Today is my very first deep dive where I get to just jump right into topics that interest me and this topic has been on my mind since 2018, honestly.

Discovering Huichol Art and Creation Myths

I was traveling in Mexico and I fell in love with some local art by An indigenous people called the Huichol people, and they have just really beautiful art, these little beads that they place on either bone, wood and make different patterns so that night , I Just did a total hyper fixation mode, deep dive into these people.

And it led me down just a really fascinating rabbit hole of exploration and curiosity. And I got on to learning about their creation story and it was just so mythical and just imaginative. And it made me ask more questions. And I just fell in love with the rich story behind all of these pieces of art and iconography that’s in those art.

And so that gave me the thought, I wonder what every culture’s, peoples had as their creation story. And I remember doing a little bit more research after that, first night deep dive and feeling a little overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that is out there about these, mythologies, but also that it’s all very scattered.

And I was looking for something that compared multiple all at once to find these commonalities and these common threads. And so when I decided to make this podcast, this was my number one topic that I wanted to just go deep dive on and get to the bottom of things in a sense. And I went full tilt with this research for this podcast.

I was researching every continent and every continent, I would have a handful. 10, mythologies and peoples from each continent . And it was just so much information and I honestly overwhelmed myself. I learned so much about all these different cultures and so many of them are so fascinating and exhilarating and I wanted to share them all with you guys.

When I was trying to sit down and come up with a podcast outline, so to speak, it was nearly impossible. Like, how do I fit all of this in here? So it left me back to the drawing board of okay, what do I really want to talk about? What do I want to say?

And so that led me to what I have put together as.

The Nad Knows Blueprint to Creation Myths

The Nad Know’s Blueprint to creation myths. And so many of these stories that I was researching they had so many common similarities and similar symbols and similar themes and I am not even close to the first person that has noticed this been interested in this but it, a lot of that information is.

It’s in really dense format and it’s hard to get a lot from. And so my goal for this blueprint that I’ve created is to just summarize and briefly touch on some of my favorite stories that fit within these symbols and other stories that have the similarities, but without going so far deep down the rabbit hole, because I have no chill, and I dove just right in and needed to parse it down a little bit.

Before we get into everything, there’s a couple things I want to make very clear as I’m going through all of these myth stories, and some are very old, and others are more recent, and the thing about the very old Myths is they were passed down verbally through storytelling and through tradition.

And we’re lucky to have as much information about some of these, really ancient cultures. Thanks to some people that decided to tell. anthropologists or historians their story, which they did not have to divulge these really sacred, parts to their culture. And so that said, since it’s coming from a storytelling background, there are differing stories and explanations and elements to, these creation myths of how our world came about.

And so if I misspeak and say something that is not in line with if you have knowledge of that story or those people know that it’s just from a place of there’s differing information out there and some stories expand further and others don’t. And there’s different trains of thought on probably every single story that I’m going to tell.

But just know that I’m another person telling this story and there’s going to be personal interpretation no matter who is telling the story. I don’t have the cultural background of each and every one of these myths and so I am doing my best as to what I’ve researched online and have some books that cover these things and just know that I’ve tried my best to get to the root of things and get rid of some of the fluff and go direct to the source on some of these stories and myths.

So with this blueprint, let’s just get into it. While I was doing my research I just noticed that there was a certain cadence of events that went through a very specific process, whether it’s, ancient Sumeria from over 6, 000 years ago to more recent religions that we might not consider myths, there’s common similarities between almost all of them.

And so where I’ve decided to start.

The Symbolism of the Egg in Creation Myths

It starts with the humble little egg. The egg shows up in almost, I don’t want to say almost all of the myths because I have not scratched even the surface. One of the strongest symbols that shows up in most of these creation stories is with an egg.

Sometimes a seed, but predominantly an egg. And there are other points in a lot of these stories that start before the egg. And I just decided that this is the best place to start that pulls most of these stories together. The egg is a, strong symbol in our culture in America and all over the world.

It’s shown in religious iconography and obviously in Easter, but I think the American view on eggs and religion is it goes with Easter. But in these creation stories, it starts with an egg, the yolk is often seen as the earth or the substance of the earth and the white of the egg is seen as either the sky and the stars and the heavens or the air around us.

It’s that separation between the earth and the. sky and the air but it, the egg symbolizes, which we see as separate, the yolk and the white. But most of these stories start off with what’s inside the egg is not separate. And it’s not balanced. There’s, A mixture and that is called chaos.

A lot of these stories goes all the, when you go all the way back, it has a lot to do with, making order of chaos and within the egg, it’s seen as chaos until those Differences of life the heavier parts that sink down and the lighter parts that separate into the egg white so this so the egg shows up and often it is from this egg either the Earth is born, or the God, the creator God, in whatever mythology is birthed from.

It can vary, but we’re, we see the egg in Hindu, in Vedic mythologies. There’s a golden egg that is said to have Started the, started everything. It’s the beginning. It’s where Vishnu started and the golden egg that Vishnu emerged from which in the Hindu.

So first I wanna just say a handful of the myths and religions that did have the use of. Did have the use of egg symbology, so we have it in tribes in Africa, like the Dogon, which are in Mali, Africa, Slavic 📍 mythology, they have their egg with the tree of life in the middle. It’s the world egg that, and the roots in the tree. Separate the earth from the sky, and that’s all contained within that egg, which is similar to Finnish mythology but also Polynesian mythology, Greek mythology, this cosmic egg, or the Orphic egg, which is oftentimes seen with a serpent wrapped around the egg to protect it. In Egypt, Ra was born from an egg as well, and Ra is, there’s many gods in the Egyptian world, but Ra is seen as like the main creator god.

The Story of Pangu and the Cosmic Egg

My favorite story that I think really encapsulates the meaning behind the egg really well is From Chinese mythology and the story of Pangu and Pangu is a God that is this hairy creature that has horns and looks a little like li, a little bit like Bigfoot, but he seems like short and squat and has these horns and, yeah, covered in fur.

