With the
world created, now the task of creating the living creatures
and the celestial bodies can begin. In this aspect, various
cultures vary widely, with some choosing the creation of the
heavens to have been a by-product of the creation of the world,
and others believe the creation of these bodies came some time
after. Some cultures viewed the sun and moon themselves to be
gods or goddesses going across the sky. The Chinese believed
that before the time of Houyi, there were ten suns in the sky
which took turns to be carried by their mother across the sky.
The Norse interpreted the sun and moon to be two goddesses,
Sol and Moon, being chased by the wolves, Skoll and Hati. Lastly,
Indian mythology points at the churning of the ocean by the
gods and demons, to be the birth of the celestial bodies.
To delve
deeper into the philosophical features of creation, one would
have to question the very definition of creation.
Creation
can be distilled to the beginning of reproduction and sustainable
procreation. If we consider the Greek, Norse and Japanese myths
again, one would notice that these creational myths illustrate
the concepts of sustainability. The Greek story of Creation
talks of Gaia who was born out of chaos. Gaia later birthed
a son, Uranus, and together they birthed many creatures including
the Titans. The spark of creation led on to the production of
so many other creatures, clearly showing the idea of reproduction
in creation.
So, to recapitulate
what has been said, creation can generally be considered at
the point at which procreation of beings begins. Norse creation
started with the giant Ymir. While Ymir slept, various creatures
grew from his limbs. These creatures led on to the further development
of the world. For the Japanese, the most important idea in their
creation was the fact that Izanagi was male, whilst Izanami
was female. This alone led to the creation of the Japanese islands.
A less important
idea that runs through some myths also talks of the creation
of the world due to the death of some enigmatic creational being.
The giant Pangu, and the giant Ymir, became various parts of
the world when they died, in Chinese and Norse mythology respectively.
Lastly,
let us look at the idea of the cyclic processes of creation,
and its opposite process, destruction. The most prominent example
of this mythological phenomenon is in Indian Mythology. The
Indians believed in the world with an infinite number of subsidiary
creations and destructions, as man cycled through its four ages,
or Yugas. Aztec mythology prophesizes that the conflict of the
gods, would result in the creation and resultant destruction
of five successive worlds. Also, some North American mythology
of the Hopi people, tell of three previous worlds, ended by
fire, freezing and flood respectively.
Though we
are not going to discuss scientific theories today, the modern
world today has its eyes on a certain creation theory that deserves
some mention. It is the theory of the big bang, along with Darwinism
and many related concepts. These could broadly be classified
under the branch of creation as a natural process, and has been
accepted as the most plausible creation theory by most of the
scientific community.
Although
most mythology today has gone extinct and have been proven untrue,
many religions still offer ideas of creation which provide just
as much an answer to creation as science and mythology. In any
case, the creation of the world is surely an intriguing question
that haunts the human mind, even in this age.
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