| Greek | Chaos takes shape before all things Hesiod opens with Chaos coming to be. The verb gives it a beginning, and the poem says nothing at all about what stood before it. The word means a gap, a chasm that opens. Out of i… | Earth bears the starry sky by herself Gaia, needing no partner, first produces Ouranos, the starry sky, made her own size so that he covers her completely. She also brings forth the mountains and the unresting sea, Pon… | The grey sickle Cramped and groaning with the children packed inside her, Gaia makes a jagged sickle out of grey adamant, gathers her sons, and asks which of them will act. Only Cronus takes the b… | The silver egg splits; the First-Born takes wing This stage does not continue from the last one; it is a separate tradition running alongside it. The Orphics told several theogonies. In the late Rhapsodic version, known chiefly t… | — | The father who ate his children Warned that a son of his will unseat him, Cronus swallows each child as it is born: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon. When Zeus is due, Rhea hands her husband a stone wrapped… Deucalion's chest and the stones thrown backwards Zeus decides to wipe out the men of that age and sends the rain. Forewarned by Prometheus, his son Deucalion builds a wooden chest, stocks it, and boards it with his wife Pyrrha; t… | The lots are drawn One challenger is left: Typhoeus, son of Gaia and Tartarus, a hundred snake heads growing from his shoulders and fire in his eyes. Zeus burns him down with the thunderbolt and thro… |
|---|
| Norse | Ginnungagap, the yawning void First there was only Ginnungagap, a gaping emptiness. To the north lay Niflheim, where the spring Hvergelmir sent out eleven rivers, the Élivágar; the venom they carried hardened l… | Ymir and the cow Auðumbla The drops of melting rime quickened into a giant, Ymir. Snorri says the frost-giants call him Aurgelmir, which is the name Vafþrúðnismál gives to the giant who grew out of the drop… | The skull raised, the sparks set Ymir's skull was lifted up to make the sky, with a dwarf set under each of its four corners: Norðri, Suðri, Austri, Vestri. His brains were flung up as clouds. The gods fetched spa… | A world cut out of a corpse Borr's sons killed Ymir. So much blood ran from the wounds that it drowned every frost-giant but Bergelmir, who got away with his household on a lúðr, a word Snorri takes to mean a… Yggdrasil, and the gold that ran out On the plain of Iðavöllr the gods raised altars and temples, forged tools and treasures, played board games in the meadow and had gold to spare, until three giant-maidens came out… | Ask and Embla on the shore Borr's three sons, walking along the sea-shore, found two trees and made people of them: one gave breath and life, one gave wit and movement, one gave face, speech, hearing and sig… | The Fimbulwinter and Surtr's fire First comes the Fimbulwinter: three winters running with no summer between them, and brothers killing each other for nothing. The wolf catches the sun and swallows her, the stars f… | Green earth comes up out of the sea The earth comes up out of the sea a second time, green, with an eagle fishing over the falls and grain growing in fields nobody sowed. The surviving gods gather again at Iðavöllr:… |
|---|
| Celtic | — | The gods arrive fifth, in a dark cloud The book files the gods of Ireland fifth in the sequence: they come in by sea like every people before them, and the compilers give their kings regnal years. They had learned their… | — | Partholón clears plains, and lakes burst out of the ground Partholón crossed from Greece and landed at Inber Scéne. When he came, the book says, Ireland held one plain, three lakes and nine rivers; his people cut four more plains out of th… Ireland cut into five, and given kings The party that went to Greece was put to work carrying earth in leather bags up onto bare rock, and the book uses that to explain the name Fir Bolg, bag men - folk etymology, not h… | — | Cessair lands forty days before the flood Cessair, daughter of Bith, came ashore at Dún na mBárc with three men and fifty women, forty days before the flood. The book makes her a granddaughter of Noah, refused room in the… Conand's tower and the tribute of two thirds Nemed set out from Scythia with forty-four ships and reached Ireland with one. His people cleared twelve more plains, four more lakes broke open, and they won several fights with t… Lug puts a sling-stone through Balor's eye A maimed man could not be king, so the crown went to Bres, who was half Fomorian. Bres was so mean with food that the poet Cairbre made the first satire in Ireland against him unde… | The surface to the Gaels, the mounds to the gods Íth saw Ireland across the water from the top of Bregon's tower in Spain, sailed over, and was killed by the three kings of the Tuatha Dé. His kin, the sons of Míl, came to avenge… |
|---|
