Stories of

ODULE

M II
Creation
Time Table: 1 hour
Topic Learning Outcomes:

a. Compare and contrast various myths of creation

b. Understand the purpose of comparative mythology
c. Recognize parallel creation stories between different continents and the Bible

Enabling Activity

Congratulations, you made it to Module 1! Don’t worry, in this subject, Module 1 is the only “boring”
module *wink wink*. From then on, we will be exploring stories after stories of how the universe and
everything in it was created. Of course, not with the eyes of Science, but with Mythology. Shall we?

Before we proceed with our lesson, kindly answer the following questions in a one whole sheet of
yellow paper. Remember to write legibly, as this will also be checked by your instructor.

1. When you were young, how do you think was the universe created?
2. Now that you are older, do you still find that version of creation plausible? Why? Why not?

Deepen!
The beginning of the universe has been a mystery to many people. Even scientists are still not able
to figure out how it all began. To venture into this great unknown, our ancestors tried to weave stories of
our beginnings. Although most of it are fictional, these various versions of creation illustrated our ancestors’
culture and tradition, thus the reason why we are still studying it up until now. We will be discussing five (5)
versions of creation (Philippine, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, and Norse) and how these versions can be
compared to one of the most known versions of creation ꟷ the Bible’s (Hebrew version).

How the World was Made (Philippine Version)

 This is the ancient Filipino account of the creation.
Thousands of years ago there was no land nor sun nor moon nor stars, and the world was only a
great sea of water, above which stretched the sky. The water was the kingdom of the god Maguayan, and
the sky was ruled by the great god Captan.
Maguayan had a daughter called Lidagat, the sea, and Captan had a son known as Lihangin, the
wind. The gods agreed to the marriage of their children, so the sea became the bride of the wind.
Three sons and a daughter were born to them. The sons were called Licalibutan, Liadlao, and
Libulan; and the daughter received the name of Lisuga.
Licalibutan had a body of rock and was strong and brave; Liadlao was formed of gold and was
always happy; Libulan was made of copper and was weak and timid; and the beautiful Lisuga had a body
of pure silver and was sweet and gentle. Their parents were very fond of them, and nothing was wanting to
make them happy.
After a time Lihangin died and left the control of the winds to his eldest son Licalibutan. The faithful
wife Lidagat soon followed her husband, and the children, now grown up, were left without father or mother.
However, their grandfathers, Captan and Maguayan, took care of them and guarded them from all evil.
After a time, Licalibutan, proud of his power over the winds, resolved to gain more power, and
asked his brothers to join him in an attack on Captan in the sky above. At first they refused; but when
Licalibutan became angry with them, the amiable Liadlao, not wishing to offend his brother, agreed to help.
Then together they induced the timid Libulan to join in the plan.
When all was ready the three brothers rushed at the sky, but they could not beat down the gates of
steel that guarded the entrance. Then Licalibutan let loose the strongest winds and blew the bars in every
direction. The brothers rushed into the opening, but were met by the angry god Captan. So terrible did he
look that they turned and ran in terror; but Captan, furious at the destruction of his gates, sent three bolts of
lightning after them.
The first struck the copper Libulan and melted him into a ball. The second struck the golden
Liadlao, and he too was melted. The third
bolt struck Licalibutan, and his rocky body
broke into many pieces and fell into the
sea. So huge was he that parts of his
body stuck out above the water and
became what is known as land.
In the meantime the gentle
Lisuga had missed her brothers and
started to look for them. She went toward
the sky, but as she approached the
broken gates, Captan, blind with anger,
struck her too with lightning, and her
silver body broke into thousands of
pieces.
Captan then came down from the
sky and tore the sea apart, calling on
Maguayan to come to him and accusing
him of ordering the attack on the sky.
Soon Maguayan appeared and answered
that he knew nothing of the plot as he had been asleep far down in the sea.
 After a time he succeeded in calming the angry
Captan. Together they wept at the loss of their
grandchildren, especially the gentle and beautiful Lisuga; but
with all their power they could not restore the dead to life.
However, they gave to each body a beautiful light that will
shine forever.
And so it was that golden Liadlao became the sun,
and copper Libulan the moon, while the thousands of pieces
of silver Lisuga shine as the stars of heaven. To wicked
Licalibutan the gods gave no light, but resolved to make his
body support a new race of people. So Captan gave
Maguayan a seed, and he planted it on the land, which, as
you will remember, was part of Licalibutan's huge body.
Soon a bamboo tree grew up, and from the hollow of
one of its branches a man and a woman came out. The
man's name was Sicalac, and the woman was called
Sicabay. They were the parents of the human race. Their
first child was a son whom they called Libo; afterwards they
had a daughter who was known as Saman. Pandaguan was
a younger son and he had a son called Arion.
Pandaguan was very clever and invented a trap to catch fish. The very first thing he caught was a
huge shark. When he brought it to land, it looked so great and fierce that he thought it was surely a god,
and he at once ordered his people to worship it. Soon all gathered around and began to sing and pray to
the shark. Suddenly the sky and sea opened, and the gods came out and ordered Pandaguan to throw the
shark back into the sea and to worship none but them.
All were afraid except Pandaguan. He grew very bold and answered that the shark was as big as
the gods, and that since he had been able to overpower it he would also be able to conquer the gods. Then
Captan, hearing this, struck Pandaguan with a small thunderbolt, for he did not wish to kill him but merely to
teach him a lesson. Then he and Maguayan decided to punish these people by scattering them over the
earth, so they carried some to one land and some to another. Many children were afterwards born, and
thus the earth became inhabited in all parts.
Pandaguan did not die. After lying
on the ground for thirty days he regained
his strength, but his body was blackened
from the lightning, and all his descendants
ever since that day have been black.
His first son, Arion, was taken north, but
as he had been born before his father's
punishment he did not lose his color, and
all his people therefore are white.
Libo and Saman were carried south,
where the hot sun scorched their bodies
and caused all their descendants to be of
a brown color.
A son of Saman and a daughter of
Sicalac were carried east, where the land
at first was so lacking in food that they
were compelled to eat clay. On this account their children and their children's children have always been
yellow in color.
 And so the world came to be made and peopled. The sun and moon shine in the sky, and the
beautiful stars light up the night. All over the land, on the body of the envious Licalibutan, the children of'
Sicalac and Sicabay have grown great in numbers. May they live forever in peace and brotherly love!

