Orphic Cosmogony: Chronos, the Cosmic Egg, and Dionysus Zagreus

TL;DR

What we call “Orphic cosmogony” is a late, reconstructed myth-complex where Chronos (Time) and Anankē (Necessity) coil around a Cosmic Egg, crack it, and release the radiant first god Phanēs/Protogonos, who generates the rest of reality. ¹
A chain of divine kingship runs Phanēs → Nyx → Ouranos → Kronos → Zeus → Dionysus, but Zeus short-circuits the line by swallowing Phanēs and re-creating the cosmos inside himself as a single divine body. ²
In a later chapter, Dionysus Zagreus, child of Zeus and Persephone, is dismembered and eaten by the Titans; Zeus obliterates them, and humanity is formed from Titan remains infused with the god’s flesh—a built-in doctrine of original mixed nature. ³
Orphic ritual and lifestyle (purification, dietary taboos, mystery rites) are aimed at purging the Titanic element and freeing the Dionysian soul from the wheel of rebirth, as the gold tablets instruct the dead to proclaim: “I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is heavenly.” ⁴
Late Platonists treat the Orphic theogony as a kind of revealed metaphysics: Chronos, Egg, Phanēs, Zeus, Dionysus become a ready-made vocabulary for talking about the One, Intellect, Soul, and the re-absorption of many things into a single divine principle. ⁵

For a shorter companion overview of Orphic cosmogony, see our article on Orphic Cosmogony: Chronos, the Cosmic Egg, and Dionysus Zagreus.

1. How do we even know this myth?#

Before we chase cosmic serpents, a quick sanity check. There is no single ancient book titled The Orphic Bible that lays this all out. What we have instead is:

A lost Orphic epic (or epics), later stitched into Rhapsodies cited by Neoplatonists like Proclus and Damascius. ⁵
The Derveni Papyrus, a charred mid-4th-century BC papyrus that comments allegorically on an Orphic theogony. ⁶
Snatches of hymns and the so-called Orphic Hymns (probably late but drawing on older material).
Testimonia in Aristophanes, Plato, Clement, Plutarch, Proclus, Damascius, and others. ²
Funerary gold tablets from graves in Magna Graecia and Crete that encode Orphic-sounding afterlife instructions. ⁴

Scholars spent the 19th–20th centuries doing what classicists do when you give them scattered verses and a lot of time: reconstructing. They speak of a “Rhapsodic Theogony” with a sequence of six divine kings: Phanēs, Nyx, Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus, Dionysus. ⁷

The catch: these reconstructions are heavily mediated by late Neoplatonists with their own metaphysical agenda. Damascius, writing in the 6th century AD, explicitly correlates the Orphic first principles with his own philosophical triads. ¹ So when we talk about “the” Orphic cosmogony, we’re really talking about:

A plausible reconstruction of a family of myths, filtered through philosophers who thought Orpheus was basically doing pro-Platonist theology avant la lettre. For more on how such ancient myths and mystical traditions have persisted and evolved through time, see our article on The Longevity of Myths.

That caveat in place, we can still map out a surprisingly coherent cosmogonic arc.

2. Chronos the serpent and the Cosmic Egg#

In what Damascius calls “the standard Orphic theology,” the universe starts not with Chaos (as in Hesiod) but with Chronos, a primordial Time-god. ⁵

He is described as a dragon-like being, “unaging Time,” with multiple heads (human, bull, lion) coiling through the void. From him emerges a threefold seed: moist Aither, unlimited Chaos, and murky Erebos (Darkness). ¹

Then comes the key Orphic image:

Chronos fashions a Cosmic Egg “in the Aither.”
He and Anankē (Necessity) wind around it in serpent form.
Their constriction cracks the Egg, splitting Aither and Chasm, and the first god spills out. ⁵

The egg is explicitly called “Orphic” already in antiquity. Later summaries say: from Chronos come Aither and Chaos; from Aither and Chaos the Egg; from the Egg, Phanēs—radiant, winged, hermaphroditic. ⁵

Contrast this with Hesiod’s Theogony, where Chaos, Gaia, Tartaros, and Eros just “come to be,” with no egg, no serpent-Time, no Necessity binding things. ⁸ Orphic myth adds a step: the world as latent totality, wrapped and pressurized by Time until it hatches.

