Do not forget those who
mythology has named the giants. They are known by many names, and were created
by the blood of Uranus as he fell into Tartarus weeping of shame. We will find out what became of them shortly,
for they had a hand in this story, to say the least. For now, let us focus on
Uranus.
Castrated by his son, alone
in the deepest dungeon, he stewed for epochs. The only thing that kept him
alive was the curse he had shouted to his son as he fell. His eyes reflected an
image of his son raising Uranus’ cut genitals to the sky, “This too will follow
you, son,” he screamed in agony, “Your son will usurp you, and his son after
that.” Then he fell into his prison and his misery. Time stood still (for him) marked
only by changing emotions as woe turned to anger, and anger to plans for
revenge. Wandering in the dark labyrinth he stumbled upon the Cyclops and Hundred
Handed ones. They cowered with fear as he spoke. In the darkness of the pit he offered his
banished sons a truce. Together, they would storm the Earth and take back his
throne from his upstart son, Kronos. They would deliver the Titans to the
darkness, and in exchange he would make them all kings. But the gentle sons of
Gaia remembered the murderousness of their father and backed away into darker
recesses. Here, inside of their mother, they remained safe.
Time marched on. Above
in the sunlight, the golden age of man was flourishing. Some call the golden
race the keepers of a garden named Eden, reduced in the stories to one man and
one woman known as Adam and Eve. They were the humans whose lives were simple.
They hunted wild animals, and gathered the fruits from the trees. They laughed
and danced and no one ever died. The population grew and power struggles over
how society would evolve emerged. Civil war erupted, and the race of gold split
into two futures. One band, fathered by Cain (yes, the first murderer, according
to some stories) - learned how to cultivate plants and make them do as he
willed. They grew food from the ground and hunted beasts on the open plains.
They were happy people who worshiped the ripe women who gave birth to new men
as the land gave birth to the food which filled their bellies. Life was good.
The other band was fathered by Cain’s brother, Abel. They learned the art of domesticating animals
and lived rich lives travelling from field to field, fattening their cows on
the prairie grass and drinking the milk that fell from the beasts’ teats. They
worshiped Kronos, but had forgotten his name, reduced to simply, “God.”
Kronos was happy. He
married his sister Rhea, and remembering his father’s words, he vowed to defeat
the curse. Full of self-importance, he believed he was special. His father’s
fate would not be his own. As each child was born, he ate them. No child would
usurp this father. Unfortunately, Kronos, like most men, did not understand the
fierceness of a mother. He should have tried to understand her love for her
children. He should have paid attention. Like Gaia before, Rhea watched in
agony as her sons and daughters were swallowed by their father. History repeats
itself. After five children were gulped in his glutinous belly she swore that
her sixth, a boy, would live. She handed her husband a stone wrapped in a
swaddling blanket. If he had paid
attention to her face at that moment, he might had known he was being deceived,
but he was too full of his own cleverness to see the smirk that spread across
her face.
She named the boy Zeus,
and handed him off to nymphs. His cradle hung from a tree so he touched not
heaven or earth and thus remained hidden from his father. He was fattened on
milk and honey. When he became a man, he
was determined to free his siblings and fulfill his destiny. He sought out Metis the Titaness for advice.
If she could have foreseen the future, how his rape would drain her of power
and end the time of women, she might not have helped him. However, she did not
have the gift of fortune telling, so our story continues.
Metis mixed him a
potion that would make his father ill, and using his mother’s connections he
found a place in the court of his father as a cup bearer. While serving his
father at the foot of his throne he became even angrier with his father, for
not once did Kronos recognize that his cup bearer was indeed his own son.
Though he knew his father believed him dead, Zeus had still hoped that his
father would see him. He fantasized that Kronos would embrace his son and be
thankful that he was alive. They would celebrate, maybe even go fishing, and
then Kronos would make him his heir and they would rule humanity together. Every
boy wants his father’s approval. Every father fails to see his son for the man
that he is, until it is too late. Once Zeus realized that his father would
never notice him, he became steely in his resolve. He prepared Kronos’ honeyed
cup and put Metis’ potion inside. After his father gulped the medication down,
he immediately felt sick. He looked into the eyes of his cup bearer and saw
murder reflected, mixed with shame, relief, and boyish pride. That was the
moment when he recognized his son and knew that Uranus’ curse had come to pass.
First, he vomited the stone that his wife had disguised as Zeus. Realizing her
deception, a tirade of curses at his wife fell from his lips before all of the sons
and daughters he had devoured spewed from his mouth. The children were unhurt and
made Zeus their leader. It took ten years of war, but finally, the Olympians
defeated their father and his siblings.
Still, Uranus wandered
the darkness below, unaware that his curse had come to pass. He continued
searching for a new plan to exact his revenge. For hundreds of years he walked
in the shadows of the pit, plotting and scheming, but nothing concrete had come
to mind. One morning (perhaps it was morning, for there was no rising and
setting of the sun in this endless blackness) he found his son Kronos and many
of his other Titan children weeping in the darkness. Together, they forged a
plan for retribution.
