BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

Creationist Gods

  
 
Seth
10:21 / 26.11.07
Something that I can't recall encountering often in discussions of deities on Barbelith is anyone who has or has had a relationship with what they believe to be a creationist god, especially outside of an organised religion. I guess I thought it would be interesting to have that discussion and find out people's thoughts on it.

Notice I say 'creationist' rather than 'creator.' There are many gods who are gods involved with a creative processes, and many people feel as though engaging in that particular act of creation is an act honouring one or more particular gods. This thread is more concerned with a relationship with a deity who created 'everything,' or at least created the parameters or circumstances through which 'everything' came about.

'Creationism' is a term that is usually applied to certain adherents to monotheistic faiths, most frequently Christianity in my experience, and most frequently with negative associations. Believing in a fundamentalist account of the creation of the Earth or the Universe as provided by a religious text is typically viewed as delusional, counter to the available evidence and anti-science, and is seen by many as dangerously misleading if it is pronounced with authority by religious groups that are able to exert a political or social influence. I can imagine many people here flinching at the word 'creationism' as a result… which for me makes the subject all the more interesting. I've grown up with many people who were creationists, both fundamentalists and people who believed the Bible's accounts were aiming for a different kind of truth than factual or historical. In all cases my only frame of reference has been Christians, so I thought it would be fun to throw it out to the Temple forum to see what people think.

So…

What do people think about creationist deities and accounts of the creation of the universe in religions? Tell me about polytheist accounts of creation, particularly ones in which gods were in partnership in the act of creation. Who has worked with or had a relationship with a creationist god? If you have, tell us about it: why did you do it and what were they like? Was the fact that they are described as the creator one of the primary reasons you engaged with them? If you have never dealt with creationist deities, or have decided that you will never work with them, why not? In short, I'm interested in any and all lines of thought on the subject.
 
 
EvskiG
11:31 / 26.11.07
Would you like to start the discussion rolling with your own thoughts and experiences?
 
 
Quantum
12:30 / 26.11.07
I'm fascinated by creation myths so I can reference a slew of interesting creation stories, but it seems to be important to the book religions mostly. I mean, Atum/Khepri/Ra created the world in the Egyptian tradition, but the worship of Ra doesn't focus enormously on him as the creator I don't think (Ghadis?), more on him as the Sun.
The 'special' status of creator seems to be a side effect of the book of Genesis IMHO, other religions place less importance on it.
For example in the Greek myth Gaia or Eurynome or Nyx (depending on your source) was the first one around, and created the first generation of beings, but doesn't hold pre-eminence amongst the gods because of it.

http://www.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_16.html
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/greek_creation_myths.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology#Cosmogony_and_cosmology

more later...
 
 
Haloquin
17:17 / 26.11.07
See, I'd never thought of it in these terms before, but I guess you'd call one of the deities I have a relationship with a 'creationist' deity.

The Feri creation myth, paraphrased below, has 'God Herself'/The Star Goddess as creating everything. I relate to zir as the ground of everything, presented as a being/personality. In My Experience; Ze is underlying everything, was perhaps the beginning of everything, and you can feel zir through everything... but at the same time ze presents as an almost-independent being. I say almost because ze is still connected to everything even when appearing as 1 being among all others in the world.

Ze is androgynous, and often referred to as not strictly gendered, although the tendency in circles I'm involved in seems to be to refer to zir as feminine due to the feminist roots of Reclaiming (which influences many of the Feri people I personally have contact with). the most common name for zir is Star Goddess.
***
The Star Goddess, moved in a space before space, a time before time.
And then she chanced upon her reflection in the curved black mirror of space (the beginning of space and time, and presumably the duality of light/dark, subject/object etc).
And she fell in love with herself.
She drew her reflection from the mirror, and called this new being Miria, and they made love.
In the outpouring of love, at the height of their pleasure, all the beings and all the worlds became, poured, span out into existence.
The force of the outpouring swept Miria away and so Miria always seeks to return to zir lover.

***
That really isn't the most beautiful rendering of the myth but I think the key elements are there.

I kinda inhereted the Star Goddess with the Feri mythology but Ze feels good. My relationship with zir is one of gratitude; I am grateful for life and for everything that I recieve, and a knowing that I am a part of zir. My interaction with zir is devotional. I occasionally ask for help in the sense of strength/support, but it is mostly an exchange of love/gratitude.

