Parallel Myths

by J. F. Bierlein

  In the beginning, there was nothing but the Great Self, Brahman. That is to say, nothing but Brahman existed. When you sacrifice to this god or that goddess, it is really only Brahman that you are worshiping. He is behind all things.

  Now Brahman looked around himself and saw nothing. He felt fear. Fear of what? Nothing but Brahman yet existed. He was all alone, and in order to fear, there must have been something else to fear. But Brahman was lonely. Even today lonely people often have fear as their only companion, whether or not there is an object to fear.

  Brahman took the form of Brahma, the Creator. Brahma felt no delight; lonely people never do. He yearned for someone to keep him company and his thoughts split the temporary body he was using into two parts, like the halves of a clamshell coming apart. One of the two parts was male and the other female. They looked on each other as husband and wife. To this day, a happily married couple are like two parts of one being with Brahma in both of them. Now Brahma knew that these first humans would need fire to prosper. So he created fire out of his own mouth. In so doing, he singed the hairs off of the inside of his mouth. To this day, hair grows on the cheek, but not on the inside.

  The male and female looked at each other and, recognizing that they were two halves of the same being, they united, making love in the usual way. Humankind was thus conceived.

  But the female thought, “How can he make love to me if we are part of the same being?” So she now tried to elude the male by changing into a cow. But he then changed into a bull and they conceived the race of cattle. She then tried to elude him by becoming a mare; he became a stallion and horses were conceived. So it continued down to the tiniest of creatures. Why did she elude him? Women are still that way; they are often coy and will play hard to get. Men must sometimes change themselves in order to win a woman.

  And so the creatures of the earth were developed by Brahma calling them forth by name and the action of the male and female. Thus, Brahma is inside of every living thing, for they came forth from him.

  THE CREATION MYTH OF IRAN

  NOTE: The religion of Iran before the coming of Islam was Zoroastrianism, a faith based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster. There are about 100,000 Zoroastrians in the world, mainly in India and in Great Britain’s Parsi community, as well as in Iran, where they have been cruelly persecuted.

  The distinguishing characteristic of Zoroastrianism is its duality: the good god Ormazd is in a constant war against the evil Ahriman. Good will eventually triumph, but only after a fierce battle, reflected in this Creation story.

  Ormazd is the Wise Lord, the eternal and omniscient source of all that is good. His opposite and the enemy of all creation is Ahriman, the source of all suffering, sin, and death. Ormazd, being omniscient, knew of the existence of Ahriman before the creation of the world. Yet the evil one was then unaware of the Wise Lord; evil ones are basically ignorant.

  Ormazd began his work of creation by casting some of his pure light into the vast abyss of the cosmos that separated him from Ahriman. Ahriman was so shocked that he declared war on creation at the first glimpse of this light. Ormazd told Ahriman that there was no need for conflict; if Ahriman would only bless the creation and leave it alone, all would be well. Like most evil ones, Ahriman is suspicious; he thought that the Wise Lord was negotiating out of weakness. Thus, Ahriman continued his war against creation.

  At this time Ormazd began to recite a sacred verse. Just one word of it so stunned Ahriman that he fell backward into hell, where he remained for three thousand years, allowing Ormazd to continue the act of creation unhindered—for a time.

  Ormazd began by creating his Eternal Attendants, the Immortals, the Amesha Spentas. They are the personifications of the principles of good at work in the world. They include Vohu Mana (Good Mind), Asha (Truth), Sraosha (Obedience), Armaiti (Devotion), and the twins Haurvetat (Integrity) and Ameritat (Immortality). They are collectively called “the children of God.”

  Next the Wise Lord created the beautiful worshipful ones, the Yazatas or angels. They serve Ormazd as messengers and warriors who defend all that is good. In times of danger and difficulty, the Yazatas are willing to help humankind when called upon. (After Ahriman was released from hell, he created a corresponding group of evil angels, inferior to the Yazatas. These demons exist for the sole purpose of making humans miserable.)

  Ormazd is a spirit without a body. However, he has a male and a female aspect. In creating our physical bodies, he is our Father. In creating our spiritual being, he is our Mother.

