Parallel Myths (16 page)

Scholars Robert Graves and Raphael Patai also trace the origin of
Lillith to a Babylonian and Assyrian evil female wind spirit
(Hebrew Myth)
.

Compare Lillith to Johi in the Persian Creation story.

(Blackfoot Indian)

NOTE
: This myth, from the Blackfoot Indians of the Great Plains of North America, contains many interesting parallels with the biblical story of the Fall.

O
nce during the summer in the earliest times, when it was too hot to sleep indoors, a beautiful maiden named Feather-woman slept outside in the tall prairie grass. She opened her eyes just as the Morning Star came into view, and she began to look on it with wonder. She mused in her heart how beautiful it was, and she fell in love with it. When her sisters got up, she told them that she had fallen in love with the Morning Star. They told her that she was insane! Feather-woman told everyone in her village about the Morning Star and soon she was an object of ridicule among her people.

One day she left the village to draw some water out of a creek. There she saw the most handsome young man she had ever imagined. At first she thought that he was a young man of her own tribe who had been hunting, and she coyly avoided him. But he then identified himself as the Morning Star. He said, “I know that you were watching me and fell in love with me. Even as you were looking up at the sky, I was looking down at you. I watched you in the tall prairie grass and knew that it was only you that I wanted for my wife. Come with me to my home in the sky.”

Feather-woman was stricken with awe and paralyzed with fear. She knew that this was a god standing before her. She told Morning Star that she would need time to say good-bye to her parents and sisters. However, he told her that there was no time for this. He then gave her a magic yellow feather in one hand and a juniper branch in the
other. Then he told her to close her eyes. When she opened them again, she was in the Sky-Country, standing before the lodge of Morning Star, home of his parents, the Sun and the Moon, where they were married. As it was daytime, the Sun was out doing his work, but the mother, the Moon, was at home doing chores. She immediately took a liking to the girl and gave her fine robes to wear.

Feather-woman loved her husband and his parents, and in time she gave birth to a little boy whom they named Star Boy. But Feather-woman needed to find things to do in her new home. So the Moon gave her a root-digging stick to work with, carefully instructing her not to dig up the Great Turnip that grew near the home of the Spider Man, warning that terrible ills would be unleashed if she did so.

Feather-woman was fascinated by the Great Turnip and wondered why it was feared. After all, it looked like any other turnip, only much larger. She walked closely around it, being careful not to touch it. She took Star Boy off her back and placed him on the ground. As she was digging, two great cranes flew overhead. She asked the cranes to help her and they obliged her, singing a secret magic song that made light work of digging the Great Turnip.

Now, the Moon had been very wise in warning Feather-woman not to dig around the Great Turnip, for it plugged the hole through which Morning Star had brought Feather-woman into the Sky-Country. With a loud
plop
she pulled the Great Turnip out. Looking down through the hole, she saw a camp of the Blackfoot Indians, perhaps her own village, far below her. As she saw the mortals doing their daily chores below, she became homesick and began to weep. In order to conceal what she had done, she rolled the turnip loosely into place and returned to the lodge where she lived with her husband and son.

When Morning Star returned to the lodge, he was very sad. He said nothing, then, “How could you have been disobedient and dug up the Great Turnip?” Moon and Sun were also sad and asked her the same question.

At first Feather-woman did not answer, then she admitted her disobedience. Her in-laws had known that she would dig up the Great Turnip, despite their warnings. The reason for the sadness was that
they knew that she had disobeyed them and must now be banished forever from the Sky-Country.

The next day, Morning Star took his wife to Spider Man, who built a web from the hole of the Great Turnip down to earth. When Feather-woman descended down the web, it looked to the people below like a star falling from the sky.

When Feather-woman arrived on earth with her child, she was welcomed by her parents and the people of their village. But she was never happy. Early in the morning, she looked up at the sky to speak with Morning Star, but he didn’t answer her.

After many months had passed, Morning Star finally did speak to her. “You can never return to the Sky-Country,” he warned. “You have committed a great sin and brought unhappiness and death into the world.” Hearing this was too much for Feather-woman to bear; soon she died of her unhappiness.

The orphaned Star Boy lived with his human grandparents until they died. He was a shy boy who ran as soon as he heard the approach of a stranger’s footsteps. The most notable thing about him was a scar on his face, which led to his nickname, Poia, meaning “scarface.” As he grew into manhood, people cruelly ridiculed him because of his scar and his pretension to be the son of the Morning Star.

Thus maltreated, Poia was heartbroken by the further indignity of being rejected by the daughter of a chief. His life growing unbearable, Poia consulted with an old medicine woman. She told him that there was only one way for the scar to be removed: He would have to return to the Sky-Country and have his grandfather, the Sun, take it off. Knowing that his mother had been banished from the Sky-Country, this was bad news to Poia. How could he return to the land of his birth? The old woman said that there was a way back to the Sky-Country, but that Poia must find it himself. Feeling sorry for the boy, she gave him some food for the journey.

Poia traveled for days and days, over mountains, through forests, through snow, and across deserts, until he reached the Great Water that the white man calls the Pacific Ocean, for this is the farthest west, where the sun goes at night. For three days, Poia fasted and
prayed. On the third day, he saw rays reflecting on the Great Water, forming a path to the Sun. He followed the path and arrived at the home of his grandparents, the Sun and the Moon.

