"Zeus: 'Mother, highest of the Gods, immortal Nyx, how am I to establish my proud rule among the Immortals? How may I have all things one and each one separate?' Nyx to Zeus: 'Surround all things with the ineffable Aither, and in the midst of that set the heaven, and in the midst the boundless earth, in the midst the sea, and in the midst all the constellations with which the heaven is crowned. But when thou shalt stretch a strong bond about all things, fitting a golden chain from the Aither.' Thus then engulfing the might of Erikepaios, the Firstborn, he held the body of all things in the hollow of his own belly; and he mingled with his own limbs the power and strength of the God. Therefore together with him all things in Zeus were created anew, the shining height of the broad Aither and the sky, the seat of the unharvested sea and the noble earth, great Ocean and the lowest depths beneath the earth, and rivers and the boundless sea and all else, all immortal and blessed Gods and Goddesses, all that was then in being and all that was to come to pass, all was there, and mingled like streams in the belly of Zeus."
" In the Orphic Cosmogony, the universe comes about, but then Zeus swallows Phanes and creates the cosmos anew, therefore he is the creator."
- Orpheus Orphic Rhapsodies, Orphicorum Fragmenta 164-167 (Otto Kern numbering) as found in Orpheus and Greek Religion by W.K.C. Guthrie, 1906, in the 1993 Princeton Univ. Press edition (Princeton, New Jersey) on pp. 139-140.
