Aether was an important god in early Greek mythology. He was a god of light and the bright blue sky. Although different sources attribute various genealogies to him, he was consistently viewed as a primordial deity, one of the earliest, and distinctly different from the more famous Olympian gods.
Who was Aether?
Aether was a primordial god who personified the bright air of the upper sky. To understand this, we must appreciate that the ancient Greeks believed daylight was not caused by the sun. While they could see that the sun was bright, they thought the sky was, too.
To the Greeks, Aether personified the bright air high in the sky. In contrast, the air close to the ground was transparent. They believed that night occurred when the goddess Nyx arrived and spread her dark mist across the sky, blocking out the light from Aether.
Therefore, Aether was an important part of the natural world. Unlike the Olympic gods, who were imagined to have bodily forms, the primordial gods were generally viewed as literally being the elements they personified.
In other words, the air of the upper sky literally was Aether. Indeed, the ancient Greeks used this word as the common noun for that substance. Aether’s dominion enveloped the sun, moon, and stars and included the heavenly realm of the Olympian gods.
Aether’s confused genealogy
Aether appears in various sources from different eras, many of which provide contradictory statements about his parentage. In the earliest source, Hesiod’s Theogony, Aether is described as the son of Erebus and Nyx.
Erebus and Nyx were the children of Chaos, the original primordial god. They were the gods of Darkness and Night, respectively.
Aether’s wife was his sister, Hemera. The Greeks believed that she would clear away the dark mists of Nyx every morning, allowing Aether’s light to shine again. Other sources mention Aether as the brother of Eros, the god of love, and Metis, an Oceanid and Zeus’ first wife.
According to this standard form of Greek mythology, Aether was the first cousin once removed or the second cousin of Uranus, depending on whether Uranus’ mother Gaia was the child or sibling of Chaos.
Some sources suggest that Uranus is Aether’s offspring. This implies that he is the ancestor of all the Olympic gods and, indeed, the majority of the divine beings in Greek mythology.
Aether in Orphic mythology
This latter understanding of Aether is primarily seen in Orphic mythology. This particular subcategory of Greek mythology generally had very peculiar ideas. Several Orphic texts mention Aether, revealing what followers of this tradition believed about him.
The Orphic tradition placed greater importance on Aether than standard Greek mythological sources do. According to one Orphic idea, all life emanates from Aether.
One Orphic text explains that Chronus (Time) had three children: Aether, Chaos, and Erebus. These represented the upper, middle, and lower air. At first, there was nothing, but then Chronus placed a cosmic egg in Aether, from which all of creation, the entire universe, and the gods, came forth.
Therefore, we can see that Aether was a profoundly important primordial god for Orphic tradition followers. However, he had a vital role in the functioning of the world, even within standard Greek mythology.
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