A Better Creation Myth
As creation myths go, the one in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion is just as believable and superior to the Judeo-Christian account in Genesis. Tolkien’s Iluvatar co-creates the universe from music sung by a choir of the Ainur, analogs of angels in the Christian tradition. This one appeals to me, possibly because of my musical background. The latter tradition forces us to believe that some jealous patriarch among the pantheon of deities demands blind obedience or else brings raging floods, swarms of locusts, or the fire of Armageddon. No thank you.
One tradition I’ve recently learned about is that of the Indigenous Haudenosaunee, a group of Native tribes, mostly represented by the Iroquois, in New England. I’m currently reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, where she briefly recounts the story. Below is my own adaptation of this matriarchal creation tradition.
She was free-falling through the darkness—unafraid. No wind rustled her long, shiny black hair. She fell longer than time out of mind. Time didn’t matter. Still, she fell.
At length, she fell from darkness into light, where a wide shaft of golden sunlight illuminated her path downward. The air around her grew warmer as the wind rushed upward, her long hair flowing up and behind her.
At the same time the sea came into view below her, she felt the tingle of its salt and wetness. Suddenly, she heard the rush of wings as two swans came into view, bearing her more slowly downward, one under each arm. A knowing smile spread across her face as she looked upward in a gesture of thanks.
As the swans slowly lowered her to the sea’s surface, her outstretched feet touched something wet and hard. When she looked down, she saw she that was being borne through the sea on the back of a giant turtle and as gracefully as the swans had borne her through the sky. When she looked up to offer thanks, she found the swans had become tall, billowing clouds.
Looking down at the ancient turtle and smiling again, she absorbed the wisdom it offered. It was wisdom of the past and the future. She was the present—offered by the Great Spirit.
She felt something in her hands that reminded her she had grasped at something before falling out of darkness, unafraid, not an attempt to slow her descent. She wasn’t sure why she had done so, but when she opened her hand, she saw a vision of tall trees, lush grasses, and plants so numerous she could not count them all. This was the vision she saw in the leaves and small seeds that lay in her palms.
She noticed a tiny daub of mud on the turtle’s back. When she reached out and touched it, dry land sprang up in every direction around her. She opened her hand wide and cast all the leaves and seeds onto the land, and every plant, tree, or grass the Earth has ever known sprang to life in great abundance.
Everything Skywoman’s children would ever need to sustain themselves was there on or in the Earth.1 She smiled again. And then, through tears that continue to fall on her children today, she witnessed a vision of the future and how they would be dispossessed of almost everything she had given them. She then bestowed on them the greatest possible gift of all, the gift that, through their bodies, they would remember what their minds could not.
1. Skywoman is the matriarchal creator of Earth who brought the Original Instructions sent by the Great Spirit.
