For this essay we were asked to pick two creation myths from two different cultures and discuss/compare and contrast them. For this I chose Out of the Blue and The Creation in the Americas.
Out of the Blue is a myth from the Iroquois tribe. In this myth a women is instructed by her father to marry a stranger. This stranger is a magician/sorcerer. This magician put the women through a series of tests to see if she was fit enough to be his wife and she passed and he wed her. On this man’s property there was a tree that the women loved to sit under and converse with her father’s spirit and other spirits. The man falls ill and there is nothing that is working or that his doctors can do to make him better. He is advised to uproot the tree and trick the women into falling into the hole where the tree once stood. Once she fell in he was to put the tree back. All this because he felt she was more powerful than he. When the women fell into this hole she forgot her life up until that point. This new world was very different for her. None of the beings were like her. She dreamed for a time and when she came to she remembered her life before. In this new world the woman has a daughter. The woman’s daughter later has offspring of her own (Leonard, S., & McClure, M. (2004). Myth and Knowing. : McGraw-Hill).
The Creation in the Americas is a Mayan myth. In this myth, in the beginning there is only the sky and the sea. There is nothing else. There were beings with green and blue feathers under the sea known as the creators. The creators were responsible for creating all that there is from plants, trees, and animals. The creators weren’t satisfied with their work up until this point and wanted to create a being that would praise them. The creators tried creating beings from mud and wood but they were not satisfied with them so they destroyed them. They finally made beings from corn meal and were satisfied. The creators were afraid they had made beings that were better than them and obscured their knowledge. The creators made wives for these beings. The beings asked for light and the creators gave them light and all the beings and animals were happy (Rosenberg, D. (2006). World Mythology: An Anthology of the Great Myths and Epics).
The worlds in these two myths are very different from one another. In Out of the Blue the myth starts out with the women on earth. As the myth moves along the women gets tricked into falling into a hole that sends her to an underworld of sorts. From the reading I feel that the elements of the earth and the underworld are very similar. The biggest difference in elements that I gathered was the difference in beings from the earthly world to the underworld. In The Creation in the Americas the myth takes place on earth. The myth takes place in the sea, on land, and in the sky. All elements of this world are created by the creators. The creators create every element of this world from plants, animals, and later human beings. The elements in each myth differ greatly from each other. In Out of the Blue the worldly elements for the most part are already there. The woman creates life in the form of her daughter, but the creators in The Creation in the Americas actually create every worldly element in the myth.
In the myth Out of the Blue the creator is a female. I believe that her being female signifies the creation of life and nurturing of offspring. In this myth I could see the cycle of birth and knowledge. The women gave birth to her daughter through the living tree as did the woman’s daughter. Both gained knowledge from their world and their actions/doings in this world. In the myth The Creation in the Americas it doesn’t tell us whether or not the creators are male or female. It only tells us that they are beings with blue and green feathers hidden beneath the sea. In this myth there is a definite cycle of creation. The creators took a very methodical approach to their cycle of creation. They thought about what they wanted created it and sat back and watched it to see if they were satisfied. If they did not like it they would destroy it and start again. If they liked it they would move on to the next piece and create that piece. They only created one piece at a time. Out of these two myths The Creation in the Americas has some destruction in it. The creators didn’t like their first creation of beings made of mud so they destroyed them so that they could start a new creation. They decided to make their next beings out of wood. They were not satisfied with this creation either so they made a huge flood of sap fall from the sky which destroyed the beings carved of wood.
These two myths are very different from one another. They both do have to do with creation of some sort, but their creations are very different. One creates life in the form of offspring and the other creates life and all elements of an earthly world. The creators in this myth are extremely different from one another. In Out of the Blue we have a female as a creator and in The Creation in the Americas we have green and blue feathered beings with no reference to sex. Each of these myths has a cycle of creation. In Out of the Blue there is a recurring cycle of birth. In The Creation in the Americas the cycle of creation stops after each separate element is created and evaluated before the next element is created. Once all the elements were created the cycle stopped completely.