Yes, this is where your Yoghurt comes from: An Intro to Greek Mythology

You find yourself in Greece one day, staring at the large impression of a very muscular looking man with a thunderbolt in his hand. You look at it intently, trying to examine the intricacies that were painted into that statue by the ancient Greeks - the colours, which have been faded, the lightning symbol, the royal facade, the beautifully sound architecture surrounding him, which makes you wonder but one thing - is that a king? If so, it doesn't seem like a normal one, right? I mean, what king has the powers to wield lightning outside of fictional novels written by dreamers and lunatics alike? A man in a very stylish Greek poncho appears next to you, and as if by magic, hears what you’re thinking. “Zeus” he says, in a matter-of-fact manner. “King of the Gods, The Olympian of all Olympians, and the poster boy for Greek Mythology” and before you could possibly answer, he disappears, as if to taunt your insignificantly tiny brain to visit a country, and not know its gods.

Do you wish to avoid a judgy look by a man in a poncho? Read on, and you might just survive!

Greek Mythology began in a very similar fashion to other mythologies in that the creation of the universe was done by one person, or yet, the creation of the universe created one entity with it, named Chaos, who then gave birth to Nyx, Gaea, Tartarus, Erebos and Eros.

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These five gods became the artists, architects and creators of the world as it is right now, albeit using some inbreeding, which wasn’t just an expansion technique for the Greek gods but also a leisurely trend (more on that later, though) Nyx was the goddess of the night, Gaea was the goddess of the earth, Erebos was the realm where souls went right after they had died, Eros was the primordial being who represented love and Tartarus was the vile and horrifying place where criminals, enemies of gods and creatures of such monstrosity were punished and imprisoned. Thus, Night, Love, Chaos, The realms of the underworld, and the earth worked together to make a world fertile for human life. That is where the fluff of Greek Myth begins.

Expanding on the origins of Greek mythology itself, especially explaining the relationships between gods in writing would take longer than it took Master Chaos to actually create the universe, so let’s condense the story a bit - a jump cut there, a timeline jump there, nothing too detailed.

Once upon a time, Gaea, the daughter of Chaos, created Ouranus or Uranus for you Romans, the primordial god of the sky. She ended up marrying him (thus, the inbreeding begins) in the holy matrimony between the earth and the sky, and had beautiful children. Gaea is said to have sired a lot of children, but we focus on the most important one - Chronus, the titan of time. He was the youngest among his siblings, but the bravest, smartest and the most murdery-est.

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After millennia of happy marriage, Gaea and Ouranus started having marriage problems. You know, he burst his clouds too often, and she quaked too much. So, she did the most normal thing and asked her son to kill his father. Yep. No questions asked. Chronus obliged, and after sufficiently chopping his father with his scythe into minced meat, he took over the rule from Ouranus as the king of the gods and primordial beings. If you’re counting, that is one for inbreeding and one patricide. The Greek family of gods was always happening. I wonder why they never made a show called ‘Keeping up with the Olympians’. It would have sold like hotcakes in my opinion. Huh. Anyway, another few hundred years passed in general mediocrity and Chronus made his empire very scary and very royal and all that. He eventually fell in love with this beautiful titaness named Rhea, who happened to be his sister (Inbreeding - 2) and married her. There really wasn’t a concept of free will back then, so assume that consent was involved for your sanity. I know I did.

They had lots of children too, but Chronus had this vision that made him believe that he would be killed by one of his own kids. This one day he had his daughter in his arms, and she radiated power - far more than Chronus ever had, and he kind of got a little jealous, which drove him to believe that Patricide! At the Greek Pantheon! would happen again.  You would guess he decided to love them more and avoid that, right? Happy ending! Nope. He ate them.

Everytime he had a child with Rhea, she would bring a beautiful baby to him, and he would swallow them like puchkas, one by one, down they went, until Rhea began to lament. She needed to do something, she thought, and when she had her youngest kid, she replaced him with a rock that Chronus swallowed. Ouch.

The child, named Zeus, was raised by eagles and nymphs until he was old enough to exact revenge on father dear, which he did in the most badass way possible. He became Chronus’ servant, who never realised he was sitting this close to his son everyday, and then, eventually, Zeus poisoned his wine. Chronus vomited, and out came fully grown olympian gods covered in holy and timely stomach bile. The gods then waged a war on the titans, until Zeus killed his father (Patricide - 2) and became the king of the gods. He built his castle on Mount Olympus, and every god living there became known as ‘Olympians’ after which, our modern stories of Greek mythology happen.

With me so far? Good. Learn more about these Olympians in my next blog, as I try to tell you about the wonderful twelve opinions, and their respective roles. Until then, you can go and make fun of that man in a poncho for assuming your unintelligence!