WEBVTT - The Thing Before the Beginning, part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:15.280 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is. 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:18.360 Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick, and we are 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:21.960 returning today with the second part in our series about 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:27.080 worlds before Creation. The idea behind this series is that 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.480 very often when we think about a creation myth or 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:37.240 a creation story, we imagine what's called a creation ex nihilo. 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.640 So there is nothing, and then suddenly, for some reason 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.280 or by some act, a world is brought into being. 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:48.839 So nothing existed before. Now there's a world. But the 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.600 interesting thing is that if you start really looking at 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.200 creation stories from all around the world, it seems to 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.880 me that very few of them actually fit this description. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.919 And instead of being accounts of how the raw substance 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:08.400 of the universe was brought into existence, what you most 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.680 often get instead is a before and after story where 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:17.640 a world of some kind already exists, usually in some 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:23.040 kind of static or chaotic state, and then something happens 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:29.319 which introduces distinctions and differences and somehow orders this pre 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.680 existing world in such a way that characters can now 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:38.080 exist and events can take place within it. And I 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.280 realized that I've talked on the show plenty of times 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:47.600 before about being attracted to imagery of weird wastelands and dark, 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.480 unpopulated places. I don't know how unique I am in this. 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.840 Maybe basically everybody thinks this is interesting, but I don't know, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.320 but it feels kind of personal to me that, for 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:01.120 whatever reason, I have never been able to forget about 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.480 that chapter in the Time Machine or the time Traveler 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:08.080 goes millions of years into the future and sees this desolate, 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.240 withering earth under the red sun and no people in it, 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.400 just these crab monsters and stuff. Or the way I 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.920 was talking in the last episode about being really haunted 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.079 by that very short description at the beginning of the 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.840 Book of Genesis of the dark, the dark deep waters 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:27.799 in the wind of God rushing above them. 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:30.320 Here's another one for you, since we're about to come 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.280 up on Alien Day, but the Service of the Planet 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:34.519 LV four twenty six. 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.320 Oh yeah, yeah, that's always That's always been one of 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:39.280 my favorite parts of the movie, when they go down 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:43.720 to the planet, the empty wastelands that feel like a 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.800 pre created or pre ordered world. I think maybe this 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.880 even connects to something we've dwelt on a lot in 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:56.760 Weird House cinema episodes, these empty places scenes in movies 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.000 which happened. I don't know, this has come up many times. 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:02.680 I'm thinking of our episodes on Night of the comment 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.320 just recently the Last Man on Earth with Fincent Price. 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:09.400 For some reason, that is just a really easy way 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.760 to get my attention. I'm into this the waste land 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:16.799 feeling or the empty world. So, in keeping with that 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:21.560 tradition of fascination, I got very interested in talking about 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:27.280 images from these creation stories of what the world is 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:31.480 like before the creation event takes place. So that's what 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:33.560 we've been talking about in the last episode, and we'll 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.800 continue in this one creation narratives, but also with the 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.600 special focus on what the world was like before the 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:44.440 so called beginning and what kind of meaning or understanding 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:49.280 these pre creation worlds imply. So for a brief refresher 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.360 on the last episode, we talked about the Biblical creation 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.240 narrative in the Book of Genesis, which is often understood 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.600 to be an example of a creation story that actually 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.360 is creation ex nihilo. It's taken as an account of 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.120 like the creation of the raw substance of reality, but 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.000 an interesting and I think to a lot of people. 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:14.480 Surprising thing is that this is almost certainly not the 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.680 intention of the original text. Most scholars today who look 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.080 at the Hebrew of Genesis one tend to agree that 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.440 it is actually not a tale of raw creation, but 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:30.640 a story in which God orders and furnishes a pre existing, 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.440 chaotic world. So this pre existing world is described as 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.560 a world of darkness and deep waters, you know, the 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:40.520 spirit of God hovering over the water. So it is 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.479 a dark and chaotic kind of empty place, but it 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.080 is a place. There's something there, there's water, there's you know, 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.719 this wind of God, and we talked about that at 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:55.120 some length. We also talked about interesting patterns that appear 0:04:55.120 --> 0:05:00.000 in multiple creation stories, often themes of darkness or undiffer 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:05.039 differentiated masses of fluid of some kind existing in the 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:09.520 world before, and creation acts or ordering acts that involve 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:13.920 the separation of substances into discrete categories. I think that's 