Shownotes Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In this video, we're going to take a look at the unborn god who would have been the most powerful god in all of Greek mythology. Were he born, Zeus was fated to be overthrown by him. Like the rising sun bringing a new day, his coming would have been the inauguration of a new age. This god's power would have been supreme, unrivaled by any other. All other gods would have been forced to bend the knee or face destruction, Zeus most of all. To understand this story, we have to take a look at the Greek creation myth, for which the driving force is a vicious cycle of son supplanting father, each generation more powerful than the one before. From chaos, the great void, emerged five primordial deities. One of these, Gaia, the personification of the earth, independently produced three second generation primordial deities, aspects of the observable world. These were Ourea, the mountains, Pontus, the sea, and Uranus, the sky. Gaia took Uranus as her consort, and from their union came the Hecatonchires, the Cyclopes, and the first generation of Titans. Uranus thought the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes were abominations, so he kept them trapped inside of Gaia; but he allowed the titans to be born. Having many of her children trapped inside of her was excruciating for Gaia, so she beseeched her children to champion her and rebel against their father. Only Cronus, the youngest, was audacious and ambitious enough to answer his mother's plea. With a grey sickle of adamant, cronus hid. The next time Uranus went to envelope Gaia in a sexual embrace, cronus ambushed him and castrated him, casting the severed genitals into the sea. This act separated earth from sky and ushered in a new era, the rule of the titans, with Cronus as king of the cosmos, but he would not keep the crown forever.