In myths Phanes is often equated with Eros and Mithras and has been depicted as a deity emerging from a cosmic egg, entwined with a serpent. He had a helmet and had broad, golden wings. The Orphic cosmogony is bizarre, and quite unlike the creation sagas offered by Homer and Hesiod. Scholars have suggested that Orphism is "un-Greek" even "Asiatic" in conception, because of its inherent dualism.

Time, who was also called Aion, created the silver egg of the universe; out of this egg burst out the first-born, Phanes. Phanes was a uroboric male-female deity of light and goodness, whose name means "to bring light" or "to shine"; a first-born god of light who emerges from a void or a watery abyss and gives birth to the universe..