8
votes
Accepted
Was Ymir ever awake?
It is true that he created other giants spontaneously, from the sweat of his armpit, and from between his feet (same idea). However, the Prose Edda (ch. 8) tells us that the cow Audhumla fed him with ...
- 5,878
7
votes
Accepted
Character that created themself?
This might be a lot more common than you'd think. Many examples come from creation myths, perhaps because having a creator at all begs the obvious question, "who created the creator?" One solution is ...
- 7,786
6
votes
Accepted
In What Myth the Octopus Hails from a Previous World?
Looks like Kumulipo, an 18th-century chant in the Hawaiian language telling a creation story.
According to Wikipedia, the summary of the story is,
In the Kumulipo the world was created over a cosmic ...
- 178
5
votes
Do the seemingly random timespans in the Kalevala creation story have any significance?
The numbers likely have no special significance.
The quoted passages all share one feature: they use parallelism, specifically one in which a number is named in one line, and then in the next line ...
- 6,006
5
votes
What started the flood in Sumerian Mythology?
It is not known because the relevant part of the Sumerian version of the myth is missing, but in later versions the cause is the god Enlil.
From an article in Livius.org: The Great Flood: Sumerian ...
- 2,287
4
votes
Did Yggdrassil exist before the world's creation
I recently read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. Although he's probably not considered the top authority on Norse Mythology, he did study the important works of Sturluson.
Here's a quote right form ...
- 373
4
votes
Was the story of Adam and Eve influenced by Sumerian Ninti and Enki?
I find myself agreeing with Arthur George: The connection is indeed tenuous, as to Enki and Ninti being recast as Adam and Eve in the Bible, based on Professor Kramer's suggestion. I have written two ...
4
votes
Are there other Gardens of Eden?
There are decent parallels, but finding something exactly as you describe is harder. Notably, a possible direct precursor to the Eden myth is found in the description of Dilmun in a myth of Enki. I'll ...
- 7,157
3
votes
Why did Athena breathe life into the man Prometheus created?
Athena never did.
There was also an account, stating that Prometheus had created men out of earth and water, at the very beginning of the human race, or after the flood of Deucalion, when Zeus is ...
- 6,719
3
votes
Are there any Dragons myths about dragons being the creators of creation? Supernatural beings -as it were - that created the landscape?
Tiamat:
Tiamat is a Mesopotamian creator goddess who, along with her mate Apsu represent the waters and together give birth to the gods. After the gods murder Apsu to gain power, Tiamat (portrayed as ...
- 226
2
votes
Why is the Serpent the most common motif as the creator in indigenous Australian cultures?
The snake as a symbol for creation is common across many cultures mythologies. The mythologist Joseph Campbell pointed out that
The serpent sheds its skin to be born again ... it lives by killing ...
- 1,207
2
votes
Phrygian creation myth
I found my own answer.
It comes from Herodotus, Histories, Book 2, v 1. He is discussing which people were the oldest on the earth.
Here is the quote - "Now before Psammetichus became king of ...
- 181
2
votes
Are there other Gardens of Eden?
The Peach Blossom Valley.
Wikipedia ascribes to a specific literary work The Peach Blossom Spring, which may have been the origin, but there have been many forms of it: a man stumbles on a hidden, ...
- 903
2
votes
Which culture believed in a bird whose flight sustains the universe?
Just to provide a full answer:
According to your own finding. It is a political essay in Sam Kriss blog, titled from White skin, black squares (2020).
It refers to Turkic-Mongol chief deity Tengri, ...
2
votes
Which culture believed in a bird whose flight sustains the universe?
Found the essay! Somehow my memory embellished it. The original quote:
Imagine a devoted cultist of Tengrism, who sometimes gets invited by
company bosses to harangue the workforce on how the ...
- 21
2
votes
Is there a name for the generational overthrow of gods/titans/giants?
Yes and no.
I'm afraid, from what I know, there isn't necessarily a nice, clean term to encapsulate what you're looking for, especially not one that has survived since the age of the Indo-European ...
- 588
2
votes
Myths on God committing suicide
Directly from Wikipedia on Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec winged serpent and creator god:
In the Codex Chimalpopoca, it is said Quetzalcoatl was coerced by Tezcatlipoca into becoming drunk on pulque, ...
2
votes
Accepted
What high school subject would mythology & creation myth be covered in?
It depends. In high school, I took a Humanities course that covered Graeco-Roman and Norse mythologies. I don't know how common that type of course is, though. You'll also see some mythology covered ...
- 7,157
2
votes
Are there any Dragons myths about dragons being the creators of creation? Supernatural beings -as it were - that created the landscape?
Academic Books on 'Dragonology':
Chinese Emperors and Sages are said to be sons of Heaven, therefore celestial dragons- Zhao, Qiguang. 2013. Dragons, East and West.
Humanity as Dragon-offspring of ...
2
votes
Why did the creators of the myth "man was created from clay" choose clay?
Because clay is easily shaped by people. Unlike metal, clay is a very straightforward material to mold it into any shape you want. Add some heat and it becomes rigid. It takes much more skill to shape ...
- 7,157
1
vote
Are there analogues of Chaos in mythologies other than Greek?
In Norse mythology, there is Ginnungagap, the "Yawning Void" into which the world was created.
According to the Gylfaginning
(translation), in the north of Ginnungagap was the cold Niflheim, ...
- 1,613
1
vote
Accepted
Are there analogues of Chaos in mythologies other than Greek?
primordial, undifferentiated substance from which everything begins
So, the Cosmic or Primordial Soup?
Primordial soup, also known as, primordial goo, primordial ooze, prebiotic soup and prebiotic ...
- 7,157
1
vote
How early is the Zoroastrian myth of mountains stabilizing a shaky Earth?
In anthropology, this is called "sacralization of the landscape" (and the elements that constitute it). It can be found in many classic texts, one of the oldest being the 山海经 (Shan Hai Jing) ...
- 5,354
1
vote
What high school subject would mythology & creation myth be covered in?
A cross-cultural study of mythology and legend would probably be a literature elective in my experience.
It may appear in history, as part of a study of a particular culture, or in a general ...
- 903
1
vote
What is the original creation myth of Hawaiian mythology?
Well you could read the Kumulipo, Papa and Wākea werenʻt the first beings, but Pō and I think Laʻilaʻi. If you want a simpler shorter version starting with Papa (Earth mother) and Wākea (Sky Father) ...
- 104
1
vote
Was the story of Adam and Eve influenced by Sumerian Ninti and Enki?
Sadly most of the recast here are based on somebody's wild theories without referring to the translation from the thousands of ancient tablets of sumerian, akkadian, assyrian and babylonian. Hebrew ...
- 19
1
vote
Is there any explanation in greek mythology for the creation of Uranus and Gaea?
Hesiod's Theogony
In Greek mythology there are a few different theogonies (accounts of the origin of the gods), the most "mainstream" of which is entitled simply the Theogony, written by the poet ...
- 9,772
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