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Sun Songs: Creation Myths
A collection of world myths.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 1, 2024
Throughout history and even before that in prehistory, people struggled to explain why we were here, and how we came to be here in the first place. For answers, they looked to the sun, to the caves, to the act of childbirth, the fulminating of volcanos and the crash of ocean surf. They blamed certain animals for bringing misery into the world and others for bringing joy.
Sun Songs is a mostly gloss-free text that presents creation myths from the around the world for both the lay student and scholar alike. There’s a short introduction, and scattered footnotes throughout, but nothing too intrusive.
Myths already well-ensconced in the Western canon (and in our minds and souls) are treated only briefly. Chances are that if you pick this book up, you know about God anesthetizing Adam to take his rib to make Eve. Likewise do you probably have some passing familiarity with the Pantheon of Greco-Roman gods, their passions, foibles, and crimes that finally toppled them from their vaunted status as infallible Olympians.
The book makes the right choice by digging deeper into less well-known myths, those creation stories from lands as far-flung as Oceana to the remoter and more esoteric pre-Babylonian and even pre-Zoroaster cults. It should probably be added here that if you regard your own personal religious belief as the literal word of God and not grist for metaphorical probing for scholars, you’ll be offended. You’ll especially be offended to see what a great debt Judaism and Christianity owe—both in narrative terms and in symbolic iconography—to early Pagan religions.
Who was it who said that the difference between a religion and a cult was simply down to longevity and the size of the congregation? I imagine that in a couple thousand years, when they’re dusting off our graves, scientology is going to look a hell of a lot crazier than Crow or Blackfoot cosmogonic explanations for how we got here. A coyote baking little clay men in a beehive kiln makes more sense to me than Thetans being harvested by Xenu, or whatever.
The author’s no iconoclast nor a man with an axe to grind, but he follows the path where it leads. I enjoyed having him as a guide for these more than three-hundred pages. My personal favorite revelation was that one tribe (I forget which) used the same word for both “man” and “devil.” “Primitive” or not, they have a sophisticated handle on duality and human perfidy. Recommended, though the absence of purty pitchers for me to look at means it gets docked a star.
Sun Songs is a mostly gloss-free text that presents creation myths from the around the world for both the lay student and scholar alike. There’s a short introduction, and scattered footnotes throughout, but nothing too intrusive.
Myths already well-ensconced in the Western canon (and in our minds and souls) are treated only briefly. Chances are that if you pick this book up, you know about God anesthetizing Adam to take his rib to make Eve. Likewise do you probably have some passing familiarity with the Pantheon of Greco-Roman gods, their passions, foibles, and crimes that finally toppled them from their vaunted status as infallible Olympians.
The book makes the right choice by digging deeper into less well-known myths, those creation stories from lands as far-flung as Oceana to the remoter and more esoteric pre-Babylonian and even pre-Zoroaster cults. It should probably be added here that if you regard your own personal religious belief as the literal word of God and not grist for metaphorical probing for scholars, you’ll be offended. You’ll especially be offended to see what a great debt Judaism and Christianity owe—both in narrative terms and in symbolic iconography—to early Pagan religions.
Who was it who said that the difference between a religion and a cult was simply down to longevity and the size of the congregation? I imagine that in a couple thousand years, when they’re dusting off our graves, scientology is going to look a hell of a lot crazier than Crow or Blackfoot cosmogonic explanations for how we got here. A coyote baking little clay men in a beehive kiln makes more sense to me than Thetans being harvested by Xenu, or whatever.
The author’s no iconoclast nor a man with an axe to grind, but he follows the path where it leads. I enjoyed having him as a guide for these more than three-hundred pages. My personal favorite revelation was that one tribe (I forget which) used the same word for both “man” and “devil.” “Primitive” or not, they have a sophisticated handle on duality and human perfidy. Recommended, though the absence of purty pitchers for me to look at means it gets docked a star.
December 29, 2018
Some of these were stories I recognized but for the most part there were many I hadn't heard of before. Setting him as a person aside, I thought that the writer was well read in the different stories of the different regions.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews