Mythology Blog Fall 2019

Oak Tree In the beginning, there was nothing but darkness. Over time this darkness grew and accumulated, and the spirit of the Earth Doctor floated over this darkness like a piece of spiders web in the wind. Noticing how lonesome he was, he began to weep. As his teardrops fell and hit the darkness, they began to form a small pond. After noticing the pond, the Earth doctor ceased his weeping. He came close to the pond to examine his creation. In it, he saw his reflection for the first time. He saw his rich brown skin, deep brown eyes, and long black hair. He took a piece of his hair and let fall into the pond. Out sprouted a big healthy oak tree, but with nothing to keep the tree in place, it kept falling over. The Earth Doctor then scooped up some of the darkness and mixed it with some water from the pond and some of the leaves of the oak tree and squeezed it, and molded it between his hands. In his hands, he had a small ball of dirt. He blew on it, and it dispersed and cover...

Coyote Today's stories focused a lot on the coyote. I feel like in the past when I've read coyote stories, the coyote is always swift and cunning. However, in these stories, he's pretty dumb. He gets tricked by almost all the other animals and always ends up as the loser. They all must have really hated coyotes lol. I don't have much to write about, I liked yesterday's creation story much more. Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest by Katharine Berry Judson (1912)

The Sun and Moon From today's readings, I really like the one about the creation of the world from the Pima people. The part that really caught my attention, for whatever reason, was the part where he made the sun and the moon. I thought it was a bit strange to see the sun being made from a ball of ice, but I can see how that would make sense. I also liked how they got the sun and moon into the sky. The part where it keeps falling down was a little funny but it was clever how it finally settled in the east. Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest by Katharine Berry Judson (1912)

Cipatli , the monster whose body created the earth according to the Nahuatl legend.  This weeks videos were over creation myths which is pretty cool since one of the main parts of my storybook project includes the Nahuatl Creation Myth. These videos went into detail over some of the similarities between the two groups of creation stories which were voids vs dualities? I think that’s how to describe them. Anyways, I saw a lot of smilarities between them and the Nahuatl creation story even though mine was not mentioned in the videos. A big common concept is the creation of the world or earth from the body of a god or higher being. Which my story has. The later videos went into detail about how the creation myths might be a way to enforce or make common the role of a man onto a women. Which kind of confused me. In earlier videos, I believe the pantheons one, he talked a lot about matriarchal pantheons. But in this video series he did not talk about them which i was kind of expe...

Today i am going to look more in depth into the story of Quetzalcoatl in order to find as many details of his legend as possible. This source has a lot of details of when he was deceived:  http://neomexicanismos.com/mexico-prehispanico/leyenda-de-quetzalcoatl-biografia-serpiente-emplumada-maya-azteca-mito/ This source has a good summary of events:  https://www.inside-mexico.com/la-leyenda-de-quetzalcoatl/3/ I’ve read a handful of other stories but they talk about different origin stories for Quetzalcoatl. Some of them are similar to that of Jesus lowkey and say that he was born to a virgin mother. Which is interesting because earlier in the semester when i was doing my initial research I read some articles that mentioned that the Mormons believe quetzalcoatl to be Jesus Christ. This stuff gets crazy, but I already have my origin story so I’m not going to change it. The two sources I have I think are good enough to make the 2nd part of my project. I did not find good im...

Portrait of an Inuit family.  Image source Today's stories were really dark but they were really interesting. The first few ones, I think three, we're talking about what happens to you when you kill someone or lie. They were really gruesome and one of them had some imagery that was pretty explicit. The rest of the stories after that were somewhat different. These stories didn’t appeal to me as much, but I was a fan of the first three. Source:  Eskimo Folk-Tales  by Knud Rasmussen with illustrations by native Eskimo artists (1921).

A polar bear, like the one from the story. Image source For this weeks reading I chose the Inuit folk tales. These stories are much different that the other tales I’ve read this semester so far. Some of them, like the Earth’s creation story, were really blunt. In the creation story, the Earth and all its trees and valleys just fell from the sky. Not much imagery or mysticism in this story, but the others are different. Some of the others are full of some sort of magic or sorcery. I’m still confused not the one about the man and the wizard where the wizard made the man’s wife disappear by making her hang her shoes to dry? My favorite of all of the stories was the one about the pet polar bear. I like how they really personify the polar bear and it basically becomes one of the members of the tribe. I felt really bad for it when the people of the other villages would attack it. I think imma use that story for my story on Thursday. Source: Eskimo Folk-Tales by Knud Rasmussen wi...