| Slavic | No sky, no earth, only water Every recorded Slavic account of the beginning opens the same way: there was no sky and no earth, only water. A Christmas carol from Galicia sings that before the world had any beg… | Two doves, or God and Satan In the carol two doves alight on the oaks in the middle of the sea and take counsel with one another about diving to the bottom. In the prose legends the pair on the water is God a… | The sky was too small, so God sent a bee In the carol the sky comes out of the golden stone from the sea floor: the doves sow it on the water as they sowed the sand, and it becomes the bright sky, and after it the bright… | A fistful of sand off the sea floor God sends Satan down for earth. Most Russian and Ukrainian recordings have him dive three times: twice he grabs the mud in his own name and the water strips it out of his fists on… The mountains Satan coughed up Satan surfaced with a few grains hidden in his cheek, meaning to keep a patch of land for himself. When God's sand began to swell on the water, the grains in his mouth swelled too,… | The dog took a fur coat as a bribe God shapes a man out of clay and leaves the body lying while he goes to fetch its breath, setting a dog to watch it. The dog had no hair in those days and stood there bare. Satan b… | — | When the whale-fish turns, the white world ends The finished world has a centre. On the island of Buyan, out in the sea-ocean, lies the white burning stone Alatyr, which the Golubinaya kniga names the mother of all stones, and f… |
|---|
| Egyptian | Nun, the water that does not move Before anything else there was Nun: limitless, lightless, motionless water, with no shore and no up or down. The Egyptians never say it was made and never say it went away. It stil… | Atum rises on the first mound A patch of dry ground pushed up through the water: the primeval mound. Atum, who had no father and no mother, brought himself into being on it — his name can be read both as 'the c… A sneeze into air, spittle into moisture Atum was alone and had to beget from his own body. In one version he takes his phallus in his hand, and the hand is itself later worshipped as a goddess; in another the birth is ca… | Shu holds up the sky Shu stepped in between his children, put his hands under Nut and pushed her clear of Geb, and the gap he opened is the air that living things breathe. Coffin lids and papyri draw i… | Ptah thinks it, then says it The priests of Memphis did not accept that any of this started at Heliopolis. On the Shabaka Stone the craftsman god Ptah conceives a thing in his heart, then pronounces its name w… | People out of the creator's tears The Eye brought Shu and Tefnut back and found that a second eye had taken its place. It flew into a rage; Atum set it on his forehead as the uraeus cobra. Then he wept over the chi… | Seven thousand jars of red beer Ra ruled on earth until he grew old: bones of silver, flesh of gold, hair of true lapis lazuli. Mankind saw the state of him and plotted rebellion. Ra called the gods into council,… | Ra withdraws; the end goes back into Nun After the killing Ra had had enough of the earth. He climbed onto the back of Nut, who turned into a cow, and rose into the sky: Shu holds up her belly from below, and eight Heh-go… |
|---|
| Mesopotamian | When heaven had not been named The poem opens on a world that has not yet been named: heaven is not called heaven, earth is not called earth. There are only two waters — Apsu the fresh water, who begot them, and… | Gods rise from the two waters; their uproar wakes the deep From the mingling waters the generations come: Lahmu and Lahamu, then Anshar and Kishar, then Anu the sky, and Anu fathers Ea (Enki). The young gods band together and surge back an… | Split like a fish for drying Ea goes out against her and turns back; Anu goes and turns back. Marduk agrees to fight only once the assembly has granted him supreme kingship. He spreads a net at the four quarte… | Stars and rivers made from a corpse Marduk lays out stations in the sky for the great gods, sets the constellations as their images, fixes a year of twelve months with three stars to each, and pegs Neberu at the zeni… | Man knotted together from a rebel's blood Marduk announces that he will knot blood together and make bone, and set up a thing called lullu to carry the drudgery of the gods. Ea proposes that the instigator be handed over;… | Apsu is killed, Tiamat raises eleven monsters Ea strikes first: he chants a spell that puts Apsu to sleep, strips off his crown and his aura, kills him, binds Mummu, and builds his own dwelling on top of the dead god's water.… The din reaches heaven; the destroying waters descend In Atrahasis mankind multiplies, and the din carries up like a bellowing herd until Enlil cannot sleep. He sends plague, then drought, then famine, and each time Enki teaches men h… | The Flood withdraws; kingship descends and Babylon rises After the Flood the gods relent and take up other means of holding the population down: Atrahasis ends by instituting infant mortality, barren women, and classes of priestess forbi… |
|---|
