Ananke

Ananke, personified Necessity, appears in the Rhapsodic theogony coiled together with unaging Time at the beginning of things, the two of them spread incorporeally through the whole extent of the cosmos and holding its limits. She is identified with Adrasteia, 'the Inescapable', the power that no god or mortal may evade, and stands as the constraining law binding the created order. Her pairing with Chronos gives the Orphic cosmos a first principle of duration wed to a first principle of compulsion. Sources differ on the degree of her personification, some testimonia treating Ananke and Adrasteia as fully divine figures and others as abstract cosmic forces woven into the fabric of the world.

Domains

• necessity fate
• cosmic order

Powers

• binds and pervades the whole cosmos as incorporeal Necessity

Epithets

• Ἀδράστεια — the Inescapable / AdrasteiaM. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983), 196-198 (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: ChronosCoupled and entwined with unaging Time at the origin of the cosmos.Damascius, De principiis 123 bis (Orphic frr. 54, 126 Kern) (primary)

Sources

• Ananke (Necessity), identified with Adrasteia, is the incorporeal cosmic principle entwined with Chronos in the Rhapsodic theogony, extended throughout the universe.: Damascius, De principiis 123 bis (Orphic frr. 54, 126-127 Kern; Bernabe OF 77, 109) (primary); M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983), 194-198 (secondary)