How the World was Made (Chinese Version)

Long, long ago—not in a land before time,

but a time before land—there was nothing in the
universe except an enormous egg-shaped entity.
Inside the “egg,” the opposite forces
of yin and yang were all scrambled; it was a
complete mess. But over time, the interactions
between various substances and energies
eventually conceived a being—a shaggy, horned
giant named Pan Gu.
For 18,000 years, Pan Gu (pan goo) slept
and grew. One day, he suddenly awoke. He opened
his eyes, but saw only pitch-blackness. He strained
his ears, but heard only unnerving silence. Pan Gu
found his dreary surroundings highly disturbing.

The Egregious Egg

Flustered, Pan Gu conjured a magical ax and
landed upon the egg a mighty chop. The egg split
into two with a thunderous crack.
Slowly, yin and yang began to separate. Everything
dark and heavy sank down to form the Earth. And the
rest, light and clear, drifted up to form the heavens.
But Pan Gu was anxious that the halves
would close up again, and so he stood between the
two halves to keep them apart. With each passing
day, the sky rose 10 feet further above him, the Earth
thickened 10 feet below him, and Pan Gu himself
grew 10 feet just to keep up with the growing
expanse and hold on.
It was a lonely and strenuous job. This toil,
the conscientious giant endured for another six million five hundred and seventy thousand days, or another
18,000 years, until he was certain that the realms were finally stabilized. Then with a great crash, Pan Gu
lay down and died.

An Ultimate Sacrifice
As the weary Pan Gu collapsed, a miraculous
transformation took place: his final breath turned into
winds and clouds; his voice into rumbling thunder; his left
eye blazed into the sun and right eye gleamed into the
moon; his hair and beard became stars of the Milky Way;
his limbs and hands and feet transformed into great
mountains and the blood running through his veins into
flowing rivers; his flesh converted into fertile farmlands,
his bones turned to precious gems and minerals; his
teeth and nails became lustrous metals; the hairs on his
skin burgeoned into lush vegetation; and the sweat from
his extended labors fell as rainwater for the mortal world.
Some say that Pan Gu’s spirit never ceased but
turned into humans, which accounts for the ancient Chinese belief that humans are the soul of all matter.
Pan Gu sacrificed his life to create the world and his body to enrich and beautify it. Now the skies
are graced with luminous celestial bodies, the Earth, contoured by great mountains and rivers and flora and
fauna galore. And Pan Gu, the giant-god who came out of an egg, is nowhere, yet everywhere to be found.
Ancient China was a land where gods and mortals lived in tandem and created a divinely inspired
culture. And so it became that early Chinese history and mythology are wholly intertwined. Our new
“Mythistory” series introduces you to the main characters of the marvelous legends of China.

