Author: Leah Noel Gallo

Over the last couple weeks, we have analyzed many different creation stories, all of which have contained certain similarities.

All of the stories describe some sort of beginning of the world. They all serve as a possible explanation for the creation of humankind.

Most all of the stories, except in the Eridu Genesis, have contrasting themes of light and dark. In the beginning is some sort of nothingness or darkness. An alive being present in the nothingness subsequently creates something- either deliberately through a command, or through a consequence of the being’s actions (such as Pangu breaking open the egg).

All of the stories we studied include a distinct creator or creators of the universe. We define these creators as gods or God, where even amidst a plurality of gods there is still a “Supreme Being” or “Supreme Creator” over the gods. From here, we can perhaps observe that many cultures, or at least the ones that we’ve discussed, trace the origin of the Universe to a single point or a single creator. What’s interesting is that in physics, this could perhaps be defined as a “singularity”, or “a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space-time when matter is infinitely dense, as at the center of a black hole.” At the beginning of the Universe, a God or gods may have acted as this point in time that prompts the creation of all things, itself or themselves being infinite.

If a God-like being is infinite, and can create the universe, then we can say he can destroy the universe as well. This goes against one of the most important laws of our universe, the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, but can only change forms. So, if the creator of the universe is able to create matter, and destroy matter, then he must be outside of time itself. If you think about it, a being cannot create and destroy itself, so it must be outside of the dimension that it created.

Right now, we perceive our world in the third dimension, meaning we can move right, left, up, down, in, and out. Also, the third dimension perceives time linearly, or as it passes. Any being that lives in a higher dimension than ours will be able to look at time as if it was an object in front of them. Time to a creator of a universe occurs all at once to them, in one place.

Therefore, we can perhaps conclude that when a creator calls a universe into its beginning, he is actually calling forth the end as well. Since the creator will see time all at once, he also sees the end of the universe as it is created.

It’s very difficult for us, as humans, to conceptualize this. However, this should not prevent us from wondering what it would be like to be the creator of a universe, and what that being perceives. Maybe, similarities between different cultures’ beginnings can shine light as to how we are going to end.

 

Thank you so much for reading! Until next time, keep searching!

This week we are continuing eastward with our Origin Story series, focusing on the Americas. The Native American people were thought to have migrated from modern-day Russia, which is said to have been relatively easy since the two continents were once connected by land.

Historians report that this group of migrants traveled southward from the arctic region of North America over the years 38,000 BCE-3000 BCE, which covers three different migration periods. It’s important to note that historians also claim that migrants likely did not just travel across the arctic land bridge to populate the Americas, but other groups also sailed from southeast and east Asia, all the way across the Pacific Ocean.

This is an important fact when we ask ourselves, “where did these people originate”? And if we answer this question confidently, we can perhaps discover where these groups’ beliefs and ideas originated from too.

For time’s sake, we are going to be discussing the Navajo tribe’s creation story this time. The Navajo Indian reserve is the largest Native American reserve in America to date, comprised of 250,000 members, and counting. Initially, the Navajo had many more members, as did all Native American groups before the arrival of the Europeans.

The creation story of the Navajo goes as follows:

The world started with a world of darkness, called Nihodilhil, which was the “First World”. The First World had four corners with four different clouds appearing above the four corners. Within each cloud were the first four elements, appearing as the colors black, white, blue, and yellow. The Black Cloud represented the “Female Being or Substance”, because a child who sleeps in the darkness of a womb, so all life slept in the darkness of the cloud. The White Cloud represented the “Male Being or Substance”, who was the Dawn and the Light.

The Black Cloud met the White Cloud in the East of the First World, and together created First Man, as well as the perfect, white corn. The first seed that came from the corn was named Dohonotini, which is also the name of the place where the two Clouds met.

This First World was small, like an island in the ocean, or a mountain in the mist. On this World grew one Pine Tree, which will become important when the Present World is created.

The First Man was not in his Present form, and neither were the beings of this First World. They call these beings the Mist People, who had no definite form, but would later transform into the humans, beasts, birds and reptiles of the Present World.

In the West of the First World, (which would later be called the Land of the Sunset), the Yellow Cloud and Blue Cloud met and created First Woman. With her was the perfect, yellow corn, just like the white corn. Except, First Woman also had the white shell, yucca, and turquoise stone with her.

