Phanes

Phanes, also called Protogonos ('the firstborn') and Erikepaios, is the radiant first god of the Orphic cosmogony — a figure unknown to Homer and Hesiod but central to the Orphic theology that so influenced the Platonists. From the primal Night and the formless beginning there arose a silver cosmic egg, and from it hatched Phanes: a winged, bisexual, gleaming god who carried within himself the seeds of all things.

His name means 'the one who shines forth' or 'who makes appear', for with him the hidden becomes manifest; he is light, life, and generative love in one, the first to bring the intelligible patterns of the cosmos into being. The Neoplatonists, above all Proclus and Damascius, wove Phanes into their accounts of the intelligible order, treating him as a symbol of the first emergence of being and form from the ineffable One.

Epithets

• Protogonos Πρωτόγονος — the first-born of creation
• Erikepaios Ἠρικεπαῖος — a secret Orphic name
• Bromios Βρόμιος — the roaring
• Metis Μῆτις — divine counsel and wisdom