Hlootoo's Art

thewritingcafe:

Anonymous asked you:

Any advice for creating a creation myth for my fantasy world?

Part I: Creating a Religion

Part II: Religious Hierarchies

Part III: Pantheons, Deities, Mythologies, etc.

Part IV: Creating a Deity

Part V: Religious Sects

BONUS: Ceremonies (birth, death, naming, sacrificing, rites of passage)

WHEN?

When does your world believe the world was made? You don’t have to create a timeline, but you can. Your characters don’t even have to give an actual time period. If the creation myth is about the creation of humans rather than the world itself and if the story involves nearby mountains, they might say “before the mountains were here”.

You can get as specific as you want with the timeline. For example, someone studied the Bible and concluded that the earth was made in October in 4004 BCE.

Come up with different ways to measure the timeline of the creation myth in your world. If one world has three moons that represent three deities, they might believe that it took three thousand years to create the world, giving one thousand years to each moon/deity. Each thousand years could add something new to the world (the natural world (planets, stars, water, rock, etc.), living things (plants, animals, etc.), and magic or something).

WHAT HAPPENED?

It’s quite common for creation stories to start with “in the beginning there was X”. X can refer to a character, a place, nothing, darkness, silence, or anything else you want if it relates to the story. If you start with this structure, something needs to disrupt, change, or add to what was.

Creations can be accidental or intended. If creations are intended, come up with a reason for why they were intended. A deity might have made the world as a gift to another deity or they might have created a volcano as a prison to hold some type of creature that shoots up lava every now and then in an attempt to escape.

CHARACTERS INVOLVED

Literally anything can be a character in a creation myth. Water can interact with deities and animals can talk. Humans can reproduce asexually and giraffes can be stretched until they have long necks. 

If you have created deities, consider putting them into your creation myth. Create relationships between these deities and make sure the events of the creation myth have an impact on the deities as well.

Other times, the creation myth creates deities and other mythological or supernatural beings. In this case, some type of being who is above the created deities will need to exist.

EXPLANATIONS

The creation of the world is not the only thing that a creation myth can explain. They can explain a number of phenomena, such as rain, death, sunrises and sunsets, stars, mountains, and other parts of the natural world.

The creation myth does not even have to be about the creation of the whole world. It might be about the island where your characters live or it might just be about humans.