Mythology: Common Creation Motifs And Religion

Hannah Ahrens Motif Essay Mythology 26 March 2024 Common Creation Motifs Throughout history, there are several different accounts of creation according to the culture or religion that created that particular myth. These myths of creation are all different from one to the other when it comes to the overall idea of how the earth and/or humans were created. However, there is one thing that connects certain aspects of one to aspects of another, motifs. A motif is something that people will see repeated over and over again in literature. Some examples of motifs related to creation are humans coming from organic materials, a war/bloody struggle happening, or some type of family tree. With that comes some motifs that are much more common than others.

The myth describes Adam as the first human creation, with females being created second. They also have the idea of females being evil and only created to be companions to man in the myth as well. With Eve being made after Adam with Adam’s rib bone, and how it states that God created Eve to be Adam’s companion. Eve had also been seen as evil since she had taken a bite of the forbidden apple herself and then persuaded Adam to take a bite as well. That decision and choice of eating the forbidden fruit led to much harder and much more laborious lives for humanity, which had been blamed solely on Eve when Adam had also taken a bite. Some other myths with male creators are the Babylonian Enuma Elish, Norse Elder Eddas, Chinese Songs of Chu, Incan, and Yoruban. The creators are as follows: Mardux, Pan-gu, Pachacamac, and Obatala. In the Chinese myth Pan-gu was the creator of the earth, but there was also a female creator who created the humans after Pan-gu passed on. The Mayan Popul Vu also had two male creators called Tepeu and Gucumatz, and they also followed the idea of men being made before women, with women being made only to serve as

The Inuit Tulugak, like the Mayans, also had a male creator, named Raven. The Inuit are, however, more unique with how man was created before women, and the idea of women being made to serve as companions. In that myth the men were not created on purpose or with intention, instead they had just randomly started popping out of pea-pods. Raven, after seeing and interacting with men, then went on to make females so males would have companions. Which is eerily similar to the Cheyenne myth which also has a male creator named Maheo who made man, then made women to keep men from being lonely. Water Being Involved Water was and still is one of the most important elements that is an essential element of human life. Without water no human would be able to live, just going a mere three days without water would lead to death by dehydration. So if water is that essential to humans, then of course they would implement that into their creation. They did that by making water either a big important part of creation or a small thing that was just there in the background. In some creations water was just there, wasn’t created or anything, it was just there from the beginning of