Welcome!!

Shrine of the Lesser Known is a personal project in which I research various lesser known deities and share my findings with the community. The first deity on my list is Khaos/Chaos.

"Verily at the first Khaos (Chaos, the Chasm) [Air] came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia (Gaea, Earth), the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos . . . From Khaos (Chaos) came forth Erebos (Darkness) and black Nyx (Night)."

Khaos, also known as Chaos or Aēr, is the first primordial deity in Hellenic believes and the progenitor for all other deities. Before Khaos there was nothing and after Khaos came all the other primordial gods, titans, gods, humans and so on. She is considered the endless void, the abyss, the chasm of air, the lower atmosphere which surrounds the earth - both the invisible air and the gloom of fog and mist. She is also believed to be the goddess of birds and one of the goddesses of fate.

When it comes to the gender of Khaos, the sources have mixed opinions. Overall, she is a sexless deity, referred by both she/her and he/him pronouns in various sources. In more modern media, the pronouns they/them have also been adopted when referring to any representation of Khaos.

Khaos has only two children, Nyx and Erebus. The other primordial gods came after Khaos, but not born from Khaos.

The information on Khaos is few and hard to come by. Since she mostly represented the endless void of nothingness from which everything else was born, the ancient greeks were hesitant to worship her. But in modern times, the general opinion has changed and, although still small, there is a community of Khaos worshippers (using the word "community" loosely since there is nothing formaly organised).

Resources:

🕯 Altars

☠ Baneful Magic (curses, hexes, jinxes, etc.)

💸 Budget / Poverty / Struggle / DIY / Upcycling Witchcraft

📖 Magical Books (pics of grimoire pages, flip-throughs, book recs/reviews, etc.)

💲 Money, Business, & Prosperity Witchcraft

💀 Necromancy, Death Witchcraft, and/or Cthonic/Death Deities (also funerary stuff, medical examination, etc., love that stuff)

🌿 Practical & Responsible Herbalism (gardening, cultivating, harvesting, foraging, herbal remedies, recipes, salves, ointments, etc. but no anti-science, anti-medicine, anti-allopathy shit)

📝 Sigils (free to use, preferably)

👻 Spirit Work (esp. animal spirits, dryads, egregores, genus loci, gorgons, & mermaids)

🥄 Spoon-Conscious Witchcraft (for those who are disabled, exhaust easy, etc.)

✨ Things relating to: Santa Muerte, Artemis, Serket/Selqet

🦴 Vulture Culture (responsible)

you're fine until you're not, but also

There's this trope I've seen in media, mentally ill that take meds and suddenly become neurotypical. To me this was a harmful fantasy, thinking that medicine means cure, and a fast one.

The reality of meds is often disappointing. You still find your limitations and differences. Lots of underground symptoms and sensitivities don't ever vanish.

Being bipolar myself it often left me perplexed, the fact that I was receiving correct treatment, but still struggled. Not with acute episodes, just a baby version of previous symptoms.

Which means struggling with symptoms WHILE medicated is actually expected and common.

MANAGING symptoms does not mean being free from illness.

Mental disorders are more often than not chronic, so NORMALISE recovery that is not linear and symptoms-free.