How the World was Made (Japanese Version)

Long ago all the elements were mixed together with one germ of
life. This germ began to mix things around and around until the heavier
part sank and the lighter part rose. A muddy sea that covered the entire
earth was created. From this ocean grew a green shoot. It grew and grew
until it reached the clouds and there it was transformed into a god. Soon
this god grew lonely and it began to create other gods. The last two gods
it made, Izanagi and Izanami, were the most remarkable.
One day as they were walking along they looked down on the
ocean and wondered what was beneath it. Izanagi thrust his staff into the
waters and as he pulled it back up some clumps of mud fell back into the
sea. They began to harden and grow until they became the islands of
Japan.
The two descended to these islands and began to explore, each
going in different directions. They created all kinds of plants. When they
met again they decided to marry and have children to inhabit the land.
The first child Izanami bore was a girl of radiant beauty. The gods decided
she was too beautiful to live in Japan, so they put her up in the sky and
she became the sun. Their second daughter, Tsuki-yami, became the
moon and their third and unruly son, Sosano-wo, was sentenced to the
sea, where he creates storms.
Later, their first child, Amaterasu, bore a son who became the
emperor of Japan and all the emperors since then have claimed descent from him.

How the World was Made (Egyptian Version)

 In a northwestern quarter of suburban Cairo,
covered by 20 meters of earth, development and the
lost echoes of history, is ancient Iwn, the city that
witnessed the creation of the universe. This city, later
called Heliopolis (city of the sun-god) by the Greeks
and later Ain-Shams (eye of the sun) by the Arabs, is
probably one of the oldest religious sites in the world.
While its unexcavated remnants lie under centuries of
fields and settlements, the place remains a symbolic
monument to Ra, the greatest god of ancient Egypt.
The origin story of how Ra spawned all that is known is
both fascinating and illuminating:
Before creation, according to Egyptian
mythology, only Darkness embraced the Primeval
Ocean out of which life would come. When the breath
of life was strong and ready, the entity called Atum
decided it was time for Creation to begin. An island
emerged from the water to support this divinity, who
manifested itself in the form of Ra, the sun god of
Egypt.
On a Primeval hill, Ra created out of himself
the first gods, Shu (Dryness and Air), and his partner
Tefnut (Humidity), who would engender other gods to
complete the Cosmos: Geb the Earth god and Nut the
Sky goddess. In turn, these two birthed the Principles
of life, namely Osiris the Perfect Being, who eventually
would rule over the rest of the world—which Ra was
busy creating by naming the elements. And by the way, humankind happened out of the tears of his eyes.
Osiris was a kind and wise ruler who taught humans agriculture and civilization. With his sister/wife
Isis, who helped her husband with creativity and magic, they formed the perfect couple. Their brother Seth
was strong but unruly, the opposite of his brother. In fact, Seth envied Osiris so much that he killed him so
he could inherit his throne and rule Egypt the way he wanted. Seth’s sister/ partner Nephthys could not stop
the murder despite her love for their siblings.
Killing Osiris turned out not such a bad idea. He was resurrected through the magic of his wife long
enough to impregnate her with son Horus, who would later avenge his father and recapture the throne of
Egypt. Then Osiris departed to the Otherworld to rule over the deceased, thus ensuring resurrection and
the cycle of life.
Yet the myths do not end there. While the aging Ra was fine-tuning his creations, humanity
rebelled against him. The god decided on extermination, asking his tear-giving eye again for help. To fulfill
her task, the eye transformed herself into a fierce lioness and began slaughtering humanity, delighted in
her feeding. When Ra saw the carnage, he felt sorry for the beloved children who, like tears, ‘came out of
his eye.’ He stopped the massacre but refused to live more among humans. This led to his journey to the
Otherworld, where Ra created the 12 hours of day by sailing the sky from the Eastern horizon to the West,
illuminating the world and allowing all creations to flourish under his rays. Reaching the Western horizon,
Ra then left the earth in darkness for 12 hours of night while he sailed the Underworld, illuminating the
dead, destroying the enemies of creation, and regenerating himself in a union with Osiris, the god of
resurrection.
When Ra appeared at dawn in the Eastern horizon, he took the form of a falcon, known as Hor-
akhty, or Horus of the Horizon, the falcon who flies high in the sky (Horus = one who is high up.) But Ra
had other forms. He also could be represented as a scarab called kheper (the one who comes into being)—
an analogy based not only on the pun between the name of the scarab and the verb “to happen’, but also
because the scarab, who arises from desert sands at the first rays of the sun, pushing a ball of dung
carrying his eggs, was believed to be self-created. By midday the sun-god was again Ra and represented
by the sun-disk. At sunset he became Atum, an old man who had completed his life cycle and was ready to
disappear to be regenerated for a new day.
Given this story, the Sun God Ra has always been the greatest god in Egypt. In the Old Kingdom
(2800 BCE), when Egypt established its institutions and expressed its royal ideology, the divinized king of
Egypt was considered the son of the Sun God. During a coronation, the king’s name as son of Ra was
inscribed on a cartouche next to one naming him as King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Kings erected temples
for him, endowing these temples with lands and clergy to serve his cult, and they added sun god chapels to
their own memorial temples throughout the country. By the New Kingdom (c. 1500 -1000 BCE) the cult of
Amun, the political god of the Empire, tried to overshadow Ra’s importance. But the kings of the 18th
dynasty reacted strongly. The decorations of their tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Western Thebes
support the supremacy of the sun god, in whom kings merged after death to partake in eternal life. In the
brief ‘monotheistic episode’ of Akhenaton, the king denied any god but the sun god himself and wrote
hymns to the
god so