| Persian | Endless light, endless darkness Ohrmazd dwelt on high in endless light, all-knowing and wholly good. Ahriman lay below in the abyss of endless darkness, knowing nothing but the wish to wreck, and at first unaware… | Spirit first, body after Ohrmazd made his creation first in the menog state: bodiless, unmoving, not to be touched, a design not yet set down. This lasted three thousand years. Of the six Amahraspands, the… | — | The sky a shell, the earth a yolk After three thousand years Ohrmazd turned the design into getig, matter that can be handled. The sky was made first, a hard shell of shining metal closed around everything like an… Tishtar's rain makes the seas and the mountains Ohrmazd's side answered the assault by going on with the creating. Tishtar, the rain star, took three shapes in turn — a youth of fifteen, a bull with golden horns, a white stallio… | Grain, beasts and men grow out of the dead When the sole-created bull died, fifty-five kinds of grain and twelve kinds of healing plant grew out of its limbs; its seed was carried up to the moon, cleansed in the moonlight,… | Ahriman breaks in through the sky Ahriman woke, took the shape of a snake, and at midday burst through the sky into the material world. He turned the water salt, spread noxious vermin — snakes, lizards, scorpions —… | The river of molten metal, and the Frashokereti The present world is still in the Mixture. The last three thousand years of the war begin with Zarathustra's revelation, and at each thousand-year mark a savior is born to a virgin… |
|---|
| Hindu | The hymn of non-being: perhaps the highest does not know Rigveda 10.129 opens by refusing the question. There was neither non-existence nor existence then, no air and no sky beyond it, no death and no immortality, no mark dividing night… | The golden embryo rises; the maker remains unnamed In Rigveda 10.121 a golden embryo, Hiranyagarbha, arises in the beginning and is at once the one lord of all that had come to be; he holds up the earth and this sky, and begets the… | Indra kills Vritra and props up the sky In the Vedic hymns sky and earth have to be forced apart, and a god does the forcing. Indra takes up the vajra that Tvashtr hammered for him and splits Vritra, the serpent lying ac… | Purusha is dismembered and the world comes out of him Rigveda 10.90 describes Purusha, a being with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes and a thousand feet, who covers the earth on every side and reaches ten fingers beyond it. The gods… A lotus from Vishnu's navel, and Brahma seated in it The Puranas retell all of it with a new set of images. At the start of a kalpa Vishnu lies asleep on the coils of the thousand-headed serpent Shesha, adrift on a shoreless ocean; a… | Four varnas from mouth, arms, thighs and feet The same hymn has humankind come out of the same dismemberment. The Brahmin came from Purusha's mouth, the Rajanya (Kshatriya) from his arms, the Vaishya from his thighs, the Shudr… | Manu and the fish The Shatapatha Brahmana (1.8.1) tells it flatly. A little fish swims into Manu's hands as he washes; it asks to be reared and promises to save him in return. He keeps it in a jar;… | Kalpas and yugas: the same world made again Time here is cyclical, and the cycles are counted out to the year. The four yugas last 1,728,000, 1,296,000, 864,000 and 432,000 years — Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali — together o… |
|---|
| Chinese | Chaos like a hen's egg Before heaven and earth were parted there was one undivided mass, shaped like a hen's egg, and Pangu was born inside it. The Sanwu Liji says he stayed there eighteen thousand years… | — | Pangu grows a zhang a day The mass split. The clear, light breath rose and became the sky; the turbid, heavy breath sank and became the earth. Pangu stood between them and held them apart. Each day the sky… | Breath into wind, left eye into sun In the Wuyun Linian Ji, a book that survives only as quotations in later compilations, the dying Pangu comes apart into the furniture of the world. His breath became wind and cloud… | Nuwa moulds earth, then flicks a cord through mud A surviving fragment of Ying Shao's Fengsu Tongyi, from the second century, says that after heaven and earth were parted there were still no people, so Nuwa moulded them one at a t… | Gonggong rams Mount Buzhou In the Huainanzi's Tianwen chapter, Gonggong contends with Zhuanxu to be god of heaven, loses, and in his rage drives his head into Mount Buzhou. The pillar propping up the sky sna… Five-coloured stones and a turtle's legs The Lanming chapter of the Huainanzi describes the four poles collapsing, the nine regions splitting open, fire that would not go out and water that would not subside, and beasts e… Gun steals the swelling soil The Shanhaijing tells it in a few strokes. The flood rose to the sky, and Gun took the Lord of Heaven's xirang — a soil that grows of itself — to dam the water, without waiting for… | Yu cuts the channels and marks out nine regions Yu stopped damming and cut channels instead, opening the mountains so the standing water could reach the sea. Mencius says he was away eight years and passed his own door three tim… |
|---|
