The Chinese Creation

WE ARE FLEAS!!

A unique character of Chinese culture is the relatively late appearance of the myths about the creation in the literature. They are included after the foundation of the Confucianism, Taoism and other popular religions.

At the beginning there was only a shapeless chaos, of which emerged a cosmic egg.

Inside, the vital forces of Yin… dark, cold and feminine

                             And of Yang… clear, warm and masculine

mixed with each one.  When they reached the equilibrium, the god Pangu, born due to their fight, woke up from his long sleep. He stretched and the shell was broken.

The heavier elements fell to forming the earth and the lighter floated to making the sky.

Pangu remained between both, raising the sky for 18.000 years… Understandably exhausted, Pangu began to sleep.

His body converted into the mountains, his flesh into the ground and his blood into the rivers; the hair turned into woods, the bones into precious minerals and the down into stars. His sweat fell in shape of rain and the little creatures which inhabited his body (fleas) converted to the human beings.

From his breath rose the wind, from his voice… the thunder! And finally, his eyes gave origin to the sun and the moon.

A little Reflexion

You can see that ancient Greeks believed in the fate: a fatality which parents passed down to sons as genetic heredity.

Zeus also had to face the prophecy… and he swallowed his first wife, Metis (swallowing is the only solution for gods). But she was already pregnant and his daughter Athena was born anyway: she came out of his head, adult and armed.

She didn’t dethrone her father.

Besides, another interesting character is Prometheus. Some sources say that he comes from the figure of Loki: god of fire (like Prometheus or Lucifer –the light bearer–) of the Norse mythology, son of giants and a bundle of contradictions: he is pretty much know as the god of mischief, deceit and lies… but he often helps the others and he has a special ability for awake affection.

Maybe humanity of these worldly gods (the bad ones) frightened us: that explains the virulence of Christianity.

What do you think about?

The Greek Creation II

THE MAN… AND THE WOMAN

Soon tedium swelled them… what a bore! So gods created a lot of beings to populate the earth. Zeus asked the sons of titan Japetus to provide them with graces and forces.

But Epimetheus gave all the gifts to animals and the human being remained naked, undefended and unarmed. Then Prometheus, friend of Man, tried to solve the injustice stealing the wisdom from Athena and conferring them the logic. He also stole the fire from Hephaestus, so that they could survive better.

But Zeus couldn’t permit men to seem gods, so he punished Prometheus in a terribly cruel way. As regards people, the god ordered Hephaestus to mold a pretty being.

She would be beautiful, virtuous, intelligent and persuasive… but Hermes conceded the gift of cunning and falseness, and Hera filled her with curiosity.

Pandora, the first woman, was envied to Epimetheus, who fell quickly in love. As present of marriage, they received from gods a lovely closed box. They didn’t have to open it under no circumstances. In those days, human beings were happy: they lived an idyllic life… they had neither work, nor wickedness, nor problems, nor old age.

Nor death.

But curiosity beat Pandora and she opened the box and all evils got away… the pain, the illness, the misfortune. But a poor thing stayed inside the box: hope.

Why can’t the women of mythology be quiet?

Eva did just the same.

So generations were gradually degenerating until our days: according to ancient Greeks, we’re the worst human version that has ever existed.

The Greek Creation

The Creation of the Universe

All mythologies dedicate a tale to relating the creation of the universe and the origin of the human existence. Greeks gave the following explanation:

At the beginning, only the Chaos dominated a deep vacuum… then Gaia emerged, the eternal goddess of the Earth, and Eros, prince of love, followed her.

Born from the Chaos, the goddess of the Night enveloped the earth with her obscurity, and her brother Erebus (primordial god of the underground region) stretched below her. Both of them engendered the Light and the Day.

Fate, Destiny, Thanatos, Lethargy and Hypnos rose of the darkness.

Gaia gave birth to Uranus, the starry sky: he fertilized his mother and Titans, Cyclopes and Giants were born.  However, Uranus became afraid of their power and threw them onto the Tartarus (the shadowy bosom of the earth).

Gaia, furious and tired of bearing and losing her children, hatched a plan to end the tyrannical reign of her husband. Cronus, the youngest son, castrated his father with a sickle and tossed the genitals into the sea.

After the Titans and the other brothers were freed, they made Cronus their king and he gathered with his sister Rhea. But he ruled the immortals even in a more despotic way than Uranus: he threw the Cyclopes and Giants back to dungeons in Tartarus, and swallowed all his own babies as soon as they were born. His objective was to prevent the prophecy which said that he would be overthrown by his own son one day.

Grieved for his behavior, Rhea gave her sixth child, Zeus, to Gaia… who hid and nourished him in a cave. Meanwhile, Rhea handed Cronus a large stone wrapped in cloth, which Cronus swallowed thinking that the newborn was inside.

When Zeus grew up, he plotted with Rhea their revenge: She convinced her husband to accept the young man as waiter; thus, he could supply his father drugs that make him vomit his five sons, who had remained in his stomach all the time.

Then the fight for the throne of the Gods began; at first, the fierceness of Cronus and some Titans seemed to beat the younger ones… but Zeus got some new allies: Cyclopes and Giants. Finally they were victorious: Zeus condemned the survivors to the prison in Tartarus.

Zeus joined his sister Hera and established their residence in Mount Olympus. When his power had been consolidated among the gods, order subjugated chaos and Rhea embellished her body… creating a paradise.

Each god of the Olympic court defined his realm:

Zeus, king of thunder and sky

Poseidon, god of the sea

Hades, sovereign of the underworld

Hestia, goddess of hearth and home

Hera, queen of marriage

Demeter, divinity of fertility, grain and harvest

To be Continued...

The Creation

When mankind had not the science at its disposal and it suffered the whole harshness of nature, it needed to justify that capricious and chaotic force which moved its world.

The Mythology is a collection of stories (myths) with a relative cohesion: they are based on tradition and legends and try to describe our reality.