The multitudes of mythical creatures that populate stories from almost all cultural traditions include monsters, demons, and fabulous beasts of every imaginable description. Indeed, among this collection of extraordinary beings are some that are too terrifying to be described at all and others that use their shape-shifting powers to appear in a variety of guises. While not all fabulous creatures are evil or fearsome, most of them bedevil human beings in various ways or represent whatever it is that people greatly fear. Gigantism is one of several different features that lend these figures their nightmarish characteristics, and thus many of myth’s monsters are immense and ferocious creatures with supernatural strength. Others are frighteningly eerie and elusive beings that employ their remarkable powers with malicious cunning, and still others are hideously grotesque and therefore tremendously unsettling to behold. Many of myth’s monstrous creatures, in fact, are instances of the chimera, the fabulous hybrid beast that is composed of parts from different animals or that is part animal and part human being. Indeed, the chimera is perhaps a particularly disarming monster, for it is at once both familiar and strange.
The monsters of myth and folklore traditions serve a variety of purposes in the tales told about them. In a great number of stories, the monster is, of course, the evil or disruptive force that great heroes must overcome. Characteristically, heroes either slay monsters that pose an immediate threat to their community’s wellbeing, or they journey forth in search of adventure, looking for monsters that will test their courage, ingenuity and skill. In other accounts, as in the story of the Greek tradition’s Herakles, heroes are assigned the task of ridding the world of particular monsters and are therefore obliged to prove themselves worthy by accomplishing this mission. More generally, monstrous beings serve the purposes of storytelling by offering a useful means of embodying that which is malicious, evil, terrifying, or threatening to human societies; by recognizing wicked forces through the act of granting them a body and a name, people can clearly define the evils or dangers that must be exorcised from their communities. Furthermore, the embodiment of the monstrous provides people with a figure to blame when adversity strikes or the unexpected occurs. Indeed, in some tales the presence of a monster functions to afford a name for the unknown, for that which is unfathomably mysterious and cannot be otherwise explained.
Among Australia’s indigenous peoples, tales of the ancestral giants and monsters that inhabit the world during its primordial Dreamtime explain the existence of landmarks on the earth, for it is said that during the course of their wanderings, these creatures shape the hills, valleys, rivers, and springs of Australia’s landscape. And, in myths from the ancient Babylonian, Chinese, and Norse traditions, the dead bodies of the monster Tiamat and the giants Pan Ku and Ymir are all used in the creation of the world. In folklore traditions, stories of monsters are often instructive, offering moral lessons, bits of sage advice, or warnings of danger in narrative form. As in those stories of the bogeyman that are commonplace in some western cultures, these cautionary tales employ the threat of a monster to alert people, particularly children, to lurking dangers. For example, North America’s Paiute people recount several cautionary tales that feature the Water Babies, eerie beings that dwell in Pyramid Lake or its surrounding springs. By some accounts the Water Babies steal unprotected children, and thus elders tell these stories to warn the young of the water’s dangers. According to other accounts, however, the Water Babies watch for wicked people, and when they have an opportunity to seize them, they drag them down into the depths of the lake. The admonition implicit in this version of the tale is readily apparent, for the people captured by the Water Babies are never seen again.
In some instances, features of mythic monsters appear to suggest the possibility of their origins in natural phenomena. For example, the Chimera, a hybrid beast that comes to Greek tradition from Anatolia, possesses a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. Interestingly, however, this monster consumes its victims with its fiery breath, and thus scholars speculate that the conception of a fire-vomiting beast might well have been inspired by the flames of natural gas that sometimes shoot from the earth in the monster’s homeland. The venomous Hydra, another Greek monster, is said to have nine heads atop its serpent’s body, and, whenever one head is chopped off, two more grow back in its place. This monster, whose name means “water serpent,” lives in the swampy marshes of Lake Lerna, and it has therefore been suggested that its watery habitation might have inspired its original conception, for, like the Hydra’s heads, when flowing water is dammed up, two stream emerge in the place of one. As for other traditions, including that of ancient China, it is commonly supposed that people’s discovery of the bones of gigantic, prehistoric animals might have suggested to them images of such creatures as the dragon.