| Japanese | Heaven and earth begin; no divider is named The Kojiki opens with six characters and no explanation: at the time when heaven and earth first appeared. They are already two separate things; nobody is said to have parted them.… | Five deities appear and hide their bodies Three deities come into being in Takamagahara: Ame-no-Minakanushi, Takamimusuhi and Kamumusuhi. Each is a hitorigami, a solitary deity with no consort, and each is said to hide its… | — | Brine dripping from a spear becomes the first island The heavenly deities hand Izanagi and Izanami the jewelled spear Ame-no-nuboko. Standing on the floating bridge of heaven, the pair thrust it into the brine below and stir until it… The sun from the left eye, the moon from the right, the storm from the nose Back among the living, Izanagi says he has been to a foul and polluted country and must wash it off, and goes down to the plain of Awakihara at the river mouth in Himuka. The staff… | — | The fire god kills his mother, and a boulder seals the pass The last of the kami born is Kagutsuchi, the fire god, whose birth burns Izanami's genitals. She sickens, and deities come from her vomit and her waste before she dies. Izanagi beh… The sun shuts herself in, and eight hundred myriad gods hold council Susanoo climbs to Takamagahara to take his leave, and Amaterasu, suspecting he has come to seize her realm, faces him across the river of heaven in an oath-taking: she chews his sw… | Okuninushi hands over the land, Ninigi comes down at Takachiho Okuninushi, a descendant of Susanoo, works the Reed Plain with Sukunabikona and makes it habitable. Takamagahara sends envoys to demand it back. Ame-no-Hohi goes over to Okuninushi… |
|---|
| Korean | Heaven and earth stuck fast The Jeju chant Cheonjiwang Bonpuri begins with heaven and earth in one lump. Nothing separated them, there was no above and no below, no sun and no moon, nothing growing, and no li… | Two gourd seeds, two sons The sky is open, and people are already living under it, wicked ones among them. Cheonjiwang, the Heavenly King, comes down to punish a rich man named Sumyeongjangja, lodges in the… | Blue dew, black dew, and three cocks crowing The chant fixes the moment by the sexagenary cycle: the crown of the sky split open at the branch zi, the crown of the earth at the branch chou, and the gap that opened between the… | One sun into the eastern sea, one moon into the western Two suns hung in that sky and two moons. By day people scorched and split open, by night they froze stiff. Cheonjiwang gave his sons a bow. They shot the leading sun out of the sky… | Gold worms into men, silver worms into women The Jeju chant never says where people came from: when Cheonjiwang descends, they are already there. For an origin one has to go to the Changsega of Hamhung, where Mireuk holds up… | Sobyeolwang swaps the pots The brothers had to divide the world of the living from the world of the dead. They began with riddles, and Sobyeolwang lost every one: he claimed that trees with solid pith keep t… | Why the living world came out crooked Sobyeolwang won the living world by cheating, and the living world grew into the shape of the thing that won it: murder, theft, treason, adultery, and he could not hold any of it d… Hwanung comes down, and a bear becomes a woman Iryeon's Samguk Yusa quotes a lost book called the Gogi. Hwanung, a son of Hwanin, wanted the world below; his father gave him three heavenly seals, and the text never says what th… |
|---|
| Biblical | Formless and void, darkness on the deep In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty — tohu wa-bohu — darkness lay on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved over the… | — | A vault between the waters, and dry ground On the second day God makes the raqia — a word for something hammered out flat, which the Septuagint turns into stereoma, 'a solid thing', and the Latin Bible into firmamentum — an… | God speaks, and it is so On the fourth day God hangs two great lights in the vault, the greater to govern the day and the lesser the night, and the stars with them; their office is to divide day from night… | Male and female in the image, then rest Late on the sixth day God says: let us make man in our image, after our likeness, to rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle and everything that creeps. He makes… Dust for the man, a rib for the woman Genesis 2 tells it again from another angle. The LORD God shapes the man out of the dust of the ground — adam from adamah — and breathes the breath of life into his nostrils, and h… | The serpent, the fruit, the flaming sword, and blood in the field The serpent is subtler than any beast of the field. It tells the woman that the fruit will open her eyes and make her know good and evil as God does. She sees the tree is good for… The deep breaks open and heaven's windows are loosed As people multiply, the sons of God see that the daughters of men are fair and take them as wives. The Nephilim are on the earth in those days, and the children born of those marri… | A tower to heaven, a confusion of speech After the Flood the sons of Noah — Shem, Ham and Japheth — spread out, each clan with its own tongue and territory: the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, traditionally counted as sev… |
|---|
