M Y T H S ARE H I S T O R Y
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  • Myths of Creation
    • 1 Thesis
    • 2 Definitions
    • 3 Exposition
    • 4 First Things: Cosmogony
    • 5 Time After Time
    • 6 From Creation To Catastrophe
    • 7 Order Out Of Chaos
    • 8 Traits, Tropes & Themes
    • 9 Macrocosm To Microcosm
    • 10 Astronomical: Theogony
    • 11 Geophysical: Geogony
    • 12 Ethnological: Anthropogony
    • 13 Cosmogonic Causal Chains
    • 14 As Above, So Below
    • 15 Foregone Ages Past
    • 16 Forthcoming Future Ages
    • 17 Second Thoughts
    • 18 But Who's Counting?
    • 19 From Myth To History
    • 20 Cycles Of Recurrence
  • The Jupiter Myth
MYTHS  OF  CREATION
3.   Exposition 
The traditional types of
mythopoeic cosmovisions
(or myth-making worldviews)
under scrutiny in the following survey
are representative of some
three score or more
now extinct ancestral cultures
​from all around the globe,
whose remarkably similar
​mythological & ritual traditions
have been largely neglected or disregarded
as imaginative superstitions thus far.
​​
Beginning as basic ways of seeing the world 
from the conventional points of view 
sanctioned by small, tightly-knit 
local communities
during the late Pleistocene
& the early stages of the Neolithic,

these budding cosmological visions 
blossomed in the late Bronze & early Iron ages
into fully-developed mythological systems
encompassing the collective entirety 
of much larger populations’ 
general bases of knowledge & belief,  
enduring for hundreds or, in some cases, 
even thousands of years.
​

Primarily inherited 
from one generation to the next 
by way of word of mouth transmissions 
& repetitive seasonal or annual rites,
time-honored cosmovisions such as these
were most commonly preserved 
by pre-literate peoples
who by and large perceived

every prominent feature of 
the richly multifaceted reality
all around them to be
actively living  component parts
of a single, widespread, 
intrinsically-unified
macrocosmic whole 
—​
w/ themselves positioned quite squarely 
right in the very middle of it all. 
​
Although only faded ruins of their 
long-forgotten myths & histories
have come down to us today 
(globally dispersed as they now are 
in fragmentary relics & remains   
unfortunately fenced-in in situ 
or roped-off on museum display),  
vestigial traces & scattered signs 
of these once globally
​commonplace ways of life 
are sometimes still found to abide  
among latter-day remnants of
native indigenous populations now 
struggling, in scattered fringes 
on the margins of our modern multinational
industrialized society, 
simply to carry on & survive . . .
(Continue)
  • Home
  • Myths of Creation
    • 1 Thesis
    • 2 Definitions
    • 3 Exposition
    • 4 First Things: Cosmogony
    • 5 Time After Time
    • 6 From Creation To Catastrophe
    • 7 Order Out Of Chaos
    • 8 Traits, Tropes & Themes
    • 9 Macrocosm To Microcosm
    • 10 Astronomical: Theogony
    • 11 Geophysical: Geogony
    • 12 Ethnological: Anthropogony
    • 13 Cosmogonic Causal Chains
    • 14 As Above, So Below
    • 15 Foregone Ages Past
    • 16 Forthcoming Future Ages
    • 17 Second Thoughts
    • 18 But Who's Counting?
    • 19 From Myth To History
    • 20 Cycles Of Recurrence
  • The Jupiter Myth