In the beginning, out of the nothing, a woman-goddess created herself by order of Unkulunkulu, the Eternal Spirit. By order of Him she also created the sun, the stars and the sea.
Her name was Mma. Although she was immortal she was cursed with the strangest longings and desires - anger, hunger, jealousy, sadness and love - and with all of this she infected all humans and animals. This is the reason why she is also called The Imperfect.
After Mma the Imperfect created the firmament she sat down on Thaba-Zimbi, the mountain of iron, and waited for more orders from Unkulunkulu. She became lonely and started to cry. She cried so loud that the stars trembled and some of them fell and her tears became rivers.
Eventually Unkulunkulu spoke: “Stop your hysterical outburst and continue to create a perfect universe!”
“No!” said Mma. “Before I continue I want a mate, for what is the sense in creating a universe only for myself?”
The earth and everything on it trembled while the Eternal Spirit spoke to Mma from His space beyond the stars. “You, Imperfect, must listen to the voice of your master! You may not question my orders. The sense in creating the universe is only known by me. Your duty is not to doubt, but to do what I say. Go on with your work at once!”
The mother goddess got to her feet. She was beautiful with four enormous breasts, each with a gleaming green nipple of emerald. With her eyes of gold she stared at the space beyond the stars where she could see the vague light that was Unkulunkulu . In vain she tried to touch him with her hands. Her lips glimmered silver as she answered him, “Oh, you have spoken, Eternal Spirit, and I heard you. As your instrument and toy I will obey you for better or worse.”
The ea...
... middle of paper ...
... Pigmies. They had no hair like the people of today. Their skins were red and their eyes yellow.
While Mma was giving birth to this nation, the Tree of Life ran to seed. Where it fell, it turned into trees. The trees bore fruit, and where it fell, it turned into creatures of all sorts. From the bore of the tree came birds, among others the holy Kaa-U-La birds who had two heads. From the Tree of Life’s roots came snakes and all kinds of crawlers and insects.
And then there were life on earth.
.....
Interesting:
According to the rest of this story all people looked the same and spoke the same language. Peace lasted for 10,000 years before the evil inside these people caused the origin of different races.
The baobab tree is still known as “Uhlanga Lwe Zeswe” – Reed of all nations.
Source: My People by Credo Mutwa
To follow: An African story about Evil.
Race, which is another characteristic of demographic data, is a modern occurrence. It is being questioned and more than likely not a valid determinant. Our textbook in chapter five states, “racial identity or race consciousness is both controversial and pervasive. When early explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries came across people who were different from them a debate began which groups were “human” and which were “animal” (pg. 191).
... hate. Now in the end of her life she finally sees who she really is, she sees her face. She states, “I saw well why the gods do not speak openly to us, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
The Chinese myth describes how when Pan-gu died, his body formed huge mountains, his skull formed the top of the sky, his hair formed all flowers and plants, his bones turned to jade and pearl, his arms and legs became the four directions. Also, Pan-gu’s blood became the rivers, his breath the wind, and his voice thunder, and finally, one eye became the sun and the other the moon. In the Egyptian myth, Geb is the earth, and Nut is the sky. These two are all tangled together, so Shu, god of air, pushed them apart. After Odin and the other gods slew Ymir in the Norse creation myth, Ymir’s huge body formed the earth, his blood the sea, his flesh became the land, his bones made up the mountains, and his hair made the trees. Odin and the other gods formed the sky with Ymir’s skull by holding it up with four large pillars. In the beginning of the Enuma Elish creation, it mentions how the two gods, Apsu and Tiamat, made the sweet water sea and the salt water sea. After a war that killed Tiamat’s army, the god Marduk raised half or Tiamat’s body to form the sky and the other half to form the earth. So many things also happened in the Maori creation. Rangi and Papa formed the earth and the sky. When their children managed to push them apart because they were so tightly embraced, Papa’s blood became the red clay land, and
The common motif for the Mesopotamian and Icelandic creation myth are “the world parent”, “a war in heaven” and “the creation of earthly matter from the body of the first mother”, ( The World of Myth, Page 19).
There are many different myths and stories about how the world came to be. In the myth, The World on the Turtle’s Back, there is a woman in the ‘Sky World’ who was pregnant and craving bark from a tree that no one was allowed to touch. She went in an attempt to get the bark, in the process of doing this she fell through a hole and ended up in a strange world below. She was caught by a flock of birds and they sat her down on the back of a large turtle. “The creatures of the sea came to her and said that they would try to help her and ask her what they could do...
God said to Adam and Eve, “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” As for Nu Kwa and her older brother, they prayed for the heavens above for an answer. They prayed, “Oh, heaven, if thou wouldst send us two forth as man and wife, then make all the misty vapor gather. If not, then make all the misty vapor disperse.” Then in response to their prayer the misty vapor immediately gathered.
