WEBVTT - The Thing Before the Beginning, part 4 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.239 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:15.840 is Robert. 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.639 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we are back 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:22.160 with the fourth and I think for now final episode 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:25.479 in our series called The Thing Before the Beginning, which 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.720 has been about creation myths, and specifically the question of 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:35.360 what came before the creation in so many of these myths, because, 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:39.479 as we have been discussing throughout the series, most creation 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:44.479 narratives are not a beginning out of absolutely nothing, but 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:49.400 a transformation or ordering of some pre existing world into 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.640 a world that is fit for the beginning of mythic history, 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.280 where now there can be gods and people. If you 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:58.800 haven't heard the previous parts in this series yet, I 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:00.920 should probably go back and listen to those first. But 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:03.880 just briefly, we have looked at a wide range of 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:08.399 creation stories, including, but not limited to, the Chinese story 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:12.800 of Pangu, the ancient Coiled One, the Biblical creation story 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.679 in Genesis One, the Babylonian creation epic known as the 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:20.600 Inima Aleish, the Maori creation story about the children of 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.880 Rungi and Papa, the Aztec ages of the Five suns. 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.800 And then in the last episode we talked briefly about 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:31.759 the creation hymn of the rig Veda, the Egyptian watery 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.360 abyss known as the Nun or the Noon, and the 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:39.520 role of pre creation states in some new religious movements 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:43.600 like scientology and Realianism. And we've come back today to 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:45.240 round out our discussion. 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.640 Yeah, and just a reminder that you know, we've done 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:50.800 four episodes. We've covered a lot of ground, but we 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.760 can't cover all the ground, so you know, we left 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.600 anything out that you think, Oh man, this is this 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.360 is rich subject matter. They should discuss this well right in. 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.000 Let us know what you would like us to come 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.520 back to because just because we're closing out this series 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:08.799 for now doesn't mean we can't come back later. So 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.040 we'll have an email address at the end of this episode, 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:12.920 and that's the best way to get in touch with us. 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.440 We'll have it right now. Contact that stuff to blow 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:17.639 your mind dot com. 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.520 Oh man, that's kind of like the blowing of Gabriel's horn. Though, 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:23.200 I think we have to end the episode now. If 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:25.400 you've said the magic work, you've said it's the end. 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:27.680 I'm sorry. We'll see you next week. 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.320 Yeah, but please write in with your own interesting examples 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.520 of creation stories, especially if they have something kind of 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.720 different to say about what the world was like before creation. 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:44.120 So we haven't looked at any Greek or Roman sources 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:46.840 on creation and pre creation yet, so I thought that 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.920 would be worth taking a brief look at in this episode. 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.639 And one place I wanted to look was the ancient 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.440 Greek poem by Hesiod known as the Theogony. This was 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:04.560 composed sometime in the eighth century BCE, and I bring 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.480 this up only to talk about briefly because Hesiad does 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.320 not go into great detail describing what the world was 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.680 like before creation began. He actually quite famously spends a 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:19.640 lot more time talking about what the muses had to 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.000 say to him, and you know, sort of his relationship 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.840 to this story that he's going to be given by 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.680 the muses more than he spends on the initial moments 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.919 of the describing the creation itself. But when he does 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:36.560 finally get to describing the act of creation, he famously 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:41.760 says that first came chaos, and then after chaos came 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:46.040 wide breasted gy Gya, the embodiment of the earth, the 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:51.040 always safe foundation of the immortals. So there's this contrast 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.360 between chaos and then the establishment of a safe place 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.680 to stand, which is the body of Gaya. And even 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:04.920 this very short characterization is interesting because we have looked 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:07.600 at a lot of different ideas of the chaos that 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.800 existed before the beginning of the world, maybe a dark 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:16.839 water world or an undifferentiated cloud of mist. But here 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:22.160 the word chaos in Greek means a vast hollow, a chasm, 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.479 or a gaping space. And Rob, I think this will 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:27.440 come back to something that you're going to talk about 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:31.120 later in this episode. But in Greek at least this 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.640 term is related to the term for a mundane chasm 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:39.240 or a regular hole in the earth. And interestingly, it's 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:43.719 also linguistically related to the human act of yawning. So 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:46.599 in the Greek sense, when you are sleepy, you yawn 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.479 and you make your mouth into a chasm, that has 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.839 something to do with the initial chaos before the world 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:53.640 was created. 