It all begins with time...

 

Once upon a time...

In a galaxy far, far away...

In a world before time began...

In a land that time forgot...

In the beginning...

 

As all mythologies insist , there once was a time before time, a place, a golden land, a timeless existence before our own when neither death nor suffering nor hunger nor broken hearts existed.

And we lost it.

Mankind itself offended the gods, or the gods amused themselves with creation, or chaos mated with night and the world came into being, or pre- or proto-humans began playing with the materials of their environment and our world resulted. An inferior world, a fallen existence, peopled with men and women who did not know they were creations of the divine, or that they had once inhabited a sphere that was the holy of holies.

Until the myths reminded them.

They spoke of a pre-existence, a garden with trees of knowledge and rivers that flowed forever; or a world where animals, humans and the earth itself spoke and communed with each other; or of a formless void where god was mind and no matter existed.

And they spoke of a way to get back.

After the creation myths, those were the most compelling tales. Tales of heroes who conquered the earthly, of spirits who guided pilgrims back to god, of wise old men and women who directed innocent believers through labyrinths and across bridges to lands where milk and honey flowed unceasingly. Shamans rehearsed the stories, interweaving them with legends about tribal ancestors, mixing history and mythology seamlessly so their appeared no division between gods and man. Till listeners dreamed, and then wanted to turn dreams into reality.

So they dramatized the stories, re-enacting the actions of heroes and gods. The rituals they performed sacralized their world, not merely recreating the time of the gods, but bringing the gods into their very place, within the circle of their actions, within the community of believers. Others wanted to find the gods in their own sphere, seeking them on mountain tops, or perhaps reaching them through ziggurats and towers, as in Nimrod's infamous Tower of Babel (right). And still others believed that the time and land of the gods would return, if only mankind could learn how to coax them, how to prepare for a restoration of a new millenium, a new age, a time when even the lamb and lion would lie down in peace, when gods and man would walk together once again, for all eternity. When time ceased, when death itself would die. Back to the beginning...

 

Here There Be Monsters: The Perverse, the Grotesque & the Sublime Major Heroes
& Major Epics
Creator and Creature:
Creation Myths by Category		 Classical and Medieval Heroes:
A Comparison