The characteristics of monsters can also take on a symbolic significance or assume a metaphorical meaning within a particular culture. The Windigo, an icy, cannibalistic giant that haunts North America’s Ojibwa people during harsh winter seasons, represents the peril of starvation as well as the madness that can overwhelm a person who is driven to desperation. An emblem of insatiable hunger, the voracious Windigo devours human flesh, and, in keeping with its monstrous nature, the more it consumes, the hungrier it gets. According to tradition, a person who is maddened by hunger can become a Windigo that will then mercilessly stalk its family and friends. By extension, therefore, among the Ojibwa the concept of the Windigo also denotes a person who is crazy or one who is utterly consumed by a monstrous need. Another monster that symbolically represents people’s sense of vulnerability is the hideous Flying Head of North America’s Iroquois tradition. Particularly insidious because of its ability to fly, this gigantic, bodiless head swoops down from the sky when dark storm clouds obscure its approach. A flesh-eating monster, the Flying Head seizes people with its enormous fangs and then tears them to shreds. Like the Windigo, the Flying Head symbolizes monstrous greed and hunger—indeed, this monster is nothing more than a ravenous, gaping mouth.
While people are obviously vulnerable to monsters that descend upon them from the skies, they are also susceptible when they are asleep, and the people of the Arabian desert tell stories of the Palis, a monster that appears at night to suck blood from the soles of sleeping people’s feet. Perhaps because it is a nocturnal monster, or perhaps because its sleeping victims never wake to see the stealthy creature that drains them of their blood, the Palis is one of the mythic monsters that cannot be described. Although monsters like the Flying Head or the mysterious Palis are difficult to overcome, human beings can sometimes thwart them through use of trickery. In a story told by the Iroquois, for example, a young woman who is alone with her baby when the Flying Head descends pretends to eat the heated rocks that surround her cooking fire. By signaling her satisfaction with each bite she takes, the brave mother persuades the Flying Head that she is relishing a delicious meal, and naturally the greedy monster cannot resist swallowing all the red-hot stones in one tremendous gulp. According to the Iroquois, the people see the last of that monstrous being when it hastily flies away screeching in its agony. As it happens, in a story that is told about a caravan that passes through the desert, the Palis too is foiled by an act of deception. When night falls, an experienced traveler suggests that all members of the party rest with the soles of their feet touching the soles of someone else’s feet. Fortunately, this ruse is entirely successful, for when the Palis steals upon the sleeping forms, it is astonished to discover two-headed people with no feet to suck.
The relationship between monsters and other beings takes several forms in myth tradition. While monsters are generally the enemy of people or the gods, in the Chinese culture the dragon is usually regarded as a benevolent creature that can use its supernatural powers to bestow the gifts of rain, fertility, good fortune, and even immortality. In contrast, the dragons of Germanic myths are evil, fire-breathing monsters that often serve as the guardians of a treasure hoard. Indeed, terrifying monsters frequently function as the guardians of treasures or of gateways: in the myths of the ancient Greeks, the monstrous serpent Python guards the precious oracle at Delphi, a dragon that never sleeps watches over the Golden Fleece, and Cerberus, the ferocious three-headed hellhound, stands sentinel at the entrance to the underworld. By some accounts, deities occasionally give birth to monstrous beings, and in the myths of the Greeks, for example, the sea god Poseidon is the father of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus as well as several sea monsters, while the goddess Pasiphae is the mother of the dreaded, flesh-eating Minotaur. As in the tradition of the Ojibwa people’s Windigo, human beings can sometimes turn into monsters, and tales from Eastern Europe tell of people’s transformation into both werewolves and vampires. Doctor Faustus, the legendary scholar in other European myths, makes himself into a monster when he bargains with the demonic Mephostophilis, and, according to more recent traditions, people like Victor Frankenstein create new monsters in the pursuit of their scientific investigations.
