Creation Myth

 

The Sun came out of his home beneath the sea. He rose with a yawn, stretching and turning the sky pink. He looked out across the sky and the tawny lion sands at the pink mountains and at the sky beyond, which was pale and blue as a bird’s egg.

Low in the sky over the mountains hung something dim and white, overlaid with blue shadows. It was the Moon, waning now, but still with a fair bit of her glory. The Sun looked at her with longing. “Every night,” he thought to himself, “I go to my home below the waves and she rules the skies, growing full with the glory of her beauty. While I am always blazing forth with my energies, she renews her beauty each month all over again.”

“O Moon,” the Sun called, “I would come together with thee, to lie with thee in thy embrace.” He called, but the Moon turned her face away and disappeared below the pink mountains that men called the Mountains of the Moon.

So the Sun rose high in the sky and continued his daily journey across the land. And when he lay down to rest, he looked out over the mountains over the darkling sea, and saw there the Moon come up again, and he called out again, his voice breaking with his loneliness. But the Moon was silent, blushing red with her embarrassment, and the Sun slipped into his bed under the world to wait for the time to rise again.

And so the seasons passed, and the Moon grew fat with her womanhood, round and full and yellow. So the seasons passed, and the Sun wanted her more and more, craved he embrace, longed to lie in her arms, and he would sometimes want to call out to her. But, remembering her rejection, he never did. And so the seasons passed.

And one day the Sun was high in the sky on his lonely way when he heard a soft voice calling, calling, and looking down he saw the Moon swimming through the sky towards him. “Sun,” said the Moon, “too long have I withstood the temptation to be your mate. Too long have I told myself that I would be burned in your fires. Also, my nature is fickle and inconstant, so I could never be faithful to you, but I can’t help that. But I am lonely, Sun, and my loneliness brings me no peace. I cannot be with you always, for your fire would burn me up, but I will be with you now, and in years to come, whenever the urge comes on me till I can no longer resist it, I shall be with you again.”

So as the first Eclipse fell over the tawny land and the Mountains of the Moon, over the distant forest and the rippling sea, the Sun and the Moon went behind a blanket and made love, and in their lovemaking they gave birth to the legions of the Stars. 




Copyright B Purkayastha 2008