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:18.320 a really interesting trend. We also talked about the pre 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:21.360 creation world described in the opening lines of the Inuma 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.440 a Leash, or the Babylonian epic of Creation, which is 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.760 characterized mainly by the things of the world like the 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:31.480 skies and the earth, being nameless, and I thought this 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:35.440 hinted at a really interesting type of ontology in some 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:40.320 ancient Mesopotamian thinking, where in some sense things begin to 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.640 exist when they are given names and destinies, so a 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:48.680 concept of existence that is at some level mediated by 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:53.640 human recognition and salience, but also I think related to 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.480 the concept you find all over ancient Ear Eastern thinking, 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:02.039 where language itself has some kind of manifestation power to 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.680 bring reality into existence. To bring it back to the 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.600 Biblical creation narrative. In that narrative, God speaks things into 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.800 existence by saying their names. But you also see this, 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.600 for example, in ancient Egyptian Heca magic, where speaking or 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:19.760 writing the names of things can manifest them in reality. 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:23.640 Another interesting thing I was reflecting on about the anuma 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:25.760 Aleish creation story that I think is going to be 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:29.400 relevant to one of our major topics today is that 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:34.000 you could legitimately mark multiple places in the story as 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.960 the moment of creation. Right, So you could select the 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:40.919 birth of the first gods, after the mingling of the 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.120 different kinds of water. You could say, well, that's the 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.880 moment of creation. Or you could select the later creation 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.760 by combat story where the younger god Marduke kills the 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.400 primordial being of saltwater, Tiamot chops up her body like 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.520 a fish, and then makes the world we live in 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.240 out of it? Which part is the creation? And I 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.640 guess in different ways they're both creation events or both 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:08.640 reordering events. And I think that that's an interesting thing 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:10.880 to reflect on. People don't often think about it that way, 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:14.040 that there can be multiple creations occurring sequentially. 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:16.400 I keep and I'm going to come back to this 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.960 idea again. I keep thinking about films and sequential films 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.120 and in some of these discussions, and it's kind of 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:26.200 like thinking about the Friday the Thirteenth franchise. Yes, there's 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:29.400 a definite first film, but which is the first film 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:31.680 that really sets the tone for what we think of 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:33.080 as Friday the thirteenth. 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.880 That's very true. Yes, So when people think about a 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.360 Friday the Thirteenth movie, the thing they're thinking about the 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:44.000 most common types of imagery and patterns don't really appear 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.080 until maybe the third movie, and I would argue don't 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.480 really get strengthened until the fourth movie. So yeah, that 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.080 is very interesting. It's like they're all derivative of the 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:57.600 first one, but the first one doesn't have the key 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:03.360 features of the people think of about the series. Yeah, yeah, Anyway, 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.720 in the previous episode, we also talked briefly about parallels 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:11.600 in science. Obviously, religious and cultural creation stories are a 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:15.240 very different type of project from physics based cosmology, so 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.360 we weren't trying to say, like, you know, which of 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.680 the creation narratives gets the science right. I don't think 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.320 that's a very useful project, but at least for some grounding. 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.360 We talked about scientific cosmology and about how we don't 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.880 really know what, if anything, happened before the before the 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.600 beginning of the Big Bang, or more precisely, before the 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.640 cosmic inflation. There are some speculative models that could be 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:43.600 candidates for a physics based world before, and these have 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.480 over the years included things like a cyclically expanding and 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.560 then contracting universe, or the idea that we are some 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:54.480 kind of bubble that emerges from a pre existing universe 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.240 and maybe this kind of renucleation just happens infinitely. But 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.400 we don't have direct evidence for these types of hypotheses 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.040 at present. The best you can do for a world 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:08.600 before in physics is create a model that is mathematically 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:11.680 consistent with the theories and observations we already have, but 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.400 it's not going to be There's not really a way 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.880 to confirm it with direct observations, at least as far 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.040 as we know. Finally, we also talked about a really 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.960 interesting creation narrative appearing in some Chinese traditions, which was 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:29.000 the story of Pengu, or the ancient coiled one, who 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:33.840 forms inside a cosmic egg within a cloud of chaotic vapor, 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:38.040 then hatches, and in some tellings, separates the earth from 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:40.679 the sky, sometimes with an axe, and then stands as 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:44.800 a pillar holding the sky up from the earth. Another 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.199 interesting tale of creation by separation. We also talked about 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.000 versions of the Pengo story, which include the Taoist and 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.679 Neo confusion concept of the wouji. And I'm sorry if 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.040 I'm pronouncing that wrong, Rob you brought up last time. 