So Pgu was in this egg. Pangu was in this egg, and so all around him is chaos. It’s the mixture of the white and the yolk. And our bro, so our guy Pangu, he stays in this egg for 18, 000 years. And during that 18, 000 years, he is basically separating the yolk from the white, and is balancing these two very different things that are all mixed together in chaos.

So he is If you can, so he is, over time separating these two substances of life. And if you think of the yin yang symbol, that is basically what he is creating and, part of where that symbology comes from. So he’s seen to separate yin and yang in the egg. And once he has it perfectly separated and balanced.

He has an axe, conveniently and breaks through the egg. And when I was doing my initial research for this, I saw the hairy Pangu. Very often there’s a drawing that I will put up so you can see what he looks like. And, but when I was, kind of configu So when I was putting together some images for him breaking out of the egg, there’s like statues and drawings and stuff, and like Pengu is ripped.

He, once he busts out of the egg, he is not depicted as this hairy, horned monster guy. He is like this, ripped man that is breaking this egg apart and thus creating the world. Go Pangu. And it’s good that he’s ripped because for another 18, 000 years, he basically has the job of holding up the sky.

So he is like having to literally, Expand, it said like 10 foot, 10 feet every year or something I don’t know the, I don’t know the, I don’t know the calculations for that, but it was something like 10 feet every year, he pushed the sky up more and more So Pangu breaks from the egg, he’s expanding the world by pushing up the sky, but he’s also has some helpers.

He has a dragon helper, he has a phoenix , he has a quillin , which I may be pronouncing that wrong, which is a dragon, horse, hooved, chimera kind of creature. And then he also has the turtle which is an often, while he and his helpers are doing such a good job of expanding the sky, one day Pangu just dies. He dies, and he, Wondu Pengu just dies. And he falls to the earth, and his body is then. He falls to the earth and his body is said to have made up the, geographic features that we have around us. His breath became the wind and the mist. His voice was thunder. His left eye was the sun. And his right eye was the moon. His head was mountains. His blood turned into the rivers his muscles were represented by the fertile lands of the soil. His beard and his facial hair turned into the stars and the Milky Way and the galaxies. His hair turned into the bushes and the trees. His bones were the minerals, and his bone marrow within those bones are precious jewels and crystals that are grown in the earth. His sweat was the rain and the fleas that he had on his back when he fell were what and the fleas on his back that fell into the earth after he died became the animals that and the fleas on his back when he falls to earth and the fleas on his back became the animals that populated the earth.

And so this is a story where the creator God, he, worked and worked to create this. Perfect place for us and then left without much hand in the day to day, he died and then left. Although there is still many other gods and deific figures in Chinese mythology, Pangu was a part of their religion around seventeen hundred to twenty seven hundred years ago. So at some point, almost 3, 000 years ago, this is what they were believing in China. And since then, the feng shui is from, China and you can really see that the core tenets of how this world was created by Pangu and the importance of balance and, separation of, certain things to bring harmony and balance.

And I’m here to provide, the, American lens of things. And so when Americans generally hear feng shui, we think of, oh, it’s, to decorate your home properly and have a nice feeling to it. But that’s just a little bit of, this Chinese mythology that has made it to our sphere of understanding.

Because before those Architecture and interior design practices were really “discovered”. It was just one of the many ways that Feng Shui and this Chinese myth and the importance of yin and yang represented in their life. They made their food in a certain way. They make their tea in a certain way and, their whole life is more interpreted with the backbone of balance and harmony and balance of opposites . And we saw it as, Oh, I like their architecture. Can you go do that for me? And it’s really taking out the by product of these core tenants that, you know, back in those days they were just living their life according to these practices and these beliefs and ways of seeing life.

So when they were decorating their homes, of course, they’re going to do it with feng shui because that’s how they did everything or, in accordance to that mythology. So back, so going back to the blueprint, we have our egg, and now we’ve heard the story of Pangu, and we know what came of him from the egg, but

but if you had a chicken but if you had an egg, it could be a tasty treat, but if you wanted another chicken, that egg needs fertilization.

The Role of Water in Creation Myths

In these creation stories, getting back to the blueprint, the really important piece to accompany the egg is water. And that is usually the fertilizing aspect of this creation situation.

In most of these stories, the earth was all water. It was one big ocean. Some say there was like some marshy land, but it was nothing that could ever be built upon. So to me, thinking about this water world, Immediately, my brain went to, oh, it’s the perfect Petri dish. And, the Petri dish. And the fertilization usually is referred to the primordial waters. And it’s not just water, H2O. It’s the primordial waters that have the other ingredients to life within it to be able to be the Petri dish that I think they’re speaking about in these creation myths. And, I have a degree in biology and I took microbiology and we would prepare our agar disks, that Petri disks, and we would prepare our Petri dishes and.

I don’t think I ever thought about it before how you grow these different bacterias on the Petri dish. That dish is made of, the stuff called agar, and it’s nutrients for the stuff you’re trying to grow. So it’s not just a little plate and you tell stuff to grow and it grows, there’s actual nutrients in there to give it what it needs.

So that the spores you can put on it will then grow. So to me, this primordial water, and there will be, talks about the earth was covered in water, and it was just all water, and so it’s very easy to spot this common theme within all of these stories. So we have the egg, and we have the water. And so what do we do now? We have the perfect ingredients for life we have the perfect ingredients for life, but how do we get to earth?

The Yoruba Myth of Obatala and the Creation of Earth

And my favorite story about how land started forming on this water world is from the Yoruba people, and that’s from Nigeria in Africa.

And the Yoruba people they’re started. Funnily enough, not necessarily with an egg, but I’ll get to that. They have a hierarchy of gods that is, it all goes back to this one god, Olodumere, and I am very sorry if I’m pronouncing these wrong, but that’s the main god. And then he split up and sent off different fragments of that god of himself, and sent them off to look for habitable planets.

It sounds like sci fi, but this is, a part of their mythology. And Earth was found. There were other Earth like planets that were found. And The other ones were honestly better than earth because earth was this water world and didn’t have any way to have solid land.

