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No Creation Myths Creation Myths No matter what culture s creation myth that is looked at, the majority of these myths all contain the same core beliefs for the explanation of the world s existence. The endeavor to understand the human existence has been with us as long as we have been around, and the most intriguing of them all is the very search for our beginning. Where, when and how did it all start? The classic Indian text Rig Veda states with poetic clarity, just how grand a quest the search for such answers is: Whence all creation had its origin, he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not he, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows or maybe even he does not know. (PRF Brown) In most human cultures, questions of this nature have been answered by myths and legends. These myths and legends are often elaborate, with surprising detail and congeniality, and always intriguing to the mind, no matter how old they may be or how inconsistent with modern scientific understanding.
In penetration of such myths, a psychoanalytic perspective based on Carl Jung's theories is frequently used (Bird 10). Gods are said to represent the archetypes, and mythical events are symbols of mans pursuit of self-realization. This way of looking at creation myths may very well be triggered by the fact that these old explanations of the birth of man and cosmos are quite contradictory to what science tells us, therefore a symbolic and psychological interpretation of the myths seems to be the only way to claim their value for present man. The myths are described as expressions of human emotional needs and the details and ingredients in them are said to evolve from the dark corners of our subconscious somewhat like dreams (Chittick 51). This is, of course, a narrow-minded perspective. Not only does it all too readily assume that modern science has found all the true answers, but more serious is the implication it contains, that people of the past had no ability for scientific, deductive reasoning, maybe not even a genuine interest in questions of this nature.
A primordial couple is found in most creation myths. Adam and Eve have their counterparts, for example in the charming Nordic myth of Ask and Emily the first a tree, the second a vine embracing it, before the gods made them into man and woman. In the Mayan legend of Pool v, people are made out of corn, in Egyptian myth out of the tears of the sun god Re and certainly our species has been cause for crying several times since. In many a myth, man is made in a beastly fashion that our deeds give good reason to assume like the Babylonian tale Enuma english, where people are shaped out of the blood and veins of an executed god. Marduk, the initiator of mans creation, has a clear purpose for him: He shall be charged with the service of the gods That they might be at ease! (Keller) The Babylonian gods sure are a violent lot, in war against each other.
Marduk believes that the devotion of men might appease them, so that things can finally come to order. But of gods or out of natures ingredients man and woman are created fully grown adults at the moment of their coming into being, except for the tales of the Eskimos on Greenland, where the first people are children growing out of the earth. There they lie, one day, with closed eyes, unable even to crawl. The earth itself feeds them. Most creation myths state it clearly: when the first man and woman were born, they immediately started to reproduce. All the people in the world come from these extraordinarily conceived ancestors.
Also animals and plants, obviously chained to the cycle of birth and dying, are believed to have a beginning much like that of man. Then early man asks himself is there anything eternal, neither being born nor giving birth? The sun is reborn each day, the moon and stars each night, the mountains wither, the soil is washed away by rain. What remains? Well, the air seems ever present, but to the mind of early man its presence is so vague that its rather taken for granted, somewhat like the space in which we all move. You cannot touch it, and not move away from it.
Theres something much more palpable, and still seemingly eternal: the sea. The sea stretches further than the eye can see, deeper than man can reach; it chews on land much like man bites the flesh from the bones of his prey. The land seems to have been raised out of the sea, and surely it can be swallowed into the sea again. Early man will find it hard to imagine a time when the sea was not.
In Jungian analysis of myths, the primordial sea is regarded as a symbol of chaos, which is an interesting although unnecessary way of explaining the fact that it is present in almost every creation myth we know of. When early man searches for something eternal, he will find the sea by pure observation and deductive reasoning, whatever his subconscious might point out. Well, modern science tells us that life itself was born in the sea, and that all plants and creatures on land came from the sea. Early man did well, in pointing out the sea as a prerequisite for creation. The sea and the water are essential elements in most myths of creation. In Enuma english of the Babylonians, there is at first As, the sweet water entity, and Tiamat, the salt-water entity, in separate dwellings.
Then Mummy, a trickster type of god connected to the rain, makes them meet, and thus creation begins. Rain brings sweet and salt water together. Doesnt it make good sense? In the Japanese myth of Kojiki, the twin gods Izanagi and Izanami stir up the ocean with a spear, making an island appear. There they settle down and embrace in a fashion so lustful, that the 19 th century English translator Basil Hall Chamberlain felt the need to switch to Latin. Out of their incestuous copulation the world is born.
The Viking tales show some variation to the theme. There is in the beginning a great gap called Ginnunga, which simply means immeasurable. In this gap fire meets ice, and in the water from the melting ice the very painstaking process of creation takes place. Even the Bible has its primordial sea, in the book of Genesis, where Gods spirit hovered over the surface of the water (Wrong 23). Although the Bible is usually said to describe creation from nothing this is not clearly the case. Genesis starts with the words: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but then he explicitly makes the heavens on the second day of creation.
The introduction should be read merely as a headline. This is most likely the case also with the second tale of creation in Genesis, starting (at 2: 4) with a similar phrase. It is very hard to find a myth, where the world is created out of nothing. Its vaguely hinted in the Zoroastrian text Avesta and in the Koran, among the few. In almost all cases, even when nothingness is implied, there is really in the beginning: something. The problem of imagining something out of nothing is obvious to everyone who ever tried it, also to modern scientists.
They find it just as hard to settle with the Big Bang theory. In all creation myths, gods of some sort are the initiators of worldly life. Theyre not at all as eternal as the sea, nor do they handle their affairs with such a firm control and clear intention as the Christian god is generally assumed to have done. Rarely do they have his exclusive monopoly. In every culture shares the same basic properties that make up their own god figure; but to call them gods is saying almost nothing about them.
What can the Egyptian sunrise creature Cheese have in common with the vindictive Odin of Nordic tales, or the almighty Java? Their personalities differ immensely, as do their powers and their functions. Even when it comes to the act of creation, they have such different ways to go about it, that it doesnt make much sense giving them the same title (Tollefson). Although most of them are far from almighty, and some of them just as mortal as ordinary men, its most certainly the Christian god whos been their measure. Christians have conducted the studies of myth and religion, consequently within a Christian framework and terminology. Different cultures have handled their fear of the unknown in many different ways; but no matter how you try to explain your own creation you will never really know until you meet the creator itself.
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Research essay sample on Man And Woman Myths And Legends
