Erebus- Greek PrimordialPrimordial"Darkness"

Origins

In Hesiod's Theogony, Erebus arose from Chaos alongside Gaia, Tartarus, Eros, and Nyx — the first beings, born when the void divided. He was darkness before night itself, the void's own shadow — there before anything existed to cast one. Aristophanes preserves a comic version of this cosmogony in the Birds: first there was Chaos and Night and dark Erebus and broad Tartarus, and there was no earth, nor air, nor sky. Night laid a wind-egg in the boundless bosom of Erebus, and from it hatched golden-winged Eros, who set creation in motion.

From Erebus's union with Nyx came Aether, the bright upper air between mortal sky and divine heaven, and Hemera, Day — light born from the coupling of two darknesses. Hesiod gives Erebus no other offspring. In the Orphic tradition, the cosmic egg from which the first god Phanes emerged formed in Erebus, and Phanes burst from it radiant, scattering light into the darkness for the first time.

The Passage of the Dead

Erebus also names the region of absolute darkness through which the dead must pass on their way to the underworld. In Homer, fallen warriors go "down to Erebus" — the phrase recurs through the Iliad like a refrain, marking the moment a life ends. When Circe instructs Odysseus in the rites of necromancy, she tells him to sail to the edge of the world where Oceanus ends, dig a pit, pour libations of honey, milk, wine, and water, and face toward Erebus as he calls the spirits up from below. The dead come out of Erebus to drink the blood he offers — the young and the aged, warriors still in their bloodied armor. It is through Erebus that they come, and through Erebus they go back when the rite is done.