Cosmogony

COSMOGONY. - It is the body of doctrines that explain the origin and formation of the universe.

The problem of the origin of the world and of man has occupied the human mind since the most ancient stages of culture known to us today. Cosmogony and anthropogony, as a rule closely connected with each other, are traced back to the action of supernatural beings pre-existing nature, or the present cosmic order. Such action is for the most part presented in mythical form.

I. « PRIMITIVE » CULTURES

In the great variety of versions concerning cosmogony, it is possible to identify a certain number of fundamental motifs, handed down by tradition, which, however, are variously colored and enriched with legendary or poetic details by the imagination of each culture, of each people, indeed often of each group within the same people. Like all cultural elements, such myths spread and migrate, and can also decline, become impoverished, be transformed and disappear. Modern historical-cultural investigation has nevertheless made it possible, through the critical examination of the rich materials known thus far, to ascertain the indisputable antiquity of the notion of a personal Supreme Being, a creator, who in the majority of cases constitutes the central figure of the myths concerning cosmogony. This Being, conceived for the most part anthropomorphically, but at the same time with supernatural attributes, sometimes creates from nothing, or, more often, fashions from pre-existing materials the earth, the stars, the animals, man, working either alone or with the collaboration of other beings or animals dependent on him. For the most part the Creator begins his work within or above a formless chaos (sea, current, primordial swamp, darkness) from which he draws the world. The first men are created (in a single pair, in multiple pairs, sometimes only the first male) from clay, wood, rushes, etc.; in some versions, the first man is made from the rib of the Supreme Being (Cheyenne of Canada), and the first woman from the rib of the man (Cheyenne, Nandi of Kenya, Vute of Cameroon, Bubi of Fernando Poo). Versions such as these, to which are added other motifs widespread among primitives (sin of the first men, universal flood, etc.), raise the question of the relations between the myths of peoples of nature and biblical tradition, a problem that is not always to be clarified by invoking direct or indirect missionary influences, at least as regards Asia and Africa.

Although myth is the most universally widespread form in which the version of cosmic and human origins is handed down, the whole body of animological conceptions of a people can sometimes document among them the presence, albeit faded, of a notion of cosmogony even when that people has not developed (or preserved) explicit myths on the matter. And, on the other hand, the myth may not be simply a narrated tale, but may be « represented » symbolically in the initiations of the young and in the so-called « mysteries of cosmogony » (Arapaho, Cheyenne, Central Australians, etc.); which demonstrates how the problem of origins in certain primitive cultures assumes vital importance at the very basis of sociological formation.

Among the Pygmies, recognized as the most primitive among the present inhabitants of Africa or indeed (according to the school of Fr. W. Schmidt) of the entire globe, some fine cosmogonic myths have been collected, in which motifs of naive primitiveness are united with relatively elevated conceptions; and this especially among the western groups (Pygmies of Gabon). Knumm (the Supreme Being), existing at the origin of time, created the world with his word; he then sits on the bank of a stream near the great village of the animals, and fashions statuettes in human form from earth of various colors (red, black, white, whence the various races), then ordering them to walk. According to another myth, in the beginning, the Creator, alone in the village, grows bored, there is no one to prepare his food; therefore he thinks of making men. Having gathered many nuts, he places them in his pirogue on the shores of the ocean, and has them towed out to sea by the crocodile; once in the open sea, he blows and spits on the nuts, and throws them one by one into the sea, ordering that they become men and women. Myths equally vivid are not found among the other major group of Pygmies (of the Ituri, Belgian Congo), who nevertheless have the notion and the cult of a Supreme Being (Tore), creator of nature and of the first man. A multiplicity of conceptions is observed among the Asiatic Pygmies. The Semang of the Malay Peninsula do not possess clear notions about cosmogony; the idea of an indirect cosmogony seems nevertheless to prevail, whether through the work of two mythical brothers, fashioned by the Supreme Being, who in turn would have made the mountains and the stones from which men would then have arisen, or by means of an animal (the dung beetle), which would have drawn the earth from the primordial swamp. The conceptions of the Andamanese also present contrasts. Among the northern groups, there is the concept of a « self-creation » of man, born from the node of a large bamboo or of a tree (a singular parallelism with the Melanesians). The name of this proto-ancestor is « the only one »: in fact he has no wife, but cohabits with an anthill (a lunar symbol, as in certain Sudanese cosmogonies), and from this has various children, who according to one version are the wind, the storm, the sky, the sea foam. Among the southern Andamanese groups, on the other hand, the figure of a Supreme Being stands out (Puluga, elsewhere called Biliku and sometimes conceived as female), who creates the first human couple.

