Myths of creation are myths of how the universe began. It is the “how” of the beginning of our solar system, of the making of all creatures and everything that surrounds us. Creation myths can be divided into many different categories according to their explanation of the origins of humans, animals, the universe, etc. Thus, we have myths of creation by Deus Faber (God the maker), by emergence, by sacrifice, by secretion, by thought, by word, from a cosmic egg, from ancestors, from chaos, from clay, from dismemberment of primordial being, from division of primordial unity, from nothing, or as explanation ADDIN ENRef (Leeming). Of these myths some are representative of matriarchal or patriarchal societies. In the myths I have collected we will see the role of animals in the genesis. The myth of creation is emulated and repeated in nature by the yearly seasonal cycles; it is the rebirth of the earth in the spring, or the birth of a baby; it is the work of an artist or the song of a musician. These are all representations of the creation in our everyday lives.
The Greek myth of Eurynome and Ophion is a good point of departure as an example of a matriarchal creationist myth. According to the myth Eurynome rose from the sea as the Great Goddess of all things. Ophion, the great serpent of the water, made love to her and Eurynome turned into a bird and gave birth to the great universal egg of which all creatures were born ADDIN ENRef (Bierlein). At this point in history, when the myth is alive, people describe the beginning of the universe through the eyes of the goddess and her symbols. She is the giver of birth and life.
The woman can be representative of the chaos from which the woman creates life by giving birth to herself. She appears in other cultures under different names such as Yemaya, Spider Woman, Ishtar or Astoreth, Demeter, and many others. She is representative of the moon with its cycles while her body is representative of the earth. From her breasts the earth nourishes its creatures and they return back to the earth to die.
Many symbols have been left behind from many different cultures worldwide that attest to the importance of the goddess-creation myth. These symbols have passed now to belong to the human consciousness ADDIN ENRef (Stein). Some of the symbols that have endured associated with the goddess are the egg, the circle and ellipse, the spiral, the triangle pointing down, as well as labyrinths and mazes.
In the beginning all life came from the sea and many cultures used the mermaid and snake with the sea serpent as its symbols. The animals symbolized the goddess of all life. Later in history in the patriarchal myth of creation, the snake symbolizes the downfall of Eve. The goddess of all things turns into a creature and is killed by men. This animal does appear throughout the history of man; however, it takes many forms and most often is associated with the dark forces.
Cecrops, the founder of Athens, was half snake, half-human who taught the first inhabitants how to read, to write, and to work crafts. The great citadel of Athens is named Cecropia after him.
In the Chinese creation myth it is from the hen’s egg that the universe is created. The yolk becomes the sun and sky and the white becomes the earth and sea. In the egg born at the same time is Pangu, who grew and grew for 18,000 years. His height at his death is said to be the distance from earth to heaven. His body became the mountains, the sun and the moon, the rivers, and the wind.
In the Cherokee myth of creation the role of the animals is an important one They viewed the world at creation as being a sea of water being held by four cords at each of the cardinal points ADDIN ENRef (Mooney, p.239). The animals lived crowded above this in Gâl—lati, wanting to know what was below. The water-beetle, “Beaver’s Grandchild”, offered itself to go down and find out, but not finding anything on the surface dove into the water and brought up some mud which begun growing in all directions forming the earth. Afterwards the birds were sent to see if it was dry, and not finding a place to land they went back. Next, the buzzard was sent and it was when tired from flying that it reached the Cherokee country and began to flap and strike the ground, forming the valleys and the mountains. The other animals, afraid that everything would be mountains, called the buzzard back. The creation of humans in this myth takes place only after the animals and the plants have already been created.
For Native American Indians there were no essential differences between nature and man, as demonstrated in their ability to talk to plants and animals. It is only because of the human aggression and carelessness violating the rights of others that the animals in council join forces against him in the Cherokee myth of “The Origin of Disease and Medicine” (Mooney, p.250). We discover how it is that the animals gathered to talk about what they could do to stop humans from slaughtering them. The social order in which animals live is representative of the way that the Native Americans lived. They lived in tribes, had a chief and townhouses, etc.
Every culture at its foundation had its own interpretation of how the world came about and why things were the way they were. However, many similarities do exist. There are two approaches that attempt to explain the parallels between the myths of vastly separated cultures. The first approach believes the myths were created in a few myth-creating locations and were diffused to other cultures with the passing of time and contact among different cultures. The second approach is a psychological view of mythology that believes myths are products of the human psyche and therefore universal to all human beings.