Creation Myth Motifs

Throughout the diverse cultures and religions in the world, there are many different creation myths. Each culture has their own creation myth and there are many similarities, or motifs, within these creation myths. The three creation myth motifs that I thought were the most important were humans being made perfectly in the first attempt, an angry god punishing humans or another god, and women being created after men. Several cultures’ creation myths describe humans as being made perfectly in the first attempt. The god or powerful being only needed one attempt to create what the god then viewed as “perfect”. This motif is a great example of how many cultures view themselves as perfect when humans are first born. These cultures see babies …show more content…
In the Chinese myth, Nuwa creates humans perfectly when she creates them by using her own hands. Later on, the humans are less perfect because Nuwa grows tired of creating the humans by hand and instead, she flings mud from a stick to create them. The humans which were created by hand are viewed as the smarter humans, while the humans flung from a stick are thought of as less intelligent. The second most important motif is an angry god that punishes humans or another god. Humans in the past had no way of knowing what caused the changes in weather, so they believed the gods or other powerful beings controlled the weather and natural disasters. Humans believed how they acted would affect a god’s mood. If the humans angered the god, then the god would send floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters to them. The humans also thought their own pain and suffering came from the gods in their creation myth because of something the humans or another god did to anger a very powerful …show more content…
There are many motifs that can be found inside the creation myths, but I think these motifs are very strong in representing how the different cultures feel about certain topics, such as women’s rights, human imperfections, and what causes natural disasters. Although the cultures’ opinions may have changed over time because of modern science, each culture still continues to believe in their same creation myth. This is similar to how many children believe the Lime Kiln is a “cloud factory” until they are old enough to understand what is really going on. Maybe you have your own childhood beliefs that changed once you began to understand modern