There are those who believed that Chronos was the first to exist, and, indeed, we cannot particularly imagine an existence without time: time is the ordering principle--past, present, future--in which the eternal Now shall always take place. Time, along with space (and in modern physics, of course, the two are one and the same), is the container in which all things have their manifestation and duration. Further Greek mythology has Chronos creating an ordered cosmos by breaking open the primal world egg when he and his consort Ananke (Inevitability) wrapped their serpentine coils around it and tore it asunder.
Indeed, we can easily see how time is both a prerequisite for--and necessary to--our existence.
Indeed, like time and space, there is no real separation or distinction in the mythologies. If time is a necessary prerequisite for our being in the world, then it is no exaggeration to claim that Chronos is father to us all. Further, we can easily see that it is time that consumes us as we travel through whatever duration of moments we might have while manifest here in this world. Chronos is steadily eating away at us all.
And perhaps Chronos is concerned that if we shall become immortals, then we should some day usurp him. No, perhaps not to become time itself nor to become the leader and first of the deities. Rather, we would no longer have the same fear and awe of the vastness of time if the passing moments stretched on to no conceivable end. It is not so much that we would take his position for ourselves, but more that his greatness would become quaint, and perhaps we'd insist he retire to some cozy little home somewhere to rest and relax for the remainder of his days.
But no. Chronos will not have that--ever. There is a reason Chronos becomes associated with Saturn, and that is because not only is he the bestower of the moments that fill our lives with good fortune or ill, but also because, as we have touched on previously, Chronos is Death, and death is something we all inherit.
Further portrayals of Chronos are not the simple wise, wrinkled old man with a beard, but a man wielding a scythe and hourglass: it is time for the harvest, and this can bring good fortune for the winter if the crops have been good, but crops are not the only things he is harvesting for sometimes that man with a scythe is enshrouded in a cloak, and maybe he's looking a bit too thin under there and those wrinkled features and flowing beard have been replaced by the smooth white surface of bone and a death's head grin.
And yet for all that, we are all heirs to Chronos: if he is our father, then what is his is lawfully bequeathed to his children upon his death. Of course, we will be waiting for much longer than we can for Death to die, and if Chronos should pass--if time should end--well, what would there be left to inherit then?
So, while we are at once given birth to, slowly consumed, and ultimately devoured by Chronos, there is that interim we call "life." Death is inevitable: it's slated for us somewhere down the timeline from the very first spark of our conception. But this is nothing to fear or deny--and certainly not to forget! As heirs to Chronos we are bequeathed life as a gift for the impossibility that we should ever receive anything else from Chronos as he will outlive us all and, really, could Chronos leave us anything greater anyway?
If time should end, we would be left with nothing; yet, as heirs to Chronos we are given the opportunity for anything. If nothing is true and anything is possible, we have Chronos to thank for the duration of our experience, for the manifestation of some of those possibilities.
