Nature of Mythology
Hesiod’s poem the Theogony reports the origin. Eros, Abyss, Erebus, and Gaia the earth and several other Greek gods and divine creatures came out of the void. Uranus the sky was given birth to by Gaia without male assistance, which then fertilized her. Born from their union were six men namely, Hyperion, Cronus, Iapetus, Oceanus, Coeus, and six women: Phoebe, Rhea, Theia, Mnemosyne Themis, and Tethys. An “emptiness named chaos” means the empty state before the cosmos’ creation. “Empty” and “chaos” have a literal meaning of a gap, the space between heaven and earth. Uranus or Sky’s father was the primordial Mother Earth’s son and husband of Gaia. Uranus was conceived by Gaia alone, according to Hesiod’s Theogony. The idea of Uranus is particularly bizarre as Gaia (earth) conceived him by himself as a woman without male fertilization, and later became his wife.
As he lay with Gaea at night, Gaia and Cronus set up a Uranus ambush. Cronus took his father and castrated him with the stone’s sickle, throwing his genitals into the ocean. Uranus’ fate is not obvious. Either he died, withdrew, or exiled to Italy. All this came after Gaia became furious at Uranus because he threw into the abyss, the Hecatonchires, and the one-eyed Cyclopes.
This motif was reiterated after Zeus challenged Cronus his father, Zeus, for father-against-son conflict. Zeus confronted Cronus to fight for the gods’ kingdom. And Zeus and his brothers were victorious after being helped by the Cyclops who was freed by Zeus Tartarus, whereas Chronus and the Titans were exiled into the Abyss. Cronus was afraid he’d be betrayed as he did to his father by his offsprings, so he would snatch the child and eat it when Rhea gave birth. Rhea was not pleased with this so he tricked him feeding him a stone which he had wrapped in baby’s blanket and he hid Zeus. No, I would not tell my children this is the origin story simply because of the violent nature of events that are narrated, especially the betrayal and change of power.