Inspired by this post in another thread somewhere, there’s a lot of world creation myths out there in different cultures. I don’t really have a favourite myself. I like a lot about the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime, but I don’t know much about it other than what I read in The Last Continent.
What’s your favourite?
Honestly, none of them since none of them are even remotely true. Granted that may sound rude, but that is my view.
Having said that, a new age creation myth is kind of interesting that some deity created life out of boredom and a desire to have some subjective experience over nothingness.
Turtles man,…turtles all the way down!
OK, I guess that’s more cosmology than creation. Still love it.
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
(Terry Pratchett)
Solipsism. Sometimes other people aren’t there, but I’m always here. When I’m gone, everybody else will be too. Prove me wrong!
Exactly. Love it.
Tolkien’s Ainulindalë: every bit as believable as Genesis, and infinitely superior artistically.
Nah, man. Somebody had to come in to remind everybody else that religion is bunk (sometimes we poor idiots forget). At least you got it out of the way in post #2.
Anyway, I like the Babylonian creation myth. Marduk kills Tiamat, cuts her in half, and more or less creates the universe from her corpse.
I’m really fond of Hesiod’s Theogony. The generations of the Giants, Titans, and Olympians make for some really nice mythologizing. Good storytelling.
Esmeralda and Keith.
I’m not really happy with any of the mainstream ones. I do like the Western occult/Kabala variation that God spoke the universe into creation and at the same time created math, geometry, and the paths of the Tarot. It’s the kind of stuff that sounds really deep around the bonfire, and reveals, as all creation myths do, more about the people telling them than the actual history of anything.
I’m also inordinately fond of the creation of humans story where a god was baking cookies, and the first batch came out burnt, the second batch underdone and the final batch golden brown and delicious, and there’s your variety of people. Don’t know if that’s a real one or something from modern fiction.
The Great Green Arkleseizure is pretty froody, too.
Sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure.
“In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
– Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
There is a story from central Africa, in which the creator god masturbates, and ejaculates the Universe.
I like that one. It tells you your place in the grand scheme of things.
I like the Navajo myth…where humanity emerges from an underground cave.
I love the Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation myth.
Turtles all the way down isn’t bad either.
More believable, IMHO.
Of course JRRT was inspired by the Bible, and made sure to craft a creation myth that parallelled it and did not contradict it.
For those interested in a wide variety of creation stories check out In The Beginning:Creation Stories From Around the World, by Virginia Hamilton. It has creation stories from around the world, all major continents, a wide variety of cultures. Google
I am not a Biblical literalist, but of the two creations stories in the book of Genesis I like the first one best, with creation taking six "days’.
The church I attend has a lovely set of windows depicting Scriptural stories, and of them my favorite is a picture of Adam surrounded by animals, naming them. There’s a water buffalo, a giraffe, a dog, and so on. But Adam has one hand on his head, as if scratching in puzzlement, as he points down at an anteater. It’s like “What the heck do I call this thing?”
The big Resurrection window, on the east side of the sanctuary, has a number small figures beneath the main picture. They are from obviously different cultures, a Babylonian, an Egyptian a Roman, there’s Adam and Eve, and what looks like a"caveman", who’s sitting on a rock with a club, while gnawing on a bone.
Well, yes, but that’s a given, I did call them “myths”. You wouldn’t go into a “Which is your favourite Bond movie?” thread with a similar comment, would you?
And thanks for that book info, Baker, it looks really interesting, I’ll have to see if I can get hold of it, or something similar.
as opposed to…