Creation Myths - Classification

Classification

Mythologists have applied various schemes to classify creation myths found throughout human cultures. Eliade and his student, Charles H. Long, developed a classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over. The classification identifies five basic types:

  • Creation ex nihilo in which the creation is through the thought, word, dream or bodily secretions of a divine being
  • Earth diver creation in which a diver, usually a bird or amphibian sent by a creator, plunges to the seabed through a primordial ocean to bring up sand or mud which develops into a terrestrial world
  • Emergence myths in which progenitors pass through a series of worlds and metamorphoses until reaching the present world
  • Creation by the dismemberment of a primordial being
  • Creation by the splitting or ordering of a primordial unity such as the cracking of a cosmic egg or a bringing order from chaos

Marta Weigle further developed and refined this typology to highlight nine themes, adding elements such as deus faber, a creation crafted by a deity, creation from the work of two creators working together or against each other, creation from sacrifice and creation from division/conjugation, accretion/conjunction, or secretion.

An alternative system based on six recurring narrative themes was designed by Raymond Van Over:

  • a primeval abyss, an infinite expanse of waters or space
  • an originator deity which is awakened or an eternal entity within the abyss
  • an originator deity poised above the abyss
  • a cosmic egg or embryo
  • an originator deity creating life through sound or word
  • life generating from the corpse or dismembered parts of an originator deity

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