“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
That’s one version. Here’s another: “Everything probably began with a Big Bang,” writes Nigel Calder in “Einstein’s Universe: The Layperson’s Guide.” “Enormous numbers of particles and anti-particles formed and disappeared in a frenzy of creation and annihilation. As the universe cooled and the energy of the prevailing radiation grew less, annihilation supervened, until only a billionth part of all that matter remained.” That billionth part is us, here, now, this.
Cultures are spawned by primal tales. Or are primal tales spawned by cultures? The Indian “Rig Veda” (translated by A.L. Basham) imagines a “primal man,” Prajapati by name, “sacrificed”: “The moon arose from (Prajapati’s) mind, from his eye was born the sun ... from his breath the wind ... from his navel the air, from his head there came the sky,” and so on. The earth came from his feet.
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