In the beginning...(Two eggcellent stories)

    I thought a good place to start my teachings section, would be with the beginning. That is, the beginning of the world or universe. Every ancient culture had their own creation myth. And heck, we even have our own creation myths today (aka: Big Bang Theory), which of course is based on modern scientific understanding, though nonetheless is still a creation myth. While each culture's creation story is unique, they also shared some common elements. For example, both in the Japanese and Greek creation stories, the world is born from an egg.

    In the Japanese story, it is a shapeless egg of swirling gases (Is that why eggs give me gas?). It's interesting to note here that this idea is not too far off from the modern Big Bang Theory, that the creation of the universe started from a single point. But thats where the similarity seems to ends, whereas in the Big Bang, the universe expands outward in all directions, usually thought of in an explosion; in the Japanese story, the lighter gases simply rose upward,forming the heavens, and the heavier gases sank to form the earth. A much calmer rendition of the Big Bang, one could say.

A sketch drawing of the Japanese creation story.

     In one account of the Greek creation myth, there was nothing but a void in the beginning, and there was this bird called Nyx. Nyx, or Night, laid a golden egg one day (though it seems silly to say “day” since there was no such thing then), and that egg, once hatched, bore Eros, the God of Love! That's right, Eros, the same god whose name we derive erotica, eroticism, and erogenous from. So this god of love, Eros, represents the sexual desire to create an ordered universe from the Chaos. And create he did. The broken halves of the shell, the top rising, and the bottom falling, created the heavens and earth. Eros named the sky Uranus and the earth Gaia. Although shouldn't Ur-anus be the lower section of the universe? (Ahhaha...that's right, I went fifth grade humor on that one). After Eros (called Cupid by the Romans) named them, he made them fall in love. After Uranus and Gaia did the nasty, the Titans were born! And thus, from them the Greek gods we've all come to know and love, like Zeus, Hades, Ares, Hera, and that gimpy one.

I think both creation myths are eggstrodinary. In fact, they're downright eggsitential. Or maybe I'm just eggzaggerating a bit... (Okay, that's enough egg puns!)

    That's another common characteristic that is found among creation stories, that they consider the earth the Mother, and the heavens (or sky) the Father (see Aborigine Creation Myth). And speaking of the Father, I want to start with the creation story that is familiar to most people – the Jewish/Christian/Islam one. But I should be careful not to refer to this as “one” story, although many people think that because they come from the same source, that they all believe the same creation myth. This is far from the truth. As religions and cultures developed, so did their creation myths. And as you'll see, even the Abrahamic religions underwent vast changes and editing.

    So, in this section, you will learn about the various creation myths of the world. I'll start with the popular ones, and eventually get to the more obscure ones.

Warning: I will not only be teaching about these stories, but also lightly poking fun at them and sometimes even challenging them. So, if you believe in any of these stories and you are offended, then well...too bad. Get over it, and learn to laugh at yourself. :-)

Eros enjoys his naming of the celestial entities.

And just for fun, and because I really haven't grown up since Junior High School... here is a list of my top 10 favorite Uranus jokes:

10. Lying on my back under the night sky, I reached up for Uranus.

9. I hear they found creatures in Uranus.

8. The noxious gases of Uranus could kill a man.

7. Who do you think will be the first to colonize Uranus?

6. I hear they've plunged quite a few orbiters into Uranus.

5. Uranus is under constant assault from unidentified objects.

4. (Friend's name) was a simple man with a simple dream: to reach Uranus and claim it as his own. 

3. T-SHIRT: I'm huge in Japan Uranus!

2.What does toilet paper and the starship Enterprise have in common?

They both circle Uranus looking for Klingons

1. Keep the Earth clean.  It's not Uranus!