosmos exists in a state of chaos in Babylonian myth, whereas at most this can be said of the earth in Genesis.[28] TheSeptuagint makes no use ofχάος in the context of creation, instead using the term forגיא, "cleft, gorge, chasm", inMicah 1:6 andZachariah 14:4.[29] TheVulgate, however, renders the χάσμα μέγα or "great gulf" betweenheaven andhell inLuke 16:26 aschaos magnum.
According to theGnosticOn the Origin of the World, Chaos was not the first thing to exist. When the nature of the immortalaeons was completed,Sophia desired something like thelight which first existed to come into being. Her desire appears as a likeness with incomprehensible greatness that covers the heavenly universe, diminishing its inner darkness while a shadow appears on the outside which causes Chaos to be formed. From Chaos, every deity including theDemiurge is born.[30]
The Greco-Roman tradition ofprima materia, notably including the 5th- and 6th-centuryOrphic cosmogony, was merged with biblical notions (Tehom) inChristianity and inherited byalchemy andRenaissance magic.[citation needed]
The cosmic egg of Orphism was taken as the raw material for the alchemicalmagnum opus in early Greek alchemy. The first stage of the process of producing thephilosopher's stone, i.e.,nigredo, was identified with chaos. Because of association with theGenesis creation narrative, where "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2), Chaos was further identified with theclassical element ofWater.
Ramon Llull (1232–1315) wrote aLiber Chaos, in which he identifies Chaos as the primal form or matter created by God. Swiss alchemistParacelsus (1493–1541) useschaos synonymously with "classical element" (because the primeval chaos is imagined as a formless congestion of all elements). Paracelsus thus identifiesEarth as "the chaos of thegnomi", i.e., the element of thegnomes, through which these spirits move unobstructed as fish do through water, or birds through air.[31] An alchemical treatise byHeinrich Khunrath, printed in Frankfurt in 1708, was entitledChaos.[32] The 1708 introduction states that the treatise was written in 1597 in Magdeburg, in the author's 23rd year of practicing alchemy.[33] The treatise purports to quote Paracelsus on the point that "[t]he light of the soul, by the will of the Triune God, made all earthly things appear from the primal Chaos".[34]Martin Ruland the Younger, in his 1612Lexicon Alchemiae, states, "A crude mixture of matter or another name forMateria Prima isChaos, as it is in the Beginning."
The termgas inchemistry was coined by Dutch chemistJan Baptist van Helmont in the 17th century directly based on theParacelsian notion of chaos. Theg ingas is due to the Dutch pronunciation of this letter as aspirant, also employed to pronounce Greekχ.[35]
InHawaiian folklore, a triad of deities known as the "Ku-Kaua-Kahi" (a.k.a. "Fundamental Supreme Unity") were said to have existed before and during Chaos ever since eternity, or put in Hawaiian terms,mai ka po mai, meaning "from the time of night, darkness, Chaos". They eventually broke the surroundingPo ("night"), and light entered the universe. Next the group created three heavens for dwelling areas together with the Earth, Sun, Moon, stars, and assistant spirits.[36]
The termchaos has been adopted in moderncomparative mythology andreligious studies as referring to the primordial state before creation, strictly combining two separate notions of primordial waters or a primordial darkness from which a new order emerges and a primordial state as a merging of opposites, such as heaven and earth, which must be separated by a creator deity in an act ofcosmogony.[37] In both cases, chaos referring to a notion of a primordial state contains the cosmosin potentia but needs to be formed by ademiurge before the world can begin its existence.
The use ofchaos in the derived sense of "complete disorder or confusion" first appears in ElizabethanEarly Modern English, originally implying satirical exaggeration.[38] "Chaos" in the well-defined sense ofchaotic complex system is in turn derived from this usage.
And beyond, away from all the gods, live the Titans, beyond gloomy Chaos
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