  Ormazd created all living things and, since he is light, all creatures need light to survive. Ormazd’s last creations were Gayomart, the first man, and his ox. As they came directly out of the hand of the Wise Lord, Gayomart shone like the sun, and the ox, like the moon. Gayomart and his ox lived in peace for thirty years, at the end of which time the evil one was released from hell. Ahriman immediately went to work creating demons, flies, germs, disease, vermin, and every other vile thing. Ahriman is sometimes called the “lord of flies,” because they buzz around filth, manure, and decaying things.

  One of Ahriman’s wicked attendants, a demoness named Johi, volunteered to make Gayomart and his ox suffer and die. Johi is the personification of all feminine evil. She is the source of prostitution, vanity, gossip, nagging, and other forms of evil seen in women. Not that women per se are evil, as they are the creation of Ormazd and are even possibly morally better than men.

  Johi succeeded in making the ox sick and then turned her efforts to Gayomart. Since Gayomart had no sexual desire for her to prey on, he ignored her at first, which made her even more virulent. She then unleashed horrible diseases on the ox, who began to die. The Wise Lord gave the ox marijuana to chew, in order to ease its pain. Then the ox died.

  Gayomart himself became mortally ill. When he died, his shining body decomposed, depositing gold and silver in the earth. From his sperm, a tiny plant with a male and a female shoot sprang from the ground and grew into a great tree that bore as its fruit the ten races of mankind. The tree separated, and the male part became a man named Mashya, and the female became his wife, Mashyane.

  The Wise Lord loved Mashya and Mashyane, supplying them with every need without any work or effort. Ormazd spoke to them directly and told them the story of Gayomart, their father. They learned of Gayomart’s faithfulness to the Wise Lord through many difficulties. Ahriman hated the two humans and sought to deceive them.

  One day, the couple, hitherto unaware of evil, began saying to each other that it was Ahriman and not the Wise Lord that had created them. This was the first sin, a lie. And as it always is with lies, more were sure to follow. This first lie was the first of the many sins of mankind. At that instant Ormazd came to earth and told Mashya and Mashyane that they would have to henceforth work for a living. They would have to offer their praises and sacrifices only to the Wise Lord, or they would have no protection and be destroyed by Ahriman. He also instructed them how to have sexual intercourse in order to perpetuate their kind.

  But Ahriman and Johi were determined to confound creation, and they took away the human couple’s sexual desire for fifty years. When Mashya and Mashyane were able to produce children, the demons ate them. So the Wise Lord saved humankind by taking away a little of the sweetness of the children, and they became like the children of today.

  Ormazd loves the human race and wants it to survive. He needs our help to defeat Ahriman. Likewise, without the help of the Wise Lord, Ahriman would destroy us. But the triumph of good is inevitable.

  * * *

  Today it is everywhere self-evident that WE are on the side of light. THEY on the side of Darkness. And being on the side of Darkness, THEY deserve to be punished and must be liquidated (since OUR divinity justifies everything) by the most fiendish means at our disposal. By idolatrously worshipping ourselves as Ormazd, and by regarding the other fellow as Ahriman, the Principle of Evil, we of the twentieth century are doing our best to guarantee the triumph of diaboli
sm in our time.

  —Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun

  THE NORSE CREATION MYTH

  NOTE: The Germanic myths were held by peoples that included the ancestors of the modern Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, and English. Since the Norse of Scandinavia were the last of these nations to be converted to Christianity, the Norse myths survived later than others. They survived latest of all in Iceland, whence comes this myth from the epic The Elder Edda.

  Long ago there was no heaven above nor an earth beneath, only a vast bottomless deep shrouded in an atmosphere of mist. Somewhere in the middle of the abyss was a fountain from which twelve rivers flowed out like the spokes of a wheel. As the rivers traveled far from their source, they froze.

  South of the world of mist, there was a world of light. Once a warm breeze blew out from the south and began to melt the ice. The contact of the warm air and the cold created clouds. These clouds congealed to form the frost giant, Ymir, and his cow, Audhumbla, whose milk nourished the giant. As the ice melted, salt was exposed, which Audhumbla licked. As she licked and licked, she exposed a man buried in the ice. On the first day, his hair was exposed; on the second day, one could see his whole head and shoulders. By the third day, his whole body was free of the ice. This was the first god, the father of Odin, Vili, and Ve.