While stories of heroic monster-slayers appear in many cultural traditions, the myths of ancient Greece are a particularly rich source of tales that feature heroes’ encounters with fabulous beasts. Bellerophon, for example, is the hero who is given the task of slaying the fire-breathing Chimera, and he fulfills his mission by first taming the winged horse Pegasus in order to make his assault upon the beast from the sky above it. Bellerophon is not able to kill the monster with the arrows that he shoots, but when he hurls a lead-tipped spear into its open mouth, the Chimera’s own flaming breath melts the lead into a molten mass that then consumes the creature’s inner organs. The Gorgon, Medusa, one of the monsters slain by Perseus, is a female being whose hair is a swarming nest of writhing serpents and whose power lies in her ability to change into stone anyone who dares to look upon her face. To achieve his task of slaying the Gorgon, Perseus dons the magic helmet of invisibility and then, using a mirror to avoid gazing directly at Medusa, he slices off her head with a magic sword. Theseus is the hero who slays the Minotaur, the flesh-eating beast that is part man and part bull, and Oedipus rescues the people of Thebes from the tyranny of the Sphinx when he correctly answers the riddle that she poses. The Sphinx, a winged beast with a woman’s head and a lion’s body, is another of the monsters that devours people, but Oedipus overcomes her power with his sagacity, and the defeated creature leaps from the cliffs to her death when she hears the hero’s answer to her riddle.
Herakles, perhaps the greatest of ancient Greece’s many heroes, slays or captures several monsters while performing the labors assigned to him by his cousin Eurystheus, the king of Mycenae. For the first of his tasks, Herakles takes on the ferocious Nemean Lion, a monster whose skin is impervious to any kind of weapon. Thus forced to use his brute strength against his mighty foe, Herakles wrestles with the gigantic beast until at last he strangles it. The nine-headed Hydra is the next of his adversaries, and strength alone is not sufficient to overcome this venom-spewing monster, for each time Herakles crushes one of its heads with his huge club, two new heads immediately grow back. Undaunted, the hero uses a flaming torch to sear the wounds from which new heads emerge, and in this fashion he is able to defeat another fearsome beast. To kill the Stymphalian Birds, flesh-eating monsters with claws, beaks, and wings of iron, Herakles creates a great uproar that causes the flock to take flight, and while the creatures are in the air, he shoots them all with his arrows. For another of his labors, Herakles must steal the cattle that belong to Geryon, a fierce three-headed ogre, and when the monster fights for possession of his herd, the hero slays him by shooting arrows through each of his three necks. In the course of his travels, Herakles also rescues a young maiden by slaying the terrible sea monster that threatens her, and he captures the monstrous Erymanthian Boar, the flesh-eating horses of Diomedes, the great Cretan Bull that is the father of the Minotaur, and Cerberus, the snarling three-headed hound of Hades.
In Native American tradition, the great Blackfoot hero Kutoyis is the monster-slayer who, like Herakles, rids the world of several dangerous creatures. Kutoyis resembles Herakles in another way as well, for both of these heroes prove their amazing strength just after they are born. According to Greek tradition, Herakles strangles two monstrous vipers while still an infant in his crib, and in the Blackfoot tale, Kutoyis, who is miraculously born from a clot of buffalo blood, grows fully into manhood within four days of his birth. Kutoyis’s mission in life is to destroy the evil beings that torment and oppress his people, and thus he journeys about the world in search of various kinds of monsters. He slays a tribe of cruel bears that have enslaved people and a community of huge rattlesnakes that savor human flesh. He also enters the gaping jaws of the hideous Wind Sucker and rescues the people he finds still alive in its stomach by stabbing the monster in its heart. In killing this creature from inside its own body, Kutoyis performs a feat that is also undertaken by Herakles, who only succeeds in slaying the sea monster by climbing in its mouth and then hacking its intestines to pieces. The Blackfoot hero then goes on to encounter other monstrous figures, and, in all, he rids the world of seven kinds of vicious beings during the course of his travels.
Whereas Kutoyis searches out the monstrous beings that endanger his people, the heroes of some myths seek to make a name for themselves by slaying famous monsters. Gilgamesh, the hero of the ancient Mesopotamian epic, longs for both adventure and fame, and therefore he and his companion Enkidu set forth on the long journey that takes them to the land of the cedar forest and the home of Humbaba, the terrifying giant. Humbaba is one of the monsters that guard a precious treasure, and the adventuresome young heroes know that if they can slay the powerful giant, then the mighty trees he protects will be theirs to cut down. A fearsome creature whose face is a mass of coiled intestines, Humbaba is a fire-spewing demon with dragon’s teeth and venomous breath. Furthermore, when the giant roars, the earth begins to tremble. Although Humbaba is a most formidable opponent, Gilgamesh is armed with his great ax, the Might of Heroism, and he and Enkidu are protected by Shamash, the god of the sun. Shamash causes eight winds to batter the ferocious monster, and while Humbaba is immobilized by this assault, Gilgamesh strikes the giant with his ax and Enkidu slices off his hideous head. Gilgamesh and Enkidu then cut down the mighty cedar forest, and when they bring their trophy home to the city of Uruk, they are welcomed there as heroic monster-slayers.
