Who is Eros Protogonos?
A short introduction to Eros as a primordial deity
The Birth of Eros (1890) by Maximilian Pirner
I have been worshipping Eros for some years now. Like many gods, Eros is multifaceted. Perhaps of all hellenic gods, Eros is placed in a particular spot as having become almost an abstraction, a concept. From Plato's Symposion all the way to Freud, Eros has become an idea.
In general, in a modern context Eros is most often seen as the son of Aphrodite and Ares, the winged bringer of erotic love as Sappho or Anacreon may tell us:
"Once more Love stirs me up, the limb-loosener, a creature bitter-sweet, baffling"
Sappho Fragment 130, transl. Gillian Spraggs
"Golden-haired Eros once again hurls his crimson ball at me: he calls me to come out and play with a girl in fancy sandals. But she's from civilized Lesbos: she sneers at my hair because it's grey, and turning, gapes in wonder after another of her own gender."
Anacreon, transl. Gillian Spraggs
This beautiful imagery is an important facet of the deity's domain. The overwhelming passion that most humans (and other beings) go through, an uncontrollable force that, as the chorus of the Antigone will tell us, is "invincible in battle."
Indeed, the little we know of the cult of Eros in Ancient Greece seems to reinforce this. Pausanias and Plutarch both will mention the cult of Eros in the Academy at Athens, which seems to have been tied to homoeroticism between men. Elsewhere, like in Korinth, he is besides his mother Aphrodite and with other gods of her retinue.
Of Thespiae, where the cult of Eros is more prominent, Pausanias (Description of Greece 9. 27. 1 (trans. Jones) says the following:
"Of the gods the Thespians have from the beginning honoured Eros most, and they have a very ancient image of him, an unwrought stone. Who established among the Thespians the custom of worshipping Eros more that any other god I do not know. He is worshipped equally by the people of Parion on the Hellespont . . . Pamphos and Orpheus [legendary poets] wrote hexameter verse, and composed poems on Eros, in order that they might be among those sung by the Lykomidai to accompany the ritual. I read them after conversation with a Torchbearer. Of these things I will make no further mention . . .
This brings us to the role of Eros in theogony. Hesiod will place him as an elder deity:
"Verily at first Khaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia, the ever-sure foundation of al1 the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos, and dim Tartarosin the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them"
Theogony, 116, transl. Evelyn-White
Also in orphic theogonies it seems that Eros was primordial. He may be considered the same as Phanes, or Protogonos, in most cases a bright winged being that springs forth early on, two-formed (androgynous) and bringing the ability to the generation of life.
The idea of Eros as an elder deity has always resonated with me. While I also worship him as a god of love, more often than not I see him as a primordial being that exists in all life, the very force that brought together chains of proteins and generated the first forms of life, billions of years ago.
One may wonder, not without reason, why worship something so far removed from daily life? Well, I do not really think Eros Protogonos is far away, or distant. By definition Eros inhabits everything that lives. It is not merely a matter of sexual attraction or even more broadly, desire. It is a matter of what life even is. As Amin Malouf puts it, “Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.”
Part of what has always pulled me towards Orphic interpretations and mysteries is exactly that contact with the impermanent. Life, like fire, requires always something more, just to keep existing. Time will, inevitably, cut it short. Yet, from the first time life sprung from the abyss until now that I type this or that you read this text, life continues. This unspoken spark, still singing as if first did since it sprung from the sea.
Honouring this impermanence and the beautiful spark of life is part of what brings me to Eros, again and again. As the orphic hymn to Protogonos says:
"Erikapaios, celebrated power, ineffable, occult, all shining flower. From eyes obscure thou wipest the gloom of night, all-spreading splendour, pure and holy light Hence Phanes called, the glory of the sky, on waving pinions thro' the world you fly."
There is much beauty to be found in worshipping Eros. Perhaps it's even attuned to what Plato alludes to in his Symposion and Phaedro. Some things, however, cannot be grasped by words guided by reason. That, too, is where true mystery resides.