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.439 How with the inflection that means something totally different, or 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.800 it means like nonsense or something, But in the way 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.160 I was trying to say it, it is the formless 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:12.880 state of existence before creation, so before the egg of Pegu. 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.160 In these tellings with the wuci, it's the state you 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:21.040 might characterize as limitless potential for becoming that is actually 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:22.160 nothing in itself. 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.760 Yeah. Yeah, and this, and as in some of the 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.439 other concepts we've discussed in specific stories, they're going to 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:32.680 keep coming up again because, as we discussed there, there's 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:36.920 certain various tropes that are popular in understanding and making 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:41.040 sense of the origins of the world or the universe, 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:53.160 and we see these reoccurring with different flavors. 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:55.600 So let's see, Rob, do you mind if we kick 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:58.320 things off today by looking at one of my examples here? 0:10:58.600 --> 0:10:59.400 Yeah, let's do it. 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:04.559 So. One of the most beautiful and interesting creation narratives 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:06.840 I have come across while reading a bunch of them 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:12.600 for this series is the Maori creation story. Now, with 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.040 this one especially, this will be true actually of a 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:16.840 lot of the things we talk about, but with this 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.240 one especially, it is important to flag that there is 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:24.080 not one canonical text or telling of this story. There 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.079 are a bunch of circulating versions which reflect both regional 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:33.600 and tribal variations, and then variations unique to individual storytellers. 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.840 So whatever version of the story you read or that 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.600 I tell will not be able to be representative of 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.040 all of them. But I'm going to try to capture 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.680 some common themes that appear in multiple tellings, with the 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.040 caveat that this is not the only nor the authoritative 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:50.120 version of the story. 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:52.880 Yeah. As we've discussed before a lot of times, the 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.040 idea of canon when it comes to mythology is even 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.200 in Western traditions, kind of an illusion. And then in 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:04.640 Western and now analysis of other cultures is also either 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:08.520 artificial or the product like colonial interference. 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:11.559 Yeah, or just the product of textualization events. This come 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.440 up in the last episode two that often the version 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:16.719 of a story we start to think of as the 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:21.120 definitive or canonical version is just the version that happened 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:23.880 to get put into print first, or happen to be 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:28.160 widely distributed in print first. Yeah, which might not have 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:33.440 any more purchase on being the original tradition or the 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:38.080 most widespread tradition among the original people who believed it. 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:41.160 It's just the happenstance that it's the one that's in 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:41.600 a book. 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:43.480 Yeah. Yeah. And we see this in the Greek tradition, 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:46.040 for example, There'll be like a key text that ends 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.040 up covering everything, and it is popular and it is 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.000 a text that survives and continues to continues to resonate 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:54.400 culturally for ages to come. 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.520 Exactly. So in the context of Greek and Roman myths, 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.960 we're very often going to be thinking of the way 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:05.440 Avid tells it, or the way that Hesiod tells it, 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:10.359 or something like that. Anyway, So there is one particular 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:14.120 account of the Maori creation story that's from an older 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.560 book that I just wanted to mention because in one 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.120 case it's the only source I found of a detail 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.400 that I wanted to flag later. So this older book 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.920 is called, in its translated form, Polynesian Mythology and Ancient 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.600 Traditional History of the New Zealand Race as furnished by 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:34.400 their priests and chiefs. This was first published in eighteen 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:38.560 fifty five, traditionally credited to the colonial administrator George Gray, 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.240 but from what I've read, it was in reality significantly 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.800 the work of a writer and Maori tribal leader named 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.800 tay Rungi Kaheke, who has long been celebrated for his 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.880 work in recording and translating Maori cultural traditions. And I 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.920 apologize in advance for any pronunciations that I don't get 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.120 quite right here. I'm doing my best based on the 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:02.960 guidelines that I could find online, so I hope I 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:08.160 get reasonably close so the story goes like this, long ago, 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:14.560 the world was in darkness. The Skyfather Rungi Nui and 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.440 or sometimes just shortened as Rungi Rungi Nui or Rungi 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:23.520 and the Earth Mother Papa Tuanuku or just Papa were 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:28.080 pressed against one another in a loving embrace. So Skyfather 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.480 Rungi and Earth Mother Papa, they're hugging. They're hugging so 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:36.480 tight that no light could penetrate between their bodies. But 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.600 there was not nothing between their bodies. There was something 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:44.160 between