  These three young gods slew Ymir and his salty blood flowed out to make the seas (you will remember that Ymir had been nourished by the cow, who had licked salt out of the ice). The bones of Ymir formed the mountains and his flesh formed the earth. From his hair sprang up all manner of plants. Among these were Aske, the ash tree, and Embla, the elm. From the ash tree, Odin fashioned a man and from the elm, a woman. From Odin himself, the humans received life and a soul. Vili gave them reason and motion, while Ve gave them speech and motion.

  Odin organized the world, separating the darkness from the light, creating night and day. Odin fashioned Midgard, or Middle Earth,* for mankind to dwell in. He also fashioned Asgard, home of the gods. The universe is supported by Yggdrasil, a mighty ash tree. One of her roots touches Asgard, another Midgard, and a third lies underground, where the souls of the dead dwell under the eye of Odin’s sister, Hel.

  Ymir the giant was not completely killed, part of his body is still alive and sleeps at the foot of the great ash tree Yggdrasil. When his body stirs, the earth quakes.

  The Norse Myth of the Creation of Man from an Ash Tree and Its American Indian Parallel

  The Norse story of the creation of human beings from an ash tree is often linked to similar stories in North America. Many writers have sought to find Viking influences in the myths of the Algonquin Indians.

  Lewis Spencer (1874-1955) writes in The Myths of the North American Indians about Norse-like spirits:

  But although Malsum [in the Algonquin myth] was slain he subsequently appears in Algonquin myth as Lox, or Loki, the chief of the wolves, a mischievous and restless spirit. In his account of the Algonquin mythology Charles Godfrey Leland appears to think that the entire [North American] system has been sophisticated by Norse mythology filtering through the Eskimo. Although the probabilities are against such a theory, there are many points in common between the two systems, as we shall see later, and among them few more striking than the fact that the Scandinavian and Algonquin evil influences possess one and the same name [Loki].

  When Glooskap had completed the world he made man and formed the smaller human beings, such as fairies and dwarfs. He formed man from the trunk of an ash-tree, and the elves from its bark. Like Odin, he trained two birds to bring to him the news of the world….

  GREEK CREATION MYTHS

  Matriarchal Creation Myths

  EURYNOME AND OPHION

  In the beginning was Chaos and darkness. Chaos was a great vast sea in which all elements were mixed together without form. Out of this sea rose Eurynome (“of the good name”), the Great Goddess of all things. She emerged from the waves naked and began to dance on the sea, as there was nothing firm for her to stand on. Suddenly, the south wind blew and spun her around.

  It is said that the north wind has miraculous fertility powers and, when she spun around, Eurynome grasped at the north wind. The great serpent of the waters, Ophion, saw Eurynome dancing and was filled with desire. He made love to her immediately. She then assumed the form of a lovely bird and gave birth to the great universal egg. Ophion coiled his tail around this egg until it cracked, spilling out creatures all over the newly formed earth. Eurynome loved Ophion for a time and they went to live on Mount Olympus, home of the gods.

  However, Ophion became obnoxious and tiresome, bragging how he had fathered all living things. Eurynome grew weary of him and “bruised his head with her heel” [compare this with the same phrase in the Genesis story of Creation]. He was then cast down to the dark regions of the earth.

  GEIA AND URANUS

  Geia, Mother Earth, emerged out of Chaos and then bore her son, Uranus (which means “heaven” or “sky”) while she was sleeping. When Uranus ascended to his place in the heavens, he showered his gratitude on his mother in the form of rain, which fertilized the earth, and all the dormant seeds within her came to life.

  An Oedipal, Patriarchal Creation Myth

  THE BIRTH OF THE GODS

  In the beginning there was only Geia (the Earth) and a great sea of Chaos. Out of Chaos came night and Erebus (darkness). From the night came the “ethers,” or upper atmosphere, and day. The earth produced the sea, then the great ocean, and other children including the Titans, Hyperion (the sun, “he who flies over”),* Rhea, Mnesmosyne (“memory”), Phoebe (the moon, “the shining one”), and at last Cronus. The children of Geia, the earth, were fathered by Uranus, the sky.

