However one explains the way in which Zeus becomes master of the universe--and the fact that ultimate rulership is specified as male undoubtedly has parallels in the whole of recorded human experience--it is necessary to see that the transition of cosmic rule flows from a creative principle as the fundamental element of the cosmos to an active principle. The creative principle from Chaos is not inactive, but it belongs to a class of action different from that undertaken in a specific context. As a matter of logic, the cosmos had to be born and made into an environment before it could be acted in or upon.
Creation, the female principle, precedes action. It starts from the absence of any context; it is no coincidence that Gaia is the sibling of Chaos (Campbell, 1987, p. 3). Unfolding creation constructs a context in which action, the male principle, may proceed. The context had to be a present fact, and it had to be acted upon through the behavior of cosmic personalities, before any mere mortal could come to a conclusion about why the facts of given experience are as they are (or anyway seem to be immutably as they are). Zeus's conquest of the universe helps explain, for example, the intractability of the idea that, whatever contingencies may arise in human experience, male strength and privilege in human culture and history are a matter of cosmic inevitability and rightness.
Nothing about the triumph of the male principle means that contingency may not get in the way of the cosmos, even one ruled by Zeus. That is an important aspect of the transfer of cosmic power from the creative female to the active male. Begin with the hypothesis that the Creation may have been benevolent, or even a positive good, as the Hebrew Bible declares (Gen. 1:31). Hesiod refers to Gaia as "safe foundation of all / immortals who possess the peaks of snowy Olympos" (Hesiod, 1987, pp. 33-4). But Gaia's creation is not perfect, and as it develops, deviance...