Creation of the Universe in Mythology
The story of the origin of our planets, solar system, galaxy and indeed universe is one that science continues to ponder with its ever more precise measurements and long-range observations of the past. But philosophy, mythology and religion had an opinion on these going back to the dawn of civilisation. In the Judaic—Christian tradition we are left with the legacy of the Old Testament and its description of the creation of the world. In the Bible, it says:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness he called night.
Tahiti is one of the largest island in French Polynesia located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean. The native people of Tahiti have their own mythology about the creation of the world:
“Ta-aroa rested for a long time in his shell. It was shaped like a seed and spun around in the infinite emptiness in constant darkness. There was no sun, no moon, no earth, no mountains. there was just churning, unbound water. There were no people, no pigs, no birds, no dogs, no man-made objects, no sea and no freshwater. Ta-aroa flicked his fingers against the inside of the shell where he sat so cramped - and it cracked and opened. He squeezed out, stood up and shouted: “Is anyone there? Is anyone under there”? Not a voice answered his calls! Then he created the world of his own flesh - and the different parts of his body became the different parts of nature - except for his head, which he kept for himself.
The Sami people are native to large parts of northern Norway and Sweden and also parts of Finland and the Murmansk Oblast of Russia. This is the Sami tradition:
“Sami mythology contains several stories about the creation of the world and man. Here, the world was not created from nothing but was transformed by the gods. The Sun god was called Beaivi, which is also the Sami word for sun. According to the Sami mythology, the reindeer came to earth riding rays of the sun. On the Sami drum, several central gods were placed on the Sun’s rays. One story tells of the god Ipmill, who was tormented by the noise from the spirits of the underworld. So he decided to create a new world. Ipmill sacrificed a female reindeer from the sacred mountain passevare, and built a new world, of the body parts of the animal: the bone became the skeleton of the earth, the flesh became the land, the veins became rivers, and the hairs became forests. Ipmil made the reindeer’s head into the sky, and the eyes became the Sun and the Moon.
Japan is an island country in East Asia, located in the Pacific ocean off the eastern coast of the Asian continent. This is the Japanese tradition:
“Two gods were commanded: “Fix this floating country and put it in order”. To help them with their task, they were given the heavenly jewelled spear. The gods stood on the hovering bridge of the heavens and pointed the spear downwards. When they touched the sea, the salt water solidified, and the salt dripping off the spearhead and became an island. This is Onogorojima, “The island that solidified itself”. The gods descended from the heavens, erected a Column to the heavens and built a hall. Later, the gods gave birth to all the islands of Japanese. They then gave birth to the god of the wind, Shinatsuhiko, then the god of the trees, Kukunochi, the god of the mountains, Oyamatsumi, and the god of the fields, Kaya-no-hime...
The Maya people were an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous people of Mesoamerica. The group that inhabited the region of Guatemala had this tradition:
“Still it hovers. It is motionless, in peace and without a ripple. It is desolate, and the heavens are empty. These are the first words and the first story. There are no people there, no animals - no birds, fish, crabs, trees, cliffs, caves, ravines, grasslands, forests. Only the sky reposing in itself. The earth has not yet appeared. There is only the ocean, and the ocean is motionless beneath the sky - that is all there is. Nothing has been put together. Nothing moves, or vibrates or makes a sound in the sky. Then came the word. The first light and man appeared in their minds...
The Greenlandic Inuit are the indigenous peoples and the most populous ethnic group in Greenland. This is their tradition:
“Our ancestors talked a lot about how the earth and its people came into being. They did not understand how to hide words in lines like the white man, they just told stories, the people who lived before us. Long ago, when the earth was created, it came crashing out of the sky. Dirt, mountains and rocks - everything came from the heavens. After the earth had been created, came the people. The earth itself game them form. Small children grew right out of the ground, they sprouted in the underbrush covered in leaves, and they then lay there between the bushes, wiggling around with their eyes closed - they could not even crawl. They got their nourishment from the earth. But the people, who did not understand death, soon became too numerous and the earth became overcrowded. Then there was a mighty flood. Many drowned, and thus the population was reduced. We can still see traces of this floor high up in the mountains, where you can find mussels.
The peoples of the pacific Northwest had this tradition:
“Before there was anything - before the great flood, before the animals roamed the fields and the forest covered the land, before the birds flew among the trees and before fish, whales and seals swam in the sea - before all this was darkness - darker than thousand stormy winter nights. All the light in the universe was hidden in a tiny box. The Raven has always existed and always will. After turning into a fledgling, he finally caught hold of the light - a beautiful, radiant orb. Changed again into a huge, shiny black shadow the raven spread its wings snapped up the light and flew out into the vast darkness. The world was transformed: mountains and valleys appeared, the rivers glittered and life awakened everywhere. Far away another great winged creature rose into the air - that was when the light struck the eyes of the Great Eagle for the first time. The Eagle attacks the Raven, who lost half of the light. It fell onto the rocky ground and shattered into many tiny pieces that bounced back into the sky. They are still there - as the moon and the stars that light up the night. The Eagle followed the Raven to the end of the world. There the Raven set the last part of the light free. The light stained the clouds red, and then the sun climbed up over the mountains to the east.
Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous people of the Australian mainland. Here is there tradition:
“The dream time tales of the Aboriginals have no beginning or end, but glide into and intertwine with each other. Told through 10,000 years. An eternal process of creation. A great darkness filled the heavens. This darkness was quiet and peaceful, and encased within it lay the earth, cold and lifeless. On the surface were mountains and tall peaks, hills, valleys and plains, and deep caves and grottos. In these caves, there were forms of life, but without awareness or their surroundings. There was no wind, not even a gentle breeze. One day, the Great Father Spirit whispered softly to Goddess of the Sun: “Now, you shall awaken and go out and give life to the world and all that it holds. First you shall wake the grass, the plants, and then the trees. After covering the earth’s surface, you shall create insects and fish, reptiles and lizards, snakes, birds and mammals. Nothing shall be created that does not benefit the other parts of creation”. All the mammals, birds and reptiles now used the opportunity to examine this strange new creature that had appeared with the rain, the thunder and the lightning. They gathered to talk about what they had seen, and all gave different accounts of this new being.
In ancient Egypt there were many creation myths. The texts describe a process without beginning and end, where the Universe is a dynamic living organism. This is their tradition:
“In the beginning, before there was any land of Egypt, all was darkness, and there was nothing but a great waste of water called Nun. The power of Nun was such that there arose out of the darkness a great shining egg, and this was Re. He was all-powerful, and he could take many forms. “I am Khepera at the dwan, and Re at noon, and Tem in the evening”, he said. and the Sun rose and passed across the sky and set for the first time. Then he named Shu, and the first winds blew; he named Tefnut the splitter, and the first rain fell. Next he named Geb, and the earth came into being; he named the goddess Nut, and she was the sky arched over the earth and with her feet on one horizon and her hands on the other; he named Hapl, and the great River Nile flowed through Egypt and made it fruitful.”
These bits of scripts were taken from an exhibit at the Archaeology museum in Stavanger, Norway. They illustrate the variety of ideas and the creativity of thinking, but also perhaps the commonality between some of them. Science has replaced these mythologies with the Big Bang model which is closely linked to observational evidence. Yet, there is still so much we do not understand about the nature of the Universe, such as what is dark matter and dark energy and are there other universes in a giant multiverse? In an infinite sea of possible universes, and if we take the meaning of infinity to its extreme interpretation, then by definition all of the above mythologies will occur at least once, no matter how crazy. Perhaps what matters is not how we got here, but that we are here, and what we will do with the limited time that we have been given.
This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.
