Before the Beginning
Jun 18, 2009

The legends are called creation myths because they describe the beginning of time, of the dividing of heaven from earth, of social organization, even of the distinguishing between good and evil. They are told as if the narrator were an eyewitness to the creation event…and they often tell about a prior state. From around the world, they converge on a picture of nature that would have appalled even Mr. Hobbes.

“But in those days we lived where there were thickets and barren rocks…; we had no villages, no cities, no temples. We lived in clefts of the rocks and holes in the ground…. We ate roots that we pulled up out of the ground, or else we fought with the foxes for the dead things they were carrying away. No one bore rule amongst us, and we knew nothing of duty or kindness of one to another.” (Inca legend)

“Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and formless.” (Rig Veda)

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was chaos, and there was darkness over the abyss.” (Genesis—Mitchell translation)

The same themes are repeated in Phoenician and Greek cosmogonies and in Taoism in China. They appear in the narratives of the tribes of Oceania and of the Pima of Arizona. The Hopi clarify the question of just how dark the darkness was by calling it a “dark purple light.” Other legends relate that something glowed dimly within the darkness “like a glow-worm” (Linga Purana)—an orb “lit by the reflection of his own inner self” (Mbayá legend).

Many legends speak of the “waters” or “sea” of chaos that preceded creation. They say that the chaos “whirled.”

Except for the whirling chaos, nothing moved: There was no Sun, no Moon, no stars. There was no day or night, no year, no seasons. There was no way to tell time. There was no reason to tell time. There was no concept of time. The beginning—the creation—was the beginning of time and space, of form and change.

It was the beginning of society and civilization. Perhaps it was the beginning of consciousness. “Before the beginning” stories from every society exhibit these themes: darkness without Sun or Moon or stars, whirling chaos, something that glowed, no civilization, timelessness. The only reasonable explanation for this commonality is that the stories derive from events experienced in common around the world.

In God Star, Dwardu Cardona compiles these themes and develops an explanation for the underlying events that is based on space-age discoveries in astronomy and plasma physics. The explanation needs further development and testing. It should inspire a search for alternative explanations that, like it, may provide a physical basis for making sense of the global themes of ancient stories.

Modern theories that project today’s sky unchanged into the past must necessarily dismiss the stories of a different beginning as a coincidence of nonsense. Therewith they dismiss the legacy of our ancestors and leave us mystified that rational creatures could have evolved societies that are darkened by so much that seems irrational. Increasingly, they must dismiss or deface the data from space probes and telescopes.

Therewith they turn science from discovery to apologetics. The insights of God Star restore the terror and awe of a history that can illuminate the darkness of the modern world.

By Mel Acheson

God Star can be ordered from Mikamar Publishing