In Platos Timaeus dialogue, Plato drawing from archaic knowledge goes into detail of explaining the creation of the universe. Platos creator is the Demiurge a word that originally meant craftsman and was later associated with the creator god and in some cases had a demonic connection.
The Demiurge compounded the four elements fire, earth, air and water to create the perfect sphere. At the centre of this sphere he created another the Earth, who he made a living being, whose life was eternal. He then created the seven younger gods these being the seven visible planets known to the ancients Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter all living beings and like the Earth immortal.
( The Sun and Moon where thought to be planets and the Earth was thought to be at the centre of the universe).
However before creating the gods Demiurge had first created the soul of the universe for it was his bidding that the soul should roule the body and so must be created first. Using three other elements described as the other, the same and the essence, Demiurge mingled these elements together to form one which he then divided lengthways into two parts. One part he placed at the edge of heaven to form the ecliptic (the imaginary line the planets orbit around), the second became the Earths axis a line running through the poles. The soul both divided and united reached out everywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven.
Demiurge universe had been forged but it was still incomplete. Four tribes of creatures had yet to be created those that dwell in heaven, those that occupy the sky, those that dwell under the oceans and those that dwell on land. The first to come into existence the deities of heaven. -
Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and from these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that generation; and from Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and all those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were the children of these.
When the deities had all been created Demiurge instructed them that the universe was still incomplete three tribes of creatures must still be created. This task was to be done by the deities of heaven for if Demiurge himself created them they would be as the universe ever lasting though out all time. Demiurge once again poured into the cup the remains of the element of which he had created the soul of the universe and mingled it in much the same manner, but diluted to the second and third degree.
The mixture was divided into equal parts equal to all the stars and assigned each soul to a star. Demiurge then gave the laws of destiny to the deities of heaven. After handing down these laws Demiurge sowed some of them in the Earth and some in the Moon and some in the other instruments of time (the stars). He committed the younger gods the seven planets (Earth being the oldest God) to furnish what was lacking from the mortal soul.
The deities following the instruction of the Demiurge took the elements of fire, earth, air and water from the Earth and created the three remaining tribes of creatures, man being the dominant of the mortals, and in this mortal vessel they placed the soul that Demiurge had mingled from the remains of the universal soul.
Platos account of the creation of the universe and of mortals shows an archaic belief that the universe is a living being with a soul that reaches out and touches everything. Humans too bare a remnant of this universal soul, each soul consisting in part of what the universal soul is made up of and each soul in part touched by the seven younger gods Moon, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.