Ancient comedy even knew this version well enough to parody it. In Aristophanes’ Birds, the chorus drops into cosmogony mode:

“First there was Chaos and Night and murky Erebos and broad Tartarus. In the bosom of Erebos Night laid a wind-borne egg, from which, in due season, Eros with golden wings sprang forth…” ⁹

Everyone in the audience knew what was being spoofed. Night, a cosmic egg, a winged firstborn—this is Orphic territory.

Symbolically the Egg is doing three jobs:

Unity: everything is inside, undifferentiated.
Latency: time coils but nothing yet unfolds.
Violent birth: creation requires a crack, a primordial trauma.

Chronos, in Damascius’ Neoplatonizing read, already smells philosophical: he’s the “One,” Aither the limiting principle, Chaos the Unlimited, the Egg their first mixture. ¹⁰ But beneath the metaphysics there’s just a very strong image: history as something a cosmic snake squeezes out of an egg.

3. Phanēs / Protogonos: the first king of everything#

When the Egg splits, out comes Phanēs (“the Shining One,” “He Who Brings to Light”), also called Protogonos (First-Born), Erikapaios, sometimes identified with Eros. ¹¹

Later iconography gives him:

a radiant, androgynous body,
golden wings,
and a serpent coiled around him,
surrounded by zodiac signs—the whole cosmos in miniature.

Ancient summaries stress three points:

He’s hermaphroditic: he contains male and female generative power.
He is total: “In him are all the seeds of the gods and of all things.” ¹²
He rules first: he is the first holder of cosmic kingship.

The Orphic Hymns (late, but in the same orbit) address a Protogonos who scatters mist and brings light by beating his wings—exactly the visual Aristophanes parodies. ¹³

Already, the theology is weirdly tight: Chronos produces Egg; Egg releases Phanēs; Phanēs both is and generates all further things—gods, elements, animals, humans. The first god is less a character than a living schema of the universe.

Most importantly, he hands off power.

4. The chain of divine kings: from Phanēs to Zeus (and beyond)#

Proclus and Damascius preserve a schema where cosmic kingship passes in six waves: Phanēs → Nyx → Ouranos → Kronos → Zeus → Dionysus. ⁷

Roughly:

Phanēs rules first as radiant demiurge.
He gives his scepter (or is otherwise succeeded) by Nyx (Night), sometimes described as his daughter and “older wife.” ¹¹
Nyx begets Ouranos and Gaia; Ouranos is king.
Ouranos is overthrown by Kronos (as in Hesiod).
Kronos is in turn overthrown by Zeus.
Zeus intends to hand the scepter to Dionysus.

Nyx is pivotal. In Orphic hymn and later philosophy she’s not just “night” but primeval wisdom, keeper of oracles—Zeus consults her. ¹⁴ Aristophanes knows the meme: in Birds, Night is mother of Eros, who hatches from her egg and organizes the world—classic Orphic beats, just in drag. ⁹

Compared to Hesiod, the Orphic sequence:

inserts a pre-Hesiodic stratum (Chronos, Egg, Phanēs, Nyx),
and then overlays Hesiod’s Ouranos–Kronos–Zeus with extra metaphysical wiring.

But the really wild move is what Zeus does next.

5. Zeus swallows the cosmos: becoming the second Phanēs#

In the Derveni tradition and the Rhapsodies, Zeus doesn’t just take over from Kronos; he ingests the universe.

Orphic fragments quoted by later authors give us something like:

“Zeus was born first, Zeus last;
Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle; from Zeus are all things.
…
He swallowed the First-Born king,
and with him all gods and all things became one in his belly.” ²

In some reconstructions he swallows Phanēs (also called Metis or “Thought”), taking into himself all that Phanēs had generated. ¹⁵ In others, he swallows the phallus of Ouranos; either way, the symbolism is the same: Zeus internalizes his predecessors, their powers, and the cosmic order they produced. ¹⁶

The sequence is:

Zeus learns—from Nyx or from oracles—that to rule absolutely, he must absorb the previous demiurge.
He swallows Phanēs / Metis / “the First-Born King.”
The text stresses that everything—gods, rivers, earth, sky—gets folded into Zeus as a single “royal body.” ²
Then, from his “heart” (or mind), Zeus re-emanates the world.