| Arabian | The Throne upon the water, the sky still smoke The Qur'an does not begin from nothing. In 11:7 God makes the heavens and the earth in six days, and His Throne was upon the water — the water is simply there on the first line, an… | Jinn out of scorching fire, angels out of light In 15:27 the jinn are made before man, out of the fire of the scorching wind; 55:15 is more precise, a pure flame with no smoke in it. A hadith in Sahih Muslim sets the three order… | Heaven and earth were sewn shut, and were ripped open The closest thing to a separation motif is 21:30: have the disbelievers not seen that the heavens and the earth were a closed mass (ratq), and We split them apart (fatq), and We ma… | Seven heavens, and mountains driven in like pegs God makes the heavens and the earth in six days, then mounts the Throne (7:54). The order is earth first: He creates what is on the earth, then turns to the sky and fashions it int… | Dry clay like pottery, and it rang when struck God tells the angels that He is placing a khalifa, a deputy, on the earth (2:30). He shapes the man from dry clay like potter's ware (55:14) — elsewhere dark mud moulded into form… | Iblis: You made me from fire and him from clay God orders the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam. They all do, except Iblis (2:34). His reason: I am better than he is; You made me from fire and made him from clay (7:12)… The oven boiled over, and the ship came to rest on al-Judi Nuh preaches among his people for a thousand years less fifty (29:14) and is not heard. He is told to build the ship, and the chiefs laugh at him every time they pass by (11:38). T… | The fish that carries the world, and the trumpet that ends it Scripture gives the shape of the world as seven heavens and seven earths. The medieval cosmographers kept drawing downward: the earth is carried by an angel, the angel needs someth… |
|---|
| Yoruba | Sky above, marsh below In the beginning there were two realms and no ground between them. Above lay orun, the sky, where Olodumare and the orishas lived. Below lay water and marsh, the domain of Olokun,… | — | — | A snail shell of earth, a pigeon, a five-toed hen Yoruba tradition has no theogony: when the story opens the orishas are already in the sky, and nobody says where they came from. Olodumare gave the making of land to Obatala and ha… The hen scratches the earth wide Obatala met palm wine on the road and drank until he fell asleep. Oduduwa picked up the snail shell, went down the chain to the water and poured the earth out; the pigeon and the f… | Obatala molds, Olodumare breathes The shaping of human bodies fell to Obatala. He molded them out of clay and laid them out in rows, and Olodumare breathed emi, breath, into them, and they lived. One day he drank p… Picking a head in Ajala's workshop The body was Obatala's craft; the destiny each person had to go and fetch. Before birth a soul goes up to the workshop of Ajala, the potter who makes ori, the inner head. Ajala's w… | Whose work is the world? Who made the land is a case Ife never closed. Obatala's side holds that he was the one commissioned and that palm wine cost him the work. Oduduwa's side holds that he went down the… | The crowns go out from Ife With the land made, Oduduwa stayed on it and ruled as the first sacred king of Ife. Tradition says his children and grandchildren went out wearing beaded crowns and founded kingdom… |
|---|
| Aztec | The pair in the thirteenth heaven None of the sources says what the state of things was before the world. They begin with Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, Lord Two and Lady Two, also called Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihu… | The four Tezcatlipocas The pair had four sons, each with a colour and a quarter of the world: the red Tezcatlipoca, known as Camaxtli around Tlaxcala; the black Tezcatlipoca; Quetzalcoatl; and Huitzilopo… | Two trees shove the sky back up When the flood age ended, the whole sky came down on the earth. In the Historia de los mexicanos, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl first made four men to help with the lifting, then t… | The earth monster pulled apart The ground was cut out of a living body. In the Histoyre du Mechique, Tlaltecuhtli floats on the water with biting mouths at every joint. Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl turn themsel… | The broken bones carried out of Mictlan Sky and earth were in place and nobody lived on them. Quetzalcoatl went down to Mictlan and asked Mictlantecuhtli for the bones of the people of the earlier ages. The death lord se… | Jaguars, wind, burning rain, flood The sun was replaced four times, and each time the world went with it. The first age, 4 Jaguar, ran 676 years; its people were giants, and jaguars ate them. The second, 4 Wind, ran… | The bonfire at Teotihuacan It was still dark. The gods gathered at Teotihuacan for four days, built a great fire, and asked which of them would jump in and become the sun. Rich Tecciztecatl volunteered on th… 4 Movement, waiting for the earthquake The sun came up in the east, and then the moon came up just as bright. That would not do, so one of the gods snatched up a rabbit and struck Tecciztecatl in the face with it; the m… |
|---|