Its different to work with other deities in that ze is more imminent and absolutely always accompanied with love and support. Occasionally overwhelming love and a sense of the vastness of existence, but always as though I am loved because I am a part of that existence (and everything within existence is loved). Which is really, really comforting... not that it feels like a get out of jail free card, theres no sense of being protected from fate or absolved of responsibility, just of the archetypal mother's love for a child who must make her own way but will return in the end (in death of course).

Is that what you mean by creationist?
 
 
Seth
17:42 / 27.11.07
That's a really beautiful post, Haloquin.

When I called myself Christian I didn't spend a great deal of time dwelling on the notion of God-as-creator. The most I thought about Genesis and Revelation were that they were mythical bookends, a framing around a narrative in order that it both begins and ends in mystery, like those fantastic albums that begin with a fade in and end with a fade out as though the record as you own it is a tiny fragment of an infinite piece of music playing forever. I think that's my favourite and most frequently overlooked aspect of both books: the manner in which their symbolic content means that no *true* reading is ever really accomplished and leaves you endlessly returning to pick over the implications of the text. To me that was always more rewarding than judging them merely as factual history, a tendency of fundamentalist Christians that really felt like a dismissal of what the text seemed to me to be setting out to do.

It was always the immanence of God that I related to, the person of the trinity called the Holy Spirit. I barely considered God's stated role as creator enough to even call it an article of my faith... at the time it felt like the equivalent of an appendix that jutted off the digestive system of my direct experience of my faith.

After my period of self-defining as Christian I didn't so much reject the faith as much as I broke down its meanings with a lot of relativistic considerations on different ways of looking at its core elements without ascribing any kind of *truth* to them. In short, while I didn't stop believing that absolute truth existed I realised the utter incapability of any human being accurately able to perceive it. One of the ways I did this was engage in thought experiments that considered God as creator a sideways angle, things that I intellectually played with but didn't take a great deal further experientially because I couldn't see many useful corollaries at the time.

That might now be starting to change, and I may (possibly, ish) be in the process of arguing myself into a new kind of Christian faith with the notion of a creator God actually being one of the central components. It's all stuff that is a little half-baked at the moment, not in the sense of being bonkers (which it may be a little) but in the sense of it needing a little more time to rise in my experiential oven... all a little too close to home to put into words at this point. In some ways I want to hoard it as purely MINE for a little longer, to enjoy it and to properly live through all the implications. Sorry if that seems a little selfish or not conducive to the stated aims of the thread... I just feel like I'm on the verge of cracking a vast and rather amazing puzzle and worry that if I show my work in progress someone will spoil the fun and slide a few of the Rubik's Cube pieces into place for me. I want it to be something that I do myself.

Quantum... what is it that fascinates you about creation myths? What's the hook for you personally?
 
 
grant
20:28 / 27.11.07
I'm interested in how visceral some other myths are - building the world out of Ymir's corpse (brains for clouds!) or humans being made from Rabbit kicking a blood clot.

There are other Native American stories where the world is sort of pre-existent, and people escape or dig through crap from somewhere they were trapped, or are made from mud, animal bits or clay and blood.

It always seems to be to keep a trickster figure - clever, not always friendly or to be trusted - from being lonely, though.

It's weird - I can't think of a deity responsible for Everything-everything that didn't come from the Middle East. As I've mentioned in one or the other of the Bible Study threads, I think this aspect of God (the Judeo-Christo-Islamic one) is sort of central to reading the Bible, but is fairly easy to overlook with all the smiting and obeying. A "goodness"-based reading requires a certain amount of doublethink. Or, at least, hermeneutic effort.
 
 
EvskiG
14:06 / 28.11.07
It's weird - I can't think of a deity responsible for Everything-everything that didn't come from the Middle East.

Now that I broke down and bought the first volume of the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, I can look that up!

A610. Creation of universe by creator.

We've got Irish, Hindu, Chinese, Mexican, Maori, and Australian myths, among others. Ymir making the universe from his body, the Maori Sky Father begetting different parts of the universe on his many wives, the universe as a god's spittle (Melanesia) or cough (Mono-Alu), and -- a particularly good one -- creating the universe by masturbating with water, stone and earth (Easter Island).