Damascius and Proclus understandably go nuts with this: they see Zeus here as a figure of the One-All, containing and re-deploying intelligible reality. ⁵

From a mythic angle, though, it’s already doing serious conceptual work:

It erases genealogical distance: Zeus is not just grandson of Ouranos; he is, in some sense, his own ancestor.
It recasts thunderbolt-wielding Zeus as a pantomorphic deity—“one single body in which all things are encircled.” ²
It gives a mythic prototype for cycles of emanation and re-absorption: out of One, into many; back into One; out again.

That pattern is important when we get to souls.

For now: Zeus has all the cards. But Orphic myth then describes a planned succession to Dionysus—and a catastrophe.

6. Dionysus Zagreus: divine child, torn apart#

The Zagreus myth is our main window into “Orphic” soteriology, but its reconstruction is messier than handbooks make it sound. Most of the full story is pieced together from Hellenistic poets, Christian critics (who loved gruesome pagan tales), and late Platonists. ³

Core narrative, as commonly reconstructed:

Zeus, in serpent form, mates with Persephone; from this chthonic union comes a horned, infant Dionysus—later called Zagreus in some sources. ³
Zeus announces that this child will be his successor and future cosmic king.
Hera, enraged, incites the Titans to destroy the child.
The Titans smear themselves with gypsum (white clay), making their bodies ghost-pale and uncanny. ³
They distract Dionysus with toys: a mirror, knucklebones, a spinning top, dolls, a miniature bullroarer—instruments of fascination and self-reflection. ³
Seizing him, they tear him limb from limb (sparagmos), boil and roast the pieces, and (in some accounts) eat his flesh. ³
Athena rescues the still-beating heart and brings it to Zeus.
Zeus, furious, blasts the Titans with his thunderbolt, reducing them to soot and ash.
From that residue—Titanic matter that has ingested Dionysian flesh—humans are formed. ³

The critical late source is the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus, who says explicitly:

Zeus burned the Titans; “the soot from the vapors that rose from them became the matter from which humans were formed,” so our bodies contain a Dionysiac element. ³

Earlier hints—Plutarch on the Titans who “tasted [Dionysus’] blood” and were punished, Proclus’ reference to the “Titanic race” of humans—are compatible with this but less explicit. ³

Scholars argue over how early this full anthropogony is. But by late antiquity, the Orphic package is clear:

Our bodies are from the Titans—violent, lawless, attached to matter.
Our soul comes from Dionysus—divine, immortal, but trapped. ³

The mirror the Titans use to distract the child is already allegory begging to be spelled out: the soul falls in love with its own reflection in the world, becoming vulnerable to dismemberment—its powers scattered through sensory life. For a comprehensive exploration of the symbolic interpretations of the Orphic mirror across history—from Neoplatonists to modern scholarship—see our article on Orphic Mirror Interpretations.

The Zagreus episode thus recasts cosmogony as psychogony: the story of how the soul ended up here, hand-cuffed to a primate.

7. Sôma sēma: body as tomb, life as sentence#

From that mythic origin you get a very specific anthropology.

Human beings = Titanic bodies + Dionysian soul.
The soul’s presence in the body is a punishment for an “ancient wrong,” often glossed as inherited guilt for the Titans’ crime. ³
Life is not the main event; it’s a kind of probation.

The famous Orphic formula “sôma sēma”—“the body is a tomb”—turns up in Plato’s Cratylus and elsewhere, with explicit Orphic connections. ⁴ For Orphics, this is not just a mood; it’s backed by cosmogony.

Hence the gold tablets (thin gold foils buried with initiates). Their texts vary but share a pattern:

The deceased soul meets springs in the underworld.
It must avoid Lethe (Forgetfulness) and drink from the spring of Mnēmosynē (Memory).
It declares its identity in a formula:

“I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is heavenly. I am parched with thirst and perish; give me to drink of the cool water from the Lake of Memory.” ⁴

Other tablets have the soul say:

“Now you have died and now you have been born, thrice-fortunate one… Tell Persephone that Bacchios himself released you.” ⁴

These are not generic “nice afterlife” hopes. They encode a specific story:

The initiate has undergone Dionysian rites; Dionysus (Bacchios) has “released” them from Titanic bonds.
The soul knows where to walk, what to drink, and what to say—gnosis in pocket-sized form.
Memory (not faith or good vibes) is the sacramental currency: you must remember who you really are and where you come from.

