My son and his husband develop gaming systems and I sometimes help them work out the dynamics. I'm not very good at it, being ever only a casual gamer. My fantasies aren't deep, never far from my reality. In technical terms, it's called dysphantasia. My gaming is what I do in the world.
I do know a lot of stories. They weave into the fabric of our societies. They are both true and they're fantasy.
When the Great Spirit was building the World, Coyote wanted to be useful so he asked the Great Spirit if he could put the stars in the sky. Back then, it wasn't easy to tell peoples, humans, deer, wolves, bears, etc. apart. The Great Spirit considered it and then said, "alright", and gave Coyote the big bag of stars.
To start, Coyote did a great job. He put the North Star right where it should be and designed the Big Dipper as a guide so people could find it. But after a while, he got bored and distracted, as he does, and after some thoughtful placements, he just took the rest of the bag and threw them up into the sky, and that's why the sky is such a jumble of stars.
In the beginning, there was just God. He was not satisfied with just being so He made. He made the Universe but it was just in His mind - formless and void. So He let His Spirit work. And there was indescribable light, blazing out in all directions. And it was God's will that things began to separate. This was the first aeon. The Observer looked out on His creation and thought, "This is good."
So He thought, "There needs to be Things." So what was just a void of light and dark began to separate, spinning, consolidating, stars, galaxies, planets, and one of those spinning orbs was Earth. It was fiery and there wasn't much to be seen of the sky, but separation continues and water covered the planet. And land formed amidst the waters. That was the second aeon.
In the third aeon ("aeon" is the Greek term used in the Septuagint that was translated "day" by King James' translators and "morning and evening" were just terms to signify completion.) God said "let the earth bring forth" plants. I figure that included the extremophiles and later one celled beings that changed this planet into the weird life-filled, colorful, oxygen rich place we have today.
During the fourth aeon, God placed the sun and moon in the sky. I think it's safe to say that the sun and moon became visible. There are two kinds of planetscapes in the solar system. On planets with atmospheres, the clouds are so thick they completely hide outer space. On planets without atmospheres, the light from astronomical bodies are not diffused enough to provide much in the way of illumination. An observer on the surface of the early Earth would not have been able to see sun, moon, or stars until an oxygen rich atmosphere developed. Our blue sunny or cloudy sky is a direct result of life on Earth.
The next aeon, God created larger beings that inhabited the water. Again, this wasn't fiat creation. He said, "Let the waters bring forth..." Well, there is one exception. He did say, "Let there be whales."
And during the sixth aeon, land animals appeared, including humans. A lone male human was almost a fiat creation of God. "Fiat" implies "created from nothing." Genesis actually says that Adam was created from red dirt ("Adam" probably means "red".)
On the seventh aeon, God rested. We live in the seventh aeon.
Now, the third creation myth I will discuss is going to take considerably more time because it's sooooo detailed. Just keep in mind that, for every version I can tell you, there are some counter versions but I'll be going on the most widely accepted versions. Nobody was around to see and report most of it. For all these stories, we just have to do the best we can.
The third myth is (wait for it) ..... geology.
No comments:
Post a Comment