The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

I've recently thought a lot about various circles / wheels / cosmological compasses and the stories they tell about the cosmos and creation.

As most of you know some pagan traditions work with a circle of four elements & directions, which are often put into boxes of male (air & fire) and female (water & earth) attributes.

Some people work with a (neo)wiccan wheel of the year telling the reproductive story of a god and a goddess.

I've recently encountered a newly constructed 'medicine wheel' for European 'shamanic practices' which starts off at the point of 'primordial essence' and then divides the universe into 'primordial god' and 'primordial goddess' as 'primordial polarity' and then tells a creation story of how the elements, the ancestors, the plants, the animals, the humans etc. came into being from the interaction of these two primordial deities...

There are also a couple of ancient creation myths starting off with a god and a goddess...

At this point I wonder if there are any creation myths where the gender polarity isn't the first thing coming out of the primordial soup. Are there any ancient or recent creation stories not starting off with some kind of primordial male and female?

When I look at how science theorizes about the beginning of the universe and the beginning of life the development of sexes seem to be a pretty late step of evolution. Not that I'm an expert, but as much as I know primordial lifeforms where sexless protozoa...and even today there are some lifeforms which don't reproduce sexually.

Maybe the strong notion of primordial male & female is due to the fact that every human child is produced in a sexual way (unless we start to clone people).

But attributing female and male polarities to everything (sun/moon, elements, etc.) seems some kind of overgeneralisation in a human-centric worldview to me.

Does anybody know any non-gender-polaristic creation stories (ancient or recent ones)?

Do you still find gender-polaristic creation stories valid because of most people's 'mun & dad-experience' or would you rather use a creation story for your pagan tradition which isn't gender-polaric?

I was also thinking it would be interesting to write a creation story which adresses different kinds of polarities than sexes/gender and tells the story about men and women in a less binary way, including GLBT+ aspects and also doesn't put gender as the primary boxes everything is sorted into...but at the moment I'm at a loss and looking for ideas and suggestions.

Any thoughts on this?

this point I wonder if there are any creation myths where the gender polarity isn't the first thing coming out of the primordial soup. Are there any ancient or recent creation stories not starting off with some kind of primordial male and female?

Does anybody know any non-gender-polaristic creation stories (ancient or recent ones)?
 

Any thoughts on this?

The Norse mythology creation polarity is hot/cold, fire/ice with the mist/swamp between being the primordial soup rather than male/female.

The first being (Ymir, later earth) came from this, was hermaphroditic, and spawned children through the sweat between his toes and under his arms. The second being (Buri) was licked free from the ice and was presumably also hermaphroditic.

The Germanic ethnogeny has Tuisto born from the earth, hermaphroditically spawning Mannus, who then spawned three tribes.


So it goes: Buri; Borr; Odin, Vili, Ve (Norse) and Tuisto; Mannus; Ingvones, Herminiones, Istavones (Germanic).

There's a 1/1/3 structure to creation that's obviously important, seen also in the importance of the number three and then the number nine in the mythology.

There's actually some thought that the three relates  to the three main veins of the umbilical cord (world tree) and that nine represents the human gestation period. Which would bring it back to gender/sex. But that's all just random theory thrown out there. Fun to speculate though.

Edit: wadjet beat me to it.

The Norse creation story is un-gendered

Thanks!!! I really didn't think about it, maybe because I still haven't done my homework on getting more familiar with norse stuff...but it's a good idea to look there!

Modern:  Feri creation myth is autoerotic.  (And arguably creates gender polarity by passing through transsexuality, which queers some stuff up rather nicely.)

Ancient:  Heliopolitan creation myth begins with autoeroticism and then moves into gender differentiation.

Which might mirror the fact that many people have autoerotic experiences before they have sexual ones. :p

Interesting point though!

Hermopolitan creation myth in which the Ogdoad creates the cosmic egg strikes me as magical artificing, and while the Ogdoad is paired-up genderwise that appears to be mostly the Egyptian obsession with polarity and a way of conveying balanced factors?  The Ogdoad themselves are effectively summons.

Would you say that all other polarities are about the gender polarity or that the gender polarity might just be a very catchy metaphor for all kinds of polarities (pars pro toto)?

Koi actually articulated this well in a conversation we had in chat a while back, so I will try to convey her perspective, which I more or less share.  Basically: if one looks at the ontology of creation, what's in there is a measure, in part, of who is able to most closely resemble the divine model.  Creation through, e.g., acts of naming, is accessible more universally than creation through sexual reproduction, and thus is more inclusive of the whole of humanity.  (The levels of disability that cut people off completely from the possibility for use of communication are much less common than the summed sets of exclusive homosexuality, sterility, medical contraindications for reproduction, asexuality, and childfree preference.)

The standard response to that is that every human came into being through a process of sexual reproduction.  But: that still creates classes.  "Everyone is made by the gods but only some people can create like gods."

That's a really interesting point. I'm also reminded of the argument many people make about many other forms of creation and reproduction. It's not that the process of creating the next generation of humans only requires sex. Children also need to be raised and a society reproduces in other ways than just biological reproduction by teaching various cultural aspects to the next generation, (re)producing food and materials and services etc...

Does anybody know any non-gender-polaristic creation stories (ancient or recent ones)?

