Friday, January 15, 2016

A Creation Myth

Creation myths. You know what they are: a story that helps describe how the world came to be. Unfortunately we have associated the word 'myth' with the word 'untrue.' This is unfortunate. A myth is simply a story in the same way that a fairy tale is just a story. Ancient stories are often revealed for the wisdom they contain with little regard to whether or not a story is historically correct or accurate. The same goes for myths. Whether or or not the myth is true is secondary to the wisdom it is trying to convey. We–the modern empiricists that we are–are beyond such nonsense, of course. But are we? Science is now the spinner of our modern stories. Consider the story of the Big Bang. It is, after all, only a theory which means it may or may not be true. Even with all the science to back it up it is still a creation myth for modernity. It teaches us many things about our universe and helps us to find a place within it (however miniscule).

I have begun preliminary work for the writing of the Milleran Cluster Book Three. It will be very much concerned about competing spiritualities as it will be about competing societies within the asteroid belt. One of the first things I had to do was write a creation myth for the people of the new planet: Rishivon.