I have collected creation stories from many parts of the world. Most begin in the same place, with dark water or a formless void before anything else exists. For the overview of what the stories share, start with What Are Creation Stories?. This page lists the stories themselves, grouped by where they come from.
Genesis and the Elohim
I begin with Genesis, where the Elohim shape the world in six days. Next to it I put the formless waters that come before every creation.
The six days of Genesis 1 read with Rudolf Steiner, who sees each day as a long period shaped by the Elohim.
My main page on the Elohim as a group of twelve creator beings.
A telling that starts with the ALL, an ocean that was both male and female, longing to know itself.
The dark, formless waters that come before creation in Greece, Babylon, Israel, Egypt, China and West Africa.
G.I. Gurdjieff's cosmology in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, where the universe is created by His Endlessness.
The Near East, Persia and the Gnostics
These are the creation stories of Mesopotamia, Persia and the Gnostic texts. I add Hesiod and the Norse Ymir here, because they also start from chaos or a first giant.
Why no single Mesopotamian myth tells of the first creation, and what survives from the Sumerian and Babylonian texts.
The Gnostic text on Eros and Psyche, Paradise, the first rose and the making of plants, animals and humans.
The first mortal human in Zoroastrian myth, created by Ahura Mazda as the ancestor of the human race.
The deep abyss of Hesiod, where Uranus and Zeus imprisoned the Cyclopes and Titans.
The Norse giant born where the ice of Niflheim met the heat of Muspelheim, and the world made from his body.
India, China, Tibet and Japan
In Asia the world comes from a cosmic egg, from Pangu or from a pair of kami. These pages follow each tradition.
Chaos, creators, and how these myths shape Atlantis and flood research.
The Vedic word for the order that keeps the sun, moon and seasons on their paths.
Pangu in the shapeless first state of the universe, and the first writer to record his story.
How Tibetan Buddhism joins Buddhist cosmology around Mount Meru with older Tibetan legends.
Izanagi and Izanami, the pair of kami who made the Japanese islands.
The Americas
The peoples of the Americas tell how the earth rose from the water and how the first humans were made. I collected the Maya, Cholula, Cherokee, Iroquois, Modoc and Aleut accounts.
The K'iche' Maya account, from the silent beginning to the gods' attempts to make humans.
A native of Cholula, quoted by Father Duran in a manuscript of 1585, on the darkness before the sun and the building of the great pyramid.
The water beetle dives to the bottom and brings up the mud that grows into the earth.
The island floating in the sky where the Sky People lived, and the Sky Woman who was going to give birth to twins.
Kumush, the Creator God of the Modoc, bringing order to a world covered by water.
The Raven, called Tulugaak, who made the world, brought light and formed the first people from clay.
The Pacific, Africa and Australia
The last group comes from Hawaii, Tahiti, Australia and Africa. Many of these stories were sung or told long before anyone wrote them down.
The Kumulipo and other Hawaiian family chants passed down without a written text.
The Tahitian creation texts recorded by John Orsmond and edited by his daughter Teuira Henry.
The Father of All Spirits wakes the Sun Mother and sends her to wake the sleeping spirits of the earth.
Cagn, the trickster creator of the San, who could take the form of a praying mantis.
