myth
When the universe first came into being, it was quite boring. To be more precise, 9 divine beings came to life, and promptly realized they had little to do. Day and Night would direct the sun and moon in their eternal dance across Sky’s being while Earth sat steady below them. Time, Creation, Destruction, Light and Darkness. The nine are ever present and constant, weaved into the fabric of everything we know. But they were, so very bored.
So, to fill the endless amount of time laid out in front of them, the 9 gods forged two new beings with drops of their divinity. Story and Art would entertain them for the rest of their days. And they did. For three millennia, Story would work together with Art to regale the gods with enticing, gripping stories, staging elaborate performances and dances throughout the day. This routine would repeat for some three millennia before the stories could no longer be acted out by only the two new gods. So, their creative minds striving to tell grander tales, they fashioned two new beings. Pricking their long fingers to draw out drops of blood, they let the droplets fall into dirt, and out of it fashioned two lesser beings, not quite gods, but not quite otherwise, Play and Performance.
Unlike the gods that came before them, Play and Performance had no real form, their appearances ever changing and morphing to fit into roles of their character, the perfect actors for any tale. So every day, as the stars gave way to the sun's spotlight, the pair would change their face and appear before the gods, recreating stories of daring adventures, gruesome wars, and tales of yearning and woe. They recreated thousands of tales, yet the favourite amongst the gods, and fortunately enough, amongst them, were tales of love. So Play and Performance were lovers, in every shape and form, princes kept apart by their warring kingdoms, a farmboy earning the affections of an heiress, two handmaidens risking everything for their marriage, the perfect tales of romance. And the gods were delighted, the universe pleased for a long time.
Yet, as the gods indulged in fantasy and epic, the world grew wild and fierce. Plants grew uncontrollably and rowdy. The ground remained untreated and too alive to tame. And the universe could turn a blind eye to its chaos no longer. So the gods gathered and agreed, there was food to harvest, and homes to build and land to train.
So Play and Performance prepared for one final act, their swan song. They entered stage right, hands tightly gripped, and told the tale of their love with as many characters as they could embody. With hushed confessions, and loud, booming decrees, it was their longest performance. By the third day, the two had abandoned characters all together, reverting to their natural, shifting forms, and reuniting in narrative for the last time. As the two lovers found each other once again in story and in life, the gods turned them back into the dirt and blood they had come from. Breaking their bodies into thousands of pieces, each of different in appearance and personality, like the actors they had come from, and became mankind.
Though their bodies were broken, the two actors lived on. Humanity was composed entirely and infinitely from them, and so, through humanity their performance continued . And the universe looked on in anticipation as Play and Performance were forever reunited through the countless interactions and hidden smiles humanity experienced everyday, living, breathing and loving in every shape and form. The two were lovers on stage, in life, and through the thousand vessels of humanity, in death.
analyses
For my aetiological myth, I wanted to write about sexual orientation, and why, according to myth, love and attraction are not limited by sex and gender. To that effect, the main characters of my story lack both those things, as their forms are constantly changing, and the stories they tell include a variety of couples (two princes, a farm boy and heiress, two handmaidens). I believed the myth would be stronger if, instead of just showing two same sex people falling in love as the basis of sexual orientation in humans, I showed two people who were not constrained by the limits of gender and sex at all. Their forms did not matter, so when they were broken to create humanity, it presented itself as love without regard to the bodies and social norms that are in place. Initially, my idea for this myth was based on the theatres in Ancient Greek, and throughout much of later Europe, not having female actors. Instead of two shapeless beings acting out romantic stories, it would be two male actors who would act out these tales while simultaneously falling in love with each other. The idea could have served as a duel aetiological myth to explain why there were no female actresses, however I later decided that this version of the myth wouldn’t be useful in explaining female same-sex relationships, or relationship with people who do not fall under the gender binary. By making Play and Performance able to take on any appearance, it would explain the wide array of romantic and sexual orientations and be applicable to any type of couple.