First, the reader will recognize the distinct presence of the event, creation. In Genesis, the author documents the form of creation to have taken place over seven days. The creator is one person, God. There are stages. He started with the simple and ends with complex images. For example, the first day God created light and darkness, then sky and water, then fashioned water and land plants into existence. On the fourth day of creation God made the stars, sky and moon. Next, He made the creatures of the sea and then the animals of the land. Last, on the sixth day he breathed life into existence. In verse 26, God created humans, in his image, to rule and have dominion over everything on the earth. Therefore, on the seventh day, God looked at all that he had made and was pleased, causing him to rest. Meanwhile, in the first act of the fictional piece, Gilgamesh, the author explains the creation of the character, Enkidu. The author tells of the corruption in the life of Gilgamesh, exclaiming that he leaves no virgin to her lover nor the warrior's daughter or the wife of the noble, and exhausts men of their strength ( Gilgamesh 13). In response, the gods cried out to Aruru, goddess of creation to form someone of equal stature to contend together and leave Uruk in quiet (14). Therefore, the goddess dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, then instantly the character, Enkidu, was created. He had long flowing hair lik...
Two closely related creation myths come from the Chinese and Japanese. Their geographical ties and trading patterns forged a link. Both share the symbolism of the egg as part an old creation myth. In the Japanese version of the myth, the two gods that were first formed, made love to each other many times and each time a new god of something was born, such as islands, wind and fire. Izam, the female finally died and the creation of other gods was put to a halt. The pattern used here was from nothing to everything, and from the birth of gods to the halt of the creation, when Izam dies.
In the scripture “Genesis” of The Hebrew Bible, a young lady by the name of Eve was created by God. Joined by the almighty power of God, Adam, and God’s first creation of man; together with Eve were united in Holy Matrimony by Heavenly Father. As time progressed, Eve stumbled upon a serpent with a vile
...vil goddess of all time, Gaea, and all of the evil monsters that work for her. Gaea wants to destroy the gods, and become ruler of the world once again.
The main interest in this short story is further elucidated when delving into a more profound level of the woman regarding her potential in acquiring timeless beauty. This potential, which transcends the careful inspection of reigning beauties, is only determined with a simple glimpse of her barefoot as evidenced by her, “Exquisitely chiseled toes, nails like the iridescent shells along the sore at Enoshima…” (Tanizaki 100). Her foot, which represents nothing but a small portion of the body, overshadowed the complete existence of other beauties. Only a glimpse of the woman’s barefoot was required for the confirmation to be delivered; a confirmation which ascertain her potential in blooming to a divine entity capable of infinite destruction. This definition of infinite destruction refers to the potential of the woman in having absolute control over men. Progressively, the woman’s potential is eventually seen with greater clarity when the artist was “scrutinizing her intently” during their encounter, and consequently, it has escalated to the sky in the sense th...
The Creature That Opened My Eyes Sympathy, anger, hate, and empathy, these are just a few of the emotions that came over me while getting to know and trying to understand the creature created by victor frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For the first time I became completely enthralled in a novel and learned to appreciate literature not only for the great stories they tell but also for the affect it could have on someones life as cliché as that might sound, if that weren’t enough it also gave me a greater appreciation and understanding of the idiom “never judge a book by its cover.” As a pimply faced, insecure, loner, and at most times self absorbed sophomore in high school I was never one to put anytime or focus when it came time
God of War himself Ares. Ares was the child of Hera and Zeus, Hera took a magical herb that
Habits of the Creative Minds is a simple textbook with a particular twist. I began reading the book thinking it was going to be a basic textbook, but the author,Richard E. Miller and Ann Jurecic, changed the tone of the book and put it into a metaphor. This metaphor was about the reader in your writing, or for anyone reading should feel like Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The reader should be reading, and figuratively fall into the reading, by this the authors means the reader should not want to put that book down. They should be engulfed in the book and read from cover to cover. The attention must be maintained and the best way to do this is by making the writing unique. The authors of this book puts
Imagine it is one’s first day in high school. Standing in front befalls the entrance way to your new future, thinking of what lies ahead from the perspective of a middle school grad. One would perhaps have mixed emotions as to what to expect. Observing the new students around the corridors, it transpires as if they are dragging their feet to progress inside, for the reason that they are fresh from the blissful summer days; they are in exchange, yet again, to the reality of school homework, projects, reports and tests. Some have queries and doubts in their minds; what does one expect of themselves getting into a high school life such as this? “What remains in store for me, I wonder…” “This school year is going to be subsequently much tougher