Combine this with ritual and lifestyle and you get a recognizably “Orphic” way of life.

8. Orphic life: diet, purity, and small acts of cosmic sabotage#

Ancient authors liked to caricature Orphics: linen-clad, carrying books, selling purification rites “for themselves and their descendants.” Plato pokes at them in Republic and Laws. ⁴

Underneath the satire are some consistent features:

Purity rules. Avoid bloodshed, funerary pollution, certain foods.
Dietary taboos. Strong traditions of vegetarianism or at least reluctance to kill animals; some sources say they avoided eggs and beans. The logic is obvious: if your myth involves gods being eaten, you’re more cautious about eating anything with a soul. ⁴
Initiatory rites (teletai). Likely included reenactments of Dionysus’ suffering and rebirth, purifications, and symbolic descent/ascent.
Reincarnation. Souls cycle through “a grievous circuit” of births until purified enough to escape. ⁴

Ethically, this is a kind of cosmic jailbreak spirituality: the point is not to be a nice citizen of Zeus’s world, but to burn off Titanic residue and go home to a higher kind.

The Zagreus myth gives this whole regimen teeth. It’s not an abstract dualism like “matter bad, spirit good” floating in a vacuum; it’s backed by a story where your ancestors literally ate god’s flesh and got vaporized for it. That’s the pollution you’re carrying.

So Orphic practice is what you’d expect from a religion invented by people who believe that:

“We are made from the soot left over when a crime against god exploded.”

The path out is ritual, discipline, and remembering.

9. How “Orphic” is any of this, really?#

Here it’s worth being a little suspicious of our own coherence.

The Cosmic Egg and Chronos-serpent appear clearly in late summaries (Damascius, Proclus) and derivative handbooks. ¹
The Zagreus anthropogony is fully explicit only in Olympiodorus (6th c. AD), though likely older. ³
The six-king schema is preserved in Proclus. ⁷
The gold tablets are earlier (4th–2nd c. BC) but do not themselves mention Chronos or the Egg, only Dionysus and Persephone and a very particular afterlife itinerary. ⁴

So there is always a risk of reading later systematizations backward into earlier, wilder material. Some scholars (e.g. Radcliffe Edmonds) argue we should treat each witness on its own terms instead of assuming a single grand Orphic “system.” ⁶

Still, several things look robust:

A pre-Hesiodic layer with Chronos, Egg, Phanēs. ⁵
A pattern of divine succession culminating in Zeus who re-creates the cosmos. ²
A Dionysian complex involving dismemberment and rebirth, with strong links to Orphic initiations. ³
A dualistic anthropology and afterlife hope encoded in the tablets. ⁴

It’s safer to think of “Orphic cosmogony” as a cluster of mythic moves, some older, some late, which Neoplatonists then welded into a single elegant machine.

The machine, however, is interesting.

10. Comparison: Hesiod, Homer, and the “un-Greek” feel#

Ancient critics already felt Orphic myth was “foreign” or “un-Greek,” and you can see why when you set it next to Hesiod.

Hesiod’s Theogony: ⁸

Starts from Chaos, then Gaia, Tartaros, Eros.
No personified Time, no cosmic egg.
Focus is on generational conflict and establishing Zeus’s rule within a family of many gods.
Eros exists but without cosmogonic detail; he’s just “the fairest among the immortal gods.”

Orphic Theogony (Rhapsodic type): ⁵

Starts from Chronos (Time) and Anankē, with a dragon-form deity coiling around Aither and Chaos.
Features a Cosmic Egg and a winged Protogonos who is itself a demiurgic totality.
Zeus doesn’t just win wars; he ingests predecessors and becomes the universe.
Dionysus isn’t just a weird latecomer but central to anthropology and salvation.

The Orphic version is:

more abstract (Time, Necessity, totalizing One-god),
more soteriological (explains why you’re stuck in a body),
more esoteric (requires initiation to benefit).