In many cultural traditions the presence of monsters serves to explain the occurrence of particular events. In Russia, for example, the Vodyanoi is said to be the creature responsible for all freshwater drownings. Part man and part fish with scales and a long, green beard, the monster lives in the ponds where it claims its victims. Among the Hausa people of West Africa, a species of creature known as the Bori causes all diseases and misfortunes among human beings. A shape-shifter, the Bori can appear without a head, assume a human shape, or take the form of a giant python. Similarly, the Oni is the monster responsible for disaster and disease in the folklore of Japan, and in the myths of ancient Babylonia, the fabulous hybrid beast Pazuzu is the embodiment of pestilence and plague. Both of these monsters are grotesque in appearance, although the pink or blue Oni is a colorful creature. The flat-faced Oni has a gigantic mouth that extends from ear to ear and horns atop its shaggy head. Pazuzu, a chimera with a dog’s head, a scorpion’s tail, a lion’s paws, and an eagle’s feet, has four wings that symbolize the flight of disease that is carried by the wind. The Patupairehe, human-like beings that guard the mountain peaks in the tales of New Zealand’s Maori people, sometimes take human lovers, and thus the Maori explain that all albino children are the offspring of these pairings. In Islamic tradition, the invisible Djinn are the creatures responsible for desert whirlwinds and sandstorms, and also for the shooting stars that flash in the heavens.
The monsters of folklore and myth are often interestingly peculiar in their features or behavior. The shape-shifting Ghoul, for instance, can be killed with one mighty blow, but if the Ghoul is struck a second time, it will come back to life. A monster that haunts the Arabian deserts, the Ghoul assumes a variety of shapes as it searches for people to devour; even though it readily takes the form of human beings or animals, its feet are nonetheless always shaped as hooves. The Kuru-Pira, an ogre that lives in the forests of Brazil, is distinctive in that its feet point backward. According to the Desana people, the Kuru-Pira is the animal master, or guardian of all wildlife, and therefore this creature punishes hunters who kill too many animals or fail to show them due respect. Because its footprints are deceiving, the ogre can sneak up on unsuspecting hunters and kill them with its poisonous urine. The Kishi, a monster in myths from Angola, appears at first to be a man. However, the face of a hyena is hidden under the thick hair on the back of its head, and when the Kishi traps a woman, it simply turns its head around and then devours its victim. The Kappa, a water monster from Japanese tradition, is another interesting creature. A chimera with a frog’s legs, a monkey’s head, and a turtle’s shell, the Kappa draws people into the water and then sucks out and consumes their internal organs. The top of the Kappa’s head in indented in the shape of a bowl, and the water that the creature carries in this depression provides it with its supernatural strength. To escape the Kappa, a person must bow to the creature, and, when it returns the bow in accordance with Japanese tradition, the source of its strength spills from its head.
The large numbers of flesh-eating monsters within myth tradition give expression to people’s atavistic fear of being consumed by a wild creature. A particularly insidious example of a monster that preys on human beings can be found in tales told by South Africa’s Zulu people. Isitwalangcengce, a beast that resembles a hyena, especially delights in eating human brains. Like the Kappa, Isitwalangcengce has an indentation in its head, shaped like a basket, and the creature uses this to carry off the young children that it snatches from their mothers. The Al, another monster that stalks women and children, appears in stories from the Armenian tradition. Part human and part animal, the one-eyed Al has brass fingernails, iron teeth, and the tusks of a boar. This creature uses its power to make itself invisible to sneak into houses and attack pregnant women or tiny, helpless infants. The monstrous Al strangles its victims and then removes their livers. Some monsters consume people’s spirits rather than their bodies, and stories of vampires or other creatures that take possession of human beings can be found in many cultural traditions. The word “nightmare,” for example, comes from the Germanic tales that recount the exploits of the Mare, a shape-shifting female monster that prowls for its victims during the night. The Mare takes possession of a person’s sleep, causing restlessness, pain, and terrifying dreams. Sometimes the creature also visits animals at night, and when a cow has been possessed by the Mare, it produces sour milk.

