ABSTRACT
In the beginning was Chaos: not only disorder, as we understand the word today, but openness and possibility (the verb kaino means for something to throw itself open). Then came Gaea, the Earth (106-7), who generated Uranus, the sky, who resembled her (126-7). As an extension of herself, not through coupling. The earth was female and the seat of the chthonic deities, and the center of worship and ritual for the ancient Mediterranean peoples. The sky was male and the seat of the Olympian gods, who received the devotion of the new patriarchal civilization. The myth informs us as to who came first and who came second, by splitting off from the first.