Still in the field of peoples comparable to the Pygmies for extreme ethnological primitiveness, the concept of cosmogony appears not to have been foreign to the Tasmanians, today extinct. The only brief myth collected on this subject among this people narrates that men were formed (it is not said how) by a benevolent Being; but in the beginning they had physical imperfections until another merciful being descended from heaven to remedy them. No notion about cosmogony is found among the Vedda, pygmoids of Ceylon; but notable ethnological antiquity in the field of the primitives of India perhaps belongs to the beautiful myth of the Bhil (pre-Dravidian and pre-Munda?): original solitude of God, who reflects « whom must I create? »; creation of minor divinities bearers of light, who through the intervention of the Evil Spirit are induced to neglect the will of God; the wrath of the latter, who drives them to earth after having struck them; his new solitude and reflection, and finally the cosmogony of man.

Certain data on the existence of a concept of cosmogony are lacking for the Australian peoples recognized as the most archaic (Kurnai, Cepara), who nevertheless believe in the existence of a Supreme Being (Mungan ugana = "our father") pre-existing the proto-ancestors of humanity. A figure of this kind acquires greater prominence, however, among the tribes, also quite primitive, assigned to the "boomerang culture" (south-eastern Australia). The creator Being of the Kulin, called Bungil or Pungel, is the author of the earth, of the trees, of the animals, and also of man. For this last work Bungil prepares himself armed with his great knife, with which he cuts two slices of tree bark; he places mud upon them, and from it fashions two human beings of the male sex; with other fibrous bark he makes their hair, straight for one, curly for the other; he gives them two names, smooths them with his hands, and finally lies down upon each and breathes his breath into the mouth, the nose and the navel of the creatures, which are thus animated. In the presence of these he manifests his joy by dancing around them at every successive stage of the fabrication. Bungil is not, however, the creator of women, who are instead made (also two in number) by Paliyan, brother (or son) of the Supreme Being, who claps his hands upon the water of a deep pool until it thickens, assuming human form. Here is adumbrated, with transparent symbolism, the generative value of water (in analogy to the waters of childbirth), a conception widespread among more than one primitive people. The Wiradyuri have the notion of a Supreme Being, Bayma (= Bayame), self-created, arisen from the crystalline mountain that serves him as a throne, and creator ex nihilo of everything, including the first man Daramalum. Daramalum is, on the other hand, the name of the Supreme Being of the Yuin-Kuri, creator of men and of trees: a typical example of a proto-ancestor elevated to divine dignity.

To an ethnological level akin to that of the paleo-Australians are assignable in Africa the Bushmen, in America the Fuegians. Among both these groups the figure of a creator god is not absent, and sometimes has notable prominence, yet it has no clear or exclusive function in the work of cosmogony. Among the Bushmen of the north-west, the "great captain" Klu (XU) often divides the creative functions with another figure, Nawa (Gawab), highest among the evil spirits gawab, who in turn is rather a demiurge than a true creator. Among the Bushmen of the Maluti Mountains (south-eastern group) the creator of the human race is Caug or Kaang "signo..."; a primordial being with magical faculties, who became wicked with the passage of time; elsewhere (among the Kham) Kaggen is the name of the mantis, which creates the moon by throwing a sandal, or an ostrich feather, into the dark sky. In general, in the myth semi-animal figures predominate here, demons of the bush and of the hunt, whose vicissitudes obscure the clarity of the versions concerning cosmogony. Clearer is the notion of a Supreme Being among the Fuegians, but the creative activity of this being is for the most part ignored, or at least is not reflected in explicit myths.

