Most of us inherit an idea of God as a “world craftsman”. If you think about it, this idea could not predate craftsmanship. It’s post-agrarian.
Prior to god-the-maker, we had the World Tree, the World Mother, even the World Turtle (oddly persistent and widespread idea). Think about it
Consider the concept of Promethean Fire: man literally stealing technology from God(s). What would modern man steal? Electricity? Software?
In the age of social media, the idea that we’re all living in a simulation is getting popular. God as Chief Simulation Officer; a cosmic CTO
One of my story ideas is a reimagining of religion thru lens of filmmaking. God as cosmic filmmaker. Universe as fractal of celluloid film
____
The following bits are notes from watching Crash Course Mythology
Some early phrases and ideas correlated with early myths:
Primeval waters
Chaos
Primal void
Wide-bosomed Earth
Darkness before creation, inhabited by Death
Endless mud sea
Sad dark Earth
Death as universal constant
Sky and the sea appear vast, unknowable, eternal
“The Word”
Feathered serpents
Speech, The Word, endless sea, eggs, seeds, glitches and software patches, furnace, ex nihilo.
Bantu: water, Mbombo, terrible pain, vomited up the sun. Heat of the sun dried up the water. Vomited up the moon and stars. Solitary man creating the world using his body
Great Heaven came, bring on the night, desirous of love, spread himself over the Earth (female). His Son Chronos used a sickle to cut off his father’s genitals, threw them into the surging sea – Aphrodite, formed of foam
Cosmic egg – Sataphata Brahmana, Prajapati. “May I be reproduced from these waters. Let it exist! Let it exist and multiply!” And then… a tortoise. Water -> egg -> Earth, sky, tortoise, more water
Ahura Mazda – a perfect spiritual world. Angra Mainyu… anger, disturbance, sun began to rotate, day and night, destruction of the perfect of the world. You can’t create the world without breaking a few cosmic eggs
Duality as a principle of of creation. Chinese: cosmic-egg, yin-Yang, female-male, dark-light. Giant who separated chaos into the many opposites. Phan Ku, hair, horns, tusks, chisel and mallet, carved out mountains, rivers, valleys, oceans, mountains. His skull became skytop, The fleas in his hair became human beings. Everything that is, is Phan Ku.
World-parent myths. Purusha. Earth-Mother, Sky-Father. Gaia as a cybernetic system nurturing life. Mountains, snowy Olympus
Earth bedded with Heaven (Uranus), bore up Oceanus and a bunch of giants. Mother as analogy – childbirth, breastfeeding (nurturing). Mothers of myths aren’t always doting, often powerful, often love their children more than apocalyptically horrible husbands/lovers
Repeated prophesy of Son overthrowing/killing Father. Cronus was nervous about his kids. Incest very common in cosmology. He swallowed his kids! His wife Rhea was not thrilled about this. She snuck off to Crete and gave birth to Zeus + handed him to grandma Gaia – So Zeus and his fam had to rise up against / overthrow Chronos to become top gods.
Norse: Prose Edda: Frost Giant Ymir, created man and woman from his sweaty left armpit, and family of Frost Giants. Three grandsons(?) – Vili Ve and Odin. Theme of dad-hating. Killed him and used his body to make the world. Skull-sky here too. Rainbow bridges.
Enuma Elish, Babylon: primordial waters, angry mother goddess, big bad creator dad. Crazy kids kill dad. Mom makes monsters.Marduk defeated sea Monster Tiamat, took her, divided her like a shellfish to create the world. Parental sacrifice, anger/tension between family members
Earth Diver myth: Iroquois Indians. Humans lived in the sky. Daughter of great chief became sick. Fell through the sky onto the primal sea. Great turtle took her, and water birds and toads etc helped, and got tired and bored, and created land to support her. (Contrast this with “animals were created for man to have dominion over”!)
Gods as personification of nature, of human nature – pantheons are metaphors for the human attempt to make sense of existence. To ‘read’ a pantheon is to read a culture’s sense of itself.
Oldest known pantheon: Sumer, from Ancient Mesopotamia.
Earth-goddess, Ki
Sky-God, An
Primal-waters goddess, Nammu
Trickster God Enki
Moon God and Goddess
Sun God, Utu
Ereskigal, Goddess of the underworld
Pantheon includes Sheep and Bull, rather than harvest God/Goddess – more herding than farming?
Egypt was complicated, many different versions in different times and places. At Heliopolis, Pantheon headed by Atum or Ra. In Thebes, Pantheon led by Amun. Attempted monotheism with Akhenaton. Sources for Egyptian myths are fragmented and spread out over thousands of years.
Osiris was teaching civilisation to the world – laws, how to grain, etc. Younger brother Seth was jealous, put him in a box, sealed it shut, and threw it in the river. In some versions he’s revived, in others he’s not. Ruler of underworld, etc.
Men/women, women frequently set as subordinate to men. Man often created “to till the earth”. Misogyny in myths – Pandora as conniving & untrustworthy – Hermes’ hateful vision of women. “Men lived in paradise until a woman opened up a cask & scattered pains and evils among men”
Japan: young, jellyfish like Earth. Incestuous gods who had deformed child (because woman spoke first). Justification for necessity of female subservience
Wishful idea that humans immortal until something bad or dumb happens – human error brings death into the world. Often blamed on women.
I think it’s very interesting to contemplate how technology and living conditions shaped mythology – humans needed to learn/discover sculpting before they could conceive of a creator as a sculptor, for example. Farming metaphors would be meaningless to nomadic hunter-gatherers