God of the Week: Oceanus (Earth, elder, hell, myths)

[Azakel]

OKEANOS (or Oceanus) was the Titan god or Protogenos (primeval deity) of the great earth-encircling river Okeanos, the font of all the earth's fresh-water: including rivers, wells, springs and rain-clouds. Okeanos was also the god who regulated the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies which were believed to emerge and descend into his watery realm at the ends of the earth. Okeanos' wife was Tethys, the nurse, who was probably thought to distribute his water to the earth via subterranean caverns. Their children were the Potamoi or River-Gods and Okeanides, nymphs of springs and fountains. Unlike his brother Titanes, Okeanos neither participated in the castration of Ouranos nor joined the battle against the younger Olympian gods. He was probably identical to Ophion, an elder Titan in the Orphic myths who ruled heaven briefly before being wrestled and cast into the Ocean stream by Kronos.

Okeanos was depicted in ancient Greek vase painting as a bull-horned god with the tail of a serpentine fish in place of legs, similar to his river-god sons. His usual attributes were a fish and serpent. In the Hellenistic era, Okeanos was redefined as the god of the newly accessible Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the old cosmological idea of a great, earth-encircling, fresh-water stream was discarded. In mosaic art he therefore appears simply as a sea-god or the sea personified, with crab-claw horns, and for attributes, a serpent, oar and school of fish. His wife Tethys, shown seated beside him, had wings on her brow, in the role of mother of rain-clouds.

[Guitar's Cry]

Interesting stuff! I've always been drawn to the sea-gods; probably for their romantic mystery.

That is probably why I also enjoy Lovecraft.