| (GRC)
«Ἦ τοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γένετ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα Γαῖ᾽ εὐρύστερνος, πάντων ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ [ἀθανάτων, οἳ ἔχουσι κάρη νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου, Τάρταρά τ᾽ ἠερόεντα μυχῷ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης,] ἠδ᾽ Ἔρος, ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, λυσιμελής, πάντων δὲ θεῶν πάντων τ᾽ ἀνθρώπων δάμναται ἐν στήθεσσι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν. Ἐκ Χάεος δ᾽ Ἔρεβός τε μέλαινά τε Νὺξ ἐγένοντο• Νυκτὸς δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ Αἰθήρ τε καὶ Ἡμέρη ἐξεγένοντο, οὓς τέκε κυσαμένη Ἐρέβει φιλότητι μιγεῖσα.» |
(IT)
«Dunque, per primo fu il Chaos, e poi Gaia dall'ampio petto, sede sicura per sempre di tutti gli immortali che tengono le vette dell'Olimpo nevoso, e Tartaro nebbioso nei recessi della terra dalle ampie strade, e poi Eros, il più bello fra gli dèi immortali, che rompe le membra, e di tutti gli dèi e di tutti gli uomini doma nel petto il cuore e il saggio consiglio. Da Chaos nacquero Erebo e nera Nyx. Da Nyx provennero Etere e Hemere che lei partorì concepiti con Erebo unita in amore.» |
| (Esiodo, Teogonia, 116-125. Traduzione di Graziano Arrighetti, in Esiodo Opere : 1998 Einaudi-Gallimard; 2007 Mondadori, p. 9) |
Esiodo lo descrive come eghéneto, non il principio quindi, ma ciò che da questo per primo appare:
| «"Primo di tutti fu il Caos", dice Esiodo (Theog. 116) è da notare che il verbo (γένετο, non ἤν) implica che non esisteva dall'eternità.» |
| (Herbert Jennings Rose. Caos in Dizionario di Antichità Classiche di Oxford, vol.1. Milano, Paoline, 1981, p. 375) |
| «Va notato che il Caos esiodeo non esiste da sempre: si manifesta d'improvviso e perdura, anche dopo che si sono sviluppati gli esseri divini, come uno spazio di fondo, un buco nero dell'universo.» |
| (Giulio Guidorizzi. Il mito greco vol.1 Gli dèi. Milano, Mondadori, 2009, p.1168) |
| «Caos il vuoto primordiale, una specie di gorgo buio che risucchia ogni cosa in un abisso senza fine paragonabile a una nera gola spalancata (χάσκω, "inghiotto")» |
| (Giulio Guidorizzi, Il mito greco. Gli dèi. vol.1, Milano, Mondadori, 2009, p.5) |
Lo scoliaste lo descrive come kenón, lo spazio vuoto tra cielo e terra dopo che una possibile unità originaria fu spezzata:
| «Il Caos è dunque emissione e secrezione verso gli elementi. Alcuni lo dicono acqua, altri aria (...) "Venne all’esistenza lo Spazio beante": Chaos è in rapporto a riversarsi; è un luogo vuoto che sta tra terra e cielo; infatti è venuto all’esistenza dall’invisibile.» |
| (Scolii a Esiodo, Teogonia, v. 116 Traduzione di Cesare Cassanmagnago. Op.cit, p.493)) |
Da notare che nella teogonia orfica riportata da Eudemo da Rodi e dal Papiro di Derveni in principio è la Notte (Nyx) e non Caos. Mentre nella teogonia di ispirazione orfica riportata da Aristofane in Gli uccelli Caos è all'origine unitamente a Erebo, Notte e Tartaro.
Così Filodemo di Gadara in Sulla pietà riassume, ad esempio, alcune differenti antiche dottrine teogoniche:
| «Alcuni autori sostengono che tutte le cose derivano dalla Notte e dal Tartaro, altri dall'Ade e dall'Etere; colui che scrisse la Titanomachia dice dall'Etere, Acusilao dal Caos primigenio; nei versi attribuiti a Museo è scritto che in principio era il Tartaro e la Notte.» |
| (Frammenti dei Presocratici (Diels-Kranz: 2 B 14); Traduzione di Gabriele Giannantoni in Presocratici, testimonianze e frammenti, tomo 1. Milano, Mondadori, 2009, p. 29) |
Anon.
/ from Voor-bereidselen tot de bybelsche wysheid, en gebruik der
heilige en kerkelijke historien etc (copper engraving of the origin of
universe)
Chaos (Ancient Greek: χάος, khaos) refers to the void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, or to the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth.
