The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [396]
Only because in Western culture we are so familiar with this version are we not more generally aware just how untypical it is. The second version, found in almost every other Creation myth in the world, gives the impression of a process infinitely more laborious, mysterious and long drawn-out. There maybe some Great Spirit or cosmic mind behind it all, and almost all the different versions begin with an image of dark and formless chaos. But what marks off all these other cosmogonic or Creation myths from the Judaeo-Christian version, is that the emergence of our recognisable world takes place by what we would call an `evolutionary' process, as each new component develops out of what came before. In a typical myth of the south Pacific, for instance, found among the Ngaitahu people of New Zealand, the original void, without light, heat, sound, form or movement, is `Po'. We then hear how:
`Po begat Light, who begat Daylight, who begat enduring Light, who begat Withoutpossession, who begat Unpleasant, who begat Wobbly, who begat No-Parents, who begat Damp, who married Huge Light and begat Raki, the Sky.' 1
Another variation on this type of myth includes those which feature the emergence of a male and a female being, the `world parents. In the Norse version creation begins with the vast, cloudy realm of Niflheim. Here in darkness immense primordial beings eventually heave into view: first a male giant Ymir, who emerges from ice, then a female being, Audumla, the `world cow. It is eventually from them that all other beings emerge, including gods, humans and animals.
Perhaps the most widespread version of this type of story, however, found in different cultures all over the world, is that which begins with the image of a single created object set in the primeval void. This `World Egg' contains within itself the potential for all the diversity that is to come. Variations on this theme have been found everywhere from ancient Egypt to the Pacific islands, from Finland to Japan, from Hindu and Buddhist India to the Orphic mysteries of classical Greece. The `Egg' then differentiates out of itself, producing a sequence of new entities, often not very clearly defined, which only gradually become such basic splittings into duality as earth and sky, dry land and sea. Almost invariably a crucial event is the coming of Light, creating the polarity of light and dark (which again precedes the arrival of specific sources of light, such as sun and moon). Gradually the details of the creation emerge, as in the appearance of specific creatures. What is important is that each of these evolves from what had come before it.
The third version, probably the most familiar to us today, is that which has been developed in our modern world over the past two centuries. But it is still `telling a story, and in this sense we can look at it just as we would look at any other type of story.
The `Big Bang' theory of the creation of the universe suggests that in the beginning there was an agglomeration of hydrogen atoms, so tightly compressed together that it was only millimetres across and of almost infinite mass. This constituted, as it were, a 'Universal Egg, which contained the potential for all that was to follow. At a certain point, somewhere around 15 billion years ago, this `Egg' exploded, with such force that electrons jumped from one nucleus to another, creating the atoms of all the other elements. These were the atoms which still constitute the physical universe and everything in it, including ourselves. Gradually, as matter exploded outwards from the original `Egg' at colossal speed, the universe took on a recognisable