Creation Myths

12 Pages 2982 Words

The Myths of Creation
…Every culture has a story that tries to explain its human origins. This is simply a normal human phenomenon. The lucky cultures are those whose creation myths contain some humor and kindness…. Stan Mulder

What purpose do the creation myths serve for humanity? Every society has a creation myth and that suggests that every society has a need for one some particular reason. We need to note, however, that to the society involved, these are not myths or stories told to enthrall the young. They are real, not in our scientific, linear, literal, sense, but nevertheless real, and part of the truth of humanity’s existence.
The first characteristic is the emergence of order from chaos. And we know that chaos is not just first, it is always, never-ending. As well as being the primal dark into which the first creation comes, chaos is also present as the depth over which we move, threatening us with the perpetual possibility of engulfment, and which we, in our living, order. We have always needed stories that speak of cycles and of alternating light and dark without conceiving these movements as flowing from a single point of origin. We humans need these stories desperately. We need them to live ourselves and for the Earth to live. This was true for the ancient civilizations that we look back at and wonder about now, and they are true for the 21st century too.
But action, the second element, must be there too. It is action that orders the ever-present chaos. Again, this action need not be taken to be temporally first. The action that generates myth is a beginning as the present point of order's emergence from chaos, rather than as the indefinitely remote past moment of first enactment. At every moment, act separates order from chaos. In any moment that we work to build the world, we are in harmony with the creative dimension of myth. But how is action possible in a world that is disordered? What can it mean?
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