The real academy defines the word cosmogony as " mythical story related to the origins of the world " or "scientific theory that deals with the origin and evolution of the universe", which also comes from the Greek Latin "κοσμογονία" which means "kosmogonia" or "κοσμογενία "Which means" kosmogenia ", with its lexical components that are" kosmos ", which is" world "," gignomai "is said to be" born "and the suffix" ia "refers to" myths and studies ". The cosmogony is a narrative of the beginning of the cosmos and its subsequent development, because all religions allude to a cosmogony that can be recognized as a development of the universe or radiation.
What is Cosmogony
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The concept of cosmogony is understood to be a mythological tale on which an attempt is made to establish the origin of the planet, the universe and the human being. The definition of cosmogony is also related to science and theories of the evolution of the universe.
The most common use of the concept of cosmogony is related to a mythical story. There are countless cosmogony, which have developed throughout history by different cultures. Generally, all the meanings of cosmogony come out of a confusion originating from whose factors are subsequently grouped and organized, thanks to the participation of divinities or supernatural forces.
From the beginning of the cosmogony, the human being captures in some very particular way everything that surrounds him, reduces uncertainty and forges his identity, which originates when they receive something chaotic. Cosmogonic narratives are usually passed from one generation to another among the same members of a population.
The cosmogonic myths contributed to the different cultures a composing vision of the world, by simplifying their point of view of the phenomena that they believed were strange to a common and popular belief that gave rise to those that accompanied and provided the psychological security for the formation of an identity. for the life of the community.
In the stories, certain researchers have indicated that the deities usually signify the essential forces of nature, which they can capture and from which the natural phenomena that influenced their lives arise. However, this ethnocentric and simplistic principle has been gradually being overcome, to give an advantage to stories, seen as a special symbolic space, where from there the human being can assign meanings to heroes, gods and mythical attitudes in intimacy relationship with psychic, social, inter subjective and cultural life
What does Cosmogony study?
According to the definition of cosmogony, it is studying the principle and evolution of large systems such as star clusters and galaxies, with the purpose of establishing the age of the universe, based on a group of religious, mystical, philosophical and scientific theories on the origin of the universe. This expression studies with more emphasis the theoretical analysis of the beginning of the world, which, according to the theories and knowledge currently approved, are closely related to the beliefs of the great explosion or Big Bang.
Main Characteristics of Cosmogony
- It involves a large number of stories that oppose each other and that little by little are modified with the passing of the generations.
- It includes numerous superstitions and integration of mythical characters and deities.
- The cosmogonic myths had a great and very good approval in the populations of Egypt, since they were used to understand and express the plurality of the power of the divine creator.
- Through this mythology, human beings manage to go back to a time of preexistence or primitive chaos, in which the planet was not yet created.
- The concept of cosmogony seeks a way to establish a reality, through knowledge of space, the universe and the ancestry of the gods, humanity and the elements of nature that surround it.
- All religions have a cosmogony that could be linked to a process of emanation or creation.
- The term essentially refers to the origin and creation of the world.
- In primitive human civilizations, cosmogony tried to have a way of exposing profane and space phenomena through myths.
Various cosmogonic theories
The cosmogony has various theories, we will describe them below:
Aztec Cosmogony
The Aztec cosmogony is made up of different myths about the creation of man and the universe. For the Aztecs, the creator of life on the planet was the God Ometeotl. In the Aztec cosmogony, this divinity is reflected as the supreme God and God of fire but it does not really receive any type of worship, although it is present in all rituals.
This deity also gave birth to four gods which represented air, water, fire and earth, and later had 1600 more gods. All this became possible because Ometeotl was an androgynous divinity, that is, he possessed the feminine and masculine duality.
The four divinities mentioned above were those who were in charge of maintaining a balance in the world so that the Sun could exist. However, in the Aztec cosmogony if this balance was lost, both the earth, the Sun and the man would disappear.
Greek Cosmogony
In Greek mythology you can find a number of legends in which the beliefs and rites of the Hellenic population are compiled on the principle of man and the universe itself. These myths show us an essential part of the history of man, which spans over a billion years beginning in 2000 BC, and reaching its entirety with the creation of Odyssey, Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony.
Of all the Greek cosmogonic myths, the best known work is Hesiod's Theogony. It was written in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC, and it is the main source that has inspired all of Hellenic mythology. Theogony of Hesiod collected the religious accounts and coordinated the divine genealogy, speaking as a secondary theme the creation of the universe since, as he refers to in his poem, he was more interested in analyzing the "progeny of the immortals" than the process of creation of cosmic systems.
In the beginning, Chaos only existed as an unfathomable area in which the pristine element and the impulse that caused the attraction between its subjects would be born.
In the Chaos arose:
- Gaea, the Earth, as a refuge for all entities.
- Tartarus, representing the underworld, located below Gaia.
- Eros, at the beginning would support the interaction between the components of the elements.
- From Chaos arose: Erebus, the darkness and Nix, the night, firm in a dark region where death resides. Both decided to get together and give rise to Ether, the light and Hemera, the day.
- Gaea alone begat Uranus, Heaven, to fully shelter her and be the shelter of the gods. Then, "Ponto", the sea, and the high mountains emerged, as a refuge for gods and nymphs.
- Hesiod describes the creation myth, telling how Uranus went every night to cover Gaea, conceiving six titans: Cronus, Ocean, child Ceo, Iapetus, Hyperion, and six titanides: Rhea, Phoebe, Tea, Mnemosyne, Thetis and Themis, as well as the Hecatonchires, which were giants with one hundred arms and fifty heads, and the famous Cyclops, giants with only one eye.
