Ouranos
Ouranos EuropeHesiod in the seventh century BC traced the genealogy of the Greek gods back to the divine pair Ouranos and Gaia, sky and earth. Passionate was their relationship, since Ouranos ‘drawing near and spreading out in all directions, eager from love, enveloped the earth in all directions’.But it was also destructive: Ouranos permanently coupling with Gaia meant that the sky could hold back their children in the earth's womb. One of these buried offspring, Kronos, the youngest son, determined to overthrow the sky father of hated name. Gaia having conceived a mighty sickle with sharp teeth, Kronos swung this weapon so well that he cut off Ouranos' phallus within the earth's body. Emasculated sky was thus separated from earth—pushed asunder as in West Asian myth by the first of the gods—and from his blood Gaia conceived the‘ strong ones’, the Erinyes, the Titans, and other creatures, while the fallen phallus engendered in the sea Aphrodite....
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