Eros [Latin Erōs; Greek ἔρως érōs] refers to passionate love, sensual desire, and longing. In the personified form of Greek mythology ca. 1386, Eros was the god of love, related to desire of an unknown origin. In the early creation myth, the Theogony of Hesiod (700 BCE), Eros was a primal god, son of Chaos, the original primeval emptiness of the universe. Eros emerged from the primordial groundlessness of Chaos together with Gaia, the Earth, matter, and nature and Tartarus the underworld, creating a dichotomy of being. Some legends attribute Eros as the scintilla of desire that united Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth) from whose union the entire material world came into being. In early legends, he was the firstborn Light that was responsible for the fertile and creative coming into being and ordering of all things in the cosmos.
Later tradition depicted him as the son and attendant of Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love. Together, as gods, they harnessed the primordial force of love and...
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Madden, K. (2014). Eros. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_209
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