What are you going to do with that? So earth was honestly cast aside oh, we’re going to focus on these other ones. And then they were like, nah, I want to see if we can do something with earth. So one of the gods, Obatala, he was like, I think I can do something with this. I think I can work with this. And the other gods were like, okay, bet, good luck.

So Obatala took the task and all of the gods chipped in all of their gold and made him a gold chain that could be dropped from the heavens through an open hole, dropped down so that Obatala could climb down the chain to Earth. He brought with him a few things. He brought a bag that contained a pine nut seed, that contained a mollusk shell that was filled with soil, a white chicken and a black cat. And so he’s hanging down on this chain, and he can’t get all the way down, but he gets far enough and starts speaking. He takes the mollusk shell and starts sprinkling the earth from his mollusk shell down to the earth. And it’s still not strong enough to stand on.

It’s not enough for him. So he throws the chicken down, chicken’s lighter. And what chickens do is spread stuff so the chicken immediately starts sifting around and spreads this earth around. Eventually, when this chicken is spread around enough, it’s sturdy enough for Obatala to hop down, and he jumps down on a little hill, and he gets to work.

Alright, let’s make something of this place. I got enough to stand on, let’s go. So he plants the pine nut seed. So this is the egg symbology in this story. Sometimes, like I said, it’s a seed, and of course I gotta pick the story that doesn’t have an egg to , but he plants the seed, the pinenut seed, into the earth and immediately, like that, A pine nut tree grows. And these, are magical. So they drop a ton of pine nuts and they grow more trees. And so he’s doing pretty good. He has his little kitty cat for companion.

All the other things he brought for kind of a reason, but his cat, he just, the reason was companionship. And if cat owners didn’t need another reason why cats are the best. Here’s another one. You just always got to have a cat with you. He’s hanging out, but the cat wasn’t enough. He got lonely.

So he was like, you know what? Let me make some friends. And we all want to make friends. I wonder if that’s why they say let’s make friends. It’s because all these gods have been making their friends when they get lonely. Anyway, he starts grabbing the soil and getting clay from the earth that he has been developing and starts sculpting these people.

And he’s working really hard, he’s really dedicated, just going after it. And he eventually does run out of fumes. I feel like I relate to him because he got on the hyper fixation and he’s I’m gonna make humans and then he’s man, this is hard. So what he does to take the edge off is he takes his pine nuts and he has created a pine nut wine from the pine nut seeds.

And so he’s getting drunk on these pine nut wine drinks that he’s making for himself. And ambitiously is yeah, let me just get back to making humans. I’m fine. I’m fine. I can keep making humanity even though I’m plastered. Shut up. And then he unfortunately makes some deformed humans and he wakes up the next morning and he is so hungover and so sad.

It’s like that hangover anxiety that’s like the reason that no one should drink because that hangxiety is the worst. What did I do when I was drunk? No matter what you did, it’s not as bad as creating half of the human race deformed. And he felt awful, and he vowed probably to never drink again, I would imagine.

But he also vowed to be the protector of the deformed, so he stayed on Earth. He stayed because he just felt so bad I fucked them up, and I gotta take care of it, I gotta deal with my thing. Problems that I created, which is a bummer, but not because it’s really sweet. And I think that just from the way those stories talked about him, he really loved humans.

And so he really cared. So he stayed on earth and created, so he stayed on earth and helped the humans out. And they ended up creating civilizations and, one thing went to another and they were doing really good. And he was like, and he was so happy. He was very proud of himself, but one problem was he, all the other gods knew what he was doing.

They were like, bet. Go try to do something with earth. Go for it. And the one god that he, the one god that he didn’t ask was The goddess that ruled everything below the sky, which earth was one of those things below the sky So she somehow was off very distracted and then notices what Obatala was doing with humanity and he took over Earth basically and she was pissed.

She was like no, that’s mine. What are you doing? So she was really mad and waited for Obatala to like, go back home and see his, other God family, brothers and sisters and Sky Daddy. So then the goddess came down and started flooding the earth because she was like, I This isn’t his, it’s mine, I’m taking it back. And so she flooded the earth, and eventually she decided to stop. She got convinced.

The sky goddess name was Olokun. A lot of them have the Olo or the O names for this culture.

So Olokun just takes back the earth, or tries So Olokun just demolishes the earth with water pretty much, finally gets, Obatala finally gets her to stop, there’s enough for him to rebuild, and so he continues on, they make an agreement fine, your people can live I guess and I’m gonna have to stop there, there’s more to that story, but I do need to get back to the blueprint, because I do need to get back to the blueprint, but to close out water, it makes so much sense, and I think that’s why water is such an important part of this creation story, and why it’s such an important part of this creation blueprint, because, water rules the earth.

All major cities are centered around water. Cant Survive without it. So it makes sense for life at all to be created. That water is a part of it because it is what gives you life, and it’s what you’re able to use to sustain life. And so it really is no surprise why water is such a key part of it.

And, If you think back to science, if you think back and,

and just to compound on why water is such a ubiquitous symbol and all of these things, I had to think back to when I learned about evolution and how the earth during the Archean age is all water for 2. 5 to 4 billion years ago, billion with a B, it was all water on earth. Were these people around then?

No. Did they tap into something that got that kind of right? Somehow, yes. And then, there’s, it’s, I feel like it’s a lot to touch on such a big, thing is like the flood myths that are also in every culture and, maybe Noah didn’t make an ark, but maybe they’re, floods have been bothering civilizations for a long time.

And so Olokun re flooding the earth, it, it tracks with A lot of other different stories and I’m not just talking about the Christian Noah’s Ark story. It goes deeper than that. But, like I said, I have to stop there because I could just keep going on and on about it. The Yoruba myths were believed and like in practice around 2, 000 years ago. Around when Jesus was getting born. It’s really hard to fully track down how long ago these date, how long ago these religions were being practiced because so much of it was storytelling and, It’s so hard to pin back how far these stories, came from

and other myths that also have water as this primordial, that has this primordial water as a part of their creation story is again, almost all of them, but Sumerian, Iroquois Chinese,

Sumerian, Vedic, Egypt, Dogon, Polynesia, Hawaiian mythology. Inuit, Huichol, Chinese mythology, Christian mythology, Catholic mythology, religion. So it’s obvious that this is,

so it’s obvious that this is an important part of the blueprint. But we have the egg, we have the water, and then we have the earth that comes. So how do we get the earth to come?

So getting back to the blueprint. We now need to figure out Earth. We have this creative energy that has come from this egg. That has come from this egg water mixture. But we sometimes, like in the Yoruba myth, need to get earth from other places. Gotta get it from somewhere. And this is where we need to decide.

And you have a few options if you were to use this blueprint to create your own myth. Which, why not?

Methods of Creating Earth in Various Myths

You can either get the earth, from the sky, and they’re, like the Yoruba myth, that is one example of that. It’s also in the Christian creation story, it says God hovered, it’s like Genesis 1 2, God hovered above the waters and brought

even in, Christian, even in the Bible, the Christian Bible, Genesis 1:2, it said God was hovering over the water, and so essentially brought that earth from the heavens to the earth and in Inuit beliefs, they believe that stones from the sky came to earth, maybe an asteroid? I don’t know.

Another option is for the earth to come from below the waters. So instead of above the waters, it comes from below the waters. It comes from below the waters. And the Cherokee beliefs is a beetle that dove down into the earth and brought it up and started making these mounds with the mud that was brought up.

And the Iroquois belief, The Sky Woman is the earth diver, she is on the back of a turtle and dives down and reaches down to the, below the water and puts the mud and creates earth on top of this turtle, creates earth on top of this turtle shell.

In Japanese mythology, which would be the Shinto, they explain the creation of the Japanese islands by the twin gods, Iganazi and Iganami. They have a jewel encrusted spear, and they dive down and get the mud from under the water and bring it to the surface so they can create the islands of Japan.

And another option is to dismember a body. And another option is to dismember a god and use the body as the earth. That one is my favorite of the three because it’s brutal and pretty freaking cool. Examples of this like the story of Pangu that we already talked about where he was doing a lot for the earth until he died and when he died that was the, catalyst of the land masses. Walking around, thank Pangu or you could thank Ymir in Norse mythology. Ymir is one of their gods, and it’s said that his body was also the creation of land around us.

Not-so-fun fact, his brother’s killed him, dismembered him, and used his body to seed the planet, unwillingly. Sheesh!

And he has a similar breakdown, the way that Pengu did, his blood was the ocean, his bones were the mountains, his skull was the sky, so I don’t know how that worked, it’s like, skull is like the atmosphere, I’m not sure. I don’t know. And Norse mythology they believed around like a thousand years ago, 1200 ish years ago. And to me, it’s interesting to me it’s interesting how Norse mythology and Chinese mythology have a very similar breakdown of body parts into land . But Norse mythology, it was believed, maybe a little more than a thousand years ago. Whereas, with Chinese mythology and Pengu, they were practicing that close to 3, 000 years ago.

Did they come up with it?

And even in ancient Babylon, and even in ancient Babylon, they believed that due to a cosmic battle and fight, one of the gods that was killed, his body was dismembered and became the land masses that we know today. And that was,

and don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure Babylon, was probably around three, four thousand years ago. So that’s predating the Chinese mythology belief. Did they get their ideas from them? Was it all migration? It’s just interesting.

Because they’re, there could also be another category of this, of bodily fluids creating life, because that is another thing that is maybe gross to people that don’t like bodily fluids. Interesting about some of these myths, like the blood of this god sprinkled and it became these islands, or There’s conflicting reports on Ra from Egypt.

Some say that he cried out humans with his tears. Other people think he jizzed out humans. Take whichever one you’d like to prefer to believe. Whichever way you decide to bring the soil to make the land, You still don’t have humans. That’s not it’s still not equated to humans. It’s like in Pengu’s story, it wasn’t until the fleas became the humans and da. And, or it wasn’t until the fleas became the animals and then I’m assuming humans evolved from that in their mythology.

Not sure. But nonetheless, just because you have the earth doesn’t mean you have the humans to go along with it. So a lot of these gods had to figure out how to make humans. So So these gods, either because of boredom, or they wanted to be worshipped, or like Zeus, he just wanted some playthings, and the toys for Zeus, he wanted humans.

The Mayan Attempts at Creating Humans

So whatever it is, there’s different modes of creating humans now, because again, the earth is all one thing, humans It’s a whole nother, so there’s oftentimes a lot of trial and error that goes into making humans and one really great example of this is in Mayan culture, there were three attempts where the gods made Humans, or made creatures, out of different material and . They found that some materials were better for making humans for some reasons and worse for making humans for others. Let’s go over the Mayan, if you try.

Let’s go over the Mayan. Let’s go over the Mayan’s version. Let’s go over the Mayan version of If You Don’t Succeed, You Try Again. The first attempt at making humans,

and this information comes from the Popol Vuh, which is the primary source of the Mayan mythology and stories. So the first attempt at making some little creatures, Mayan gods, used. Mud. So they slapped together some mud and they realized that these creatures aren’t going to do anything. They were shapeless.

They were not able to worship properly. They were like, that’s not going to work. They wiped those out and then decided to try again. This time they tried with wood and although it was better at holding form than mud. They still didn’t really have any success. They were strong, but they lack any souls.

They didn’t have any emotions. They couldn’t understand things. And if you can’t understand and have emotions, you probably can’t worship the gods. So they were not interested. They wiped those ones out again. And the third time’s a charm. These gods decided, let’s use corn, maize. Maize had the perfect combination of everything.

It wasn’t too rigid, it wasn’t too soft, it made the perfect human.

They used a mix of yellow and white corn, which could be a good tortilla recipe as well.

