MYTHS OF CREATION
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5. Time After Time
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"History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man."
―P. B. Shelley |
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Although these early narratives of cosmic origins varied in composition and complexity, according to the age and relative longevity of a resident culture’s particular place and time, a type of seemingly ‘cyclical’ or periodically recurring Cosmogony persisted in remaining the leading and most commonly established mythological theme in known antiquity; — such that, in most peoples’ mythic histories, Creation was seen as a perpetually ongoing process of development unfolding thro multiple phases of more or less stable stasis, now and then interspersed with intermittent intervals of emergent novelty and widespread change. — Unlike today’s faith in world history’s slow and steady evolutionary progression towards ever-greater degrees of technological progress and cultural sophistication, however, the developmental cosmogonic process chronicled in traditional Myths of Creation was never perceived as being uneventful or uniformly continuous whatsoever, but was rather consistently portrayed as proceeding by distinctly discontinuous steps or stages from the very start. |