| Maya | A flat sea and an empty sky There was only the sky and the sea, and nothing else. The face of the sea lay flat and did not move, the sky hung empty, and nothing at all stood upright: no people, no animals, bi… | Tepeu, Gucumatz, and Heart of Sky There was light in the water, and in the light lay the makers: Tepeu and Gucumatz, covered over with the blue-green feathers of the quetzal. Gucumatz is the Plumed Serpent, the sam… | — | Mountains out of the water, animals that cannot speak They said one word, Earth, and the earth was there. It came up out of the water like mist, like a cloud taking shape; the mountains rose and were mountains at once, and cypress and… | The mud person soaks away The makers still wanted something that could talk, remember them, and feed them, so they made a person out of mud. It came out badly. Its neck would not turn, its face looked only… Cast the seeds, carve the wood This time they asked first. The old diviners Xpiyacoc and Xmucane took a handful of red coral-tree seeds and maize kernels, cast them, counted them, and asked whether wood would do… White maize, yellow maize, ground nine times The fox, the coyote, the parrot and the crow brought the news: the mountains Paxil and Cayalá were packed with maize, white ears and yellow ears. Xmucane ground the corn nine times… | Resin rain, flood, and the revolt of the things Heart of Sky sent a flood down on them, and a thick rain of resin fell out of the sky onto their heads. Four things went through the houses: Xecotcovach gouged out their eyes, Cama… | The twins go up, and the gods turn to stone The twins do their work before the maize people have been made. Hunahpu and Xbalanque bring down Seven Macaw, who had been calling himself the sun, with a shot from a blowgun; then… |
|---|
| Inca | The land was there, and it was night Betanzos says the land of Peru was at first one long night: the country was already there, but there was no sun and no day. People lived on it, and they had a lord who commanded th… | Con Tici Viracocha comes out of the lake A lord came up out of a lake in Collasuyu, which the chroniclers take to be Titicaca. Betanzos gives his name as Con Tici Viracocha, and has him come ashore with a company of atten… | — | Sun, moon and stars rise out of the lake When the water had gone down, Sarmiento says, Viracocha kept three men to help him make the new people, one of them called Taguapaca. At Lake Titicaca he commanded the sun to come… | Giants first, then men his own size While the world was still dark, Sarmiento says, Viracocha first made giants — painted and sculptured, out of all proportion in their size — to see whether men of that size would do… Cut in stone, called up out of caves and springs At Tiahuanaco he cut the nations out of stone: a headman for each people, women big with child, babies in their cradles. He painted on them the clothes each nation was to wear and… | Unu pachacuti, the water that overturns the land Viracocha cursed them. Some were turned to stone, some into other things, some were swallowed by the earth and some by the sea, and over the rest he sent a general flood, which Sar… | Fire at Cacha, then out across the sea At Cacha, now Raqchi, the Cana people came at him with weapons. He called fire down on the hill; they threw down their arms and fell on their faces, and he beat the fire out with h… The golden rod sinks into the ground at Cusco The dynasty begins here. In the royal tradition Garcilaso heard as a boy, the sun god Inti sent down his son Manco Cápac and his daughter Mama Ocllo at Lake Titicaca with a golden… |
|---|
| Native American | A world in the sky, water underneath The Haudenosaunee account begins overhead. There was a world in the sky, with people and villages in it and a great tree at its center that bore blossoms giving light; there was no… | First Man and First Woman in the Black World The Diné account, Diné bahané, is an emergence: the people climbed up into this world through the worlds stacked beneath it, one after another. At the bottom lies the Black World,… | — | Muskrat's handful of mud on the turtle's back Sky Woman went down through the hole — she slipped, or she was pushed, or she climbed down of her own will, depending on who is telling it — and as she fell she snatched at the pla… | Clay for people, an antler for the fight On the turtle's back Sky Woman bore a daughter. The daughter grew, conceived, and died in childbirth, leaving twins: one born in the ordinary way, the other, Flint, breaking out th… Out of Wind Cave, and the buffalo behind them The Lakota account begins underground. The people — the Pte Oyate, the Buffalo Nation — lived beneath the surface. Iktomi the spider trickster and Anog Ite, the Double Face Woman,… | Coyote takes the water monster's children In the Yellow World the men and the women fell out and separated, living on opposite banks of a river, and neither side could manage alone; in the end they came back together. Late… | White Buffalo Calf Woman brings the pipe In a year of famine two scouts went out to look for buffalo and met a woman in white buckskin. One of them approached her with lust in his mind; a cloud came down over him, and whe… Four mountains, a fistful of stars, Changing Woman First Man and First Woman had carried up soil from the worlds below, and with it they built four mountains around the Diné homeland: Blanca Peak in the east, dressed in white shell… |
|---|
