The Orphic Hymns

You are the father of all, the mother, the nurse and the nurturer, giver of quick births, blessed one, rich in seed, the impulse of the seasons, skilled in every art, shaper, maker of many things, revered power, eternal, bringer of motion, rich in experience, thoughtful,

Nature is father and mother at once, like the double-natured First-born of Hymn 6, and she is trophos and tithēnē, two words for a nurse. Plato, in the Timaeus, calls the space in which all things come into being "the nurse of becoming," using the second of these words. Kinēsiphoros, "bringer of motion," recalls Aristotle's definition in the Physics: nature is the source of movement and of rest in the things that have it.