Fun!
 
 
jentacular dreams
15:54 / 28.11.07
There's a Hindu analogue to Ymir in the Rig Veda, Purusha, the cosmic giant who 'birthed' the gods, who then tied him up and sacrificed him.
 
 
EvskiG
16:23 / 28.11.07
A614. Universe from parts of creator's body.

Norse, Mexican, Chinese, and Hindu versions.

I'll stop now.
 
 
grant
16:38 / 28.11.07
Well, the weird thing about Jehovah is that there's no raw materials, really, when he starts out - no bodies, no one to do any commentary or giant-killing. Just darkness and "the waters."

That's a little peculiar, isn't it?
 
 
Haloquin
16:45 / 28.11.07
Isn't there "the word"?

If so, does that make it a kind of birth? Or is the implication that we are the thoughts of God made flesh?

Or perhaps that would explain why we are 70% water!
 
 
jentacular dreams
19:12 / 28.11.07
We discussed that a little in the (ongoing) bible study threads if you're interested? Genesis starts here, and continues here. And here's Johnny.

(Sorry, couldn't resist).
 
 
Princess
19:21 / 28.11.07
Well, isn't that one of the big things in Christian philosophy? Does God create ex nihilo (of nothing) or ex deus (of himself)?

As far as the Genesis account goes, he basically names things into existence. He doesn't seem to make them from the waters, just whilst he is floating above them.
 
 
EvskiG
19:49 / 28.11.07
In Genesis we start with water and God.

While God is described as hovering over the face of the water, there really doesn't seem to be anyplace to hover (the sky wasn't created until the second day).

Heaven is created by dividing the waters. Land seems to have existed under the waters, and becomes a separate thing (dry land) when God commands "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear."

(Interestingly, the sun, the moon and the stars have two origin stories: they are commanded to appear (Genesis 1:14-15) and are made by God and set in the firmament (Genesis 1:16-17).)

Oddly, though, both Jewish and Christian commentators generally insist upon creation ex nihilo, even though it's contradicted by Genesis itself, since anything else suggests that God isn't all-powerful or an all-creator.

Interesting discussion on the subject here.
 
 
grant
20:19 / 28.11.07
I've read an Egyptian version that seems closely parallel, with Atum (?) bringing land/himself forth from the waters of Nun. There's a gendered thing in there, too, which might be in the Hebrew text but ain't in the English Bible I'm reading. It's not a simple gendered thing, though. (Also see Nun, the transgendered primordial ocean.)


Thus, you know, "working with Atum" could be a euphemism for sigil-work.
 
 
grant
15:15 / 30.11.07
Ok, sorry.

Anyway, I think there's something about "working with" creationist gods that... well, isn't. The properly "creationist" ones seem sort of distant - Obatala crowns some Lucumi folks, but his father, Olodumare, doesn't. He's just sort of off in the background, running things.

Jehovah used to show up for a good war or sacrifice, but not so much any more - and even when He did, I think it was only via intermediary angels (the "Angel of the Lord") or tongues of fire & whirlwinds. There's a bit in Job that explicitly says God cant' appear directly without screwing everything up, isn't there?

And in Valentinian gnosticism, the real God is far away, and we're stuck in a pocket creation with Sophia to guide us out, right?

And I don't think Brahma has much in the way of followers (and none for Brahman, the soul-source above the gods) - there are just Saivites and Vaisnavites (which I'm not sure are even indigenous categories, but ones put on by outsiders). Maintain, worship the one dude (or paths/relatives thereof), destroy/inspire, worship the other dude (or paths/relatives thereof). Not so much for the creation of it all, or that which precedes creation.
 
 
Ticker
19:49 / 30.11.07
Ev mentions upthread under Creator myths an Irish one.

I'd love to hear it if you got the title handy from your source as I was taught that while there are place creation myths the closest thing to a Irish creation myth is the Lebor Gabála Érenn the Book of Invasions. It contains a very Christian creation myth placed to retrofit Ireland into the Christian cosmology.

My experience of most of the cultures lumped under the Celtic label are of detailed and fun individual sites' stories of creation rather than one unifying myth. So more this piece of reality was created this way and as it happens to be where we are that's the important story to know. Lot's and lot's of smaller creations with many more creator Gods. I'm not sure if this view point is useful in this thread?