The Warawinewa of the Yahgan (as, for that matter, the Köl'ash of the Halakwulup) is recognized as lord of creation, in particular of the animals, conceived as his things; to him men say they owe their existence; but whether he is the creator of them and of the world, the Yahgan cannot affirm, even while declaring that they have long concerned themselves with the question. Better defined conceptions on this point have the Sheik'nam (Ona), who form the most continental Fuegian group and the one most influenced by the matriarchal culture of the Tehuelche. Their Supreme Being Tendinkel, living beyond the stars, is the creator of the earth and of the empty firmament, but has then ceded the formation of the world to Kenda, his agent and progenitor of humanity.

Among the primitive cultures of America, that of the Central Californians deserves a special mention for the richness of its cosmogonic myths. According to a myth of the Yuki, in the beginning everything was water. Upon this surfaced a patch of foam, on which floated a feather; and from the feather came a voice and a song. This is the Supreme Being (Taikomol = "he who goes alone") who proceeds to the creation of the earth (from a piece of basket, which he reinforces with pitch), of the sky (by means of the skin of four whales) and of men (by means of sticks, which Taikomol places at night in his house, and which in the morning rise in human form). To humans the Creator teaches usages and customs and the respective languages. There follows the creation of mountains, rivers, etc., for which he mostly uses condor feathers (a totemistic element?). A variant of the Uchnom group narrates errors committed by Taikomol, which cause the newly created world to sink and be submerged by the primordial sea; he then creates a second one, but this too, without sun, without light and without game, does not succeed and is set on fire; the third attempt, after various difficulties, has better success. There appears in these myths a figure, typical of North American mythologies, who stands beside the Supreme Being now in the guise of collaborator and completer of his work (among the Yuki it is he who is the giver of fire, of the sun, of food, etc.), now as his mocking antagonist: the Coyote. Typically American is also the motif of the creation of the first men by means of sticks (or trees), which, joined to the other motif of successive failed attempts at creation, is found again among the superior Central American civilizations (Maya). According to the Maidu (central California), upon the primordial ocean there navigated, in the darkness, a raft, on which were the turtle and the culture hero (Peheipe, "father" of the secret society); from the sky is lowered a rope made of feathers, along which the Creator descends, face covered and body shining, who enters the raft, and, at the prayer of the turtle, consents to fashion a dry land. The turtle dives to procure the necessary earth, and — after an immersion lasting six years — brings back to the surface a few crumbs between its claws; the Creator makes of them a little ball, which grows until it constitutes the earth, on which the raft then runs aground. Still at the request of the turtle, there follows the creation of the "sister" sun and the "brother" moon, then of the stars, which light up in the sky one by one as the Creator calls them by name. The anthropogony is here presented as the result of a challenge, proposed by the devil Héllokaich (a figure equivalent to that of the Coyote) to the Creator: the latter procures two sticks, which as in the Yuki myth become a man and a woman. The devil wants to do the same, but since at the moment when his sticks are about to animate he laughs, the new creation turns out imperfect; and the Creator refuses to correct it.