marvelous they were later echoed in the biblical psalms of King David. Even after the reign of Akhenaton,
most of Egypt’s great gods synthesized with Ra as Amon-Ra, Khnum-Ra, Sobek-Ra, and so forth. It would
take yet more centuries and Roman conquest before the cult of Ra declined.
And yet, even today, in a modern Egypt entranced by its ancient civilization, the tale endures.
Reflections of Ra are still heard in folklore as his fiery eye is evoked in popular songs and local
expressions. The word Ra also appears in everything from Hollywood films to video games. Clearly, the
resurrection of this greatest ancient God continues as predictably as the sun rising in the east.

How the World was Made (Norse Version)

In the Elder Edda a Wise Woman says:—

Of old there was nothing,

Nor sand, nor sea, nor cool wave
No earth, no heaven above.
Only the yawning chasm.
The sun knew not her dwelling,
 Nor the moon his realm.
The stars had not their places.

But the chasm, tremendous though it was, did

not extend everywhere. Far to the north was Niflheim,
the cold realm of death, and far to the south was
MUSPELHEIM, the land of fire. From Niflheim twelve
rivers poured which flowed into the chasm and freezing
there filled it slowly up with ice. From Muspelheim came
fiery clouds that turned the ice to mist. Drops of water fell
from the mist and out of them there were formed the
frost maidens and YMIR, the first Giant. His son was
Odin’s father, whose mother and wife were frost
maidens.

Odin and his two brothers killed Ymir. They

made the earth and sky from him, the sea from his
blood, the earth from his body, the heavens from his
skull. They took sparks from Muspelheim and placed
them in the sky as the sun, moon, and stars. The earth
was round and encircled by the sea. A great wall which
the gods built out of Ymir’s eyebrows defended the place
where mankind was to live. The space within was called
Midgard. Here the first man and woman were created
from trees, the man from an ash, the woman from an
elm. They were the parents of all mankind. In the world were also DWARFS—ugly creatures, but masterly
craftsmen, who lived under the earth; and ELVES, lovely sprites, who tended the flowers and streams.

A wondrous ash-tree, YGGDRASIL, supported the universe. It struck its roots through the worlds.

Three roots there are to Yggdrasil

Hel lives beneath the first.
Beneath the second the frost-giants,
And men beneath the third.

It is also said that “one of the roots goes up to

Asgard.” Beside this root was a well of white water, URDA’S
WELL, so holy that none might drink of it. The three NORNS
guarded it, who

Allot their lives to the sons of men,

And assign to them their fate.

The three were URDA (the Past), VERDANDI (the

Present), and SKULD (the Future). Here each day the gods
came, passing over the quivering rainbow bridge to sit beside
the well and pass judgment on the deeds of men. Another
well beneath another root was the WELL OF KNOWLEDGE,
guarded by MIMIR the Wise.
 Over Yggdrasil, as over Asgard, hung the threat of destruction. Like the gods it was doomed to die.
A serpent and his brood gnawed continually at the root beside Niflheim, Hel’s home. Some day they would
succeed in killing the tree, and the universe would come crashing down.

The Frost Giants and the Mountain Giants who lived in Jötunheim were the enemies of all that is
good. They were the brutal powers of earth, and in the inevitable contest between them and the divine
powers of heaven, brute force would conquer.

The gods are doomed and the end is death.

But such a belief is contrary to the deepest conviction of the human spirit, that good is stronger
than evil. Even these sternly hopeless Norsemen, whose daily life in their icy land through the black winters
was a perpetual challenge to heroism, saw a far-away light break through the darkness. There is a
prophecy in the Elder Edda, singularly like the Book of Revelation, that after the defeat of the gods,—when

The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,

The hot stars fall from the sky,
And fire leaps high about heaven itself,

—there would be a new heaven and a new earth,

In wondrous beauty once again.

The dwellings roofed with gold.
The fields unsowed bear ripened fruit
In happiness forevermore.

Then would come the reign of One who was higher even than Odin and beyond the reach of evil—

A greater than all.

But I dare not ever to speak his name.
And there are few who can see beyond
The moment when Odin falls.

This vision of happiness infinitely remote seems a thin sustenance against despair, but it was the
only hope the Eddas afforded.