My direct experience with the Deities of Ireland tends to mirror this as They seem so connected to Their land as Genus Locii. Some of Them have multiple places and I have worked with Eriu, the Goddess Who is Ireland. I've always gotten the impression that She views Herself as always being even if there is was a distinct sense of different times.
 
 
EvskiG
11:36 / 03.12.07
Ev mentions upthread under Creator myths an Irish one.

I'd love to hear it if you got the title handy from your source

I don't have much. Apparently it's an Irish myth from T.P. Cross's Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature. Looks like it's cross-indexed with "A611. Fiat creation. Universe is created at command of creator" and "A611.1. Druids as creators."

Nothing more than that, but I'd guess it's the Christian myth you're thinking of.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:36 / 04.12.07
Anyway, I think there's something about "working with" creationist gods that... well, isn't. The properly "creationist" ones seem sort of distant - Obatala crowns some Lucumi folks, but his father, Olodumare, doesn't. He's just sort of off in the background, running things.

I dunno, man. This is one of the major differences between NT gear and the various African diaspora trads: our Creator isn't exactly distant. Odin did the making the world out of bits of dead giant in our lore, and He's wicked involved. You've got all those personal appearences in the lore, turning up to fix the outcome of a battle or to ferry His chosen slain home. You've got clear records of "elder kin" who counted the Old Man as their particular friend amongst the Gods. You also have a lot of modern heathens reporting His hands-on involvment via possession or even (rare, but has been claimed) full physical manifestation.

I guess He could be lying about the whole dead giant thing. Wouldn't put it past Him.
 
 
eye landed
11:59 / 04.12.07
hes lying. notice how he gives his friends different names. in fact, loki (always a reliable source) told me that odin made up that story to cover up his tribe wiping out some indigenous people in order to take their land.

ive always thought of the creator as the author of my (or our) story. the explosive moment of creation is the first touch of pen to paper, which separates two contrasting colours into the promise of meaning. i think this is related to the book religions still placing so much importance on the creator-person. maybe sometimes an author writes something really self-indulgent, where he makes a thinly veiled avatar and has all his characters worship him. but maybe a mature author is one who 'kills himself off' so his characters can develop with as little influence as possible.

maybe im being short-sighted by privileging writing-as-creation over other artistic media, and maybe this is part of my brain-washing. does writing involve a more profound transformation, that is from the materials to the product? is a story constructed from ink and paper more magical than a statue carved from a rock? the act of writing seems more divorced from its materials than the act of carving; carving almost seems like a dialogue with the material, while writing seems like a social act rather than a physical one. is this because the actual materials used in writing are symbols rather than ink? is this why writing with a pen and writing with a keyboard seem kinda similar, while carving a rock and cg modeling dont seem similar at all? and maybe a trained sculptor+3d graphic artist would disagree.

anyway, point: i see the creator as a writer.

for me, working (or playing) with the creator shows me his guise as the trickster. the beginning of the world is always balanced by its end, and i like to think endings lead to new beginnings. beginnings and endings are the hardest part of writing, right? i think the creator laughs when i think i can understand or even interact with him, and thats why i only get the trickster corner.
 
 
Quantum
13:26 / 04.12.07
i see the creator as a writer.

Then why aren't we text?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:57 / 04.12.07
You look like text from where I'm sitting.
 
 
grant
15:18 / 04.12.07
1. "Text" has a broader definition than words on a page - anything that can convey a message is called "text" in modern critical theory. (Or, if you like, Modern critical theory.)

2. I guess He could be lying about the whole dead giant thing. Well, part of what I was getting at was the idea that there was giant beforehand to make the world from. He didn't make the giant. Someone else had to have done that. It's a different flavor of creation.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:46 / 04.12.07
I always got the impression that the giant just sort of... happened. So you've got Creation as a force, and further down the page you get Divinity as an adjective, but no personified Divine Creator.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
18:09 / 04.12.07
loki (always a reliable source) told me that odin made up that story to cover up his tribe wiping out some indigenous people in order to take their land.

How do you know Loki wasn't just in one of those funny moods? I'm not saying it's not perfectly true, I'm just saying that one can say true things in such a way that they become... unhelpful.
 