A similar dualism in creation is found again among various primitive populations of America and Asia. The eastern Algonquians explain the coexistence on earth of good and evil by attributing part of the creation to the "Great Spirit" dwelling in the primordial mist (who creates the earth, the sky, the stars, and then the wind that clears the sky and makes the waters of the primitive chaos flow away), and part to Manito, spirit of evil, conceived also as a powerful sorcerer, to whom is due whatever is bad in the world (flies, sin, misfortunes, diseases, death). Greater prominence, with regard to cosmogony, is assumed by the function of the "devil" in the (primary) culture of the nomadic pastoralists of central Asia, among whom — through numerous variants — the anthropogonic scheme is the following: the Supreme Being creates man, with the earth, but before having perfected the creation abandons him, returning to heaven to seek a soul for him, and entrusting in the meantime to the dog the custody of the unfinished creature and the care of assisting its awakening; then the devil approaches, who, having induced the dog with flattery to yield to him the body of the man, breathes his own soul into him, or in some other way proceeds to corrupt him. Hence human mortality and imperfections. The devil intervenes, moreover, according to some Siberian peoples, also in the c., assuming that function of "fishing" the earth from the primordial sea, which in the more archaic cultures is for the most part the task of sea birds, of the mouse, or (as in the aforementioned myth of the Maidu) of the turtle, etc. This motif of "fishing" the earth, or of "fishing it up again" after a first submersion, recurs frequently also among more recent peoples, e.g., in India and in Slavic folklore. In the Arctic cultures of Asia, myths of the c. are scarce, except among the Samoyeds, who have a version singularly analogous to certain ones of North America (Algonquians); and among the Ainu, among whom there likewise returns, among others, the motif of the collaboration of an aquatic bird with the Supreme Being in the c. In other versions of this last people there recurs the notion of a divine c. of man by means of wood and earth; in still others, the c. is entrusted to the proto-ancestor, or to two inferior divinities. In one of the Ainu anthropogonic myths, human imperfection is due to the carelessness of the otter (as to the dog among the Siberians). Among the neighboring Koryaks of Kamchatka, the c. is no longer at all the work of the Supreme Being ("the one above," "the master above"), but rather of "Great Raven," a figure having the character of a culture hero or of a proto-ancestor.

The plurality and diversity of conceptions found within one and the same people demonstrates how belief in a Supreme Being is not sufficient to make one always identify in it the Creator. In general, the preponderant function attributed to a creator Supreme Being on the part of the ethnolinguistically most ancient peoples comes to be reduced among many peoples of "primary" and "secondary" cultures, or even disappears altogether.

Where, for example, influences of a (later) matriarchal culture intervene among the primitives of North America, one arrives at a conception entirely different from those seen; it is the earth itself that, conceived as female, generates the first men (Iroquois, Indians of the Thompson River, etc.). This is the predominant conception among the majority of African Negroes, of an agricultural-patriarchal ("paleonegritic") culture, by whom the earth is thought of as the seat of the ancestors and the bestower of all life; they have a typically manistic anthropogonic conception, with the preeminence of the figure of the proto-ancestor, who brings forth from the earth (or from caves, ponds, rocks, etc.) the first men. Also among the majority of the Indians of South America (Patagonians, Indians of the Gran Chaco, Bororo, Kaingang, the Gê-Tapuya group, etc.) the figure of a creator Supreme Being is almost unknown: instead, astral mythology stands out (the sun is sometimes vaguely conceived as creator), and above all the figure of two mythical twins, culture heroes and sometimes fabricators of the individual animals.

Totemism, where it is most accentuated, sometimes colors the myths in a very characteristic way. Among the Dieri of southeastern Australia it is narrated how in the beginning the earth opened in the center of a lake and there emerged pre-human beings (incompletely formed totemic animals), which, having then lain down in the sun, rose transformed into men. Also in the version of the Aranda (central Australia) the c. of the totems precedes that of human beings. These received their present form through the work of two celestial beings, the Ungambinhula ("coming from nothing" or "existing of themselves"), who did nothing but perfect formless creatures, plants and animals already in the process of transformation into men, liberating the limbs from the amorphous mass and engraving, with stone knives, the features of the face.

The Melanesians (of the "sky of the two classes") have the belief in two creator beings of unequal rank: one, a benevolent divinity (Tagar or Tagaro), the other (called Qat in the Banks Islands, Suge in the New Hebrides, etc.)

playfully spiteful and harmful, always in disagreement with the first in the c. of the first men and in the decisions about their destiny. A myth of the Island of the Lebbrosi narrates that Tagar made the two first human beings both male: one of these threw at the other a yam tuber, which suddenly transformed into a woman, crying out loudly that many men would perish in the future because of women. In other versions, it is Qat who fashions the first woman from flexible rushes to make himself a wife. The Melanesians of the Gazelle Peninsula (New Pomerania) imagine God in the act of drawing two figures, both male, on the ground, then wetting them with his own blood and covering them with two leaves: they become two men. These then climb two palm trees, detach coconuts which, thrown to the ground, split open transforming into women.

