Through the sipapu, which is also the Acama creation myth. The old deserted Pueblo ruins have sipapus in their kivas.
I like the raven myths. Raven is always depicted as a creator and a trickster in nearly all Native American cultures.
Not a creation story in the sense of creation, but I think it is a fairly original idea and was awe inspiring to my kids when I read it to them. I won’t say more other than to say that it spurred a lot of discussion about what is possible.
Andy Weir’s The Egg. It will only take you two minutes and it’s from the guy who is more recently known for “The Martian”.
Oooooh, yes.
That’s a good one.
A snow cave? Ice cave? Rift formed of dark matter?
God playing hide-and-seek with himself, as per Alan Watts (who himself was translating Vedanta Hinduism for a Western audience). Basically the same idea as “The Egg,” posted above.
There are two meanings of “myth.” One, of course, is something that’s fake and made-up. The other is a story we tell that sheds light on some aspect of truth without being literally true itself. The Watts & Weir stories aren’t any more true than the book of Genesis, in a literal sense, but to my mind they do a much better job of describing the nature of things (hence, ‘favorite myth’). YMMV.
Very occult bird, your basic raven.
Like a writing desk?
“We were bought on credit and never paid for and are being repossessed one by one.” –Bizarro (I think)
I can’t pick just one.
My favorite modern origin of humans in popular fiction comes from the Diablo series of video games, where we’re the offspring of renegade demons and angels who decided to make love instead of war. This explains our dualistic nature and why both sides are fighting over our souls. Seems like it should be an old idea, but AFAIK it’s an original.
Aztec cosmology has to be the most metal religion ever invented. It’s all about gods sacrificing themselves in a giant cosmic fire to become the sun, multiple failed worlds dying to make way for the new (one drowning in an ocean of blood), and in the current era the sun is battling the moon and her armies of stars and humanity must supply him with blood and hearts to keep up the fight. That’s why they were so big on human sacrifice, because otherwise the sun dies and the world ends. Get choppin’!
My favorite Western creation story is some flavor of Gnosticism. The true god is in heaven but doesn’t do much. The entity that created the material world, the Demiurge, is either a blind idiot god - which is why the world sucks - or Satan himself, which explains why the world, including our own bodies, is fundamentally evil. Our souls are trapped in this awful plane of existence and the only way to escape is to reach enlightenment. Makes way more sense than the other Abrahamic religions.
It’s not a creation story for the universe or humanity, but I like Bila the sun goddess from the Australian aborigines. Fairly unknown to most. She was a cannibal who roasted people alive. Everyone banded together to chase her away, but then the world grew dark and cold. So they hunted her down and tied her to the earth with a cosmic chain and that’s where the sun came from. That should be worth a rock song or two. I like the idea of parents telling their kids that as a bed time story. Beautiful day? Nah, the cannibal sun is watching and waiting.
Seems pretty logical for people that lived in the desert and along the sea. The sun is a bitch, and she *will *roast you alive!
Hogfather.
Partly due to not knowing many other’s I like the one in Genesis 1.
I used to be a young-earth creationist in high school and recently I heard about the Framework Interpretation:
It explains why there were plants before there were the Sun, Moon and stars… and birds before land animals.
That link doesn’t seem to go anywhere. It leads to a Wikipedia page saying that there isn’t any such Wikipedia page.
The right bracket is meant to be included in the link…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_interpretation_(Genesis)
According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. Plato discusses this in The Symposium, and says that: “Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete." If the halves are fortunate enough to find each other, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy for the rest of their lives.
I’ve always loved that story. I guess I’m a romantic.
The Grade 1 version of how the solar system was formed: the sun was spinning and burning a lot, and then it spat out the planets and asteroids. Anyone else’s Gr 1 teacher say something close to that?
Chinese folk mythology: Pan Ku was in an egg, came out, and started chipping away at the egg to sculpt it. Then he died. His body became our planet, his breath became the wind, his sweat the rains, his blood the rivers… The flora and fauna were the parasites on the surface of his body.
I think it’s a refreshing contrast to the Abrahamic schpiel that posits humans as an intentional and supreme creation.
–G!
That one will do me just fine!
God damn, dude. Do you need some shit paper after the dump you just took?
“Screw it, I’ll just wait until it gets hungry.”