Etymology
Greek χάος means "emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss", from the verb χαίνω, "gape, be wide open, etc.", from Proto-Indo-European *ǵheh2n-, cognate to Old English geanian, "to gape", whence English yawn.It may also mean space, the expanse of air, the nether abyss or infinite darkness. Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 6th century BC) interprets chaos as water, like something formless which can be differentiated.
Greco-Roman tradition
Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context of cosmogony. 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".In Hesiod's Theogony, Chaos was the first thing to exist: "at first Chaos came to be" (or was) but next (possibly out of Chaos) came Gaia, Tartarus and Eros (elsewhere the son of Aphrodite). Unambiguously "born" from Chaos were Erebus and Nyx. For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have borne children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy", beyond which lived the Titans. And, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus' thunderbolts.
Passages in Hesiod's Theogony suggest that Chaos was located below Earth but above Tartarus. Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus.
The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception of immortality.[clarification needed]This idea of the divine as an origin[clarification needed] influenced the first Greek philosophers. 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 is apeiron (the unlimited), a divine and perpetual substance less definite than the common elements. Everything is generated from apeiron, and must return there according to necessity. A conception of the nature of the world was that the earth below its surface stretches down indefinitely and has its roots on or above Tartarus, the lower part of the underworld. In a phrase of Xenophanes, "The upper limit of the earth borders on air, near our feet. The lower limit reaches down to the "apeiron" (i.e. the unlimited)." 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".
In Aristophanes's comedy Birds, 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.For Ovid, (1st century BC), in his Metamorphoses, Chaos was an unformed mass, where all the elements were jumbled up together in a "shapeless heap".
- Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum
- unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe,
- quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles
- nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem
- non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum.
- 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.
Fifth-century Orphic cosmogony had a "Womb of Darkness" in which the Wind lay a Cosmic Egg whence Eros was hatched, who set the universe in motion.[citation needed]
Chaoskampf
The motif of Chaoskampf (German: [ˈkaːɔsˌkampf], "struggle against chaos") is ubiquitous in myth and legend, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon. The same term has also been extended to parallel concepts in the Middle East and North Africa, such as the abstract conflict of ideas in the Egyptian duality of Maat and Isfet or the battle of Horus and Set.The origins of the Chaoskampf myth most likely lie in the Proto-Indo-European religion[citation needed] whose descendants almost all feature some variation of the story of a storm god fighting a sea serpent representing the clash between the forces of order and chaos. Early work by German academics such as Gunkel and Bousset in comparative mythology popularized translating the mythological sea serpent as a "dragon." Indo-European examples of this mythic trope include Thor vs. Jörmungandr (Norse), Tarḫunz vs. Illuyanka (Hittite), Indra vs. Vritra (Vedic), Θraētaona vs. Aži Dahāka (Avestan) and Zeus vs. Typhon (Greek) among others. Non-Indo-European examples of this trope are Marduk vs. Tiamat, Yahweh vs. Leviathan (Hebrew), Susano'o vs. Yamata no Orochi (Japanese) and Mwindo vs. Kirimu (African).
Biblical tradition
Chaos has been linked with the term abyss/tohu wa-bohu of Genesis 1:2. The term may refer to a state of non-being prior to creation or to a formless state. In the Book of Genesis, the spirit of God is moving upon the face of the waters, displacing the earlier state of the universe which is likened to a "watery chaos" upon which there is choshek (which translated from the Hebrew is darkness/confusion).The Septuagint makes no use of χάος in the context of creation, instead using the term for גיא, "cleft, gorge, chasm", in Micah 1:6 and Zacharia 14:4. The Vulgate, however, renders the χάσμα μέγα or "great gulf" between heaven and hell in Luke 16:26 as chaos magnum.
This model of a primordial state of matter has been opposed by the Church Fathers from the 2nd century, who posited a creation ex nihilo by an omnipotent God.
In modern biblical studies, the term chaos is commonly used in the context of the Torah and their cognate narratives in Ancient Near Eastern mythology more generally. Parallels between the Hebrew Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish were established by Hermann Gunkel in 1910. Besides Genesis, other books of the Old Testament, especially a number of Psalms, some passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Book of Job are relevant.
Alchemy and Hermeticism
The Greco-Roman tradition of Prima Materia, notably including the 5th and 6th century Orphic cosmogony, was merged with biblical notions (Tehom) in Christianity and inherited by alchemy and Renaissance magic.The cosmic egg of Orphism was taken as the raw material for the alchemical magnum opus in early Greek alchemy. The first stage of the process of producing the philosopher's stone, i.e., nigredo, was identified with chaos. Because of association with the Genesis creation narrative, where "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2), Chaos was further identified with the classical element of Water.