And, to this day, the Mayan gods have not needed to try another material. It worked. Corn was the ticket. They figured out, they said these things. People got substance and we’re good. They really figured it out with corn. And it makes sense, because corn fed and, because corn fed and nourished those people, you are what you eat, they it makes sense. And does it making sense in reality? Oh, duh, they just ate a lot of corn. That’s why they picked that.

Reverence for Corn and Water

That doesn’t really make it not special and not make it worthy of being held at such a high prestige, to say that we were made from corn because we were in those times, they survived on corn.

It was them just like the water. It’s like you, you pay reverence to the water because it’s so important. So we were paying reverence to the corn and I love corn,

but my

Prometheus and Zeus: A Tale of Creation

but my favorite made from clay creation of humans story is none other than Prometheus and Zeus from the Greek mythologies. I don’t know why I love this story so much. It is really heartbreaking and it is really sad, but there’s just something about it that just makes me feel good. So Zeus and Prometheus. They were best friends. This is a story of best buddies. Zeus is obviously a not easy person to get along with. He was very Spirited. He had a lot of personality. He didn’t really give a fuck about what any one or anything else wanted he was Zeus. He was gonna do whatever he wanted, but Prometheus was just special everyone loved Prometheus He was just the sweetest guy the nicest guy and him and Zeus just were best buds

they were an inseparable duo and Prometheus noticed that Zeus was being sad and mopey. Until one day Zeus comes to Prometheus with the best idea.

The Birth of Humans and Prometheus’ Attachment

I got all these other animals. I have horses, I have elephants, I have birds, I have dolphins, he loved his dolphins but he was like, I want some little me’s, like he wanted some little hims and he wanted to make some humans.

And at first Prometheus was like, I don’t know, it could get messy and. Zeus was like no. This is going to be the best idea. Don’t worry. We’re going to have so much fun. They’re going to be our little besties and we’re going to make them do whatever we want. And it seemed like Prometheus, he was just good at everything. So he was like, so Zeus was like, you are going to shape them for me and make them. But I’ll tell you how I want them. I’ll tell you what I want and you make them. So Prometheus was like, Alright, bet. I’m down. Let’s do it. And because Prometheus was an artist, he was like, I need my space.

I need to be alone to shape these humans. Prometheus and Zeus set off traveling the Earth, trying to find the perfect soil to make these figures from. And He decided that, so Zeus and Prometheus set off. They travel the world until they find the perfect clay that has exactly the right things in it.

To make their humans and so once they find this clay, Prometheus is like, all right, leave me alone. I’m time to work. And they’re like, all right, let him cook. And Prometheus had so much fun making these little humans. He made one of every color. He, there was purple, blue, red, yellow, violet, green.

He had all these people. And he was making them. Oh, and before he sent Zeus on his way to leave him alone so he could get to work, he asked for some spit, and that’s what he was using to like, moisten  the clay with. Again, that’s the water and the primordial water kind of imagery. And so Zeus eventually is dude, we gotta go check on Prometheus. I know he said he wanted to be alone, but I’m dying over here. So him and his daughter, Athena, they were just We’re just prancing along, doing Zeus things, and we’re just, all excited about the, all excited about getting to see his little babies soon.

And so he’s just fumbling along, and in his excitement, smashes the green, blue, and purple people, he’s just smashed them with his big ass foot. And Prometheus is freaking out these are my babies. He’s gotten attached. And he he was very upset. Zeus was like, it’s fine.

You have, like, all these other colors. It’s no big deal. Shut up. And Prometheus was like, Whatever. He was still just really excited to get the show on the road because they still needed to be breathed life into. And and Zeus was like, oh, Athena, you can do that.

So Athena blows life into these figurines and they become alive. And these first little group of humans, Are like, what the fuck are those? There’s giant people staring at us and yelling at us. And Zeus was all excited and Prometheus was like, Shut the fuck up, dude. Chill, we’re scaring them. Cause they’re like, ah.

So Zeus has the bright idea to like, Hey, let’s shrink down to their size. Or maybe it was Prometheus that had that idea. I can’t remember. So they shrink down to human size, which definitely, helped calm, after a while the new people’s nerves. And so he, and so they’re down on human level, all small, and Zeus is just like, so excited.

He’s so stoked, and he’s just I did it, I created people this is what we’re gonna be known for, and everyone’s gonna love this. And Prometheus is Did. Prometheus was just obsessed. He was obsessed with his humans. He cared for them so much. He pretty much decided I’m gonna stay here most of the time teaching them how to, do life and how to, like, how the world works and, all that.

I want these little, my little people to, I want my babies to survive. And so Prometheus,

so Zeus sensed this going on and he’s Hey, no, we just need them to survive so they can worship us, and if I know Zeus, he’s probably planning on banging him too, of course, and so he’s no, we don’t care about them, they’re just our playthings, and Prometheus was like, Bro, no I was chill when you squashed my green, purple, and blue people, but no, these are my babies.

I’m gonna take care of them. And Zeus was like, God, you’re so weird fine, but promise me that you will not teach them how to make fire, because if you teach them how to make fire, they’re gonna They’re gonna become more powerful than us we cannot give them our secrets. And Prometheus was like, FINE, I won’t teach them how to make fire chill out.

So then Zeus went on his merry way, and I think he was just sad that he like, was, losing his best friend, essentially. . But the more Prometheus stayed, With his babies, he just fell more and more in love with them and he just wanted the best for them and he was like, they deserve everything possible.

Prometheus’ Betrayal and Punishment

And so he felt he, he had to teach them how to make fire. And so he broke his promise to Zeus and Greek mythology, Greek gods, they take their word very seriously.

They do not say something and then if you call them out you said this, they have to do it. It is very your word is very important if you’re a Greek god. So Prometheus went against his word and gave humans the ability to make fire. And Zeus obviously finds out about this. You can’t really keep that a secret.

You so Zeus was pissed. He was heartbroken. It was his best friend. His best friend betrayed him. He’s also scared that these humans might become more powerful than him now. And so he is terrified. He also takes out that fear and anger onto his best friend. He is so betrayed and so hurt by Prometheus that he banishes him to the underworld, to Hades, and ties him to a rock and has birds eat out his liver every day.