Now, the First Woman was standing in the West, far away from the First Man standing in the East, each representing different things. First Woman represented darkness and death, whereas First Man represented the Dawn, and Life.

The First Man had a crystal with him, and he burned it to light a fire. The crystal was clear, and was the awakening of the mind for the first time. It represented clear seeing for males.

The First Woman burned her turquoise to also light a fire. They both saw each other’s fires in the distance.

As the Black Cloud and White Cloud rose higher, the First Man desired to seek out the light. He tried to find it three times unsuccessfully, however, the fourth time he was able to mark the area using a forked tree branch. This when First Woman noticed, and said “I wondered why he did not come.”

As the Blue Cloud and Yellow Cloud rose higher, the same thing happened to First Woman! She tried to find the light three times unsuccessfully, but the fourth time, she found the smoke from the fire, and found the home of the First Man.

She had noticed that his crystal was stronger than her turquoise, and First Man asked “Why don’t you bring your fire and we can live together?” So the woman went with the man.

In came another person, called the Great-Coyote-Who-Was-Formed-in-the-Water, who was in the form of a man. He said to First Man and First Woman that he was hatched from an egg, and knew all that was under the water, and all that was in the skies. First Man decided that this being was to be put before all things in his life.

(Here it gets a bit more complicated).

After the Great Coyote came, and while the three began planning the future, another fourth being came to the house. He was also in the form of a man, but was wearing a hairy coat with a belted waist, and then he promptly fell to his knees. His name was “First Angry” or just Coyote. He said to the three, “You believe that you were the first persons. You are mistaken. I was living when you were formed.”

After that four more beings came together, who are called the Wasp People. These Wasp People knew the secret of shooting harm into others and causing evil, so they were very powerful.

Four more beings came after that, who were wearing red shirts and had black eyes- they were called the Spider Ants, who knew how to sting.

From this came more and more multitudes of beings, who all quarreled with each other constantly.

This is the story of the First World…which is only the beginning of the beginning! The story continues with the stories of the Blue Second World, Yellow Third World, and the White Fourth World.

The stories of each world constitute the entire Origin Story of the Navajo.

Here is a visual of the First World:

This story came from oral history, passed down from generations to generations, since the very beginning of Navajo culture. It was not written, like much of our history, but spoken. This is a precious story that has never died, and hopefully will never die with all of the time to come.

 

Thank you so much for reading, until next week, keep searching!

To continue the story of the origin of mankind, we are going to look at the stories of creation in the Pacific Island region, which includes the islands of Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, and many more. The people of these islands are said to have sailed from the mainland of China and slowly dispersed throughout the many islands in Melanesia and Polynesia.

Island migration

Beginning with Samoa, it is said that the earliest trace of human occupation in this island can be dated back to 1050 BCE. Austronesian speaking people inhabited the island, which eventually developed its own culture, language, and creation story. Samoan culture is similar the neighboring islands of Tonga and Fiji, which were settled around the same time. It is believed that these three islands “served as a gateway into the rest of the Pacific region known as Polynesia” (Wikipedia.org).

The creation story of the Samoans was first recorded by anthropologists Lowell and Ellen Holmes, meaning the story had not been written down before then. It is common among these islands for history to be passed down orally, through memory and repetition, not written on paper or in textbooks.

In Samoan mythology, Tagaloa is the supreme deity who is the chief of all gods, and the beginning and source of all life.

Carving of Tagaloa

Tagaloa resided in space before the universe was created, and created the heavens and the earth, the trees, the sky, the land, the sea, and the people. According to myth, the beginning of time only consisted of the heavens, and the waters which covered the earth. Tagaloa looked down from his high place, and desired to create a place where he could stand, called Manu’atele (which in google translate means “the great wound”). The supreme deity was pleased with his resting place, and thought about making another. So, he split the Manu’atele rock into many pieces that would serve as his stepping stones. Among these pieces were the islands Savai’i, Upolu, Tonga, Fiji, and many others that scattered the great ocean. The rock from which it was all split, Manu’atele, was called Samoa.

The island of Samoa

Tagaloa felt that the distances between the rocks was too great, so he created a sacred vine to spread over them. As the vine grew, its leaves fell off and turned into “worm like things” that had no heads, arms, legs, or life. The deity saw these worms, and gave them bodies and beating hearts, consequently creating mankind.

