Cosmic Creation Myths Across Cultures

1065 Words5 Pages
Cosmic Creation Myths Across Cultures Victoria A. Provencal HUM/105 World Mythology Wednesday, June 6, 2012 Cherie Ann Turpin The study of mythology is used to describe stories from various cultures to describe/explains certain actions that might have occurred that are considered mysterious or unexplainable. In moving forward, creation myths is defined as telling a special kind of story known as “cosmogony”, a word deriving from Greek that means, literally, “the birth of order.” (Leonard, S., & McClure, M. 2004) In performing some research and reading more into “cosmogony”, cosmogony is also defined as a mythological explanation for the creation and evolution of the universe. (Cosmogony, 2004). In reading both definitions of “creation myths” and “cosmogony”, you can see that they both relatively mean the same thing. As we study mythology and creation myths, you will understand that creation myths typically deal with different cultures and what each culture seeks to explain how this world was created. Each culture likes to tell stories on how they believe and describe how certain things around them were created. In many instances, these stories that are told will try to explain mysterious phenomena, teach lessons, and provide great emphases to the aspects of life that they feel are important to their particular culture. For this particular paper, I chose to pick two creation stories from two different cultures, the first being The Creation of the Universe and Ife, from Africa and The Creation, from the Americas. The creations myth mentioned are somewhat different, but have some of the same similarities. (Creation Myths, 2001) The Creation of the Universe and Ife and The Creation myths the world or worlds described in “The Creation of the Universe and Ife (The Yoruba)”, the sky is represented by Olorun, which is the ruler of the sky, creator of
Open Document