And then overnight, his liver grows back and gets picked out by birds and ravens every single day. He banished him for eternity. He said, you are going to, live with what you did. And it’s interesting because they say that the liver is the seat of the emotions. And so with our emotions, we’re feeling with our liver, we’re feeling Our emotions, and one of them can be the sadness and the love that Prometheus had for us.

Thank Prometheus next time you light a fire or enjoy anything that has to do with fire, thanks Prometheus. Pour one out for our homeboy Prometheus, who I will tell you, spoiler alert, Prometheus eventually, not immediately, but eventually gets out of it. And so that will have to be another story for another day too.

The Role of Gods in Human Creation

So back to the blueprint. Whether you created your humans out of mud, out of clay, out of wood, or clay with Zeus’s spit. And breathed into life by Athena, whatever it is, you now have your little human race, and you have your little babies. Now you have to decide, am I gonna stay with my little babies like Prometheus did, or, and help them out?

And, or am I gonna leave and say, Here you go, created this, bye. Kinda like Pangu did. Do you peace out and say, best of luck? Or do you leave instructions and peace out? And say, here’s how to live, see ya later. Throughout all these myths, there’s examples of both. So obviously, Greek mythology, the story we just read obviously, Greek mythology, Prometheus sticks around and teaches us how to be good humans and be civilized. In Christianity, which a lot are familiar with, God sticks around and even though he’s a vengeful and bitter God in the Old Testament, he is a loving God in the New, but he stays around and communicates somehow.

In Hinduism, Vishnu, he stays around. He loves his little humans that he created. In Hinduism, we have Vishnu, and he is the, seen to be creator God in Hinduism, and, and, similarly to Christianity he is God is seen as a Trinity as well, although their Pantheon of gods and Hinduism is very expansive. The Vedics and the Hinduism that is that was probably practiced 3- 3500 years ago, whereas Christianity is around 2000

another example of a God staying around and helping out humans is in north myth is in Norse mythology and Odin and

and

Myths Across Cultures

another example is Odin from Norse mythology where he stuck around to perfect where he stuck around on earth to protect us from chaos

it’s crazy to think about that Norse mythology, Odin, Thor, these myths that we use in our Avengers movies and stuff. People believe that in just a thousand years ago, it’s very recent. And to think that there. And to think the similarities between that practice, religion around a thousand years ago, it has a lot of similarities to like Sumerian myths were five, six thousand years ago.

So these, archetypes have been in our world forever, and are we just rinsing and repeating and using and abusing and using them for our own benefit, or are we getting on to something and trying to, figuring something out and there’s just one common story that’s being told? It’s confusing. Another example of the gods that said, yes, I want to take care of my babies is This is the Dogon people of Mali in West Africa, and even still today, they say that this Nommo, which is one of their kind of creator gods, Nomo will, in,

Nomo will Nomo’s spirit will, entrance these priests and then those priests will be guided to picking the next priests, which, it’s a good segue into thinking like, okay, at what point were these people just using this for power? Okay, I’m a priest, I’m going to pick another dude to be the priest that, you know, and say that it was Nommo or are they actually channeling these spirits?

I’m not here saying these are all real and not myth, but at the same time, I’m also not here to say that they’re not. Are we talking to one god? Are we talking to twenty? The other side of this thing is the gods that seed the earth and say, good luck humans, here’s your instructions, or not, and then dip out and say later, good luck. Those Mayan gods tried three times to create humans, and then after the third time, they dipped out. Obviously, there’s a lot of Mayan myth and quote unquote instructions that were left by those gods, but the 📍 one that created humans ended up leaving us behind and 📍 that was believed around 1700 years ago, just a bit longer than the Norse mythology to put things into a somewhat of a timeline.

In Sumeria, which is modern day Iraq, they made the gods made humans and they were basically for toiling and doing the physical labor and didn’t really just created them like tools to be slaves. And was that a tactic that empire was using to make slavery valid, or something to be praised in their society so that they could use slave labor. Maybe not, I don’t know. And that was practiced around 6, 500 years ago.

And then again, Pangu, he’s another example of just coming in and dipping out, having to dip out after a while, and didn’t really leave instructions for people other than the form of those myths basically being the only ngu left.

And then there are more that are scattered in between that are in and out in their role in humanity So we went from the egg all the way to people, when people came about, there’s more that takes place before the egg on a lot of these stories. And there’s obviously a lot more that takes place after people came about.

And although these stories seem so fantastic and out of this world and just so crazy, to some extent, they’re not crazy. They’re the myths that surrounded those cultures at that time. And whether we like to think about it, admit it or not, myth is all around us. Myth is creating our worldview.

There were so many times in doing this research where I was so surprised at the things that I was learning. Whether it was things that I felt had connections to science and some real scientific theories and things that you would think the church or religion would not be supporting as well.

And there were a lot of moments that I was very surprised and learning about how some of these other cultures were so far advanced for their time that. There’s got to be something and some intelligence that they were tapping into, or had received some information from, that was passed down through stories.

This intelligence was beyond the internet and or beyond writing, a lot of this stuff starts in Sumeria because they started writing then and all the places that developed language and some way of communicating, those are the ones that have first dibs at saying this is what happened.

And before then, it was just migrating, exchanging ideas, and using things all around them to build the myth of how they felt like they were in this world at all, how they arrived.

And if you’re someone who does have really firm beliefs, sometimes hearing these things can make you feel a little uneasy no that’s, My thing, or that’s the Bible’s thing, or that’s the Quran’s thing, or that’s there is no God. That’s my thing, like whatever your thing is, if this is uneasy to hear some of these stories and ideas, It doesn’t have to be, like, I’m comforted by it.

The Dogon People and Lost Knowledge

I’m comforted by, that we, and I say we, as in the thousands of years of people that have been talking about this, wondering about this, and trying to put shit together, because there is a lot to put together, and we’re in a time where we have access to it and, we’re lucky to access a lot of it, for one of the cultures that I was researching, the Dogon people, the only reason we know about their mythology is from an anthropologist that dedicated his life to these people and to this tribe to learning about them.