PRIMAL PARENTS
In the broadest sense, primal parents, or first parents, are the figures throughout myth who give birth to the earliest generation of gods or whose progeny are the first primordial beings, animals, or people to inhabit the world. Furthermore, in the many narratives where a catastrophic flood or similar disaster almost entirely eradicates the earth’s population, primal parents are the survivors who give birth to the new race of people who then repopulate the world. As beings that appear near the beginnings of time, primal parents frequently play a significant role in creation myths, and, indeed, in one category of such myths, world parents are the source of the creation of the cosmos. In some myths primal parents are presented as natural elements or forces that give birth to life. For example, in the ancient Mesopotamians’ account of creation, primal parents are the very waters from which all life arises. According to this myth, a pantheon of gods is produced by the commingling of primordial waters that take the form of Father Apsu, the embodiment of all fresh water, and Mother Tiamat, the personification of the salty seas. Similarly, the interactions of other natural forces, in the form of the primal parents Yin and Yang, are said to be the source of the universe and all it contains in a creation myth that comes from ancient China.
The primal parents of the people who inhabit the earth are often created by deities who commonly shape them from a natural substance that carries a symbolic significance. In the Hebrew account of creation, for example, Adam and Eve are formed from the clay that represents the fecund earth that is their home, and in Navajo tradition First Man and First Woman are made from the white and yellow ears of corn that provide people with their staple food. In the myths of some cultures, however, the primal parents are not shaped from a natural substance, but simply grow from it instead. Indeed, in the tale recounted by the ancient Persians, Mashya and Mashyanag, the primal parents of the human race, emerge from a rhubarb plant. In this creation tale the primal parents are not the first living beings to inhabit the earth, for Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, originally peoples it with Gayomartan, a perfect being whose metallic body gleams in the sun. When Gayomartan is slain by the evil Angra Mainyu, his shining body becomes the gold and the silver that can be found buried in the ground, and from his semen sprouts a large rhubarb plant whose bifurcated stalks and leaves assume the shapes of the primal parents’ bodies. Interestingly, the substance from which Mashya and Mashyanag take their human form is a plant that is often used as a medicinal balm.
Myths from many cultures posit the original existence of another order of primal parents, or world parents, that most commonly take the forms of Earth Mother and Sky Father, and in these narratives the primal parents are indeed the source of all creation. Complementary figures, these primal parents serve to embody a conception of the fertile union of the earth and the sky, the realm of the material and that of the ethereal. In their initial state of primordial unity, the world parents generally represent the presence of chaos, but when earth and sky are differentiated, through the separation of the primal parents, the creation of the world can then fully unfold. In many of the creation myths that feature the motif of the world parents, the task of separating Mother Earth and Father Sky falls to the children of their union, but in some myths deities or animals also perform this necessary task. All creation myths symbolically depict the emergence of order from a state of chaos, which is characteristically conceived as the undifferentiated oneness of the primal void, and it is thus when the original parents have been separated and are no longer one that form arises from formlessness and the multiplicity of the cosmos comes fully into being.
In most accounts of the world parents, although by no means in all of them, the earth serves to personify the principles of maternity. As an emblem of the mother, the earth represents the fertile matter that first gives birth to life and that then nurtures and nourishes the fruit of the womb. Perhaps obviously, the representations of Earth Mother as primal parent suggest a relationship between this mythic figure and the archetypal goddess that has come to be known as the Great Goddess or the Triple Goddess. Although theories about the Great Goddess and her role in early and preliterate agricultural societies are largely based on interpretations of artifacts, primarily the many Paleolithic figurines that depict the female body as a symbol of fertility, students of myth have also discovered vestiges of this prehistoric, archetypal figure, particularly in accounts of the Earth Mother as world parent. One significant instance, for example, can be found in classical Greek tradition, in the creation myth Hesiod recounts in his Theogony. In Hesiod’s tale, Gaea, the Earth Mother, and Uranos, the Sky Father, are indeed primal parents, but, interestingly, it is Gaea who first emerges from the yawning void that Hesiod calls Chaos, and who then, without partner, gives birth to the Sky Father who becomes her consort. Gaea, then, is both world mother and mother to the father of the world.
