Moirai

### Summary

Primordial gods who govern over the fate of mortals and immortals in Greco-Roman religion and mythology.

### Origins

Greco-Roman Mythology

**Moirai**, also called the **Fates**, are three primordial goddesses personifying destiny from Greco-Roman mythology, controlling the metaphorical threads of life for every mortal and immortal from birth to death.

## Overview

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the **Moirai**, often known in English as the **Fates**, were the incarnations of destiny; their Roman equivalent was the **Parcae** (euphemistically the "sparing ones"), and there are other equivalents in cultures that descend from the Proto-Indo-European culture. Their number became fixed at three: Clotho ("spinner"), Lachesis ("allotter") and Atropos ("the unturnable", a metaphor for death).

The role of the Moirai was to ensure that every being, mortal and divine, lived out their destiny as it was assigned to them by the laws of the universe. For mortals, this destiny spanned their entire lives, and was represented as a thread spun from a spindle. Generally, they were considered to be above even the gods in their role as enforcers of fate, although in some representations Zeus, the chief of the gods, is able to command them.

In the Homeric poems Moira or Aisa are related to the limit and end of life, and Zeus appears as the guider of destiny. In the *Theogony* of Hesiod, the three Moirai are personified, daughters of Nyx and are acting over the gods. Later they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, who was the embodiment of divine order and law. In Plato's *Republic* the Three Fates are daughters of Ananke (necessity).

The concept of a universal principle of natural order and balance has been compared to similar concepts in other cultures such as the Vedic Ṛta, the Avestan Asha (Arta) and the Egyptian Maat.

## Summary

The Moirai - Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho - were three primordial goddesses created by Ananke since the beginning of the Age of Gods. They were born during the Archean eon on Earth, when the earliest known life forms began to appear, and were given authority over governing the fate of these beings.

Like other [Gods of Fate], they were visited by Michael in their dreams and taught how to wield the Threads of Life, a primordial type of supernatural energy generated by Diegesis that could be used to control the probabilities of the universe, and through it, controlling how history would unravel.

However, they were not the only gods capable of this power, as their creator Ananke and her son Moros were capable of it as well. During the First Holy War, after Ananke was killed and her consciousness absorbed into the Dimension Lost, Moros abandoned the group, leaving Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho the only [Gods of Fate] within their pantheon.

Since then, for the most part, the Moirai lived distant from the other gods, though when the Olympians overthrown the Titan dynasty and claimed the heavens as their own, Zeus invited them to live on the newly-changed Mount Olympus, which they accepted. Upon arriving, they appointed new domains for the Elder Olympians, as well as rearranged pre-existed domains of deceased gods for suitable candidates.

From then on, they lived together in a secret cavern on Mount Olympus that changed every hour, with only Zeus and Hestia knowing how to find them. Like other gods, they were worshiped by the Ancient Greeks, ever since pre-Mycenaean Minoans as powerful goddesses, revered in rituals and ceremonies as the "power that governs even the gods".

Every now and then, they would appear in Greek myths, such as resurrecting Pelops after his father killed him, allowing Alcestis to exchange her life for her husband's, warning Althaea of her son Meleager's doomed fate, etc.

## Trivia

* In Athens, women would offer the Moirai locks of hair for a good pregnancy.
* One of Zeus' epithets is "Moiragetes", which can mean "Leader of the Moirai" or "Guide of Fate".
* According to Pausanias, Aphrodite had an earlier, pre-Olympic existence called *Aphrodite Urania* the "eldest of the Fate".
* In Plato's "Republic", the Moirai are said to sing in unison with the music of the sirens: Lachesis sings the things that were, Clotho sings the things that are, while Atropos sings the things that are to be.
* Various accounts of the Moirai's parentage exist in Greek mythology:
	+ In Orphism, they are daughters of Chronos and Ananke.
	+ In some myths, they are daughters of Zeus with Themis, making them sisters of the Horai.
	+ In most versions, they are daughters of Nyx, either by herself or with Erebus.
* The Moirai consider the Norns, the Matronae, and the Morrígan to be their rivals.