On my 2nd channel, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t already, I talked
about my plans to up my game when it comes to Vlogs of Knowledge.
Now I had dabbled with this idea for quite some time, but I never really felt ready to
do it.
And honestly, I didn’t even know how I would approach it if I did.
On Vlogs of Knowledge, we’ve covered a few myths and legends over the years.
I mean we even did one last week and you guys really loved it.
So as part of my ongoing process of improving this show, I am happy to announce that we
are going to be starting the first ever series on this channel.
Of course, you’ve all seen the title, it’s going to be about the Greek gods and mythology.
Now, just a little disclaimer.
I don’t actually know if I should release these videos one after the other week after
week, or if I should do it more intermittently, like every other week or so, and keep my usual
style of surprising you guys with a new topic every week.
Actually, I would love to hear your opinion on this.
So please, do leave me a comment down below on how you would like to see all of this play
out.
If you’re new here, I’m Darius Cosden and this is Vlogs of Knowledge.
Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell, as I do upload every single Wednesday.
And come on, we’re starting 2018 with a bang.
We're literally going to talk about all of the important Greek Gods.
I don’t think you want to miss that.
Greek mythology is a huge topic.
It is very extensive, it's very complex, and honestly, very weird.
In this series, we’re going to cover each and every single important god, their story, how they
relate to other gods, and their significance to the greeks of the time.
I think the best way to start this series is to dedicate this first video to the origins
of mythology.
Because like I said, this topic is incredibly complicated, and you deserve to understand
the foundation before actually getting to the nitty gritty stuff of each and every single
god.
Not only is there an extensive family tree in which all gods are related to one another,
but they also seem to love incest, infidelity, and having children with anyone, or anything
they can get their hands upon.
We’re going to be talking about babies being eaten, fathers and daughters having sex, testicles
being cutoff and producing children from the blood of the injury, and honestly, so much
more.
I think this will be my favourite thing we’ve done on this channel so far.
So let’s get to it!
The first and most important thing I want you to understand is that there were different
generations of Greek Gods.
Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, and the more popular ones are from a younger generation
that we call the “olympian generation”.
They, along with most other gods from subsequent generations, all had fathers and mothers.
To fully understand greek mythology, we have to go back to the very beginning of time.
The greeks, just like any other culture, had their own creation myth that explained how
things came to existence.
And just like most creation myths, everything got started out of nothing.
Before any god ever existed, before any human had ever been born, the greeks thought the
universe was composed of something called “chaos”.
You can think of this “chaos” in two ways.
On one hand, this was a physical place far far away, that preceded the earth, all life
on it, and all physical forms, but on the other hand, as we’re going to
see will happen a lot, this Chaos eventually became personified in a god.
It was human nature to personify things into human-like gods.
It wasn’t just the Greeks.
Humans have done it since the very early days of humanity.
And it makes sense.
When you don’t understand how things work around you, you would naturally want to associate
certain events with certain gods, whether real or false.
This “chaos” having been now personified, was then given an ability that is common to
all female humans: the ability to give birth. An ability that would be passed down to every
single god that came after it.
The Greek gods loved to give birth to children.
And it didn’t even matter with whom they had them with.
The first deity to come out from this chaos is a goddess named Gaia.
Gaia was the Earth personified.
She was the very first mother nature, the source of all life here on Earth.
Gaia was considered the mother of all of greek mythology.
Through her, the mythological family tree was about to be created.
Now here’s where things start to get a little weird.
Gaia is technically the daughter of Chaos.
But the greeks also made her his husband.
And what do husbands and wives do?
Well, they have children.
Having children with your sons or daughters was something that was very common in Greek
mythology.
And it’s not even that bad.
We haven’t even talked about some of the weirder things, like people
eating their own children, sending them to the underworld, or even growing gods out of
their heads..
It’s weird but hey, it was a different time, a different culture, and we can appreciate
it for what it is.
Gaia produced many children, who then had their children of their own with her, so technically
if you think about it, Gaia was the the wife, the mother, and the grandmother to a lot of her children.
It must be tough playing mother nature…
I mean when you’re the first to exist, you get to play with everyone you create.
Of course, I’m not going to mention every child of Gaia.
It would really confuse you because there are so many.
But there’s one in particular that we have to talk about: Uranus.
Which is not to be confused with the planet.
Uranus, like the other children of Gaia, also had his own children with her.
They gave birth to many “things” if you will, as well as other gods.
For one, they gave birth to and created a race called the “titans”, which were a
set of 12 giant, powerful gods, that formed the first Pantheon of Greece.
Now a pantheon is simply a way to group all of the big, important, gods that existed and
that were being worshipped at the time.
For example, Zeus, Hera, Hades, Poseidon all belong to the Olympian Pantheon, which
is a later generation.
As you can imagine, the greeks, just like any other culture, loved to have some drama
in their life and mythology was no different.
It wasn’t long before conflict arose between the different gods.
I mean when your family tree is that complicated, it’s almost impossible not to have some
sort of conflict.