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.160 That's fascinating. I know that, you know, I'm always encountering 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:03.279 descriptions of yawning chasms and so and it almost feels, 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.679 at least in my mind, divorced from the act of yawning, 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.800 like I don't necessarily think about humans yawning such a 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:15.279 mundane thing, right when I'm imagining like the yawning chasm 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:18.279 of darkness or whatever, it happens to be yawning the 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.880 yawning void at the beginning of time. But that connection 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:23.680 is definitely there. 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.000 Yeah, it's kind of interesting because it's like, you know, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:29.200 when you're going towards the land of sleep, that's kind 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.040 of when chaos overtakes your mind. You know, you go 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.960 into this dark space, this dark void, and maybe dreams 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.040 and thoughts are set loose in a very unregulated way. 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.680 There is a kind of chaos of sleep. And so yeah, 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.160 I'm not suggesting that there's any thought like that in 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:48.520 the use of yawning as a verb being related. I 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:50.200 think it has more to do with the opening of 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.400 the mouth, is like the creating of the gap, and. 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.120 It would be the most readily available metaphor to any human. 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:02.040 Yeah, But anyway, this idea of chaos is interesting because 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:07.839 in the narrative here it seems to have connotations of infinity, 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:13.120 maybe a boundlessness and featurelessness, at least until the ground 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.480 of Gaya's body is established, you know, the sound foundation 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.440 of Guya's breast there that everything can stand on but 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.160 under normal conditions. If you think about it, a gap 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.920 or a chasm is usually only defined if it has 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.440 a boundary or if it is between things. It is 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:36.880 a void that exists between other established points. But here 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:40.560 it's not clear if the poet intends to suggest that 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:43.400 there was any boundary or anything for the gap to 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:47.520 be between, like there is no earth until the next 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.920 line of the poem. So as often imagined, this line 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.040 conjures a kind of paradoxical view. It is a gap 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.039 between no points, a whole in nothing. 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.080 I'm just I'm assuming we're not supposed to draw any 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.880 comparison between the idea of a void or a gap 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.640 and cleavage for Guy's breasts, because we have a lot 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.880 of breast related imagery here and we're talking about gaps 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:15.080 and voids. 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.080 No connection, that's fun. I don't know. I haven't seen 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.160 any scholarship to that pot. And I mean, it's just 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:22.600 I only refer to Guy as breast because it's there 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.480 in the poem, and just something's phrased as wide breasted 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:29.120 Guy is the description of where Guy is born. I think. 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.520 So the idea is that in some sense, the earth 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:36.880 is guy's body, and she is characterized as wide breasted. 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.600 I think just meaning like this is a broad, great 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:41.360 body that we can all stand upon. 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.160 Okay, all right, you know these sorts of questions are 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:46.320 worth thinking about because you know, we're going to come 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:47.960 back in my section later and we're going to get 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.400 back to the ideas of giant bodies of primordial beings 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:55.720 doing strange things. So you know, all of this is 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:56.280 fair game. 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:01.560 So next, I want to look at the more extensive 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:07.560 account of pre creation and what creation means in the Metamorphoses. 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:10.680 So this will bring us into the Roman period to 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.000 the Roman poet Avid, who lived in the first century 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:19.120 BCE to the first century CE. Avid deals extensively with 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.440 creation and pre creation in this narrative poem in the Metamorphoses. 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:26.880 So the poem is an interesting contrast to he see 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:29.040 it in a number of ways, most of all in 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:33.880 that it describes the pre creation state in great detail 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:39.200 and also with what I would call somewhat negative connotations. 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.720 So I'm going to read directly from the Metamorphoses. This 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.520 is going to be from book one, and I decided 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.400 to use Anthony S. Klein's prose translation. I was originally 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:52.600 looking at Rolf Humphrey's translation because I like that, but 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.200 I think this will be better because this translation is 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.000 more concerned with just the literal sense and less with 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:01.680 the poetics. Some of the poetry is going to be 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:03.920 lost here, but this is trying to capture the literal 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.640 meaning of the poem. So first Avid says that he's 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.400 going to he gives a short introduction and says he's 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.720 going to be talking about bodies changed into new forms. 