| Polynesian | The nothing, then the long tally of nights The opening comes in the form of a genealogy. The reciter begins at Te Kore, the nothing, where not even the space in which something might happen exists yet, and works forward thr… | The parents cling, and the children grow up in the dark between them At the end of the nights come Ranginui the sky and Papatūānuku the earth, locked in an embrace so close that no gap is left between them; the world of light has to wait until they… | Tāne sets his head on his mother and his feet against his father The brothers hold a council. Tū-matauenga proposes killing the parents outright. Tāne-mahuta says there is no need: part them, and let the sky stand far off as a stranger while the… | Tāne fastens the sun, the moon and the stars on his father The sky is propped, but it is bare. Tāne goes to fetch the sun and the moon and sets them on his father, and hangs the stars on him one by one. Below, he clothes his mother with fo… A grandmother's jawbone for a hook, and a fish the size of an island Māui makes a hook from the jawbone of his grandmother Murirangawhenua. His brothers will not take him fishing, so he hides under the floorboards of the canoe and comes out only whe… | Tāne shapes a woman from red earth and breathes into her nose Tāne wants descendants. He mates with one being after another and gets streams, stones, reptiles and plants out of it, but no people. His mother tells him to go to Kurawaka, a plac… | The storm beats four brothers, and Tū eats them Tāwhirimātea never agreed to the parting. He follows his father upward and there raises his own offspring, the winds and squalls and hurricanes and the thick clouds, and then loose… | The fantail laughs, and Māui dies inside the goddess of night Hine-tītama grows up and marries Tāne, and only later asks who her father is and learns that her husband is also her father. She does not come back into the light. She goes down be… |
|---|
| Aboriginal | A flat plain with no places in it Tellings differ from country to country, but they tend to open the same way. The first earth was a flat plain: no ranges, no rivers, no place that could be named or told apart from… | Coming up through the ground Bandicoots came out of Karora's navel and his armpits first and burst through the sod above him; only then did the sun rise for the first time and Karora himself break through the… | — | Country takes its shape behind them As the ancestors travelled, the country took its shape behind them: a back arching underground became a ridge, a track gouged out became a riverbed, a resting place sank and filled… | Stone knives cut fingers, mouths, eyes Where people came from is answered differently from country to country, and in many tellings people need no making at all, the ancestors themselves being where people come from. Th… | The frog who drank the water Catastrophe here is local; no flood drowns the continent. The Gunaikurnai of Gippsland tell of Tiddalik, the frog who drank every river, lake, creek and soak dry, until the plants… | Done once, and done that way ever since The ancestors left more than the shape of the ground. They left the rules: who may marry whom, which family answers for which stretch of country, what may not be eaten or touched o… The Dreaming did not end Their work finished, the ancestors lay down into the land or rose into the sky, and neither move took them away. The Wandjina laid their images into the rock of the Kimberley and l… |
|---|
| Inuit | Sea, Sky, and Darkness Exist Before Boundaries Harden Many Arctic origin narratives do not begin from absolute nothingness. Sea, ice, sky, and darkness seem already present, while land, light, and the distinctions among species remain… | — | — | Raven Raises Mud and Releases Light In some Alaskan and western Arctic traditions, Raven brings mud from beneath the sea and lets land expand, or opens a container in which sun, moon, and stars have been withheld, gi… | Bodies Come from Earth or Relation; Names Seat the Soul Some western stories have Raven shape people from earth or vegetation, while eastern records more often distribute human origins among separate ancestors and marriages with animals… | Severed Fingers Become Seal, Whale, and Walrus Across versions from Baffin Island, the central Canadian Arctic, and Greenland, the Sea Woman is thrown into a storm by her father and loses the fingers gripping his boat. The join… | Taboo Tangles Her Hair; the Shaman Descends to Repair It When rules governing meat, hunting, birth, and death are broken, the offenses knot themselves into the Sea Woman’s hair and she withholds game. An angakkuq journeys below to comb i… |
|---|
| Philippine | Bathala Dwells Above; a Serpent Coils in Boundless Water A later Tagalog synthesis places three powers before land: Bathala in the heights, the serpent Ulilang Kaluluwa within the sea, and the winged Galang Kaluluwa, each originally unkn… | — | — | Two Remains Meet and the Coconut Rises with Land In the popular version, the first coconut grows where the bodies were joined. Its round fruit recalls Galang Kaluluwa’s head, the leaves spread like wings, and the hard trunk carri… | A Sacred Bird Opens Bamboo and Two Voices Answer A separate and widely circulated human-origin motif sends a great bamboo over the sea. The sacred tigmamanukan bird pecks the joint open, and Malakas and Maganda—Strong and Beautif… | The Serpent Refuses the Sky and Falls After Three Days Ulilang Kaluluwa sees the breadth of heaven and demands to share Bathala’s rule. Refusal leads to three days and nights of battle, ending with the serpent killed and burned. When G… | Spirits Remain in the Land and Bakunawa Returns at Eclipse Creation never emptied the world for humankind. Diwata continue to own mountain, tree, spring, and field, and a traveler asks permission at their boundaries. During eclipse, Bakuna… |
