Parallel Myths (17 page)

(Greece)

T
he first age of humankind was the golden age, when humans actually conversed directly with the gods and ate with them, and mortal woman had children by them. No one needed to work as people lived on the milk and honey abundant everywhere around them. There was no sadness. Some say that this golden age ended when humans became overly familiar with the gods, demonstrating arrogance and contempt. Some of the mortals even complained that they were as strong or as wise as the gods.

Next came the silver age, in which people first tilled the soil to earn a living and ate bread for the first time. Even though men lived to be a hundred years old, they were effeminate and utterly dependent upon their mothers
[Ed.’s note:
a matriarchy?]. They constantly complained about everything and were quarrelsome. The great god Zeus grew tired of their whining and destroyed them all.

Then came the first bronze age, when the first people fell like seeds from ash trees. People then ate both bread and meat, and were vastly more useful than the people of the silver age. But they delighted in wars and eventually killed each other off entirely.

The second bronze age was a glorious age of heroes. These people were fathered by the gods on human mothers. This was the age of Hercules and the heroes of the siege of Troy. These men fought gloriously, lived virtuous and honest lives, and went to the glorious Elysian Fields when they died.

We are presently in the iron age. You will note that the value of the metals decreases with each passing age. So it is with the character of humankind. It is worse in the iron age than it has been at any
previous time. Men no longer converse with the gods; in fact, they ignore piety altogether. And who could blame the gods for being indifferent to the mortals? The people of the iron age are materialistic, treacherous, arrogant, sexually out of control, and violent. The only reason the gods have not destroyed humanity is that there are still a few decent people left.

(Aztec)

W
e are presently in the period of the fifth sun, but what were the earlier periods like?

The first of the five suns was the Sun of the Ocelot. At that time, the world was shrouded in darkness and humans lived by animal instinct alone, without the benefit of reason. Lacking thought, they were eventually all eaten by ocelots. The second sun was the Sun of Air, a world of spirits and transparent beings that may return someday. But the humans of this time did not understand the necessary principles to be redeemed from their sins and the gods changed them all into monkeys.

The third was the Sun of Fire. During this period, people again were ignorant of the gods. All the rivers dried up and all creatures were killed by roaring flames, with the exception of the birds, who flew to safety. The fourth sun was the Sun of Water, Tlaloc, the rain god, who destroyed all the people in a flood.

The fifth is our own period. This is the sun where the other four principles, animal energy, air, fire, and water, are combined and in balance. We cannot take it for granted that this sun will last forever; our continued existence is dependent upon following the “ladder of redemption” that is contained in the Aztec calendar and observing rituals. If the gods are again ignored, then this sun too will die and all of us with it.

(Navajo)

T
he present world is the fifth world. In the first world, there were three beings living in the darkness: First Man, First Woman, and Coyote. The first world was too small and dark for them to live happily, so they climbed into the second world, which contained the sun and the moon. In the east, there was blackness; in the west, yellowness; in the south, blueness; and in the north, whiteness. Sometimes the blackness would roll from the east and overshadow the entire world. When the three beings arrived in the second world, the sun tried to make love to First Woman. When she refused, there was discord. Coyote, who understood such things, called the other people of the four directions together.

He advised them to climb up into the third world, a wide and peaceful land. Upon their ascent, they found that Coyote had been right; the new land was beautiful. They were greeted there by the mountain people, who warned that they would all live in peace as long as they did not disturb the water serpent, Tieholtsodi.

Telling Coyote not to do something was a guarantee that he would do it. His natural curiosity got the better of him and he wandered down to the sea. There he saw the water serpent Tieholtsodi’s children playing and found them so attractive that he ran off with them under his arms. Tieholtsodi became very angry and searched the world for his children, but to no avail. Then he decided to flood the world and flush out the thief.

As the waters rose, the people discussed how to escape the flood and, through magic, they piled the four mountains of the four directions up, one atop the other. Still, the waters continued to rise, covering the first mountain, then the second, then the third, until the people were huddled atop the fourth mountain wondering what to do. So they planted a giant reed that grew high into the sky. Just as the waters were lapping around them, they climbed up into the fourth
world. The last to leave was the turkey; to this day his tail feathers are white where the floodwater washed out the colors.