Upon finding Poia asleep on their doorstep, the Sun was at first prepared to kill the mortal, as no earth-dweller could enter the Sky-Country. But the Moon persuaded him not to do so; she recognized the scar and told the Sun that it was their grandson. Soon, Moon, Sun, and Morning Star all welcomed Poia. At the request of his grandson, the Sun removed the scar.

The Sun also taught Poia great magic and the truths of the world. Poia’s grandfather explained that the people on earth were suffering as a result of Feather-woman’s disobedience. The Sun had a message for the Blackfoot people: If they would honor him but once a year by doing the Sun dance, all the sick would be healed. Poia himself learned the Sun dance quickly, and his grandfather grew to love him very much. His grandparents gave him a magic flute to charm women into falling in love with him. But, because of his mother’s disobedience, Poia had to return to earth, which he did by walking down the Milky Way.

When Poia returned to the Blackfoot people, they honored him. He taught them the wisdom he had learned from the Sun and, most important, he taught them how to do the Sun dance, which indeed healed the sick. Because of Poia’s great deeds, the Sun and Moon allowed him to bring his new wife, the chiefs daughter who had once rejected him, to the Sky-Country, where they remained forever. Now Poia himself is a star that rises with the Morning Star.

(India)

A
s we know, the world has been created and destroyed many, many times. Only Brahma the Creator knows how many times this has happened. In each of these cycles of creation there are four ages,
each characterized by an essential element. First, there is the golden age, an age of
Satva
, or “goodness.” Next comes the age of
Rajas
, or “energy,” followed by a third age that is a mixture of the two. Finally comes the fourth age, an age of
Tamas
, or “darkness,” completing the cycle.

The golden age lasts four thousand years and is followed by a “twilight” or transition period that lasts four hundred years. During the golden age, people are born in pairs. They enjoy life fully, free of care, not having to work, eating whatever food is around them. They do not hate or become tired. They don’t even need homes for shelter as the climate is perfect. There is no sadness.

The second age works on the principle that, when fulfillment is lost, another form of fulfillment is sought. When water reaches its subtle state, steam or vapor, it forms clouds. During the second age, these clouds give forth rain, and trees spring from the ground. The trees are the livelihood of the people, serving as homes and providing abundant fruit and wild honey for food. Sacrifices to the gods are characteristic of the second age, even as peaceful meditation was the nature of the golden age. The second age lasts three thousand years and is followed by a twilight of three hundred years.

Idyllic as life is even during the second age, the people begin to change. Their emotions of passion, greed, hatred, and anger emerge and ruin the peaceful environment. They begin to find their fulfillment in having more trees than their neighbor. Living in the trees, the first form of fixed dwelling, people grow possessive, wanting more and more of everything. They covet and eventually learn to steal and kill. They finally denude the world of trees and take so much from the earth that it can no longer supply their needs.

At this point, the people of the second age contemplate their fulfillment, causing the trees to again spring from the earth. But do the people learn from their earlier miserable experience? Hardly. Now they begin to rob and kill each other freely. Then Brahma, in every second age, creates the warrior caste, the Kshatriyas, to keep the people from butchering each other. Thus, the second age ends as a time of misery and anarchy.

Then comes the third age, which lasts for two thousand years, followed
by a twilight of two hundred years. Because of the need to instruct people on morality, a sage named Vyasa appears in every third age to write the scriptures, the Vedas, and divide them into four parts. During this age, death, drought, and disease are the sufferings born of speech, mind, and action. As a result of this suffering, people become completely numb.

While in this state, human beings begin to contemplate a release from their sufferings. In their intellectual detachment from the world, people can begin to know themselves and see their faults. As meditation was characteristic of the golden age, and sacrifice of the second age, knowledge is characteristic of the third age.

Now, Dharma, the eternal principle of truth on which the universe itself rests, is like a four-legged stool. After the golden age, one leg of the stool of Dharma disappears; then at the close of the second age, a second leg disappears. The third leg is gone after the third; and by the coming of the fourth age, Dharma is very weak. By the fourth age, a dark age, there is little truth left in humankind and nothing for the universe to stand on.

In the fourth age, people walk around in darkness, completely ignorant and blind to the truth. Their senses are clouded in darkness and illusion
(maya)
. They are unable to separate what is true from what is false, and they really don’t care about the difference. They are filled with jealousy and hate, even killing holy men who try to show them the truth and lead them out of darkness. Countries are always at war with each other for reasons that are trivial and even forgotten after the war has begun. Scripture has no more authority for people.

Things just continue to deteriorate throughout this dark age and in the end people are reduced to scavenging for their food, taking whatever roots, meat, or fruit they can find or steal. Even when they have gathered such meager things, someone else will try to steal them. They eventually have few, if any, possessions, and perform no rituals.

However, for those few wise people who survive the dark age, there will be opportunities to penetrate the illusions and find rare insights. Thus they will achieve a kind of mental peace. The few survivors of the dark age and the hundred years of twilight after it may live to see the
golden age return and the four-legged stool of Dharma reestablished. Or they may find themselves at the end of the world cycle, witnessing the periodic destruction of the universe.