Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [201]
On the second day of Creation, they send down their son, Gua (or Gu), the god of thunder, blacksmiths, and farmers, to help mankind. Gua does not anticipate that his tools will later be used for warlike purposes. In a separate version of this myth, Gua helps make the first people out of divine excrement.
’Ngai (Masai of southeastern Africa) A creator god of the cattle-herding Masai, ’Ngai gives every man a guardian spirit to ward off danger and carry him away at death. The good go to a rich pasture land, while the evil are carried off to a desert.
In the beginning of Creation, there is only one man on earth, Kintu. When ’Ngai’s daughter Nambi sees Kintu, she falls in love with him, and they marry after he passes a series of challenges. Promising not to return to the sky, they go to earth with plants and animals in Nambi’s dowry. But Nambi forgets to bring along grain to feed her chickens, and when she returns to the sky to get some, she meets Death, who follows Nambi home and then kills the couple’s children. Death remains on earth after that. As in many African myths, the connection between heaven and earth is destroyed by human error or foolishness.
Nyame (Ashanti of Ghana) Supreme god of heaven and earth, as well as the sun and moon, Nyame is Creator of all the realms—heaven, earth, and the underworld. Nyame gives each soul its destiny at birth, and washes it in a golden bath. But Nyame is one of those gods for whom living with humans gets to be too much of a nuisance. After an old woman preparing yams keeps hitting Nyame with her pole, he goes away to seek a more peaceful home in the sky.
Unkulunkulu (Zulu, Xhosa) Known as “Old, Old One,” Unkulunkulu is both the creator, a god of earth who has nothing to do with the heavens, and the first man. According to the Zulu (southern Africa) Creation myth, he evolves alone in the emptiness, and, once he comes into being, creates the first men out of grass. Unkulunkulu orders a chameleon to tell men that they will be immortal. But the creature lingers so long that the god angrily sends a lizard with the opposite message, and the lizard arrives with the news of death first.
To balance man’s mortality, Old, Old One teaches humans about fertility rites, marriage, healing, and other basics of civilization. He also provides the dead with a dwelling place in the sky, and the stars are thought to be the eyes of the dead looking down upon the world.
Tricksters and Animal Gods
No matter what he is called, people everywhere love a trickster. To Shakespeare, he is the playful sprite Puck, who makes trouble in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or the whimsical spirit Ariel working his mischief in The Tempest. To generations of children, he is the magical boy Peter Pan who never grows up and knows how to fly, or the “wascally wabbit” Bugs Bunny, who constantly bedevils Elmer Fudd. In silent movies, he is Charlie Chaplin, sticking a wrench in the cogs of Modern Times to outwit the high and mighty. In Star Wars, he is Han Solo, the likable rogue out for himself. More recently, he is Seinfeld’s Kramer, who can create manic upheaval and disorder in less than thirty minutes.
Described as the “sacred clown,” the trickster can be found in every mythology. Looking to put over a con, cause chaos, or get something for nothing, the trickster is a lovable loner who is almost always outside the ring of “civilized” behavior. As Jungian authority Dr. Joseph Henderson writes in Man and His Symbols, “Trickster corresponds to the earliest and least developed period of life. Trickster is a figure whose physical appetites dominate his behavior; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs, he is cruel, cynical, and unfeeling…. This figure, which at the