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:15.880 That's a lot of what the metamorphoses is. You know, 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:22.800 these stories of magical transformations of humans into natural phenomenaic 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.800 rivers and rocks and trees, transformation of humans into animals 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.400 and all kinds of things like that, And there's often 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.600 a lesson to be learned in these transformations. But coming 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:38.160 to the creation narrative, Avid writes, before there was earth 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:42.720 or sea or the sky that covers everything, nature appeared 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.760 the same throughout the whole world, what we call chaos, 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:53.439 a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined, 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:59.320 discordant atoms of things confused in the one place, there 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.199 was no tie. And yet shining his light on the world, 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:06.160 or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth, 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:10.000 hovering and surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:14.680 watery amftrity, stretching out her arms along the vast shores 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.480 of the world. Though there was land and sea and air, 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:24.560 it was unstable land, unswimmable water, air, needing light. Nothing 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:29.280 retained its shape. One thing obstructed another because in the 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:34.440 one body, cold fought with heat, moist with dry, soft 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:39.600 with hard, and weight with weightless things. So I think 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.720 that's a very interesting way of describing this precreation state, 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:48.720 that there are already all these things and in the 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.920 sense they have their own nature. There is land, there 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.320 is air, there is water, and they're all different things. 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.000 But they're also all totally mingled together in a way 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:04.760 that none of them can really be themselves, and thus 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:09.280 they are constantly fighting one another. They are in perpetual conflict. 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:12.320 Hmmm. Yeah, this is fascinating to think about it, especially 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.080 comparing it to some of the Chinese concepts we talked about, 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:19.360 because in a similar sense, we have extremes that have 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.800 not been separated yet, but they're not but they're already 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.640 like kind of like tangled up in opposition to each other. Yeah, 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.240 So you know, some some different philosophies going on here, 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:32.199 but some of the same concepts in play. 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:37.360 Yeah, it's not a single, undifferentiated mass. There are differences 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.360 within it, but the differences are not allowed to be separate. Instead, 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:46.040 the differences are forced together and thus forced into conflict. 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:49.800 And so so nothing. You know that nothing can be 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.560 done really, because there are no differences that allow things 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:56.160 to be done to them. You know. So all the 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.760 water is mixed with the land, and the air is 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.559 mixed with the water, and you have moist fighting dry, 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:08.040 and soft fighting hard and all that. Anyway, the poem continues, 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:11.600 this conflict was ended by a god and a greater 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.560 order of nature, since he split off the earth from 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.120 the sky and the sea from the land, and divided 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.880 the transparent heavens from the dense air. When he had 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.959 disentangled the elements and freed them from the obscure mass, 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:31.960 he fixed them in separate spaces in harmonious peace. The 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:36.200 weightless fire that forms the heavens darted upwards to make 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:40.160 its home in the furthest heights. Next came air in 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:44.760 lightness and place. Earth heavier than either of these, drew 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.600 down the largest elements and was compressed by its own weight, 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:52.960 the surrounding water took up the last space and enclosed 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:54.079 the solid world. 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.199 Oh wow, I mean even in this translation is it's 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:01.080 pretty beautiful and haunting. I love it. 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:05.720 Yeah, totally. And so from here the creation continues. So 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:10.880 you get further descriptions of what this nameless god does 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.000 to establish different sort of categories or zones of earth. 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:18.640 You get these different zones of earth and sea. You 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:22.360 get the establishment of the four winds, and then eventually 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.120 you get the creation of human beings, you know, with 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.840 reason to rule over this. And in a way, there's 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:32.120 a sense that the creation of human beings, which possess reason, 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.079 is its own kind of imposition of order onto the world, 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.400 if that makes any sense, Because now there is something, 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:41.360 there is some other type of being to inhabit the 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.080 world and to think about it, and thus by thinking 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.960 about it can speak of it and create categories and 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:50.320 impose a new kind of order and order of meaning. 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.160 But anyway, I thought this was interesting in a number 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.040 of ways. So a few things I want to talk 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:01.679 about here. One is the idea that the initial chaos 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:07.600 not only is represented as undifferentiated mass and matter, like 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:11.320 in some other examples, we've talked about, but here the 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.600 elements and principles within the combined mass are at war 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.560 with one another because they are mixed, so that has 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.600 naturally very bad connotations. You know, we've talked about the 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:28.200 different kind of valances of these pre creation states. That 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:31.040 there are some stories where the pre created world has 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.240 some nice things about it, like in the Maori story 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:36.920 where it's a loving embrace, you know, and so the 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.480 younger beings, the children of the Sky Father and the 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.760 Earth Mother are crushed in between them. So that's not 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.280 so great for them, but for the Sky Father and 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:48.960 the Earth Mother it is there is like love in 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.920 this pre creation state. It sounds cozy, it sounds nice. 