II. "SECONDARY" CULTURES. — With the passage to "secondary" cultures, the accounts of the c. become complicated, enriched with complex particulars, within the framework of often highly evolved polytheistic mythologies. That in certain cases there was an actual passage of mythical elements from the higher cultures to those of geographically even very distant regions is by now considered a certain fact. Asia offers us more evidence of this, but examples are also found elsewhere (Africa, Polynesia). A famous example is the motif of the "cosmic egg," known to the high Indian cultures as to the Polynesian ones; from it the world would have developed, and in it, according to the Polynesian conception, the god Tangaroa himself would have lived for long eras. This motif is found, rather singularly, in West Africa (Yoruba, Pangue). Not always, however, is the Asiatic derivation to be accepted. Perhaps independent of it are the Australian versions of this motif, such as that of the Bad (from the egg are born the rainbow and the flood) or that of the Wimmera (from an emu egg is born the sun, and from that moment humanity has its origin).

Typical examples of elevated "secondary" c. are found in Polynesia. A celestial god (Tangaloa in Samoa and Tonga, Tangaroa in New Zealand), conceived in the form of a bird, has the sun for an eye, and for a wife an enormous rock (O-te-papa), from which he has as children other gods, the planets, the sea and the winds; he also generates the first men, or fashions them from red earth. According to other myths, the "maker of the sky" is Raitubu, son of Tangaroa. In Mangaia (Cook Islands) it is imagined that from an original chaos of mud a powerful invisible agent made the present world evolve. The genitrix of creatures and gods is Vari-ma-te-takere, the "great mother" (vari = "principle" but also "mud"), who produces them from pieces of her own body. The earth is not "created," but "drawn up from the shadow": ten or more superimposed heavens tower above it, to which correspond various subterranean worlds (another parallel with Indian conceptions). The Maori of New Zealand believe that at the origin of things stood heaven and earth (Rangi and Papa), adhering to each other in the primordial darkness in which a pair of human proto-ancestors already lived. It is a son of the divine pair, Tane-mahuta, "father of the forests," who after a council held with his brother gods struggles against his parents, bracing his head against the mother-earth, his feet against the father-sky, and separates them despite their cries of pain: whence the light, and the present cosmic order.

The Indonesian cosmogonies, especially the Javanese ones, are very rich. Here Indian influences are even more evident, and historically more traceable, than in Polynesia, and not only among the peoples of higher civilization. The Batak of Sumatra have the notion of an anthropomorphic Supreme Being, possessor of a fabulous blue hen, Manuk-manuk; from the eggs she lays is born a triad of gods, one of whom, Batara Guru, creates the world by having a swallow place a handful of earth on the sea, and then populating it with plants and animals. On Nias there is belief in a celestial Being, Lovolani, who made the first man and his companion descend from the sky.

In Africa, it is the "Atlantic" cultures of Upper Guinea (Ashanti, Edo, Yoruba, Ibibio) that carry to their most complex development a lofty mythology which presents points of affinity with the Polynesian ones: a sky-earth pair from which the world originates, a multitude of lesser gods (of the firmament, of man, of the sea, etc.) in struggle among themselves or against the father sky-god, esoteric myths such as that of the birth of hundreds of divinities from the body of a female goddess "mother of fishes", etc. Humanity is often conceived as genealogically descended from the gods. Still within the Sudanese world, mythological and cosmogonic conceptions revealing a restored and complete metaphysical thought are found among the peoples of the upper Niger (Bambara, Dogon, Bozo, etc.). According to the cosmic vision of the Dogon, Amma, the one and omnipotent god, creates the stars by throwing pellets of earth into space, the sun in the form of pottery fired to white heat and surrounded by a copper spiral, and the moon by an analogous technique. The earth, also created by Amma, is conceived as female and is fertilized by water, the divine seed; from this are born, among other things, two twin genies, of divine essence, possessors of the Word — the basis of the universal system according to a complicated symbolism — and sharers in the divine force that is water. This pair of genies, a perfect unity, transmits by speaking to the earth the original word, bearer of force and initiator of things; and draws on the ground the souls, male and female. Upon both these "shadows" the first man and the first woman, created by God independently of the Earth, like globes of clay thrown from the height of the sky, extend themselves, assuming them together.