The story continues with Tagaloa placing a man and a woman on each of the islands in order to populate his creation. With this, he created different titles in order to help the govern the vast region, such as the title Tui, which meant king. Since there was so much to govern, Tagaloa felt that there should be one king who presided over all, and he chose the son of Day and Night for this special role. This King was named Satia i Ie Moaatoa, which meant “attached at the abdomen”. He was named this because once he was born, he suffered a great wound when he was ripped from the abdomen of his mother. He resided in Samoa, which means “sacred abdomen”, with all of his people.

Samoan civilization

Satia I le Moaatoa, once grown, became the Tuimanu’a Moaatoa,

the King of all Kings.

This is the origin story according to Samoan culture. In future weeks we will analyze more and more stories, and we will make connections between them all.

…to be continued…

This is a compilation of all the creation stories and myths of every region on our planet. This is the first part of many to come. I seek to find the similarities of all of these stories, in hopes to establish a firm truth of what caused the creation of our universe, and why?

Chinese Story

In ancient Chinese mythology, the creation story can be accredited to the Daoist writings of Xu Zheng, who authored the Three Five Historic Records in the 3^rd century AD. Even though this seems relatively recent, it is believed that Xu Zheng based his writings off of creation stories of the Yao people of southern China, who dominated in the 2^nd century AD, or the ancient Hindu religion’s creation story, which predates Xu Zheng’s writings by about 2000 years, which would be 4000 years ago to us.

The myth begins with a universe of chaos and disorder all within a big, black egg. Inside the egg, the first man, named Pangu, slept and grew for 18,000 years.

While Pangu slept, the concept of duality, known as the yin ang yang, also grew and developed. Once Pangu awoke, he wanted to break free from the egg, so he cracked it open which effectively separated the sky above him and the earth below him, as well as separated the yin and yang.

Pangu held both pieces for a long time, and grew taller while doing so. Because of this, the distance between the sky and earth grew. There are different versions of the story that all claim to be true after this moment. One version claims that the turtle, qilin, phoenix and dragon assisted Pangu in holding the two pieces apart and forming the sky and earth.

After another 18,000 years, Pangu died, and his body became the soil of the earth, where the parasites of his body became humans. Two other versions claim that Pangu formed the earth with a chisel and hammer, and that a goddess, who came after Pangu, formed humans, respectively (ancient-origins.net).

Indian Story

What is understood to be the story of creation in India has undergone many transformations over time. In the Vedic period, which was about 2000 years ago, the story of creation did not contain the complexities that are considered to be part of the divine story, today. Even back in 3500 BCE, the Indus River Valley civilization, which is believed to be one of the first advanced civilizations in human history due to intelligent infrastructure, practiced meditation along with worshipping a supreme, father creator. Religious tradition in India has changed drastically since then. Over time, religious beliefs have grown into something much more elaborate.

The Hindu story of creation, as believed by modern day Hindus, begins with three gods who are part of the divine trinity and who altogether make up the Supreme One. These three gods are the creator Brahma, the preserver Vishnu, and the destroyer Shiva. In the nothingness of the beginning of the universe, Vishnu lay sleeping in the endless coils of a serpent, who was protecting his sleep. Out of the nothingness came a constant pulsing of energy, called Aum. This pulsing of energy caused Vishnu to awaken, ending night and creating dawn. Once Vishnu was awake, a lotus flower formed at his naval, with Brahma, his servant, sitting on top awaiting his lord’s next command. Vishnu said, “It is time to begin”, and subsequently commanded Brahma to “Create the world.” After this, a wind and energy swept up the waters and the nothingness, which caused Vishnu and the serpent to vanish. Once this happened, Brahma remained sitting on the lotus flower.

He grew the lotus flower into a great tree, which was separated into three sections: the earth, the skies, and the heavens (in that order). Brahma then created all of the different forms of life on earth, giving each living thing feelings and a spirit. Shiva, who is not mentioned in the story, means nothingness, and is the supreme god out of the three. Shiva is interlaced with the soul and contributes to one’s sense of self. Ironically, Shiva is also the god who destroys, and transforms the universe.

…to be continued…