The first conflict came from Uranus himself.
He hated the children that Gaia gave him.
He hated them so much that he eventually couldn’t take it anymore, and imprisoned his youngest
son in the womb of the Earth.
Gaia, obviously hurt by this, decides to seek revenge.
She goes to Cronus, one of Uranus’ sons who was jealous of his father’s ultimate
power, to get him to help her take revenge on her husband.
Gaia prepares for Cronus a special sword, and asks him to go ahead and castrate Uranus
by cutting off his testicles from his body, to prevent him from having any more children.
I mean since Uranus hated his children so much, why should he be allowed to have any
more?
It made perfect sense.
And out of the 12 brothers and sisters of Cronus that formed the first Pantheon, only
Cronus had the guts to do such a thing, because he really wanted the throne for himself.
Gaia lured Uranus in, and Cronus went ahead and cut off his most prized possession.
The blood that came out of the cut fell on the earth, which is said to have given birth
to a whole new race of giants, as well as two other gods.
Not only that, but the story goes that his testicles also produced a sort of white foam,
out of which the goddess Aphrodite was born.
You see, that’s what I meant with the weird stuff.
They had such an imagination.
After having successfully dealt with his father, Cronus takes his sister Rhea, another one
of the titans, marries her and they take the throne to rule as king and queen.
They imprisoned some of Gaia’s other children in the underworld, which included the race
of cyclopses, who were strong giants that only had one eye in their forehead, and set
a dragon to prevent them from getting out.
Cronus and Rhea ruled during a period the greeks called the “golden age”.
This was a period that's very similar to what you’d find in the Bible as the garden of Eden.
It was a time of peace, harmony, people lived very long lives, didn’t have to work
and co-existed together as the perfect human race.
A few years later, Cronus learns from his mother Gaia that he is destined to have the
same fate as his father did.
That is to say, his own children are destined to overthrow him, just as he overthrew his
father from power.
Now of course, being power hungry, this was something that he absolutely did not want.
And before proceeding to even more weird stuff, I’m going to let you guys guess what he
did.
Because what he did, was not something I think you would expect.
Cronus decided that the best way to prevent his supposed destiny, was to eat his own children
as soon as they were born.
Because if you eat your own children before they get a chance to grow up and kill you,
then you might actually have a chance to survive.
The first children Cronus and Rhea had were Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.
All of whom should sound familiar.
Uranus was part of the first generation of gods, Cronus was part of the second generation,
and Cronus’ children were part of the generation that came after it: the Olympian Pantheon,
which is what most people think of when thinking about Greek mythology.
When you have gods like these as your children, and you have been told that your destiny is
to be overthrown by them, you would want to do something about it to make sure that your
throne is safe, especially if you are that power hungry.
Now I personally wouldn’t eat my own children, but hey, to each their own.
Cronus ate all of his children without Rhea knowing, as soon as they were born.
He didn’t let them live, he ate them right away to not give them a single chance
of survival.
Now when Rhea eventually got wind of this, she was pregnant with yet another son.
And this son, she wanted to keep.
Rhea went to Gaia and Uranus for advice on what to do.
They were both willing to help since for one, Cronus had cut off Uranus’ testicles, and
for two, he had also imprisoned the cyclopses, Gaia’s children.
So the three came up with a plan to distract Cronus while Rhea gave birth to her son.
She went to the Greek island of Crete, where she gave birth to her sixth child.
Cronus knew that she was pregnant and was ready to eat the baby the same way he had
done with all of the other ones before him.
But instead of giving him the baby, Rhea gave him a rock wrapped in cloth for him to swallow
instead.
While Cronus thought he had swallowed the last of his children, the baby was actually
being raised and secretly kept on the island of Crete.
And that baby, was eventually going to become the king of all gods, the supreme Greek god,
the ruler of the Olympian Pantheon, and the one to overthrow his father out of power.
That baby, was none other than Zeus himself.
And that concludes the first part of our series on Greek mythology!
I really, really hope that you guys have enjoyed this and if you did, please leave it a big thumbs
up, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell, because I do upload every single
Wednesday.
And now it’s time for questions.
What do you think of me doing this series that I'm trying to do?
How would you like it to play out?
What gods or things would you like me to talk about?
Please do leave me a comment down below I would love to read and answer them all, and bonus points
for you if you do leave a comment you might get featured in next week’s video as a fan
of the week!
As you know and say at the end of every video, I haven’t talked about everything regarding
Greek Mythology. I mean this is a very extensive topic and there's no way I can cover everything.
But it's OK,
Because I do this on purpose to get you guys to go out and research more on your
own.
Because I believe in research and I believe in getting you guys educated on a subject.
For those that want to learn more, as always, there will be some links in the description where
you can start!
With that being said, my name has been Darius Cosden, it’s been an absolute pleasure you
can follow me on social media the links will be in the description, thank you for watching
this video, thank you for giving your time to this video, and I will see you all next Wednesday!