|---|
| Akan | No Narrated Chaos: Sky and Earth Are Already There Akan origin narrative generally does not describe a void waiting to be shaped, nor gods constructing the world from a primordial monster’s body. Nyame’s sky and the earth of Asase… | — | A Pestle Strikes the Low Sky Until Nyame Rises Beyond Reach The sky once hung within reach and no present distance separated people from Nyame. An old woman pounding fufu repeatedly struck the low heaven with her pestle; other versions blam… | River, Rock, and Shrine Receive Branches of Sacred Power The inhabitable world becomes negotiable through the abosom. Tano and other river powers possess bodies in water and may branch into new shrines through sacred water, stone, or ves… | Kra Comes from Nyame While Blood and Spirit Enter through Lineage Akan accounts assemble a person from several components. Kra comes from Nyame and carries life and destiny; mogya, blood, places the person within the maternal lineage; individual… | — | Ananse Pays Four Impossible Captures and Stories Web the Earth Stories first belonged to Nyame. Through stratagem Ananse captures python, leopard, hornets, and forest being, pays the sky god’s price, and causes tales to bear Spider’s name. The… |
|---|
| Guaraní | Before Earth or Sky, Sacred Wisdom Dwells in Faint Eternal Light There is no ground on which to stand and no sun has risen. Within primordial darkness persists a faint radiance that will not go out. From his own wisdom Ñamandu Ru Ete Tenondé gra… | The Soul-Word, Love of Others, and Sacred Song Are Established First Ñamandu’s earliest creations are not mountain, animal, or human body. He establishes ayvu, at once speech, soul, and a principle of life; then love for one’s fellows and the song t… Flame, Mist, and Thunder Receive True Fathers; Heaven Gains Directions Ñamandu creates true fathers including Karaí, Jakaira, and Tupã with their sacred companions. They tend flame and solar heat, life-giving mist and vegetation, thunder and water, an… | — | Eternal Palms Hold Center and Directions While Mist Covers New Land Sacred song unfolds the first earth upon divine supports, marking center and directions with eternal pindó palms. Springs, forest, and edible plants follow, while the life-giving m… | The Fathers Send a Name and the Child Finds Its Word in Community A human body forms through parents and the nourishment of land, while the soul-word is sent by the divine fathers from their celestial quarters. In ceremony a religious leader disc… | Flood and Fire Cross the Earth; Sacred Speech Opens a Passage Mbya, Apapocuva, and related traditions recount in different orders a first earth destroyed by flood, fire, or darkness. Some people escape toward a higher region through song, dan… | Migration, Song, and Lightened Bodies Seek a Land That Does Not Decay Tupi-Guaraní histories repeatedly turn toward yvy marã e’ỹ, the Land-without-Evil or land that does not decay. It can be understood as a sacred destination and as an immortal condi… |
|---|
| Cthulhu Mythos | The blind god seethes at the center of infinity Azathoth is often summarized by later mythographers as the source of everything, yet Lovecraft supplied no creation chapter beginning with it. The fragment Azathoth only carries it… | The gate, the key, and the thousand masks cross the stars Yog-Sothoth touches all time and space, gate and key at once. Nyarlathotep differs from the silent powers by entering cities, deserts, and dreams, speaking through the faces of pha… | Forbidden books cut doors between ignorance and the deep cosmos The Necronomicon, Elder Thing murals, Yithian archives, and Miskatonic University collections allow otherwise separate stories to answer one another. Knowledge performs an inverted… | Visitors from distant stars carve cities into the young Earth At the Mountains of Madness presents a nonhuman terrestrial history through carved murals. Barrel-shaped Elder Things cross space to the young planet, build cities beneath sea and… | Humanity wakes in the wake of an unnamed experiment Lovecraft offers no creator who breathes a soul into humanity. At the Mountains of Madness suggests that food organisms cultivated by the Elder Things develop beyond their intended… | R'lyeh rises and sinks again beneath the flood Cthulhu and its kind come from the stars and raise R'lyeh in the Pacific, a city hostile to human geometry. When the heavens change, the city sinks and Cthulhu enters a deathlike s… | The stars are not yet right, but dreams already spread through cities Cthulhu is not slain, the Elder Thing city remains beneath ice, Yithian minds still look backward from the future, and Nyarlathotep never truly leaves. Radio, archaeology, aviation… |
|---|