StoryLab - Crash Course Mythology (Creation Stories)

For the Story Lab assignment I chose to watch another Crash Course Mythology Unit on Creation Stories. And I know a bunch of different creation stories, some from this class and some from other classes or independent research, but I always like them. They're either poignantly symbolic or they're hilariously random. Either way, what fun.

So the first video is about creation ex nilium, creation from nothing. Obviously, everyone is familiar with the story of Genesis wherein God either created everything from nothing by hand or by simply speaking it into existence. There were other stories, including a Kono story where in Death creates  his home and ultimately the world out of a sea of mud and a few taunting words from a fellow god. The Mayan creation story also begins with a vast ocean, as does the Egyptian myth. The Mayan gods--Maker and Feathered Serpent--speak the world into existence (though they have to try four times to get it right). What I find most interesting is the idea of The Big Bang as a creation myth, and the fact that the Theory of Evolution also supposes that life all began from a vast body of water. I think this just kind of goes to show that all roads lead to Rome, whether you get there by folklore or science.

In the second video, "Water, Seed, Egg" he talks about how in many myths, there is not only the idea of "seed"--like, in the Biblical sense--creating the world, but also other fluids from gods, like blood and vomit. He also mentions how there is a widespread idea of the earth coming from an "egg" of some sort. In another myth, he talks about how a world-parent is sometimes present. For example, in one Chinese myth, the earth is within an egg and so are all the dualities of existence--Yin and Yang. And balance, the earth and the god are all one--and when the god died, the void of his power was filled by sin and pain. I think that's a cool concept, that the physical and the metaphorical all exist as one and that good and bad are neither rewards nor punishments, just things that are. 

The third video is about "Earth Mothers"--which is a very common trope: Mother Earth. Mother Earth makes sense, because the earth nourishes us like mothers do, and creates life--like mothers. In some cases, father's conceive gods and the earth alone, but more often Father and Mother must be present. Like in Hesiod's Theogony. There was chaos, and then there was Gaia. And she was the mother of everything--gods, titans, cyclopes, and Uranus--the Sky Father. What is so interesting to me is the "Succession Myth"--that fear in the Greek pantheon where the sons kill and overthrow their fathers. I think that says more about men than it does about mothers. I loved the Norse creation myth, it's god everything: succession myth, "Adam and Eve," dwarves. Honestly, the Norse pantheon is so underrated. 

In the final video, "Social Orders" describes how myths explain (or try to explain) our relationships. It's as annoying as it is well-known that the Bible positions women lower on the totem pole than men--which sucks, but isn't exclusive to Judeo-Christian myths. For example, God creating Eve from Adam's rib and allows him to name Even "woman" as if she is closer to a beast than a human. Then she is later cursed with pain in childbirth and told to be subservient to her husband--basically justification for sexism. Men's punishment is basically just working and dying, and it is because a man listened to a women. More misogyny in Hesiod's theogony via Pandora and her box. But the Greeks were famously misogynist, and so were tons of other societies, like Japan. I think it's cool that a lot of myths talk about how humans or one event messes up the good life for humanity, but it always puts the blame on women. We just can't catch a break.

"Pandora's Box" by Unknown Artist via Wikimedia Commons