Chronus vs. Kairos
According to Greek mythology, the god of time is known as “Chronos” or “Chronus”. His name in Modern Greek means “time” and etymologically. You can see it in some modern words such as chronology, chronic, anachronism, and chronicle…can you give some more examples?
He is imagined as spiritual god and is believed to be in the form of snake with three heads; that of a man, a bull, and a lion. It is believed that he and his partner – Ananke – surrounded the primary egg of the world with their coil and split it to form the ordered universe of sky, earth and sea.
In Greco-Roman mosaics, he is depicted as the man who turns the zodiac wheel and is usually portrayed through an old, wise man with a long, gray beard, such as “Father Time”.
According to mystical cosmogony – that is the study of the origin and development of the universe – the unageing Chronos produced Aither and Chaos, and made a silvery egg in the divine Aither. It produced the bisexual god Phanes, who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the ultimate creator of the cosmos. However, there is another figure in Greek mythology which is related to the concept of time and that is “kairos”.
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment). While Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time, Kairos signifies a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens… While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.