Vinigi L. Grottanelli

III. HIGHER CULTURES

1. Mexico and Peru

In pre-Columbian America, cosmogonic myths are especially characteristic, one of the Maya and the other of the Peruvians. The former held that in the beginning everything was sky and water, stagnant and dark. Gucumatz, Tepeu and Hurakan held council and created the world, formed of mountains, plains and rivers. First appeared the vegetable kingdom, then the animal kingdom; subsequently, with clay, the deities made man. But man dissolved in water. Then the gods asked the help of Xpiyaco and Xumcam and created man from the wood of one tree, woman from the sap of another. In this way, however, they lacked intelligence. After a flood, four perfect and intelligent men are created. They were able to see far and near. But the pre-existing race, out of envy, strikes them on the eyes, so that they become able to see only at close range. While the men were sleeping, the deities created four women who made possible the multiplication of the race. For the Peruvians, it is Con, son of the sun and the moon, who makes the world and man through his supernatural power. Con takes pity on the inhabitants of the coast and transforms the region into a desert, but mitigates the sentence by creating rivers in the region and herbs and fruits with which men may nourish themselves. At this point Con disappears and is replaced by another son of the sun and the moon, Pachamac, who transforms into animals the men created by his brother. He himself replaces them with new ones, the Indians of historical times, whose occupation is the cultivation of the fields and the gathering of fruits.

Another cosmogony of Mexico says that «in the times of darkness the world was a chaos unfolded in obscurity, where foam and mud flowed. The animal-god and the animal-goddess planted a rock on the abyss of the waters, upon which they placed the sky. Here they dwelt for many years and established worship as well as the cultivation of flowers and fruit. With prayers and vows they implored the spirits of the parents to reveal the light and to separate the earth from the waters and to free the dry land from the vault of heaven. The earth was populated, and after a universal flood that destroys the first humanity, the world is re-established by the creator of all things».

2. China

The ancient Chinese religion had, in all likelihood, neither a doctrine of creation nor cosmogonic myths; but from the examination of certain legends, whose dating cannot be established because of their extraordinary fragmentariness, and in analogy with other similar legends of Indochina, a modern scholar, Maspero, wished to see the echo of an ancient cosmogony. The earth, originally covered with water, is populated by one of the sons of the Lord of Heaven expressly sent. Heaven and Earth, the greatest gods, thus explain the origin of everything. An attempt at scientific explanation is instead represented by the monistic-materialist theory of Wang Ch'ung (1st century A.D.), which derives everything from a homogeneous, vaporous and nebulous chaos. The lighter elements and the heavier ones separated spontaneously: the hot and luminous ones (fire) remained above; the cold and dark ones (water) below. Another famous doctrine is that of Sing-li (11th century), founder of Neo-Confucianism: the Great Ultimate generates in activity the Yang (active principle), in repose the Yin (passive principle); this generation repeats itself throughout all eternity, since the one is the cause of the other. From the union of Yang and Yin are born the five elements, the masculine principle and the feminine one, and so on.

3. Japan

Japanese cosmogony is known to us from the Kajiki and the Nihongi (composed in the 8th century A.D.), aimed above all at demonstrating, in the collection of numerous myths, the supernatural origin of Japan. The Nihongi affirms the existence of a primordial chaos from which heaven and earth would have been formed (the Chinese influence is evident). There then appear, by spontaneous generation, certain deities (five according to the Kajiki and three according to the Nihongi), followed by other divine pairs. Of all these, only the last two, Izanagi and Izanami, are important, because they become the cosmogonic pair which descends from heaven onto a floating bridge on an island that emerges from the ocean to receive them. There around, Izanagi and Izanami create the islands of Japan and various deities, through which one arrives at Susa no wo and at Amaterasu (v.), who by magical arts produce many children: the ancestors of several noble Japanese families.