Just as the material earth that gives birth to life and then nurtures it frequently serves as an apt metaphor for the role of primal mother, the sky that surrounds the earth and is the source of energy and light typically symbolizes the role of the world father. On one hand, representations of the primal father as the embodiment of the ethereal serve the necessary purpose of distinguishing the parents; if the power of the mother can be seen in the germinating earth, the power of the father can be expressed by the rays of the sun or by the bolts of lightning that flash across the sky. On the other hand, however, the association of the father with the sky also signifies the ascendancy of the male that occurs with the emergence of patriarchal culture. The sky, after all, transcends the earth and envelopes it in its vast immensity. Furthermore, the sky is the realm of light, whereas the womb of the earth is the realm of darkness. As agricultural communities are supplanted by warrior societies, the primal parent known as the Sky Father is readily transformed into another familiar figure, the omnipotent sky god who can also take the form of the sun god or the god of storms.
While it is usually the male parent whose power is associated with celestial energy, the Egyptian creation myth that is recorded in the Ennead offers an interesting exception. A complex tale, wherein creation unfolds through a series of stages, the Ennead describes the union and subsequent separation of a Sky Mother and Earth Father. Characteristically, chaos (in the form of the Ogdoad, the eight principles of disorder) exists before the time of creation. Creation begins when a primal mound appears on the surface of Nun, the primordial waters of the void. Ra, the sun god, comes into being on the primal mound and then expectorates Shu, the god of the air, and Tefenet, the goddess of moisture. Shu and Tefenet then give birth to Nut, the goddess of the sky, and to Geb, the god of the earth—who themselves eventually become the parents of two pairs of divine twins, Osiris and Isis and Set and Nephthys. As the parents of the twins Osiris, Egypt’s first pharaoh, and his sister-wife Isis, Nut and Geb are generally regarded as the primal parents of the Egyptian people.
Before the Sky Mother and the Earth Father can give birth to their children, however, they must be separated, for there is no space between them where others could exist. Therefore, their father Shu, assisted by the Ogdoad, hoists Nut to a position where she arches high above Geb, and it is in this pose that the two deities are characteristically represented in Egyptian art. In effecting the separation of the primal parents, the god of the atmosphere provides both the space necessary for his daughter to give birth as well as the air required for all earth’s living creatures to breathe. While Nut and Geb are united as one in their loving embrace, the process of creation is interrupted and comes to a stasis. Only when earth and sky are differentiated one from another are these world parents able to participate in the unfolding of creation through the act of bringing forth new life.
Geb, as an earth deity, personifies the impulse to procreate, and Nut, goddess of the heavens, contains within herself all celestial bodies. According to Egyptian tradition, each morning Nut gives birth anew to Ra, and each evening she swallows up the sun again. At night she takes the form of the sacred cow, clothed in the stars of the Milky Way. She plays a significant role in the Egyptian cult of the dead, both as the mother of Osiris, the resurrection god, and also as an emblem herself of a rebirth to a new life. Indeed, the ancient Egyptian coffin is seen as the symbol of heaven, and is thus also regarded as symbolic of the sky goddess herself. In the figure of Nut, as in that of Gaea, myth scholars can also find traces of the Great Goddess archetype. Just as Gaea exists before she bears the father of their children, Nut also exists before she gives birth to her grandfather, the sun. Scholars therefore speculate that accounts of the sky goddess as mother of the sun long predate the Ennead’s depiction of her role as primal parent.
In the Egyptian creation myth it is the father of the earth and the sky who makes the space between them, but more typically the children of primal parents must find a way to separate them. In the Greek myth, for example, the Titan Kronos, son of Gaea and Uranos, uses a sickle to emasculate the father who has forced his progeny to return to their mother’s womb and whose suffocating presence weighs heavily on Mother Earth. After the maimed Sky Father has retreated to the outermost edges of the heavens, there is finally space for a second generation to emerge, and Kronos quickly claims his father’s place as sky god, marries his sister Rhea, and in time becomes the father of Zeus and Greece’s other immortal gods.