And he spent over 📍 20 years with these people when the elders would not speak to him. Because again, he didn’t have books to read about what they believed. He didn’t have anything. He was literally there wanting to learn. And wanting to find out what they believed. And after these years that he dedicated to the Dogon people.

One of the elders finally relented and said, all right, I’ll tell you. And they sat in a room every day for 33 days. And this elder told him everything. I’m sure this anthropologist was, he told this anthropologist everything. He wrote figures in the sand of some of the symbols and things that he the elder did.

And the anthropologist rewrote them. And they’ve, this, these people prove the existence of one of the Sirius stars. It was Sirius B. 📍 Their oral history talked about the existence of that star thousands of years before its discovery in 1862. And I read some arguments on why they were able to do that, and it wasn’t because of any knowledge they had.

It was because there were less lights and light pollution then and they were able to actually see it with the naked eye, which I mean maybe but they were able to observe and record this star and its path and it’s intertwining path with Sirius A and this anthropologist wrote and drew the paths of these intersecting stars You And it exactly matches with the pathways of those stars as recorded by astronomers.

And how, how could they have seen a star that they didn’t observe without a telescope thousands of years before astronomers? Make it make sense. It doesn’t make sense. But if it wasn’t for that elder, he, we wouldn’t have access to any of this information. Those 33 days where that anthropologist was writing down everything this guy said I’m sure he was just dying and hoping he got it all, it’s, what has been lost to us is immense. And what’s been manipulated through time is also immense.

When we go back to these core tenets of these different stories. I can see them ring true with so many different trains of thought. You can rationalize anything one way or another using these stories and using these myths, and I wanted to end this podcast with.

Questions to Wrinkle Your Brain

A segment I’ll call questions to wrinkle your brain because although I would love to have a smooth brain all the time and just be super smooth brain and not worry about a single thing.

I think it is good to wrinkle your brain just try to crack into your worldview a little bit and peek out every now and then on how you view things. And when you find out something is not in accordance to your worldview. Let it feel good. Let it feel comforting. Let it show you growth.

And so the first part of this questions to wrinkle your brain The first question I want to ask is, did you know that there’s a version of Norse mythology that did not include Odin and Thor and all of these gods that we know and love so dear? I was doing the research into Norse mythology and I just really wanted to get to the root of things and try to track it back to, Where the inspiration for these certain things came from, and what did they believe before this, what did they believe before that, what did they believe before that.

And I got back to a point that was like, oh, they didn’t believe any of this stuff. They believed in gods and spirits, but it wasn’t like the pantheon of gods and these personified men and women and Valkyrie and, all these things and it wasn’t like that. It was. It was the god of wind, it was the god of, water, it was the animal spirits, it was, the crop, it was the moon, it was the sun, it was these bigger, way bigger players in this cosmic story than a man in the sky, a man wherever, or, sometimes women, but mostly men, for sure.

There was a whole Norse mythology that was with the Norse people and they did not believe that stuff. And they believed in a very more animism, animalistic kind of spirit, ancestor guided kind of thinking. And that was again, more than a thousand years ago. And the Viking Age is whenever we know of Norse mythology and we relate to the Viking Age version of Norse mythology with Odin and Thor and all that.

But Before these Slavic and German tribes started, migrating and mixing with other people, they pretty much, and independently on their own, believed in these more, shamanistic, animalistic, spirit guided, based on the elements of the world aspect of things, and not so much that this god is the god of war, and this god is the god of this, and this one does this.

And, it really wrinkled my brain because that’s all that I know Norse mythology about and that’s all I, it really wrinkled my brain because when you think of Norse mythology, you think of that stuff. And so learning that the migration of these Germanic and Slavic tribes and then mixing together, it caused war and it caused tension.

And so to maintain control, it was really convenient to have. A god of war, or a god of, whatever, to, to strengthen you, to make you strong. And, in their belief system, and I’m, I’m certain people still believe this today and have every right to, but, that, you go to Valhalla from dying in battle.

How convenient is that for a people that are now migrating and having to battle other people? Seems convenient. Or is it what that, army or whatever needed to fortify themselves to take on all these battles when in the past they were dealing with the wind and the rain and making sure that their people were fed and praying to the animal spirits that, et cetera, et cetera.

So the view we have of all these things, they’re not, they have not been in place forever.

The Evolution of Belief Systems

And I think, speaking from experience with myself, we have the view of things we believe in today as being rigid and set in stone and this is the way it is and believe it or don’t. And I grew up religious. In the Christian church, I then as an adult went to school and studied science and have a degree in biology and I, towed in the waters of being atheist and believing that religion was a joke and that, it’s all fake and it’s not real and God’s not real.

And I’ve dabbled in those areas for sure. And I thought that,

and although I have a different. Although I have a different view on things today and my own personal belief system that doesn’t really attach to one thing or another. I still had the mindset that Christianity and like Catholicism and Orthodox, Catholicism, those things are very rigid.

And I think that way because Christianity is rigid and I was brought up in a very rigid, no, you have to believe this, mindset. And I was. So surprised to learn this next little tidbit. So it’s the next question to wrinkle, winkle your brain. Did you know that the Catholic church, did you know that the Catholic church accepted the theory of evolution in 1950?

For some people, they might be like, yeah, I knew that. I did not. I absolutely did not. I have the view that if you are religious and pretty much any abrahamic religion; Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, any of that. I had the view that you do not believe in evolution, that you are, you do not believe of the, natural process of evolution and evolving over time.

No. Pope in the 50s was like, yeah, that sounds right. I’ll believe, yeah, we’re accepting that. Also in the 1950s, They also accepted the theory of the Big Bang, and that to me was even more of a shock, way more of a shock. And I just always assumed that the Catholic Church would have a more staunch view on these things.

And then, really, quite honestly, The opposite. It’s mostly the Christian church, and I’m sure there are plenty nowadays that believe in, accepting of some scientific theories and things like that. But there are so many that don’t believe in evolution and will fight you tooth and nail on it.

