The Story of Cronos
Professor Tiele now devotes fifteen pages to the story of Cronos, and to my essay on that theme. He admits that I was right in regarding the myth as ‘extraordinarily old,’ and that in Greece it must go back to a period when Greeks had not passed the New Zealand level of civilisation. [Now, the New Zealanders were cannibals!] But ‘we are the victims of a great illusion if we think that a mere comparison of a Maori and Greek myth explains the myth.’ I only profess to explain the savagery of the myth by the fact (admitted) that it was composed by savages. The Maori story ‘is a myth of the creation of light.’ I, for my part, say, ‘It is a myth of the severance of heaven and earth.’ [{32a}] And so it is! No Being said, in Maori, ‘Fiat lux!’ Light is not here created. Heaven lay flat on Earth, all was dark, somebody kicked Heaven up, the already existing light came in. Here is no création de la lumière. I ask Professor Tiele, ‘Do you, sir, create light when you open your window-shutters in the morning? No, you let light in!’ The Maori tale is also ‘un mythe primitif de l’aurore,’ a primitive dawn myth. Dawn, again! Here I lose Professor Tiele.
‘Has the myth of Cronos the same sense?’ Probably not, as the Maori story, to my mind, has not got it either. But Professor Tiele says, ‘The myth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.’ [{32b}] What is the myth of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). Ouranos ‘hid his children from the light in the hollows of Earth’ (Hesiod). So, too, the New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat on Papa (Earth). The children ‘were concealed between the hollows of their parent’s breasts.’ They did not like it, for they dwelt in darkness. So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a way, enfin, as to divorce him a thoro. ‘Thus,’ I say, ‘were Heaven and Earth practically divorced.’ The Greek gods now came out of the hollows where they had been, like the New Zealand gods, ‘hidden from the light.’