It’s not “un-Greek” in the sense of being imported wholesale from India or Phoenicia, but the egg-and-serpent motif does resonate with Near Eastern and Indo-Iranian cosmogonies: the Hiranyagarbha (“golden embryo”) in Vedic tradition, the Orphicish egg in some Phoenician theogonies, later Chinese Pangu myths with egg and cosmic separation. ¹⁷

The Greeks themselves noticed. They associated Orpheus with Thrace and foreign music; they assumed this kind of theology belonged to mystics, not city-state religion. For a detailed exploration of how similar questions arise when investigating the origins of the mysterious Olmec civilization and their possible connections to African or other influences, see our article on Origins of the Olmec Civilization: Theories and Debates.

11. Pythagoreans, Plato, and the philosophical digestion of Orpheus#

Once you’ve invented:

a divine principle that contains and re-emits the cosmos,
a body-tomb doctrine,
a cycle of reincarnation,
and a path of purification,

you’ve basically handed philosophers of the soul a starter kit.

Pythagoreans#

Pythagorean communities share with Orphics:

belief in metempsychosis (soul transmigration),
vegetarian or restricted diets,
and a concern with purity and ritual order. ⁴

Ancient tradition often fuses “Orphic” and “Pythagorean” practices. Whether one “borrowed” from the other or they grew in the same religious ecosystem is hard to untangle, but by the Classical period both point toward a view of the soul as alien to the body and capable of ascending through disciplines.

Plato#

Plato is very aware of Orphic and Pythagorean ideas:

In Cratylus and Phaedo, he invokes “body as tomb” and discusses punishments after death that sound Orphic. ⁴
In Republic, he mocks itinerant Orphic priests selling purification rites but then builds an elaborate theory of soul’s fate after death that feels structurally similar. ⁴

He never just parrots Orphism; instead, he philosophizes it. The cosmogony in the Timaeus is completely different in its starting point (demiurge, receptacle, Ideas) but still preoccupied with:

the relation of soul to body,
the problem of reincarnation and justice,
the need for the soul to remember and align itself with a higher order.

You can think of Plato as taking the existential questions Orphism dramatizes and reframing them in the language of mathematical cosmology.

Neoplatonists#

By late antiquity, Neoplatonists like Proclus and Damascius have no qualms about quoting Orphic verses as if they were Talmudic glosses on Plato:

Proclus cites Orphic lines on Chronos, Egg, Phanēs, Night, and the six kings to map out levels of intelligible reality. ⁵
Damascius reads Orphic cosmogony as a mythic presentation of his own first principles: the One, the triad of Limit/Unlimited/Mixture, etc. ¹

For them, Orpheus is basically a proto-Neoplatonist who spoke in images where they speak in abstractions. Chronos becomes the One; the Egg, the primordial mixture; Phanēs, the first Intellect; Zeus, the henad who gathers all things; Dionysus, the soul that descends and rises. For a comprehensive overview of key hermetic thinkers and esoteric figures across history who were influenced by similar mystical traditions, see our article on Hermeticists of Fame: Key Figures in Western Esotericism.

Whether this is “true” to older Orphism is debatable, but it shows how useful this mythic machinery was. If you want to describe:

a universe that begins in unity,
differentiates into multiplicity,
and returns to unity,

the Orphic theogony gives you a storyboard for free.

12. The Cosmic Egg as a cross-cultural weird attractor#

The Orphic Egg isn’t unique in world mythology, but Orphism uses it in a particularly tight way.

Cosmic eggs elsewhere:

Vedic: the Hiranyagarbha (“golden embryo”) floats on primeval waters, splits into heaven and earth, and from it Prajāpati is born.
Some Phoenician theogonies have a cosmic egg formed from “wind and desire,” cracked by a god.
In several later traditions (Chinese Pangu, some Gnostic texts), an egg encodes the same move: undivided potential → cracked duality. ¹⁷
African creation myths, particularly among the Dogon people, also feature cosmic egg motifs where Amma shapes and hatches a primordial egg to create the universe. For a comprehensive survey of African tribal origin myths, including cosmic egg narratives, see our article on African Tribal Origins: Creation Myths from Across the Continent.

The Orphic twist is to:

tie the Egg explicitly to Time (Chronos),
wrap it with Necessity (Anankē),
and treat the hatchling, Phanēs, as both person and principle.

The egg is not just “where things come from”; it’s a structural symbol:

The cosmos starts as a closed unity, and Time + Necessity apply pressure until it opens into a space where difference, order, and history are possible.