When the universe first came into being, it was quite boring. The first paragraph of my myth is a very brief creation story, the basic setup of the world. Creation stories detail the earliest parts of the world, often a time long before humans. I was influenced by Hesoid’s Theogony, and how the birth and creations of the first gods are simply stated, they are simply there. “In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss, but then Gaia, the Earth, came into being” (Hesiod. Theogony. 116-117). Similar to how Chaos was already present in the world, the 9 initial gods in my myth just exist, after vaguely coming into being. I thought having a brief creation story would allow for an easier understanding of the narrative, as it would add some context and background for why the two shape-shifting beings were created. Additionally, as mentioned in the Thinking through Myth, thinking Myth Through paper, genealogy is the connecting thread between myths, creating a narrative cohesive of sorts (Dowden). I thought that the best way to begin the start of a genealogical tree was through that of a creation story, to set up the births and deaths of certain gods. For example the gods Story and Art are the collective offspring of all the first 9 gods, being made from a mixture of divine energy, and Play and Performance were formed by Story and Art via the mixed of their blood and dirt.
In addition to the creation story aspect of my myth, I also explain the creation and need for mankind, tying into the aetiological aspects of it. Many cultures use mythology to explain the unexplainable, and for a long time, the origins of mankind were unexplainable. So, humans were created by the gods, for some reason or another. For those in Ancient Greek, the creator of mankind was Prometheus, who forged mankind out of clay and water (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.7.1), with Hephaetus making Pandora, the first woman, out of the same material (Hesiod. Theogony. 571). As not only Greek myths mention humanity being made out of earth, Mesopotamian myth mentions humanity being formed of clay, I wanted to create humanity in the same vain. In my myth, two beings of dirt and divinity are broken apart to create humanity, leading to humanity being made from the same.
Hand in hand with my initial idea for the myth involving two actors, I wanted to reference the connection between art and mythology in ancient Rome and Greece. Many myths and stories of heroes and gods are told through plays, examples including Aristophanes’ Frogs, and Euripides’ Medea. And stories that were not directly plays were still performed, recited orally in front of crowds. While these performances told tales of brave heroes and feats done by the gods, they were probably also used to entertain crowds in cities. The Frogs for example, was performed during festivals for Dionysus, the gods of many things, one of which, being theatre. Euripides’ Medea was also performed, placing last place during a Dionysia festival where three tragedy writers competed (Gregory). As these two plays show, storytelling and performance was tightly interwoven with Ancient Greek culture, both for entertainment purposes, and religious purposes. Myth was also closely tied with art, as pottery and paintings often depicted mythological characters, and ancient Greece and Rome were no exception. Because of the ancient plays based around mythological events, and the frequency of myth being conveyed through art, I decided to have characters specifically tied to those fields. In my myth, the first gods create the gods of story and art, who subsequently created play and performance, driven by the motives to be entertained, and to entertain, respectively.
The final aspect of Greek myth that influenced my myth was the ability to alter one’s appearance. The Greek gods, for a wide array of reasons, are able to disguise themselves. Athena does so in the Odyssey to approach Telemachus, appearing as an old man, and remains in that form when visiting Nestor (Homer, Odyssey 1. 96-155). Zeus has been known to take on several different looks to seduce those he finds attractive such as an eagle to kidnap Ganymede (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 141), a golden shower to impregnate Danae (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 26 & 34) and a satyr to attract Antiope (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6. 111) to name a few. I want to use these abilities to shape shift as the basis of my myth, and to be the central reason to explain sexual orientation.
works cited
Apollodorus. The Library of Greek Mythology. Translation by Aldrich, Keith. Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1975.
Aristophanes. The Frogs. Translation by David Barret, Penguin
Dowden, Ken, and Niall Livingstone. "Thinking through myth, thinking myth through." A Companion to Greek Mythology (2011): 3-23.
Euripidies, Medea. Translation by Rex Warner, Dover Publication
Gregory, Justina. A companion to Greek tragedy. John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
HESIOD, THE HOMERIC HYMNS, EPIC CYCLE, HOMERICA. Translation by Evelyn-White, H. G. Loeb Classical Library Vol 57. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
Homer. The Odyssey. Translation by Shewring, W. Oxford University Press.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translation by Melville, A. D. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
cover photo by: artstation.com/gahallan