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:54.440 Yeah, also reminds me of some of these examples we've 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:57.080 looked at where the pre creation state is like a 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:01.800 place of renewal. So there is something there's a lot 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:05.200 of potentiality there and therefore, you know, even if it 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.520 is stagnant and unformed and even not even you know, 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.360 maybe not even like fully matter, yet it has all 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:13.200 of that potential. 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.240 Yeah, that's right. But I think in contrast here you 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:20.720 can say the the connotations of this pre created state 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:24.480 are pretty negative. Now you might say that Avid ends 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:28.480 up showing some good things about chaos too, because later, 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:33.480 you know, you might say that chaos creates opportunities. Chaos 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:37.000 is you know, it means like change and transformation, which 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.720 leads to what you might call creative destruction, or you know, 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:45.040 creates opportunities for new things to happen. But at least 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.400 the majority of the connotations I would say are negative. 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.080 And so so these things are at war because they're mixed. 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:55.840 And then you have this God who comes and imposes order. 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.920 The God is not named, though it could be identified 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:03.520 with the principle call nature. The unnamed God imposes order 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.480 by separating things. So not only does the act of 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:14.080 separating things establish and stabilize categories, this also, it explicitly says, 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:18.520 brings peace. The opposing classes of matter are no longer 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.560 fighting with one another. So it's like a reduction in 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.760 violence because the categories are created and things are separated. 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.040 And I think that's an interesting thing to keep in 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:33.920 mind here. The imposition of distinctions in categories in Avid's 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.240 view of creation is not only the establishment of order, 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.720 but also the establishment of peace, an end of a 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:41.880 kind of violence. 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:48.359 Fascinating. Yeah, And I love these various hints and descriptions 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:50.360 that we get concerning just the idea that there's some 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.680 sort of emergence that takes place. Yeah, you know, sometimes 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.360 it's more expressly stated, other times it's you know, we 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.120 can sort of draw that out of the writing a bit. 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:03.160 But you know, this idea that consciousness of some form, 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:07.760 some sort of super consciousness eventually just kind of manifests 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.400 out of a system that is maybe growing a little 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:11.280 bit more complex. 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:15.280 Oh yeah, that's interesting too. You're relating that to the 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:17.320 idea of like the god being unnamed. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.520 Yeah, absolutely, like an unnamed god that you know, it 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:24.920 is maybe just entirely composed of the will to separate, 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:27.560 maybe just two things, but that will kind of like 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:30.879 emerges out of the out of the chaos of all 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.400 of this, and maybe that's its only act, and then 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:35.800 it passes away or becomes something else. I don't know. 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.680 So here order is presented, I think as a clear 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:46.160 improvement on the disorder that came before. But another interesting 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:49.479 thing about Avid's view is what happens in the rest 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.280 of the poem, all of Avid's story of the history 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:58.560 of the gods in humanity after this initial act of creation, 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:05.679 scholars have noted that throughout the Metamorphoses, Avid repeatedly depicts 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:10.399 a tendency of the world to slide back toward the 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:15.719 initial chaos. In other words, the chaos and the state 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:20.440 of material war in which the world began is not gone. 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.399 That's not just in the past. In fact, this is 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:25.960 recalling a discussion we had in the last episode about 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:29.960 the Egyptian creation, a pre creation state, that there's a 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:35.320 kind of lingering presence of this chaotic pre created world, 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.520 these chaotic waters. It's sort of a place you can 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:41.880 go back to, and also a principle that creeps in 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.159 on our orderly reality. I think you could say very 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:49.800 much the same is true in Avid's view of the world. Chaos, Yeah, 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:54.560 it's not gone. It is something more like entropy. It 0:18:54.640 --> 0:19:01.080 is temporarily held back by organizational efforts, and multiple points 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:06.320 in avid story, chaos strikes out and asserts itself again, 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:11.080 and so you can get big, major disastrous instances of this, 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:15.280 like Jupiter's flood. There's a flood narrative in the Metamorphoses 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.199 in which you know, the great god Jupiter sends a 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:22.800 floods wipes out one age of humanity, and this if 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.600 you think about it represents a remingling of land and sea. 