That same logic then reappears in the Zeus-swallowing episode and in the fate of the soul: unity → scattering → re-collection.

13. What kind of world does Orphic myth imagine?#

If you put the pieces together, Orphic cosmogony is telling a particular kind of story:

The universe is fundamentally temporal. Time (Chronos) is not a late by-product; it’s the first mover, a dragon coiling in the dark.
Unity precedes multiplicity. The Egg and Phanēs encode a total cosmos before any gods start squabbling.
Divinity is recursive. Zeus becomes a second Phanēs by swallowing the first; Dionysus recapitulates divine death and rebirth; the soul repeats Dionysus’s pattern on a small scale.
Matter is compromised. Our bodies come from the ash of guilty Titans; embodiment is not neutral, it’s the outcome of a crime.
Salvation is memory and purification. You get out by remembering your true origin (“my race is heavenly”) and living in ways that loosen the Titanic bond. ¹⁸

It is a mythic physics in which:

the One keeps trying to become the many without losing itself,
the many keep forgetting they are the One,
religion is a kind of cognitive therapy, trying to reverse that amnesia.

The fact that late Platonists seized on this and said “yes, exactly, that’s what we meant” is not an accident. For them, Orpheus furnished a symbolic vocabulary for metaphysics they were drifting toward anyway.

From a modern vantage point, the Orphic cosmogony looks like a speculative cosmology whose real payoff is psychological:

It tells you why you feel torn between animal drives and a sense of divinity.
It gives that conflict a deep time horizon: the fight between Dionysus and the Titans is playing out in your habits.
It suggests that spiritual practice is not about pleasing a capricious god but about aligning the spark with its source.

Chronos and the Cosmic Egg are the opening shot in that drama. Dionysus Zagreus is the wound. The gold tablets are crib notes someone slips into your pocket on the way into the exam.

FAQ#

Q1. How does Orphic cosmogony differ from Hesiod’s creation story? A. Hesiod starts from Chaos and personified earth/sky, with Eros present but under-explained; there is no Time-god, no egg, no radiant firstborn demiurge. Orphic cosmogony adds Chronos, Anankē, the Cosmic Egg, Phanēs, and a cycle where Zeus swallows and re-creates the cosmos, plus a Dionysian anthropogony that explains human nature as mixed. ⁵

Q2. What exactly is the significance of Dionysus Zagreus’ dismemberment?
A. Mythically, it is the turning point where the intended heir of Zeus is torn apart by Titans; ritually, it underlies Dionysian mysteries centered on suffering, dismemberment, and rebirth; anthropologically, it explains why humans are Titanic in body but Dionysian in soul—we’re born from the ash of Titans who ate god. This sets up Orphic ethics and purification: you live in a way that honors the Dionysiac element and disciplines the Titanic one. ³

Q3. Why did some ancient writers call Orphism “un-Greek”? A. Not because it was literally imported from somewhere else, but because its tone and structure differ sharply from Homeric/Hesiodic religion. Orphism foregrounds cosmic eggs, serpent-Time, reincarnation, soul-body dualism, secret rites promising salvation—all things that feel more at home in mystery cults and philosophical religion than in the sunny reciprocity of city cults. Its imagery also resonates with Near Eastern and Indo-Iranian cosmogonies (world-egg, firstborn demiurge), which made it feel exotic even in antiquity. ¹⁷

Q4. How did these myths shape later philosophy?
A. Pythagoreans and Platonists borrow Orphic themes—reincarnation, body-as-prison, purification, cosmic cycles. Neoplatonists go further: they quote Orphic verses as authoritative theology and map Chronos, Egg, Phanēs, Zeus, Dionysus onto the levels of their metaphysical hierarchies (One, Intellect, Soul, etc.). Orphic myth becomes a symbolic grammar for describing how the many derive from and return to the One. ⁵

Q5. Is there any “original” Orphic scripture behind all this? A. Almost certainly there were Orphic poems (plural), including a theogony used by the Derveni commentator and later recast into Rhapsodies. But what survives is fragments and quotations heavily mediated by philosophers and critics. So “the Orphic cosmogony” is best treated as a reconstructed constellation of myths attested across centuries, rather than a single canonical text. The fact that it holds together as well as it does is a testament both to ancient system-builders and to the myth’s internal gravitational pull. ⁶