CHAOS, in the history of religions, refers primarily to the primordial condition, precosmic period, or personified being found in many oral and literary mythologies. It is commonly, although not always legitimately, taken to mean the horribly confused state, muddled matrix, vacuous condition, or monstrous creature preceding the foundation of an organized world system. By extension, the idea of chaos in myth and ritual may also apply to any anomalous condition, event, or entity outside conventionally sanctioned codes of order. The meaning and significance of chaos in world mythology has, moreover, a special thematic relationship with the idea of the beginnings of the world, or of any structured condition. The word beginning is, in fact, etymologically connected with the Old English on-ginnan and the Old Norse gina, in both of which lurks the mythological image of the cosmogonic Ginnungagap, the primordial void that spawned the giant Ymir (the Primordial...