 
The only non-sexual creation myth I can think of that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Babylonian one about Tiamat being slain by Marduk, who forms the world from her body. I don't recall it exactly, so corrections welcome where needed

It seems to me that strongly gendered sexuality-based creation myths are just what appeals most to a certain type of post-feministic eclectic pagans, because replacing male superiority with female supersiority didn't work so well and was never mainstreamable in any way. So now they just are regarded as equal and equally necessary for life. Probably just yet another mirror of sociocultural evolution. (And yes, this is speculative, but funny, and might contain some inkling of truth )

My own spiritual worldview doesn't require a creation myth of any sort, as I see the universe as cyclical and the everchanging expression of the Divine. But creation myths make great stories to tell over a cup of tea by the warm flicker of candles, and as long as they aren't regarded as THE TRUTH (TM) but as metaphors I don't see any problems bringing my children up believing in them

BB
Abgeneth

Haha, then we would be pagan creationists! :p

 
There are pagans who consider themselves the only true pagans (tm) and think they are the only ones having the right to worship the gods, so if we already have an annoying orthodoxy the step to creationism isn't so far, is it?

 
The only non-sexual creation myth I can think of that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Babylonian one about Tiamat being slain by Marduk, who forms the world from her body. I don't recall it exactly, so corrections welcome where needed

The Babylonian creation myth- the Enuma Eliš- begins with the story about the primordial gods Abzu and Tiamat... Abzu being the male, freshwater primordial aspect and Tiamat being the female, saltwater primordial aspect.  It specifically states how- upon mixing their waters, gods come into existence within them.  So yes, there was indeed a male/ female union that resulted in offspring, from which the first generations of gods arose.

While a world already existed within the primordial waters of Abzu and Tiamat, Marduk- upon defeating Tiamat in battle later in the story- reshapes the world using her body, establishing a new universe from primordial ingredients and bringing about a new Order over the primordial chaos that came before.

Do you still find gender-polaristic creation stories valid because of most people's 'mun & dad-experience' or would you rather use a creation story for your pagan tradition which isn't gender-polaric?

I was amused to find this thread, because this is exactly what I logged in to post about. I'll share with you my own personal cosmology (its so abstract I dont know if I want to call it a creation myth). It's more based on neoplatonism and gnosticism than anything.

In the beginning was undifferentiated and formless existence. And this formlessness gave rise, through some ineffable process, to differentiation and duality. It emanated a paired male and female goddess, who then together emanated (or 'gave birth to') the spirits underlying all things. and these, seeking union, joined together to create the world, left and right, sun and moon, earth and water, the world is formed from paired spirits seeking unity. and from this mixing of opposites, living beings came, containing in themselves a spark from their progenitors, the spirits of the earth. And the spirits were in the animals, and the male-and-female were in the spirits, and the Formless was in the form of all the manifold creation which it had brought forth. But the male-and-female wished to participate in life in a boundaried, finite way, to look out from the inside of creation, so to speak. So they made for themselves bodies and passed into them, but the boundaried world could not contain them, and they shattered, the eternal male-and-female remaining as they were, while their mortal bodies came alive, like puppets who continue to move after the strings are cut. And these were the first two humans.

But the humans still had their being from the male-and-female, they still felt a connection to the higher order of being, and this is why, paradoxically, humans are above the beasts and the spirits and the whole earth is their dominion, and yet they are less than all of these, because their true nature is hidden from them. Only when humans reunite with the male-and-female will they understand their true selves.

Okay. So let me bring out some of the implications of this.

First of all, it doesn't say anything, positive or negative, about LGBTQ issues. Like in the Tao, male and female are interpenetrating. Or, to borrow a phrase from Kabbalah, the part contains the whole. The male and female each contain each other, they each contain the totality of the One, the offspring of the god and goddess contain the totality of their parents, and so on. In other words, I'm in agreement with that Crowley quote someone posted upthread: at some level, duality is illusory. But that doesn't make duality unimportant. It's a big feature of my cosmology because I think the reconciliation of opposites, and seeking harmony, is super important. Maleness and femaleness are good symbols for that kind of complementarity and unity.

A few other remarks. There is a pattern embedded within this account, it goes one--->two---->many--->manyx2. 'Many, x2' because the last stage of creation is both multitudinous and divided into genders. So, in a way, thats kind of like manyness doubled. So you have a movement from unity to diversity. And in this story, the sad plight of humanity, both exalted and debased, is a result of disharmonious action, the pattern being violated (and each of the gods trying to act independently, not creating/emanating as a unity).

But from another perspective, since the part contains the whole, the whole will constantly reassert itself, so you can see another pattern at work, a cyclical one: unity===>plurality---->unity--->plurality.  The spirits which make up the world, join together in order to make it, so while theirs is a fractured unity, its still a shadow or sign of the primordial unity from which all things came. Then we get plurality again, and then the narrative breaks the pattern and introduces disharmony with the creation of humans. Which makes humans the last link in the chain, and, further, one which originates from 'higher up' in the order of being than the reality immediately preceding it. The implication I see is that humanity, though isolated from the rest of the world due to ego, has the potential to express in itself the unity of all creation. Despite our existence being to all appearances rudderless, empty, mistaken, the part still contains the whole: we are still connected. We just have to realize it. So...from discord, harmony; the pattern will reassert itself.

Lastly, about animals. The idea of a hierarchy of being will rub some people wrong, but I included that partly because I really do think humanity is special and I really do value human life more than I value animal life. Our capacity for rationality, love, art, etc. is precious to me, and if I had to choose between, say, preserving that light and preserving the earth's ecosystem, I would choose humans. But I don't think animals have literally no value or that they are just here for our convenience.