Aither

Aither is the bright upper air — the clear burning stuff above the sky, not the air men breathe. In the Rhapsodic theogony he is one of the two things Chronos brings forth, the other being Chaos, and between them they frame the space in which everything else happens. The Greek tradition has its own Aither, son of Erebos and Nyx in Hesiod; the Orphic one is recorded here because his place in the sequence, and his derivation from Time, belong to the Orphic scheme rather than the Hesiodic one.

Parentage

• Chronos

Domains

• sky
• creation

Sources

• Reference treatment of the Orphic Rhapsodies, placing Chronus as the one principle and Ether and Chaos as the two.