Ramon Llull (1232–1315) wrote a Liber Chaos, in which he identifies Chaos as the primal form or matter created by God. Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) uses chaos synonymously with "classical element" (because the primeval chaos is imagined as a formless congestion of all elements). Paracelsus thus identifies Earth as "the chaos of the gnomi", i.e., the element of the gnomes, through which these spirits move unobstructed as fish do through water, or birds through air. An alchemical treatise by Heinrich Khunrath, printed in Frankfurt in 1708, was entitled Chaos. The 1708 introduction to the treatise states that the treatise was written in 1597 in Magdeburg, in the author's 23rd year of practicing alchemy. The treatise purports to quote Paracelsus on the point that "The light of the soul, by the will of the Triune God, made all earthly things appear from the primal Chaos." Martin Ruland the Younger, in his 1612 Lexicon Alchemiae, states, "A crude mixture of matter or another name for Materia Prima is Chaos, as it is in the Beginning."
The term gas in chemistry was coined by Dutch chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont in the 17th century directly based on the Paracelsian notion of chaos. The g in gas is due to the Dutch pronunciation of this letter as a spirant, also employed to pronounce Greek χ.
Modern usage
The term chaos has been adopted in modern comparative mythology and religious 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 of cosmogony. In both cases, chaos referring to a notion of a primordial state contains the cosmos in potentia but needs to be formed by a demiurge before the world can begin its existence.Use of chaos in the derived sense of "complete disorder or confusion" first appears in Elizabethan Early Modern English, originally implying satirical exaggeration. "Chaos" in the well-defined sense of chaotic complex system is in turn derived from this usage.
"Chaos magic" as a branch of contemporary occultism is a product of the 1970s.
Magnum Chaos, dalle tarsie del coro di Santa Maria Maggiore di Bergamo.
Scansione da libro di una fotografia di una tarsia lignea del coro della
Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore a Bergamo, opera di Giovan Francesco
Capoferri su disegno di Lorenzo Lotto
Wenceslas Hollar - Chaos (State 1)
Asiatic Devices Allusive to the Cosmogony, Engraved by Inigo Barlow
The Primordial Abyss
Chaos
Painting, 19.7 H x 15.7 W x 0.6 inMaria Polunina
Russia
Chaos and Creation
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chaos theory
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Chaos-Reborn-logo-chaotic.
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Patterns-In-Chaos-2008_Kerrie-Warren.
ChaosLogoFinal
chaos_by_radojavor
chaos-sphere
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ChaosGreekMythology
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ChaosGreekMythology
The_Big_Bang_by_OrderedChaos
chaos-the-creation
primordial_deities___chaos_by_paranoid_plague.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In his extended poem Metamorphoses (43 BC-17 AD) Ovid collected all the Greek myths about the transformation of gods and heroes into animals, plants and rocks and constructed a history of the world from the Creation out of Chaos to the time of the emperor Augustus. The first book describes Chaos and its “metamorphosis” into the Creation under the influence of one of the gods, who isolated the elements. A combination of epic poem, world history and cosmogony, Metamorphoses belongs to a tradition dating back to Hesiod’s Theogony. The artist Hendrick Goltzius (1565-1617) was one of the leading exponents of the school of mannerism in the Netherlands. His engravings illustrate Ovid’s conception of primeval Chaos: a scene of confusion, violence and disorder, like the molod tohu of the Jews, which the Creator gradually transforms, through a series of metamorphoses, into a harmonious, peaceful and ordered world.
Chaos or the Origin of the World in the 17th century.
In the 17th century writers and artists represented chaos as a formless,
irregular and confused mass of elements (particularly fire in this
illustration from The Temple of the Muses) and creatures of all kinds
from which, according to the ancient philosophers, the world was
created. It was therefore regarded as the first principle of the
Creation and the cradle of the universe, the physical equivalent of the
axiom ex nihilo nihil fit (“nothing is made from nothing”).
Le Chaos, ou l’Origine du Monde”, engraving by Picart. Paris, BNF
Le Chaos, ou l’Origine du Monde”, engraving by Picart. Paris, BNF
Chaos or the Origin of the World in the XXth century. In 1988 the
Russian physicist Andrei Linde suggested that in its initial state the
universe was chaotic – in other words, the quantum vacuum was not at all
homogeneous. According to his hypothesis many different universes were
created by different types of fluctuations, each with its own physical
properties, each in parallel with or embedded within the others so that
no communication between them was possible. In this computer simulation
of the origin of such universes, those whose early development underwent
a phase of rapid expansion (“inflation”) are the most prevalent
(indicated by the peaks), whereas those, like ours, which have expanded
relatively slowly are less common (indicated by the throughs).
Computer simulation, @A. Linde, Stanford University
Computer simulation, @A. Linde, Stanford University
Spacetime foam
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