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:29.119 You know, we already did the work of establishing that 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:32.320 order of separating land and sea they're different. Now, well 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.240 I'm going to mix them all up again. So it's 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:38.800 like we're losing progress, We're going back toward that chaotic 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:43.920 pre ordering state. And then you could also view throughout 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:48.720 the poem the metamorphoses themselves the central kind of thing 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.320 in the poem, where you'll have a character who gets 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.680 transformed into a tree, or a character who gets transformed 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:59.760 into a river or an animal or something. These metamorphoses 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:05.080 them are violations of category distinctions, and so you could 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:09.600 view them as undoing the careful work of separating things 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.159 that gives us the order we know. So it is 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.919 a story in which the chaos that existed before the 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.080 ordering of the world is not gone. It's a principle 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:23.480 that's always creeping back in. It's like the growth of weeds. 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.199 I feel like that's a metaphor that's come up on 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.040 the show several times recently, but I think it fits here. 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:33.600 It's always trying to creep back in and requires effort 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.840 full reassertion of orderly principles and distinctions in order to 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:39.879 keep everything separate and at peace. 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:44.879 Yeah yeah, especially on the part of human practitioners of 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:46.400 religions and rituals. 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:47.919 Yeah yeah. 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.520 I also love this idea that all of the divine 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:56.800 acts could maybe be loosely divided into acts of acts 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.960 of division and separation and acts of combination and convergence. 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.199 Oh yeah, that's interesting too. And you know, the acts 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:09.600 of the acts of mingling and remixing and thus re establishing, 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:13.920 you know, creating new insertions of chaos. I think they're 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.520 not always bad because, as I mentioned earlier, like they're 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:21.160 usually bad for the person they're happening to in the story, 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:26.760 but they also create these interesting lessons and transformation points. 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:30.159 So I don't know if Avid would say that the 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.280 chaos and the mixing is always one hundred percent bad, 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:35.480 but it seems generally less preferable. 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:40.720 Yeah. Yeah, it's a mashup. You know. Mashups can be great. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.200 They can be a little rough around the edges, and 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:45.679 you know, and then there's a how to and how 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:47.760 do the original artists feel about the combination? 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:58.840 Yeah. 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.200 Now, for our next section here, let's move on into 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.720 Norse mythology. We're going to be talking about something known 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:12.360 as the Ganunga gap. This is pretty this is pretty interesting, 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:16.960 and this is basically a pre creation state. And for 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.120 this topic I turned to Before the Creation in Old 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:25.000 Norse Mythology, Empty Abyss or Crowded Place by Daniel Sofborg, 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:30.280 professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Tartu, published 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:33.639 in the Abyss as a Concept for cultural theory in 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:34.640 twenty twenty four. 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:38.520 I assume that's a book. Yes, yes, okay, that would 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:40.040 be a really focused journal. 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:42.960 Yeah, yeah, this is the book, and I have not 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:45.840 read the rest of the book, but I read this article. 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:49.560 This one is publicly available if you look around in 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:54.440 the usual places to get your academic papers. 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:53.080 And. 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:58.760 Sodborg's work is also available elsewhere. But this is going 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:03.640 to concerns specifically. It's going to concern a few different 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:07.160 sources for Norse mythology. But one of the main things 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:09.679 he's talking about here is the eedic poem known as 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:16.200 the Voluspa. So this is usually dated to pre Christian 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:22.280 Pagan tenth century Norse culture, and it concerns a serious 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:27.000 diviner by the name of Volva. And in this bit 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:29.359 I'm about to read she is supposedly speaking to the 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:32.560 god Odin as well as to other gods and human 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:36.240 beings as well. So in translation it goes like this. 0:23:36.800 --> 0:23:39.920 It was at the beginning of time when nothing was. 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:44.080 Sand was not nor sea, nor cool waves. Earth did 0:23:44.119 --> 0:23:48.359 not exist, nor heaven on high. The mighty gap was 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:53.480 and this is gap var ginnega. This is reference in 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:56.960 gnaka gap. So we'll see like different versions of that, 0:23:57.560 --> 0:24:00.199 but not growth. So again the mighty gap was, but 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:06.760 not growth. So the character Volva here is telling us 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:11.960 that prior to creation, we didn't have sand, we didn't 0:24:11.960 --> 0:24:13.760 have sea, we didn't have waves, we didn't have earth, 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:17.439 we didn't have heaven. All we had was a vast gap. 0:24:18.480 --> 0:24:20.960 It brings us back very much to this thing we 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:22.480 talked about with he Sid Yeah. 0:24:22.320 --> 0:24:26.760 Yeah, and so Sabborg, as he details in this paper. 0:24:27.119 --> 0:24:30.359 The nature of this gap has long been a matter 0:24:30.440 --> 0:24:33.280 of linguistic debate. Depending on how you tease a part 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:36.919 of the different translations, it might mean yawning void. It 0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:41.800 might mean an enormous, mighty void or a magical power 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:45.040 filled void. With both of these these these latter two 0:24:45.400 --> 0:24:50.280 translations certainly implying like the potentiality of that void like 0:24:50.320 --> 0:24:53.760