  Uranus became jealous of the affection that Geia had for her children and sought to destroy them. First, he hid them deep inside her in a cavern. She was tired of Uranus’ jealousy; and, as her children grew, they caused her great pain. The youngest of these children, Cronus, decided to take revenge on his cruel father. Earth took Cronus into her bed with a sickle in his hand. When Uranus came to sleep with Geia, Cronus castrated his father and flung the parts into the sea, where they sired Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who emerged from the fertile sea foam.

  The blood poured out over the earth, giving life to the Furies, the avengers who mete out justice.

  Cronus was now master of the gods and he married Rhea. Their children were Hestia (goddess of the hearth), Demeter (goddess of agriculture), Hera (goddess of childbirth), Ares (god of war), and lastly, Zeus. Cronus, jealous of the attention Rhea gave her children, swallowed them all whole, except Zeus whom Rhea sent to Crete for safekeeping. She deceived Cronus into swallowing a stone that he believed to be Zeus. Like her mother, Rhea conspired with her son to take revenge upon her cruel husband. For Rhea knew that it would be Zeus who would overthrow his father and become king of the gods.

  Zeus remained in a cave where he was nourished by the goat Amalthea and fed by the honey of wild bees. He grew to manhood in just a few short years, at which time Cronus vomited up all of his swallowed children, as well as the stone. The stone was placed by Zeus at Delphi, where the Oracle of the god Apollo is located. Cronus was killed. For ten years Zeus and his brothers battled against their uncles, the Titans, for mastery of the universe. Finally, with the Titans vanquished, Zeus set up his court on Mount Olympus as the uncontested master of the gods.

  CREATION MYTHS OF AFRICA

  The Yoruba (West Africa)

  In the beginning the world was a watery, formless Chaos that was neither sea nor land, but a marshy waste. Above it, in the sky, lived the Supreme Being, Olorun, attended by other gods, including Orisha Nla, called the Great God. Olorun called Orisha Nla into his presence and ordered him to make a world. It was time to make solid land and Orisha Nla was given a snail shell full of magic earth, a pigeon, and a five-toed hen to accomplish this assignment. Orisha Nla came down to the Chaos and set to work organizing it. He threw the magic earth into a small patch. The pige
on and the hen began to scratch in the magic earth, and they scratched until land and sea were entirely separated.

  When Orisha Nla returned to the Supreme Being to report on his work, a chameleon was sent with him to inspect the job. The chameleon reported good things and Olorun, satisfied with the good report, dispatched Orisha Nla to finish. The first place on earth was known as Ifé which means “wide” in the Yoruba language. Later, the word He, meaning “house,” was added. Today the city of Ifé-Ilé is the most sacred to the Yoruba people.

  The making of earth took four days. On the fifth, Orisha Nla rested from his work. The Yoruba traditionally have a four-day work week and rest on the fifth in memory of the creation.

  Orisha Nla was sent back to earth to plant trees, including the first oil palm. Olorum made rain fall from heaven to water the seeds, which grew into a great forest.

  In heaven, Olorun began to make the first people. They were fashioned from earth by Orisha Nla, but only Olorun, the Supreme Being, could give them life. Orisha Nla hid in Olorun’s workshop to watch. However, Olorun knew that Orisha Nla was hiding there and put him into a deep sleep, and so only Olorun knows the secret of how to bring a body to life. To this day Orisha Nla, through the agency of parents, makes the body, but only the Supreme Being can give it life.

  Madagascar

  THE THREE PEOPLE AND THE STATUE

  The Creator made two men and a woman, each of whom wandered the earth alone unaware that the others existed. The first man was lonely and carved a statue of a beautiful girl out of wood. The second man happened to pass by and fell in love with the statue. However, the second man was shocked by its nakedness and clothed it, covering the statue with beautiful flowers. Later, the woman happened to be passing by and she too was lonely. She took the statue home with her and asked the Creator to give it life. The statue slept in bed with her, and by morning, it was transformed into a living girl.