 
Quantum
19:33 / 04.12.07
What about Ginnungagap?
 
 
grant
19:59 / 04.12.07
What, the void? Fire and ice? If that made Ymir, where's the cow he drank from? And how did Odin & his two brothers show up?

Interesting, though, in that he was born from water, like Tiamat & Apsu, or like Amun or Jehovah (sort of).

Water coming out of a binary, anyway.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
23:42 / 04.12.07
What about Ginnungagap?

What about it? It's a GAP. A void. An emptiness. It's not like Olodumare, with the personification and the musophobia.
 
 
Quantum
09:29 / 05.12.07
Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast windy emptiness that existed before the 'upper worlds' of cosmology. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants.

I was just thinking of the origin-origin, the first state in different myths, whether it's water or whatever. The act of creation seems to be (in older cultures) an act *upon* something already there, contrasted with the ab initio creation from nothing of the Big Bang or the Word.
 
 
Ticker
16:56 / 05.12.07
From my trad there seems to be a lot of 'always been there' pointing back less to things always being the same and more to there was always something there to be acted upon.

I'm not sure which is harder to contemplate..an eternal something that changes or an interupted nothing which was then put upon with a something that is going to expire. Six of one half dozen of the other perhaps but I lean toward the always been a something side of things. Even if it takes rest breaks.

Also I was looking for a Irish creation myth for you kids and stumbled on this JSTOR article about Eyeballs and Wells. Seems to be out to correlate Odin's ocular adventures?
 
 
eye landed
03:33 / 06.12.07
for those of you not in the jstor loop, the article concludes that an eye looks like a still pool of water, and when you pull it out you get a geyser of blood (most of the stories quoted had the geyser appear in order to wash the wound, which being a function of bleeding). so eye-yoinking myths are origin myths for local water sources. large rivers fed by these sources are associated with arms and legs...

i think this is meant to be taken as evidence that odins eye provided the source of mimirs well, rather than a price for a drink. as the voluspa quote says on the first page, mimir drinks mead/every morning/from odins pledge.
 
 
eye landed
04:13 / 06.12.07
ginnungagap is similar to qabalist creation: there is a crack, a crack in everything; thats how the light gets in.

there is a difference. the sources im finding for norse creation stress that the fire and ice on each side finally met in ginnungagap, which precipitated (haha) the creation of stuff. the semitic myth is rather the opposite: a point appears in the nothingness, exemplified well by xepera spontaneously raising himself from the primordial ocean.

the latter is a lot closer to a modern 'mathematical' creation story, as in crowleys book of lies:

Nothing is,
Nothing Becomes,
Nothing is not.

is it equally valid to assume pre-existance of opposites as to assume pre-existence of will?

the semitic myth suggests that the world is already there (the waters of chaos contain the seed of all), and creation is the creation of awareness. the norse myth suggests that distinction is already there (ymir is just frozen in the ice, muspellheim and niflheim are already separated), and creation is the creation of the real or the useful.

mind-emerging-from-world vs world-emerging-from-mind.
 
 
Haloquin
19:00 / 07.12.07
does writing involve a more profound transformation, that is from the materials to the product? - 311...

No. Writing uses materials of symbols, language, words. Painting and other visual arts, in that sense, uses concepts, colours, images, symbols. Materials wise, ink on paper can make words or images, the transformative process (of staining paper to create something from raw materials) is no more profound, to my mind, in either case.

For me, the act of creation in writing or other art forms is equal... it just seems to me that 'Western culture' places a heavier emphasis on writing and verbal language than on art. I'm not sure that written language exists in every culture, but art of some description does (at least I'm sure it does, I may be wrong on both counts).

There is of course the flip side that some people find the creation of visual art very profound as they perceive it as something that only a few talented people can do, but culture wise I think we have a tendency towards a love/infatuaition of written language.

Also, I personally find the idea that a Being shaped me with their own hands more profound than the idea that I somehow appeared because a Being wrote about me. "We are all the thoughts of God" is a very important sounding idea, but "God got hir hands dirty and shaped the clay of my being"... it makes God feel closer, IMO.

/current thoughts from Halo's head
 
 
Haloquin
19:02 / 07.12.07
Although I hasten to add that I'm not dsmissing the idea of creator as author... its just writing doesn't seem any more profound than other art forms (clearly I consider writing to be an art form itself).
 
  
Add Your Reply