4. Babylonia

Of Babylonian cosmogony we are informed above all by the Enuma Elish, a poem that narrates the struggle of Bèl (Marduk) against the monster Tiāmat (the poem, as it has come down to us, is in an Assyrian recension of the 7th century B.C.). It appears that the origin of all things was the primordial watery chaos, represented by the triad Apsū-Tiāmat-Mummu, which begins the cosmogonic theogony. The third divine pair issuing from the chaos is that of Anšar and Kišar, the upper part and the lower part of the universe not yet ordered. Other gods are born, and out of fear for its threatened peace the primordial triad plans to destroy them. However, Marduk defeats it, and, having thus attained supreme power, with one half of Tiāmat's body he makes the firmament to contain the waters of heaven, and with the other half the earth as a lid for the underworld. The sky, the constellations and the lunar phases are ordered. At this point the poem is mutilated; but it can be reconstructed (also on the testimony of Berossus) in the sense that Marduk creates men so that they may venerate the gods. Various allusions to the creation are also found in other documents.

5. Egypt

For Egypt too, the origin of everything from a primordial watery chaos is attested, from which the divine Ennead would have evolved, through which, according to the systematization of the priests of Heliopolis, Atum R'ā, the solar god, with the magical power of the word creates air (Sw), rain (Tefnet), earth (Geb) and sky (Nbt). Once heaven and earth are separated by the force of air, Isis and Osiris, Nephthys and Seth are born, the pairs of fertility and sterility.

6. Phoenicia

For the Phoenicians, according to the version of Philo of Byblos, at the origin of everything would be the gloomy chaos, without limits in time and space, which produces from itself the muddy slime (mōt) from which all things were born. Evidently this idea of primordial chaos was a common heritage of the ancient Middle East, if a memory of it is found even in the Mosaic cosmogony.

7. India

Various cosmogonies can be traced in the sacred books of India. Beginning with a famous hymn of the Rg-veda, in which one is transported to the time when "there was neither non-being nor being; there was neither the atmosphere nor the sky (that is) above. What moved? Where? Under whose protection? What was the water (of the sea) unfathomable? deep?... Without producing wind, that One (tod ēhan) breathed by its own power; beyond it there was nothing else... Whence has this creation come, whether it produced it or not, he who is the overseer of this (world) in the supreme heaven, he surely knows it, even if he does not know" (Rg-veda 10, 129; trans. by V. Papesso, Bologna 1931). Elsewhere the origin of the world is attributed to Viśvakarman (Rg-veda 10, 81 and 82) or to Prajapati (Rg-veda 10, 121). Elsewhere again Prajapati is called Viśvakarman ("creator"). In the Brāhmaṇa it is usually Prajapati who shapes the universe from his own essence, and through ascetic exercises produces the earth, the atmosphere and the sky. Other, not very different descriptions of creation are found in other texts; in all of them appears the priestly preconception that the cosmogony is the work of the magical power of religious ceremonies. Until speculation becomes more refined and in the Upaniṣad everything appears to proceed from Brahman, the absolute existing for itself, which creates the gods and assigns them the government of the worlds. The Puranic texts will not depart much from this interpretation.

In Jainism there is no place for a cosmogony, inasmuch as the universe has neither beginning nor end.

Nor for Buddhism does the cosmogonic problem hold great interest, in connection with the Buddha's doctrine on the finiteness or infinity of the world. The Buddhists reject the supreme personal creative power attested by the Brāhmaṇa; nevertheless the Buddha himself gives a cosmogonic interpretation when he answers Ānanda, who questions him about the causes of earthquakes (Dīgha, II, 107), that the earth is built upon the waters, the waters upon the wind and the wind upon space, and that, therefore, the earthquake is due to the blowing of the wind which stirs up the waters and causes the shaking of the earth. And even before the appearance of the Mahāyāna texts a cosmogony had certainly been formed, attested to us by various works, but more systematically by the Prajñaptiśāstra of the sarvāstivādin school.

