The creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars is part of almost all
mythologies. By observing the dance of the stars and the pathways of
the planets, we measure time. The changing face of the night sky has
led to myths of the world’s ages, and of power battles in the heavens. Here are three mythological concepts of the cosmos famously known throughout history:
The Eternal Return
One of the key features of many
mythologies is the contrast between the
straight line of time as we experience
it and the circle of mythological time,
which embodies what one historian of
religions, Mircea Eliade, called “the
myth of eternal return.” Myths and
rituals are a way of entering the eternal
present of this mythological time and
accessing its creative power.
The World Tree
Many cosmologies envisage a universe
with a number of layers, joined
together by a central axis or “world
tree.” The Vikings located Niflheim, the
world of the dead, at the bottom of the
cosmos, the mortal world Midgard in
the middle, and Asgard, the world of
the gods, on top. Connecting these, and
the realms of the elves, giants, and
dwarves, was the world tree, Yggdrasil.
The Sky Mill
One of the central concepts of early
mythology was the sky mill, which
turned on the cosmic pillar or world
tree. The millstone of the celestial
equator ground out the ages of the
world. One of the names given to the
Inca high god, Viracocha, translates
as “the bearer of the mill.” The Incas,
noticing the astronomical phenomenon
of precession (the “wobble” in
the Earth’s rotation that causes the
equinoxes to move through the
constellations), feared that the stars
and the sun were at war, and tried to
tie them together to prevent disaster
by performing rituals at the HitchingPost of the Sun at Machu Picchu.
There they pleaded with Viracocha:
“May the world not turn over.”
What are your thoughts on these concepts?
In what religions have you seen these concepts expressed the strongest?
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