*
Uranus and the Titans tried without success to escape
Tartarus. Only those who had descended as innocents could leave its darkened
halls. Near to giving up, beginning to feel complacent with the society they
had created in the depths, they finally stumbled across the giants who had been
created by Uranus’ blood as he fell from the sky. The stories collected into
holy books spoke only the blood of the Holy Father; many details had been left
out. Translations muddy things up. The
giants had been cooking inside of their mother for epochs. Now, at the direction
of their father, they prepared to rise from Gaia’s folds. Their quest was
simple enough for immortal children: rise up from the earth, defeat the
Olympians, and then release Uranus and the Titans from their stone prison. Uranus
would become the supreme god, the Titans would mete out his rule on the Earth,
and the giants would become kings among men.
Time marched on. In the
sunlight, the Olympians had succeeded in uniting the children of Cain and Abel
with a simple invention called a plow. With this new device the sons of Abel
were able to join with the daughters of Cain. Their feud from former lives was
forgotten. The domesticated animals helped to create fields of domesticated
plants, and society evolved to another level. Beer was invented. Now, the
humans did not all have to focus all of their efforts on making food, for it
was so plentiful. They had more time to dedicate to worship of the gods, and
poets were born. The Olympians were proud of this new world. They became fat on
the meat that the humans sacrificed to them, and became drunk on the wine that
grew from the grapes of their fields. They paid no attention to the lost sons
of Abel. Following their patriarch, Abraham, they had retreated across the
Mediterranean Sea. They did not know the Olympians, for they were wandering the
desert and enslaved in Egypt during the time of the war. They only worshiped Kronos, who if you will
remember, went by the name God to this lonely tribe. Kronos heard them from
below. Their prayers fueled his powers and through a long and winding tunnel connecting
Tartarus to the lands above, he spoke to them. His words became a magic book,
and he promised these sons of Abraham that he would always protect and love his
chosen people. They would rise to greater heights centuries later when one of
their own would walk the hot desert sands and preach about love and forgiveness
and later, after his death, would conquer the world.
The Olympians should
have taken notice, but instead they laughed at this tribe. They were too drunk,
their bellies were too full, and they were too busy having affairs with the
mortals below. Their empire of humans had grown, and there was a lot of
pleasure to be had. They should have
consulted the fates sooner, for perhaps they would have foreseen how this tribe
would grow, how their beliefs would lead to the Olympians confinement in dog
shaped prison. They would have seen that their stories became nothing but fairy
tales.
*
Time marched on. A
prophet was born to the Israelites, but they did not recognize him. Many
prophets walk on Gaia’s skin, unseen. Most are now confined to rooms with
pillows for walls. The world is uninterested in prophets. But this time, where
our story sits, the world was waiting for a messiah. Born to a poor unwed
mother (who later recouped her virginity in the stories, to keep things proper,
you see) he lived a normal life until he was approaching middle age. A great
storyteller, he developed a following. Below, Kronos and Uranus listened. So
did the people. His stories were a threat to the dominant culture who still
worshiped the Olympians, and so he was sentenced to death. The brutish Romans
loved to crucify their enemies and leave them on display, and that is what they
did to this man, now known as Jesus. No
one knew that a religion was born from this moment that would spread across the
world, but as his teachings gained notoriety after his death, Kronos and Uranus
saw their chance. If they had the people on their side they could win any war. The
giants burst forward from the womb of their mother in full battle gear. The
cross that Jesus was crucified on emblazoned their armor, and the giants
marched toward Athens.
*
Sadly, (for them) this first attack by the sons of the
blood of the Holy Father failed. Jesus’ people were still few, and they were thwarted
by a lion skinned mortal. The giants fled back into the depths of Tartarus.
Their only success was in assassinating a Roman emperor named Severus
Alexander. Though this seemed inconsequential at the time, it started a spiral
of decline for the Roman Empire. During
the following chaos of civil war and invasion caused by this assassination, the
Olympians power began to wane. More and more were turning to a new religion,
Christianity, based on the life and death of the wandering barefoot Jew. When
the giants staged their second attack, just one hundred and fifty years later,
there were no mortals who would fight for them. They were easily subdued. There
was only one catch. Because they were immortals, they could not be killed. The
giants, however, had come prepared. They forced the Olympians into the bodies
of dogs. Alcyoneus, the leader of the giants marched to Rome and was made king
of the newly Christian empire. He took on a new name- Theodosius. In his new
role, he made the Olympians illegal, and saw over the murders of any that still
believed. The giants forsook their brothers in Tartarus. Why would they give up
their new power in this land to Uranus and the Titans? The giants had done all
of the fighting. The giants did not need Kronos to wield power over the earth.
They named themselves popes and emperors and developed a system called absolute
monarchy. They blended in with the mortals and with magic, they let their
bodies age and as one body died, they inherited another. History is full of
stories of the giants, but they had many names. Nearly every great and terrible
leader in history is actually but one of the nineteen giants. No, they did not
go back for Uranus or Kronos. They left them in the depths of the earth, where
their cries of anger led to earthquakes and typhoons above. The dogs, dethroned
from Olympus, wailed for a time but then slept in the temples that were
beginning to crumble. They forgot who they were. The people kept them alive
only in stories. The dog gods were cursed to lifetimes of patrolling their ancient
sites. They struggled with memory. When the dogs slept they had an inkling of
their former lives, but aren’t we all gods when we sleep?