the Earth and the sky. It was the dwelling 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.560 place of their children, the offspring of their union. So 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.680 the children of the Sky Father and the Earth Mother 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:56.800 lived smothered in darkness with no space to move. Now, 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:00.880 another quick terminology note, because I initially got confused reading 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.880 about this. Sometimes these children of the Sky Father and 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:08.680 the Earth Mother, these younger beings, are translated as gods 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.360 in English, and sometimes they're translated as if they are 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:16.720 humans or people, or with words usually applied to humans 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.119 like fathers. From what I could tell, the most culturally 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:24.000 appropriate term is going to be the Maori term atua, 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.000 which means a kind of supernatural ancestral being. So that's 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.320 what I'm going to try to use here. So again 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.880 we've got Rungi, the sky father, and Papa, the earth mother, 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:38.360 and they're in this tight embrace, and the children the atuas, 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:41.800 are between them. And what happens next varies by telling, 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:45.080 but in some versions, one of the younger beings, one 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.760 of the Atua, suggests that they kill their parents, or 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.320 they kill their skyfather Rungi, so that they might break 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.320 free of the dark embrace and have both light and 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.880 room to move. But then in response another one of 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:02.960 the atuas, this one named tne Matua or just Taune. 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:07.280 This is the Attua of the forests and of birds 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.560 and insects and beings that dwell in the forest so 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:14.000 forests and the creatures that dwell there. Tane says he 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.080 has a better idea. They will not harm their mother 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:21.320 and father, but instead cleave them apart. So they shall 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:25.360 push their father far away up above, and the children 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:29.600 themselves will remain below, close to their mother who nursed them. 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.440 And all of the younger beings agree to this plan 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:37.680 except for one. There is one of the the Atua 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:42.800 named Tafiri Matea, or the Atua of wind and storms, 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.120 who is close to his sky father and fearce separation 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:46.760 from him. 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.880 Okay, so basically we're dealing with the primordial reverse parent trap. 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:54.080 Oh that's interesting. Yes, so they're trying to get their 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.720 parents apart because they I mean, it's hard to blame them. 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.400 They they're like totally crushed in between them. The embrace 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:03.280 is so tight. But yes, yes, instead of instead, instead 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:05.080 of setting them up there trying to get them apart. 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.199 But it's an impossible job, it seems, because Rungi and 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:12.960 Papa are so vast. How can their embrace be broken? 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:18.280 So all of the younger atua take turns trying, but 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:22.200 eventually the stories often narrate them one by one, each 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.480 trying to separate the mother and father in their embrace, 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:30.040 but they can't do it. Eventually, only Tanae is able 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:33.280 to drive them apart, and in one telling I read 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.280 this is the telling from the eighteen fifty five book. 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.400 The way he accomplishes this is by inverting his body. 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:44.520 He plants his head head upon the body of the 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:47.560 earth mother so on the ground, and then pushes his 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:52.600 skyfather away with his feet and powerful legs, and in 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:57.399 driving Rungi and Papa apart, Tane lets light into the 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:02.480 world and is thus comes to be associated with light. 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:06.439 He's sort of God or the Attua of the forests, 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.159 but also in a way of light and in letting 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.199 the light in this readies the world for the creation 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:17.040 of humankind and the beginning of history. And in some 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:21.080 tellings it is Tane himself who leads to the creation 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:25.760 of humankind, because he creates the first woman named hine 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.919 A Hue by forming her from the earth. So he 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:33.000 takes the soil of the body of his mother, of 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:37.399 the earth mother, and then breathes life into the form 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:40.560 of the new woman he has made by breathing into 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:44.520 her nostrils, and then together with her, Tane becomes the 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.879 ancestor of humankind. Though I think the actual story is 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:51.640 more convoluted. There are some steps involved, but they give 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.800 rise to humankind down the road. But there are some 0:18:55.920 --> 0:19:01.240 interesting consequences of this separation. So after the separation, Rungi 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.560 and Papa are in a state of grief about being 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:09.160 torn apart because they were in love, you know, and 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:13.080 now they're separated from one another, and that grief continues 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:17.280 until this day. So Rangi cries for his beloved wife 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:22.080 and his tears become the rain. Meanwhile, Papa cries and 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:27.200 her tears become mists and fog. Papa also is sometimes 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:31.919 depicted as being pregnant with another atua or having a 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:35.840 younger atua, either at her breast or inside her. That 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.280 younger atua is I think the youngest of this generation 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:44.080 between them, and is named ru Ru Almoko. And this 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:48.280 younger being embodies earthquakes. So the rumbling from deep inside 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.840 the