8. Iran

Among the Iranians the most important texts on the creation of the world are the Vendhādā and the Bundahiṁ. According to these, Ormazd (Ahura Mazda, v.) and Ahriman (Angra Mainiu) existed from all eternity. The two were divided by the ether, and Ormazd reigned in the endless light, while Ahriman stood in the abyss of infinite darkness. When a conflict broke out between them, Ormazd creates beautiful regions and Ahriman seeks to ruin them by bringing against them physical and moral evils (here the Zoroastrian dualism already manifests itself). The period of creation according to the system of Zarathustra covers twelve thousand years, divided into four periods: in the first is placed the spiritual creation, while Ahriman creates demons and refuses the peace offered by Ormazd. In the second epoch the Ameśa Spenta (v.), the sky, the water, the earth, the plants, the animals and man are created. The third period is characterized by the offensive of Ahriman, while in the fourth the demonic enemies are defeated.

9. Greece

The cosmogonic myths found a particularly fertile ground for development in Greece. In Homer it is Oceanus, the great river that flows around the earth, who is the progenitor of all beings 'Ὠκεανό, ὅσπερ γένεσις πέντεσαι τέτυκται (Iliad, XIV, 264), who would have been conceived, according to Aristotle, "as the moist element in general, a ring of moisture circulating around the earth in continuous flux." Elsewhere (Iliad, XIV, 201) Oceanus is the father and Tethys the mother of all things; Tethys, whose name would be connected with θῆσθαι (to suck), would symbolize the mother-nurse, the Earth. Beside them is the goddess Night.

After Homer, Hesiod, who, like Homer, places theogonic interest at the center of his cosmogony, indicates chaos as the beginning of the universe. After chaos, Earth, Tartarus and Eros; from chaos were born Erebus and Night; Earth gives birth to the sky, the mountains and the sea; then, mating with the Sky, the progenitors of the various lineages of gods.

Not dissimilar are the cosmogonies of Musaeus and Acusilaus, while Pherecydes of Syros designates Zeus, Chronos and Chthon (or Chthonié) as the first beings who always were: from them proceed numerous gods in five generations. Then Zeus, having changed into Eros, weaves Ogenos (ocean) and the earth on a great cloth. Ophioneus (perhaps representing the disordered forces of nature) opposes this creation, but is hurled to the bottom of the sea by the army of the gods.

Epimenides declares Aria and Night to be original beings; from them Tartarus would have been generated; then two other beings from whom the cosmic egg would have been born.

Of the four Orphic cosmogonies, Aristotle held that the author of the first was Onomacritus. In it Night is first; after her the Sky and the Earth and their children Oceanus and Tethys. The second, whose author is Apollonius, seems a development of the first. From the original mixture earth, sky and sea separate: from them all beings proceed; according to the third Orphic cosmogony, water and mud are in the beginning, which condense to form the earth; from them is born a dragon that never grows old, to which Necessity or Adrasteia unites. From the dragon is born an immense egg which, splitting, forms the sky and the earth.

Another version, preserved for us by Damascius, posits Chronos, Aither and Chaos as primordial elements. In the bosom of Aither, Chronos fashions an egg from which Phanes emerges. From the mating of Phanes and Night is born the pair earth and sky.

On these elements Greek philosophy will develop with the aim of giving, precisely, a "scientific" interpretation of the birth of the physical world.

10. Germany

Of Nordic mythology (Germany and Scandinavia) many tales are imbued with foreign elements, especially Christian; nevertheless the lines of a genuine cosmogony can be traced. In the beginning was the void; in the North was formed the land of ice, Niflheim; in the South the kingdom of fire, Muspellsheim; from a fountain of the kingdom of Niflheim issue twelve rivers which, moving away from the source, freeze and form the glaciers of the north. The warm wind that blows from Muspellsheim melts the ice and from it is born Ymir, father of the giants of the sky, and the cow Audumbla his nurse. Audumbla nourished herself by licking the glaciers, from which emerged in three days Buri, father of Bor, who in turn generates Odin, Vili and Ve, the gods of the world. These kill Ymir and create from him the the earth, round, surrounded by the sea. On the shores of the sea the three gods find two trees and from them create the first men, Ask and Embla.

From the very scanty and doubtful information about the religion of the Balto-Slavs it does not seem possible to derive the outlines of a cosmogonic belief (see also: CREATION; HEXAEMERON).

Mario Camozzini