A myth from Polynesia offers a particularly fine example of world-parent creation and its link to the separation motif. In the Maori creation myth, existence first emerges from chaos in the form of Father Rangi, who represents the sky, and Mother Papa, who personifies the earth. These primal parents, however, are joined so tightly together in the primal void of their united existence that their bodies are in fact connected by tendrils and sinews. Trapped in the suffocating darkness between their parents, the six sons that Rangi and Papa engender must find some way to establish a space where they can lead their lives. The sons debate the problem, and Tu, the god of war, argues that their parents should be killed. When Tane, the god of the forest, proposes that Rangi and Papa might be separated rather than needlessly slaughtered, five of the sons attempt in turn to push the sky and earth apart.
Rongo, god of cultivated plants, lacks the strength necessary to succeed in his task. Tangaroa, god of the sea and its animals, and Haumia, god of wild vegetables and plants, also fail in their efforts to detach the sky from the earth. When it is Tu’s turn, the ferocious god of war hacks with his ax at the tendons that bind Rangi and Papa together, and the blood that he spills through his efforts becomes the sacred red clay that the Maori people take from the earth. Tu, however, cannot separate his parents either, and therefore Tane steps forward to take the next turn. Planting his shoulders upon the earth and placing his feet up against the sky, Tane, like the trees of his forest realm, slowly and patiently presses upward until finally all of the tendons are torn, and sky and earth lie far apart. Light then appears in the world, freeing Tane and his brothers from the dark void that had once enclosed them. Among the six brothers, only Tawhiri, the god of the winds and storms, fails to rejoice when Tane succeeds in breaking the bonds that have tied Rangi and Papa together. Tawhiri, whose own nature is best suited to a state of chaos, resents the new order that has come into the world along with the emergence of light and space. In his fury he therefore joins his father in the sky and unleashes winds, rains, and hurricanes to batter the earthly realms of his mother and his brothers.
The Maori creation myth is fascinating in yet another respect, for it also presents an interesting variation of the deluge motif. After their separation Father Sky and Mother Earth naturally grieve for one another. Father Rangi, in fact, weeps copiously, and soon his tears begin to inundate the earth. Fearing that all of the world will in time be swallowed up by their parents’ tears, the sons decide that they will turn their mother over so that she and her beloved can no longer see the sorrow in each other’s face. The plan is successful, and the floodwaters eventually subside. Of course Rangi and Papa nevertheless continue to mourn their separation, and from time to time they gently weep: Rangi’s tears are said to be the morning dew, while Papa’s are the morning mist. And the primal parents’ seventh son, nursing at Mother Papa’s breast when her other children change the position of her body, tumbles into the underworld and then makes that realm his home. Whenever Ruaumoko moves, therefore, the earth begins to quake.
In many traditions the world is reborn when a second set of primal parents, the survivors of the deluge, reestablish human life after the catastrophe. As in the original creation, order emerges from formlessness when the chaotic waters recede and the primal parents populate the earth. Particularly in those tales where the flood cleanses the world of its corruption, those who are spared by the gods while others are punished represent the promise of a new beginning in a better world. Noah and his family, the flood heroes of Hebrew tradition, number among myth’s virtuous survivors, as do Deucalion and Pyrrha in the Greco-Roman story of the deluge. And, in the Mesopotamian account recorded in Gilgamesh, the wise Utnapishtim and his wife are the only people deemed worthy to be saved from drowning. As the reward for their righteousness or wisdom, the flood heroes of these myths become the primal parents of all succeeding generations. In fact, the Mesopotamian gods’ pleasure in discovering that Utnapishtim saves the seeds of all earthly life is such that they not only honor him as the founder of the new race of people, but they also grant him the great gift of immortality.
Interestingly, the primal parents who survive a flood sometimes repopulate the world by unusual means. Deucalion and Pyrrha, for example, create a new race of people by paying homage to their Mother Earth through a ceremonial ritual: after veiling their eyes, the two throw behind them stones they have gathered, and from these rocks, the bones of Mother Gaea, new men and women soon begin to emerge. Born of earth’s stones, this race makes claims to be a particularly hardy people. Another remarkable means of producing a new race of human beings appears in the Chinese tale of the flood heroes named after the calabash that saves them. In this story, Brother and Sister Fu Xi marry after the waters recede, and, when it is time for the primal mother to give birth, a great meatball comes forth from her womb. The husband and wife chop the meatball into numerous pieces and then wrap the portions in bits of paper. When a great wind scatters the papers about the earth, the portions of meatball they contain become the new inhabitants of the world.