earth is this younger or possibly unborn god stirring 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:56.600 within the Earth Mother. Another consequence is to remember the 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:01.960 dissenting brother, the Tafiri Mati, the only one who did 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:06.040 not want the sky father Rangi pushed away. In some tellings, 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:09.320 he goes up to the sky to join his father 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:14.159 after the separation, and as the embodiment of wind and storms, 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.439 he batters the world below as a form of revenge 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:23.080 or punishment. Also, in some versions of the story, Tane, 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.560 as the guardian and embodiment of forests, is said to 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:30.280 have clothed his earth mother with trees, either to hide 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:33.000 her nakedness or to comfort her in the grief of 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:46.439 her separation. So there are a lot of things I 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:51.240 find really interesting about this story. One is that it 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:55.840 frames the ordering of the present world not as an 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.720 inevitable prelude to anything of value happening. You get that 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.720 since in some of these other creation narratives, where it's 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.199 like the creation story is what had to happen for 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.560 anything interesting or worthwhile to take place, it's not really 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:14.240 like that here. Instead, this story frames it as a 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:19.959 as the victory of one divine party's interests over another's, 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:25.520 and the losing parties continue to exist. So Skyfather and 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:30.880 Earth Mother are perpetually thwarted and held apart from their embrace, 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:32.919 but they still want each other, and they weep for 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:38.440 each other. And the Atua of storms is constantly in reaction, 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.000 is whipping the earth with these with these tempests, in 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:46.320 a rage for his father being driven away. Another thing 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:50.480 that I like and find interesting about this story is 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:56.520 that in the narrative, the world before is not depicted 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:00.399 as a bad or worthless place, at least least not 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.280 from every perspective. Granted, from some perspectives in the story, 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:07.280 it's not so great, Like the cramped darkness is certainly 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:11.920 not appealing to Dutane and his brothers, but this pre 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:18.480 creation state is not the frightening chaos of nameless, churning 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:20.960 dark waters that we get in some of the stories 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:26.680 we've talked about, like it is, it is not necessarily bad, 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:29.840 and it is not nothingness. At least from Papa and 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:35.840 Rangey's perspective, this primordial state is comfort and love. Isn't 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.760 that kind of interesting. It's like it's an embrace so 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.600 complete that not even light can pass through it, and 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:46.359 thus the ordering of the world for human habitation is 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:49.200 actually the shattering of a loving embrace. 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:55.560 Yeah, that's fascinating. It's like this like a suffocating togetherness, 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.760 Like it's not you know, it's it's certainly not evil. 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:01.920 It may it even sounds like quite good, quite comforting, 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:05.560 but it leaves no room for the development of other things. 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.720 Yeah. Yeah, this does imply something kind of profound to me. 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:13.959 And maybe this thought is not fully formed, but I 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:16.480 was thinking about how there is a sense in which 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:22.080 you can view human life as that which begins when 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.639 perfect love and comfort is denied and you have to 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:30.480 go searching for something to fill the gap. But coming 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:33.960 back to that point of contrast, I mean this highlighted 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:36.119 for me something I don't think I had thought about 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.879 as much in the last episode was how you know, 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:45.479 there's always room for kind of misinterpretation or you know, 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:49.000 reading of attitudes into these ancient stories that maybe the 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:51.439 people who believed in them wouldn't have had. But at 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.280 least as far as I can infer from the texts 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:56.919 that are passed down in a lot of these ancient 0:23:57.000 --> 0:24:00.600 like especially the Mesopotamian narratives, like that really does seem 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:03.560 to me like the people who believed this thought the 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:06.960 pre creation state was kind of a bad place, Like 0:24:07.040 --> 0:24:09.320 it feels like before the world was made, it was 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:13.640 not a good scene, not good. It was like a dangerous, frightening, 0:24:14.640 --> 0:24:19.119 poisonous kind of void of meaning and history, and that 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:23.359 finally some order is brought into it in which good 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:24.359 things can happen. 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:27.639 Yeah, that is a fascinating point. It'll be it'll be 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:30.040 fun to compare this story too, to the next one 0:24:30.080 --> 0:24:33.560 we get into and trying to think about its primordial 0:24:33.640 --> 0:24:35.200 state in comparison to this one. 0:24:35.560 --> 0:24:38.440 Yeah, well maybe we can go right onto that now, 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:40.320 because that's all I've got for now in the Maori 0:24:40.400 --> 0:24:42.760 creation narrative. But I really like that one. I'm gonna 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:43.760 be thinking about it a lot. 0:24:44.920 --> 0:24:48.280 Yeah, that's The great thing about these different creation accounts, 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:52.080 emergence accounts, if you will, they they're they're they're very 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.040 thought provoking. They make you think about the texture of 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:58.639 reality in our lives, uh, you know, presumably in the 0:24:58.680 --> 0:25:03.200 same way that they made ancient people's think about these questions, 0:25:03.760 --> 0:25:06.480 because these are not new questions either, the questions that 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:11.600 humans have been asking, you know, since the dawn of history. 0:25:11.720 --> 0:25:17.200