It’s so crazy that we’re still fighting about some of these things. And that Christianity is really the only one that is holding on so hard to being right. It’s, and it’s not about being right. And another thing that I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear if they are, if they were raised in a Christian, mindset, even if not Christian, but like adjacent or light, it just, it forms our worldview.

In the Quran. For Muslims, they love Jesus. The Quran does not deny that Jesus was born of a miraculous birth. They love Jesus and he is a very important prophet and share his teachings. If you were to have told me, five years ago that Muslims love Jesus, I hope that I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I hope I would have been like, yeah, that sounds like right, but I think I would have been surprised and that’s like maybe showing my ignorance and I, I was just surprised and I think that it’s purposeful that we don’t know these things that how we’re all talking about the same thing and we’re all sharing the same stories and the same types of stories like of just what it is to be a human.

Anyway, I still have another question to wrinkle. I still have another question to wrinkle your brain.

Talking about the miraculous birth of Jesus that Islam does not argue with. Did you know that Jesus was not the only miraculous birth in Christianity and Catholicism? I just assumed that he was the only one. Little asterisks, other religions have tons, and mythologies have tons of other examples of miraculous births.

But for this question to wrinkle your brain. It’s more about just Christian and Catholic kind of views of things.

Did you know that Mary, Jesus’s mother, according to the Immaculate Conception Doctrine text, is that Mary was also born of a miraculous birth. She was born to her parents that were older, and they were not within the childbearing age. And an angel visited and said, you’re gonna have a baby.

And the mom was like no I’m not, definitely not, and they’re like, yeah you are, and sure enough, she became pregnant at an old age with Mary, so she’s pure because even her conception was not tainted by, dirty sex. This is one thing that Christianity disagrees with Catholicism.

They don’t think that she had an immaculate conception of Mary. They believe that Mary was free of sin in her daily life, but in terms of like the conception of Mary, they did not, Christians do not agree with Catholics on that one. Just that she was free of sin in her daily life, which made her good enough to have Jesus.

Sounds like a little bit too much emphasis on purity, and that could be used as a form of control, but I digress. The other immaculate conception or miraculous conception is one that Christianity does agree upon is John the Baptist and John the Baptist was born to another, it’s another older woman that was out of childbearing years and the angel visited her and her husband and said, you gonna have a baby and he’s going to be a preacher.

And the husband. Was like, what? No we’re not. Shut up. You’re being so stupid. That’s obviously not gonna happen. And Angel was like, bitch, shut your fucking mouth and made him mute until John the Baptist was born. Which I thought was a hilarious flex. And yeah we think that these things are like concrete and, there’s all these other little exceptions and magical and mystical things happening that wasn’t just Jesus being born of a virgin.

And again, other stories and religions and myths also have plenty of examples of immaculate conception for various deities or prophets or what have you. We are all telling the same story. That’s what I’m coming to. That’s what I’m coming to believe because at this point, I’ve seen too many similarities.

I’ve seen too much stuff and it seems a little bit too coincidental.

And just one other thing, it’s not really a question, but it’s another thing to wrinkle your brain. In the Big Bang, they say that as the light and the particles traveled out after that first. Bang. The light and the matter, they were conjoined. They were together. And then as it emanated out, eventually the photons and the matter were able to finally be separate.

And that was a big turning point in the formation of matter. Other things in that cosmic spew.

But to me, it reminds me of when Pangu was in the egg and he had to separate the white from the yolk. And that separation just sounded a little bit too similar to the separation of the light And the matter and that being separate was what gave matter a chance to start building up in complexity over time and expanding that gave way to us.

So even coming into present day and present day scientific theories, we can still weave them back in to myths that they were believing three, 4, 000 years ago. So whatever you believe. Believe it. It doesn’t matter, as long as it is true to you, and if you shape your people and your humans out of wood, mud, or clay, it doesn’t matter.

Because, like the Mayan gods, like Hurracan, he learned. After the first attempt, and then went on to the second, and went on to the third. We can make mistakes, we can learn from them, and implement the knowledge that we learn from them. And that’s what we want to get out of this. I feel like it’s hard for me to wrap this all up into a pretty little bow.

But I think that with this blueprint, you can see some of the elements that we need to incorporate into our lives. Just like with feng shui, where it’s not just about the interior design, it’s about how we view life that if you have these things that you believe in that help you and enrich you, bringing those out into everyday life is how we get through it and how we make sense of the human condition.

Final Thoughts and Future Topics

There were a lot of my personal favorite mythologies and indigenous beliefs from around the world that I did not speak on. And it was really hard to decide which ones to talk about and which ones not to. And so for some of my favorites, like my number one that got me into all this is the Huichol people.

And I’ll have to do a full deep dive on to into them and some of my other favorite people. Another tribe in Africa that I love is the Tuareg people. And so this is just a taste of what I have studied and have been talking about. And it’s honestly my first time putting it all together and making sense of everything.

Trying to at least, getting it out of my brain. So I look forward to sharing more of this kind of content, and if anyone is interested, I would happily share access to my research document that has it all broken down by continent. It all has, it has all the symbols that are broken down, the egg, the water, the divers that go into the water and get the earth, all these different things that I talked about.

I’ve broken them all down, and so if you want access to that, I would happily share it. So just message me and i will happily give you that if you want to have a little rabbit hole to get into some of this stuff and if you have any questions, if you have any comments about things that I might have gotten wrong or misspoken about, which absolutely can happen and again, like I said in the beginning of this episode, there is There’s a million ways to tell these stories, and they have been told a million ways.

And from the research that I’ve done, this is how I’ve made sense of it. So my apologies if I’ve gotten it wrong, and please let me know if there are any things from your lens that is, is conflicting but I look forward to getting into more of these topics with everyone. And just seeing how this is received from all of you guys and I don’t know now that you have the blueprint why don’t you come up with your own creation story and your own creation myth and What kind of people would you create and what kind of world would they build?