Examples Of Motifs In Creation Myths

When you hear the word ‘myth’, your immediate intellect may go to a story that is fake or ‘made up’. While that is partially true, myths are generally traditional tales that primarily revolve around specific people and religious beliefs. The most prevailing myths that orbit around today’s standards are creation myths. Basically, they are theories about how humanity emerged and how the world was created. As I read ‘Greek Creation’ and ‘The Algonquin Myth of Michabo’, I perceived that they are both obviously very distinctive from each other, but in a way they share the same ‘idea’ or interpretation about how the world and humanity was formed.

The most popular creation myth, in present day is the “one god” myth. It existed yet, had a brief life and it was in the minority. Here Ptah was the closest thing to monotheism that the ancients had. This is a popular theme in Memphite theology, but it was present in parts of Egypt. Ptah supposedly had all that is manifest in thought and then created them with his Word (Baines, 1991). It is also said that the “one god” is and the other god names are used to personify an extension of the “one god” (Ancient Egyptian Religion pg. 2 and 3). Ptah creates the Ennead with thought and word. This monotheism was not very widespread and it did not last long.

One very interesting aspect of the human experience is the manner in which certain themes appear again and again over time, in literature, religion, mythology, and culture regardless of the geographic location, the economic status, and the time period. Perhaps it is the innate human need to explain and explore the known and unknown, but to have disparate cultures in time and location find ways of explaining certain principles in such similar manner leads one to believe that there is perhaps more to myth and ritual than simple repetition of archetypal themes. In a sense, then, to acculturate the future, we must re-craft the past, and the way that seems to happen is in the synergism of myth and ritual as expressed in a variety of forms (Bittarello)

There are three groupings of these myths, all with similar motifs. The first group is the Western style apocalyptic archetype. These myths focus on the end of the world and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God. The second group is the Eastern style myth which are more focused on the rhythm

The most commonly used motif of all is the quest for something of importance. In the Odyssey,

One parallel between Greek and Egyptian creation stories is that they both begin with a God or Gods being created from the universe. The creation of

I will also explain what I think the most used motifs are, and the cultures that used them. The creation of humans In certain creation myths, the creation of humans was difficult. In some

The binary pairs that can be discovered in The Structural Study of Myth by Claude Levi-Strauss mainly include the follow ones: different and same; langue and parole; horizontal and vertical; diachronic and synchronic; syntagmatic and paradigmatic; high value to kinship relations and a downscaling of the family; life and death; herbivores and carnivores; etc. As for the aforementioned binary pairs, different and same has been mentioned several times while the rest pairs have only been referred to only once. Detailed speaking, different and same has been mentioned such as many different cultures present similar myths; structure remains the same and stays the same in different cultures and times; different in their detail, represent the same “deep

While creation myths around the world might be distinct, being representative of a diverse set of given culture and its beliefs of the role of humans in time and space, many creation myths share common themes and motifs. Creation myths are always built on one of these five universal foundations: creation from nothing, creation from chaos, creation from world parents, earth-diver creation, and emergence creation through a hole in the earth. In the Norse creation myth, Odin and his two other brothers killed Ymir after being persuaded by the threat of a growing Jotun population. Odin, Vili, and Ve took Ymir’s corpse to Gunnungagap and turned different parts of his body into different aspects of the cosmos and the earth. This dismemberment of

In Greek Mythology, perhaps one of the most rudimental yet one of the most important elements are the Greek Gods and Goddesses. The ancient Greeks created the stories about the lives and journeys of the Greek Gods, known as myths, simply as an endeavor to elucidate nature and all phenomena which were difficult to explain using modern science and logic. These myths about the Gods were spread around the world by explorers and storytellers, and later merged with Greek religion. To this day, numerous myths survived through many writings and through much art. Each of these myths is very unique, and moreover, tells us much about the Greek Gods. The Greek myths in particular convey to us that Greek Gods and Goddesses looked and acted like humans,

By reading myths, people can see that the creation myths illustrate the cultural beliefs of a society, when these myths were created by people, their thoughts and cultures determined what would happen in the stories, if they where scared of something, this would be many times the bad thing in the myth, representing the evil or something that people would be scared. Other factor that appear on the myths that are based in the cultural beliefs of that time are the gods, they represent everything that was important in that time, war, plantation, reproduction, etc. Concluding my idea, myths represent almost all the cultural beliefs that a society haves, and we can learn a lot of their culture by simply reading their

These creation myths are very different. The methods used to create the world was not equals, because in Seneca (Native American), the 2 brothers divided the island in two parts, and for the chineses, Pangu woke up and realized the matter of the Universe broke an egg. The people who created the world was not the same, as in the Hopi (Native American) Sotukan created it and, in the Norse (European) Börr's sons created it. Another thing different was the reason that world was created by reason of the Indians, when Froth wanted to have like a mind, and on Seneca tradition, the two brothers only wanted to create more life in the world. Different costumes and traditions comprove how the creation myths are not similar.

It should be noted that all creation myths tend to possess similar themes, despite differing story lines. As noted before, there exists the basic ideas of chaos before creation, and gods to form life. But then various myths show that, once life has been created, the gods tend to retreat from the humanity they create, instead watching them from afar and using specifically chosen and often religious contacts to spread their words and commands. This deus

We can see how our ancestors made sense of natural phenomenons and events. For example, the seasons where explained by the tale of Demeter and Persephone. The winter and fall seasons were when Demeter was mourning and could not see her daughter, while the summer and spring were when Demeter was with her daughter. At that time in history, humans did not have the necessary instruments or knowledge to realize seasons were just the tilt in the Earth's axis. The story of Helios and Phaeton, with Phaethon setting the earth on fire hinted at a great fire or light in that time period. These myths allowed ancient people to fathom difficult concepts. Myths also gave the proper principles and morals to become successful in the culture. These behaviors were represented by the heroes in the myths and epics. A hero was seen as a role model and a person of high importance because of their contributions to their community and society. Their actions taught others the appropriate behaviors and values which shaped their

Myths have been a part of human lives for as long as time goes back. They tell stories, explain how things came to be, and have formed the base of many cultures throughout human history. The most difficult thing modern people come across when reading a myth is interpreting it. For this reason, I will explain my favorite theory of mythology and talk a little bit about the other theories.