For Thursday we are all required to bring in a Creation myth(excluding those in the Bible and Hesiod's Theogony), and tell it to the class in less than a minute. Primitives to Zen is clearly going to be ransacked.

The Five Basic Types of Creation myths are as follows:

1. Creation ex nihilo, through the thoughts, voice or bodily secretion of a divine being.(ie. first creation story in the Bible. The acquisition of language is the acquisition of order. Sounds like The Idea of Order at Key West)
2. Earth diver(avian or amphibious) diving into the sea and retrieving sand from the bottom of the seabed, which becomes the terrestrial world.
3. Emergence-- where progenitors pass through a series of worlds until reaching the present one.
4. Creation by dismemberment of a primordial being(ie. Tiamat)
5. Creation by cracking of cosmic egg, and bringing form out of chaos.(ie. Humpty Dumpty or the Kaba stone in Mecca)

This list(taken from Eliade) was later expanded by Martha Weigle who brought a feminist slant to the study of myth.

As she points out, the first creation myth(historically speaking) involves a female diety speaking the world into being by herself. Eventually this developed into creation alongside a male consort(usually a snake), to creation of the world by splitting the body of the female consort into two, until finally arriving at the Bibilical style creation story in which a male diety speaks the world into creation on his own. And after this, women and snakes, who had been held in highest honor, are denigrated and dismissed as inferior and evil. Just how did this come about? Being limited me I am not quite sure, but I think Douglas was on to something when he said it's all about jealousy and power. But more on this later.

And we are to do a blog about our very first memory. It shall be interesting to see where it takes us all.