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| - No one knows exactly how the universe began, and exact origins of the chaotic universe remain uncertain. But several creation myths have been postulated by the peoples of Azeroth. A collection of these myths can be found below...
- Dragon kind has several very specific stories on the creation and evolution of the world. This is one of those stories. __TOC__
- That's all well and good, but is it true? Did Dwerfater create the Valley? The very short answer is "no". "...made the Valley" here is a slight mistranslation, a better translation would read "created the Valley by piling up mountains all around a plain". Was Dwerfater the first dwarf? Also "no", he was simply "the first of their people" which means that he was either the first dwarf to arrive in the area, or possibly was created by Torag himself.
- Despite their efforts to elucidate creation, the stories rarely shed any light upon how the Creator Himself (or less commonly, Herself) came into being, and never offer any explanation as to how the bizarre events they detail could ever possibly have happened.
- Several features are found in all creation myths. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human like figures or animals who often speak and transform easily. They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past, what historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore. And all creation myths speak to deeply meaningful questions held by the society that shares them, revealing of their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context.
- There was only Void in the beginning. One day he decided to create Eris of Disorder and Aneris of Order. Eris was born pregnant and, after 55 years, gave birth to the seeds of many things. Aneris had born sterile, and soon became jealous. So she started to steal away existant things, made them into nonexistant things, and claimed them as her own. Eris became sad and said that she would simply give birth to more things. Aneris replied that she would simply continue to steal her sister's creations away.
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| abstract
| - That's all well and good, but is it true? Did Dwerfater create the Valley? The very short answer is "no". "...made the Valley" here is a slight mistranslation, a better translation would read "created the Valley by piling up mountains all around a plain". Was Dwerfater the first dwarf? Also "no", he was simply "the first of their people" which means that he was either the first dwarf to arrive in the area, or possibly was created by Torag himself. Creation myth in the world which contains the Stoneheart Valley has this problem as a running theme: Everyone and everything was created by something else, and the process goes as far back as people have bothered to record history. An (ironically unrecorded) calamity just over 10,000 years ago destroyed 99.9% of all historical documents, so people are left with fragments of truth held together with a lot of guesswork. What makes things worse is that while gods are capable of great feats of power and creation, the status of "god" is a grey area. Archmage Fondon can move through planes as easy as fish through water, and Archmage Speigal was such a great diviner that gods coveted his power, yet neither were gods. Kel (it is said) was just a normal person, who was raised up to heaven by Mitra to serve as the Lady of Protection. "God" is just a label, and is no more set in stone than any other. If there are turtles most of the way down, then it follows there must have been some beginning. The draconic myth of Apsu and Tiamat is by far the most common, and very good religion. That is to say, beings that mortals can't comprehend doing things for reasons that mortals can't comprehend. Also, it just so happens that Golorian is the planet that Apsu finally made his home, so it must be true. Ego is a fatal flaw in many religious beliefs. On a grand scale, if a story is told about how your race/homeland/etc is super-special-awesome, it's fair to guess that the story was told for some purpose other than historical accuracy. On a smaller scale however, in a world so peppered with gods and demons and so on, it's understandable that some things may have been created for the direct benefit of a small, specific group. To the people of the Valley, it makes sense that Dwerfater created the mountains for the dwarves. It follows that Torag created Dwerfater and the other dwarves for the land. Perhaps some greater god created Torag, and the world as well. By that logic, the creation of the multiverse must have been by some creature or concept that did not require to be created itself. To the dragons, it was Tiamat and Apsu. The more nature-inclined folk suspect that the primal forces exist even in a vacant universe. Demons say that there is no such thing as a vacant universe, then Abyss is infinite and timeless, and all other planes are just islands in its unfathomable bulk. Many scholars agree on principle, but suggest it is the Maelstrom, not the abyss that is infinite and timeless. Some folks believe in an uber-god that exists outside of time, but that just seems to be dodging the question. The truth is that the end of the world seems to be a more pressing concern than the end. The fourth and fifth age, no new gods have come forth, and several have died. The prosperity and population of the world have begun to dwindle, and things look only to get worse. The old things that were around when the world was young - the demon lords below and the elder gods above - have begun to slowly circle the dying world, waiting for the time to be right.
- Several features are found in all creation myths. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human like figures or animals who often speak and transform easily. They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past, what historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore. And all creation myths speak to deeply meaningful questions held by the society that shares them, revealing of their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context. Mythologists have applied various schemes to classify creation myths found throughout human cultures. Eliade and his student, Charles H. Long, developed a classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over. The classification identifies five basic types:
* Creation ex nihilo in which the creation is through the thought, word, dream or bodily secretions of a divine being
* Earth diver creation in which a diver, usually a bird or amphibian sent by a creator, plunges to the seabed through a primordial ocean to bring up sand or mud which develops into a terrestrial world
* Emergence myths in which progenitors pass through a series of worlds and metamorphoses until reaching the present world
* Creation by the dismemberment of a primordial being
* Creation by the splitting or ordering of a primordial unity such as the cracking of a cosmic egg or a bringing into form from chaos Marta Weigle further developed and refined this typology to highlight nine themes, adding elements such as deus faber, a creation crafted by a deity, creation from the work of two creators working together or against each other, creation from sacrifice and creation from division/conjugation, accretion/conjunction, or secretion. An alternative system based on six recurring narrative themes was designed by Raymond Van Over:
* a primeval abyss, an infinite expanse of waters or space
* an originator deity which is awakened or an eternal entity within the abyss
* an originator deity poised above the abyss
* a cosmic egg or embryo
* an originator deity creating life through sound or word
* life generating from the corpse or dismembered parts of an originator deity
- No one knows exactly how the universe began, and exact origins of the chaotic universe remain uncertain. But several creation myths have been postulated by the peoples of Azeroth. A collection of these myths can be found below...
- Dragon kind has several very specific stories on the creation and evolution of the world. This is one of those stories. __TOC__
- There was only Void in the beginning. One day he decided to create Eris of Disorder and Aneris of Order. Eris was born pregnant and, after 55 years, gave birth to the seeds of many things. Aneris had born sterile, and soon became jealous. So she started to steal away existant things, made them into nonexistant things, and claimed them as her own. Eris became sad and said that she would simply give birth to more things. Aneris replied that she would simply continue to steal her sister's creations away. Void grew angry and created a son, one of Spirituality. He declared that the brother of the two would travel back and forth between them: a time in existence, and a time in non-existence. He declared that the brother of the two would travel back and forth between them. Order doesn’t rule Spirituality forever and neither does disorder. Spirituality would travel back and forth between and disorder, causing the principle of chaos. He actually has two names, depending on with of his sisters he is with. Sheogorath is Spirituality when ruled by disorder. Jyggalag is Spirituality when ruled by order. Since Daedra are subject to a reincarnation cycle, this “Daedric Prince of Spirituality” is doomed to relive the endless cycle of the Greymarch.
- Despite their efforts to elucidate creation, the stories rarely shed any light upon how the Creator Himself (or less commonly, Herself) came into being, and never offer any explanation as to how the bizarre events they detail could ever possibly have happened. Many scholars maintain that they are not supposed to be read literally, and that these days we must consider them within the context of the era in which they were written. Ultimately, they are parables that seek to reconcile the morality of a culture with innate human superstition. However, many religious people still consider them incontrovertibly factual. Let's meet a few of them now...
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