Creation Myth
Max Sandy
10/3/12
World Civilization
The Creation of the Creation Mythos
Myths are a vital key to understanding not only a culture’s history, and also its future. A society’s ethics and mores are portrayed through a myth’s oral and written tradition that is passed down from generation to generation and is most often used as a teaching tool. Since creation myths are such a good set of tools every culture has some form of them. Creation myths are an important aspect of teaching a culture’s children about how the world around them came to be and why things are the way they are whether good or bad. Although each culture and people has their own specific story that explains their beginnings, there are commonalities that are consistent from story to story. Every creation story has a deity or deities, reinforces the androcentric nature of the ancient world, emphasizes order over chaos, and explains the cycle of life and death.
If humans have two genders and their deities are supposed to be a reflection of themselves and at least some aspect of human nature, then it stands to reason that there would be a male aspect and a female aspect to the divine in a creation myth. In some myths the world is literally birthed into existence after the god and the goddess copulate as in the case of the Shinto creation story out of “The Kojiki”. The two main deities Izanami-no-mikoto and her husband Izanagi-no-mikoto, “were united and bore as a child [the island] Apadino-po-no-sa-wake-no-sima”, and it was this act of procreation that the islands of Japan originated from. Not every story has a divine act of copulation that literally gives birth to the land, but many simply feature a god (or gods) and a goddess (or goddesses) like in the Huarochiri Manuscript. These deities do not give birth to the world but simply interact with each other quite similarly to how the people of the South America interacted with each other when it was written. Others, like the Mesopotamian creation epic,
10/3/12
World Civilization
The Creation of the Creation Mythos
Myths are a vital key to understanding not only a culture’s history, and also its future. A society’s ethics and mores are portrayed through a myth’s oral and written tradition that is passed down from generation to generation and is most often used as a teaching tool. Since creation myths are such a good set of tools every culture has some form of them. Creation myths are an important aspect of teaching a culture’s children about how the world around them came to be and why things are the way they are whether good or bad. Although each culture and people has their own specific story that explains their beginnings, there are commonalities that are consistent from story to story. Every creation story has a deity or deities, reinforces the androcentric nature of the ancient world, emphasizes order over chaos, and explains the cycle of life and death.
If humans have two genders and their deities are supposed to be a reflection of themselves and at least some aspect of human nature, then it stands to reason that there would be a male aspect and a female aspect to the divine in a creation myth. In some myths the world is literally birthed into existence after the god and the goddess copulate as in the case of the Shinto creation story out of “The Kojiki”. The two main deities Izanami-no-mikoto and her husband Izanagi-no-mikoto, “were united and bore as a child [the island] Apadino-po-no-sa-wake-no-sima”, and it was this act of procreation that the islands of Japan originated from. Not every story has a divine act of copulation that literally gives birth to the land, but many simply feature a god (or gods) and a goddess (or goddesses) like in the Huarochiri Manuscript. These deities do not give birth to the world but simply interact with each other quite similarly to how the people of the South America interacted with each other when it was written. Others, like the Mesopotamian creation epic,