Cosmogony





Cosmogony

The latest articles related to Cosmogony

Asimov’s Galactic Empire was the first example of one of the eight stages of a “consensus cosmogony”, also called the ”Science Fiction Cosmology”, identified by Donald A. Wollheim in the 1950s, which science fiction writers needed only hint at in their stories for experienced SF readers to slot into their perception of future history and [...]

The descriptions of the Basilidian system given by our chief informants, Irenaeus (”Adversus Haereses”) and Hippolytus (”Philosophumena”), are so strongly divergent that they seem to many quite irreconcilable. According to Hippolytus, Basilides was apparently a pantheistic evolutionist; and according to Irenaeus, a dualist and an emanationist. Historians, such as Philip Shaff, have the opinion that: [...]

Cosmogony

Strniša is most renowned for his poetry, based on a highly metaphysical poetic view. His poems express a cosmogony directed against the anthropocentrism of traditional literature. His poems are an exploration of multiple universes, interconnected through a mysterious and magical fate, which man can grasp through imagination and intuition. Adapted from the Wikipedia article Gregor [...]

Cosmogony

According to the myth recorded by Juan de Betanzos, Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca (or sometimes the cave of Pacaritambo) during the time of darkness to bring forth light. He made the sun, moon, and the stars. He made mankind by breathing into stones, but his first creation were brainless giants that displeased him. So [...]

Cosmogony

Manichaeism presented an elaborate description of the conflict between the spiritual world of light and the material world of darkness. The beings of both the world of darkness and the world of light have names. There are numerous sources for the details of the Manichaean belief. There are two portions of Manichaean scriptures that are [...]

Cosmogony

The ”pneuma” of the Stoics is the primitive substance which existed before the universe. It is the everlasting presupposition of particular things; the totality of all existence; out of it the whole visible universe proceeds, eventually to be consumed by it. It is the creative force (God) which develops and shapes the universal order (cosmos). [...]

Cosmology

The Rig Veda is adored by Hindus as the most sacred scripture, and the Vedas have traditionally been lauded as containing the secrets of cosmogenesis. The knowledge of cosmology, of physical processes and particles, of the creative-destructive interplay of matter and energy contained in the Vedas is very abstruse, and thus is well beyond what [...]

In briefly sketching this version of Basilidianism, which most likely rests on later or corrupt accounts, our authorities are fundamentally two, Irenaeus and the lost early treatise of Hippolytus; both having much in common, and both being interwoven together in the report of Epiphanius. The other relics of the Hippolytean Compendium are the accounts of [...]

right The (ca. 4th century BCE) ”Daodejing” suggests a less mythical Chinese cosmogony and has some of the earliest allusions to creation. There was something featureless yet complete, born before heaven and earth; Silent – amorphous – it stood alone and unchanging. We may regard it as the mother of heaven and earth. Not knowing [...]

A Babylonian deity associated with cosmogony, represented as stripping the father of the gods of umsimi, usually translated “crown” but, as it was on the seat of Bel it was actually the “ideal creative organ.” “Ham is the Chaldean Zu, and both are cursed for the same allegorically described crime,” which parallels the mutilation of [...]

Chaos (Greek ”khaos”) refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in creation myths, particularly Greek, but also in related religions of the Ancient Near East. The motif of ”chaoskampf” (German for “struggle against chaos”) is ubiquitous in these myths, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity [...]