MYTHICAL EXPLANATIONS – the creation myth
Creation myths evolve in nearly as many ways as there are cultures. Sometimes they are used to solidify political power, as when Egypt moved back and forth from the gods Aten and Amen. More frequently they are used to explain the unknown. Some cultures used the familiar (animals, clay, mud, etc) to explain their existence, while others used the sun and moon, which were IN their lives, but not OF them. The Inuit creation myth turns the emergence tradition upside down; the sea goddess is the survivor of acts of extreme violence. Her parents cannot feed her and cast her into the sea to drown. When she survives and swims back to their canoe, they cut her fingers off, to prevent her from clinging to the boat. Those fingers becomes all the features of the sea, but she returned to the depths, sealed in by ice.
I’ve always found it interesting that where some peoples gave all power to a single entity (like the sun or Judeo-Christian......
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