The fourth world was even larger than the third. However, it was dim and misty. There was a great river flowing through the fourth world. Human beings lived north of the river and human souls in animal form lived to its south.

About this time, humans grew quarrelsome. The men constantly argued with the women about stupid things. Each sex claimed to be the more important. The women argued that, were it not for them, everyone would die—after all, they planted the corn and harvested it, they made clothing and bore children. The men disagreed, saying they were the more important: Men did the rituals that guaranteed a good corn crop, plowed, hunted, built homes, and fathered children. In addition, they protected the villages from attack. The women countered that they made baskets, cooked the food, and tended the fires. The arguments could not be resolved, so the men decided to leave for four years.

But neither the men nor the women were happy during those four years. Men and women were meant to be together, despite their differences, and with separation came appreciation. Because the women did not know the proper corn rituals nor how to plow, the corn did not grow properly and there was not enough food to go around. With the failure of the crops, there was little that the women could do, as they did not know how to hunt.

The men weren’t any better off than the women. Four years on their own made them irritable. Not knowing how to process cotton, the men found their clothing deteriorating into rags, and so their skin burned in the hot sun and froze in the cold weather. Although they knew the rituals and how to plow, they had no corn, as they didn’t know the right procedures for cultivation and harvest. Although they knew how to hunt, they grew sick and their teeth fell out from chewing raw meat, as they knew nothing of cooking. Worst of all, they missed the delight of having little children around.

Thus the two sexes realized that each was incomplete without the other; neither was the more important. The women decided to overlook what they considered the men’s “faults,” and the men “forgave”
the women for theirs. When they finally did get back together, it was a period of peace and happiness—and many, many children were born in that first year together.

Their peace was short-lived, however, for Coyote still had the children of Tieholtsodi with him. Tieholtsodi’s flooding of the third world had been so complete that the waters rose up into the fourth, making the ground soft. A new flood threatened the people and they again stacked the four mountains on top of each other, planted the giant reed, and escaped to the fifth world, where we now live.

The beaver was the first to enter the fifth world and he returned with very discouraging news: From what he could see, all that was above them in the fifth world was the bottom of a vast lake. So the people then sent the locust, who went up to the surface of the lake.

On the surface there were two swans, the guardians of the fifth world. They told the locust that no one could enter the fifth world without passing a test. The newcomers had to take an arrow, swallow it, pass it out by the anus, then put the arrow back up the anus and spit it out by the mouth. The locust knew very well that most of the animals would never survive such a test. But, being a locust, he tricked the swans; he knew that he could pass an arrow through his own thorax and survive. Moreover, it was apparent that the swans had never seen a locust before.

So the locust amazed the swans by passing an arrow through his own thorax and he challenged the swans to do likewise, which, of course, would have been fatal to them. The swans knew that it would be suicide to pass an arrow through their chests, and they were impressed by the locust’s courage and “magic.” So they gave their permission for the people of the fourth world to enter the fifth.

Having endured two floods because of Coyote’s theft of Tieholtsodi’s children, the people wanted to avoid the same problem in the fifth world. So they ordered Coyote to give the children back. He did so and Tieholtsodi was pacified.

Upon their entry into the fifth world, the people found themselves on an island in the middle of this vast lake. They prayed to the Darkness Spirit, who cut a ditch to drain away much of the water; this ditch is today the Colorado River. Then they prayed to the four winds
to blow day and night to dry up the soil on their island until more land was available. The sun and the moon were thrown up into the sky, and for four days the people watched the sun ascend up to its proper place in the sky.

However, when the sun reached that spot, it stopped, ceasing to move at all. Everything was in danger of being burned up. A great chiefs wife came forward and told the people that she had recently dreamt that the sun would not move unless a human being died. She offered herself. The people wondered sadly where her spirit had gone until, one day, a man looked down a hole and saw the woman inside it, contentedly combing her hair. Since that time, one human being has had to die each day in order to make the sun move.

NOTE
: As in the Navajo myth of the five worlds, emergence from an underground world is a theme in the myths of a number of North American peoples. Here is the myth of the Mojave Apache, who lived in the southwestern deserts not far from the Navajo, and the Mandan Sioux, which comes to us from the Dakotas, thousands of miles from the home of the Mojave.
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What is the significance of such myths? Are they representative of successive stages of cultural development or consciousness? Are they evolutionary?