Mayan Cosmogony
The Mayans, like other peoples, appreciated the universe as an opinion established by the gods and when faced with the question of temporality, they projected time as the dynamism of spatial existence, as the cosmic transformations produced, in essence, by the activity of a being sacred that was the center of his worldview and his concept of the place of man in the universe: the Sun (it is a term that also means day and time).
The passage of the Sun was perceived as a circular movement around the earth, which establishes the variations that occur in it (day and night, fertility, seasons, drought, cold and heat, etc); that is why time was considered as a cyclical movement.
Temporality was not then for the Mayans an abstract concept, but a clear and eternal activity of space, which showed carnal beings everything about their origin, creating cosmogonic myths, like a sacred story, like the story of the first historical fact that took place in a "static time", whose main characters are the sacred beings
There is a book called Popol Vuh where the Mayans relate the cosmogony, it is one of the few texts of stories that could be rescued during the Spanish colonization in the town of the Mayans.
In this book the Mayans tell, through different metaphors, how the origin of the universe was, according to them, how the world was built and how man was formed after several failures, until achieving the creation of the man of corn, a grain that was esteemed as one of the sacred foods.
Buddhist Cosmogony
The Buddhist cosmogony is the exposition of the evolution and shape of the universe in accordance with canonical Buddhist writings and commentaries. In ancient Egypt there were five " official cosmogony " throughout its history, which causes that, when this subject is studied, some points are confusing and even contradictory.
In spite of everything, the conception of what the original universe and the resulting world was like after its transformation, remained quite stable despite the different schools of thought. The Buddhist cosmogony is divided into spatial (describes the distribution of the different worlds that make up the universe) and temporal (describes the jaws of these worlds from the beginning until their existence ends).
In Buddhism, the universe has not been created by a divine being, but is part of the cycles of creation and destruction. The universe in which we live like the rest, are condemned to be born, die and be reborn. The self-coherent Buddhist cosmogony that is expounded in Abhidharma works and commentaries, both in the Theravada and Mahāyāna schools, is the final result of a study and reconciliation of the cosmetological commentaries expressed in the Buddhist sutras and in the vinaia customs.
There is no sūtras that exposes the entire system of the Multiverse. However, in many sūtras, Gautama Buddha reviews other universes and states of being, but also, other sūtras relate the origin and death of the universe.
The compendium of this knowledge in a single exhaustive mechanism must have occurred early in the history of Buddhism, because the mechanism described in the customs pale, vibhajyavāda (represented by the Theravādas of today) corresponds despite incongruities of nomenclature, with the sarvāstivāda customs that is preserved by the Mahāyāna Buddhists.
Egyptian Cosmogony
In ancient Egypt there were five kinds of "official cosmogony" throughout its history, which leads to the fact that, when the subject was studied, some points were very confusing and even contradictory. Even though the notion of how the universe was originally and the world that came after its transformation remained quite stable despite the different doctrines of thoughts.
A cosmogony is a system that deals with the creation and evolution of the universe. It is not only for the purpose of proliferating the world or a space, but for its development in time.
The mythologies that gave rise to the different cults had a common foundation, always created starting from specific elements that are:
a) The " chaotic waters " or " main ocean " where the potential for life is located. At the beginning of everything, in fact before the act of Creation, there was only a dark watery abyss, called "nun", whose possible energies enclosed the potential form of all living beings. The creative spirit was present in these waters.
b) The " Primal Hill " is where I create life; the first sign of land that is born in the middle of the waters.
c) The Sun rises as a powerful and essential matter that produces the origin and development of light and living beings.
d) Natural events, personified in different divinities.
Arabic Cosmogony
The Arab belief, which was originally that of Abraham, offers several points that bear a resemblance to the Catholic religion and consequently to that of the ancient Jews. The origin of the world, according to the Koran and Muhammad's answers to the questions asked by the Jews about his religion, is practically the same as genesis.
It is important to mention that most of the Arabs are Muslims. The Muslim is one who practices the Islam religion. It is like referring to the Christian, who is one who professes Christianity.
There are several holy books of Islam. The most significant is the Qur'an, its message was largely drawn up by the Prophet Muhammad.
Indian Cosmogony
In Hinduism there is really no single cosmogony or single cosmology. But there are three possible mythologies of how the universe was created, which are:
- The shattered god: it is the most archaic myth that is contained in the hymn "Púrusha sukta" of the Rig Veda, an ancient sacred text from India.
- The cosmic egg: it is a legend that relates that the universe was born from a cosmic egg, and from that same egg Prajapati emanates, which is a generic term for many gods who lead reproduction and are defenders of life.
- The lotus flower of Brahma: in the beginning of the vulgar era "Puranas", various processes of genesis are exposed: in the first instance, it is believed that somewhere in the spiritual universe there is a sea of "cause", in which he finds the highest "Vishnu" style laid out. Universes are born from his being.
8 examples of cosmogonic myths
- The Japanese cosmogony.
- Mesopotamian myth.
- The Inca cosmogony.
- Scandinavian myth of creation.
- The Tibetan myth of creation.
- The Nahuatl cosmogony.
- Principle of the universe for the Celts.
- The watery origin of Greek mythology.
Differences between cosmogony and cosmology
The differences that exist between the meaning of cosmogony and that of cosmology is that, on the one hand, the fundamental essence of cosmogony is that it aims to analyze and study the mythical events of the birth of the universe, focusing mainly on the gods, and giving rational justifications, while, cosmology is based on the laws that run the world.
