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WHAT DOES A CREATION MYTH DO?
Lecture Notes
Ted E. Tollefson, 1989

1. Explains how the world comes into being

Is the myth personal or impersonal? linear or cyclical?
Is chaos as enemy or the source of creation?
Is the world created out of nothing , out of matter, out of self?
Is the creative act solitary and communal? sexual or asexual?

2. Establishes a model of the creative process

Marduk: creation via combat, murder, dismemeberment
Yhwh: creation via separation
Alligator: creation by letting things settle down
Alchemy: mixing, heating, transmuting
Buddhist: via desire, fear, sloth.
Goddess/ Oprhic Egg: dancing, copulating, self-birthing

3. Builds up a world-view, a hierarchy of values, "first things first"

In Genesis: god is male, the first human is male and the female is derivative.
In the Upanisads and Plato's Symposiuim there is an evolution from unity to diversity and back towards unity.
In many Goddess stories, creation comes from the female Goddess, then female humans, then last of all male humans. Sometimes the male God is entirely absent; other times he is a rotating consort--a serpentine phallic functionary.

4. Often, but not always, this hierarchy includes genders, races, tribes, religions

Genesis tells us that men > (come before; are more than) women; Jews > idolaters ;

Goddess mythologies establish the priority of women over men.
Brother/sister mythologies (Shiva/Shakti; Apsu/Tiamat; Yang/Yin) emphasize the interdependence of men and women.

5. Gender implies sexuality, which is often linked to savlation

In Genesis sex= fall, fault, shame. Our genitals are a source of shame; sexuality is desacralized and disconnected from the fertility of the earth.
In some Gnostic myths and some Buddhist stoires, sexuality is linked to the fall into matter. Thereby the path of salvation includes both ascetic and libertine movements.
In Taoism, Tantra and Plato's Symposium, sexuality is linked to our original unity, hence ritual and/or meditative sex is salvatory.

6. Explaining how things come to be (#1) often involves explaining how and why bad things happen. The description of the Fall or Descent tells us who to blame (malogony).

Pandora's Box, Genesis and some African stories blame women's curiosity and also the guile of the serpent.
Genesis also blames the passivity of men (Adam).
Some Gnostic myths blame YHWH, an evil demi-urge, who was jealous or fearful of the creative power of human beings.
Coyote stories of the Native Americans blame Coyote: a half-baked comic figure who is somewhere between the gods and humans.

7. Myths of malogony are often disguised indictments of rival mythological systems.

Patriarchal religions often put the blame of women + serpents; desire + curiosity. They are a disguised attempt to discredit rival fertility religioins in which the power of the Goddess was expressed in conjuction with ther consort, the serpent.
In some cases the gods of a previous religion become the demons or demi-gods of the new; the invasioin of fierece herder/hunters in Greece and Indian was reflected in battles between Olympian Gods and the Titans (Greece), or between Brahmanic gods and the darker Asuras (India).
So too modern Humanism indicts religious superstition as the cause of evil and modern neo-Goddess religions blame patriarchy.

8. Myths of Fall imply myths of Return; Sin implies Grace, Disease implies Cure.

In Genesis, the cure is the sexual subordination of women to men and their mutual loving obedience to a male sky god (Yhwh).
In the alligator myth, the way is by relaxing, letting go, letting things settle.
In Plato's Symposium and Tantra, sexual ecstacy is a path of salvation.
In early Buddhism, Jainism, many Gnostic sects and the
Shakers, salvation comes through sexual abstinence.

9. Patterns of divine/human interaction establish models for ethics.

The Genesis myth sanctifies obedience.
The Prometheus myth sanctifies rebellion.
The Myth of Marduk (Babylonian) sanctifies strife and combat especially against parental authority.

10. All creation myths cast a shadow, evil disguised as other, often that of displaced gods of Goddesses.

The myths of Genesis and of Marduk both cast a maternal shadow: for the Goddess is the displaced deity.
The Shadow of Christ (and also Yhwh) is also the earthly God: Satan is a composite of Pan, Dionysos, and Hades--all representations of the phallic deity forced underground by Biblical sky gods.
The Shadow of Athene is her mother Metis, a pre-Olympian Goddess of feminine wisdom who reappears as Medusa.

WHAT DOES A CREATION MYTH DO? Lecture Notes Ted E. Tollefson, 1989

1. Explains how the world comes into being

2. Establishes a model of the creative process

3. Builds up a world-view, a hierarchy of values, "first things first"

4. Often, but not always, this hierarchy includes genders, races, tribes, religions

5. Gender implies sexuality, which is often linked to savlation

6. Explaining how things come to be (#1) often involves explaining how and why bad things happen. The description of the Fall or Descent tells us who to blame (malogony).

7. Myths of malogony are often disguised indictments of rival mythological systems.

8. Myths of Fall imply myths of Return; Sin implies Grace, Disease implies Cure.

9. Patterns of divine/human interaction establish models for ethics.

10. All creation myths cast a shadow, evil disguised as other, often that of displaced gods of Goddesses.

WHAT DOES A CREATION MYTH DO?
Lecture Notes
Ted E. Tollefson, 1989