"All the watery and earthy elements met together again in the nebula, one with the other.

They dashed together amid thunder and lightning; and over the crash of the thundering the (Great) Rational Lives (the Zophashamin) watched, while on the land and sea male and female cowered" The Phoenician creation story is another account of creation which most religions attempt to answer According to Sanchoniathon, knowledge started with Taautus who was first of all under the sun to discover the use of letters and the writing of records. This god from Byblos was the Logos of the Egyptian Tehuti and the Greek Hermes. As Enoch, he gave the Hebrews their Torah and the Alexandrians their Corpus Hermeticum. In Islam he was Idris the companion of the prophet. This clerk of the under-world and the scribe of the gods, he bore a tablet, pen and palm-branch (the Phoenix-tree). He attended the judgement of the souls, invented writing and served as a wise teacher and a peace-maker. The cosmogony of Taautus supposes that all things consist of a Dark Mist of an ethereal nature, the Breath of dark mist, and of a turbid Chaos black as Erebus; that these were boundless, and for many ages remained without a boundary. But when the spirit fell in love with its own principles, and they were interblended, that interweaving was called love; and this love was the creation of all things. But Chaos did not know its own creation. From its embrace Mot (matter: the god of death) was born. From Mot (the Great Mother) it was that every seed of creation came, the birth of all cosmic bodies. First, there were (Great) Lives devoid of all sensation, and out of these came subsequently (Great) Lives possessed of intelligence. The latter were called Zophashamin (Overseers of the Heavens). They were fashioned in the forms of eggs, and shone forth as Mot, the Sun and Moon, the Stars and the great Planetary Spheres. Now as the original nebula began to lighten, through the heat mists and clouds of sea and earth were produced and gigantic downpours and torrents of the waters in the firmament. Even after they were separated, they were still carried from their proper places by the heat of the sun. All the watery and earthy elements met together again in the nebula, one with the other. They dashed together amid thunder and lightning; and over the crash of the thundering the (Great) Rational Lives (the Zophashamin) watched, while on the land and sea male and female cowered The Overseeing Zophashamin eventually slipped into the dimension of our planet. They interbred with the daughters of Earth. Their first landing place seems to have been Baalbek in Lebanon. They devised Baetulia (contriving stones that moved as though having life) to build a grand Trilithon Platform. They used the art of magic words (mantras) to lift and move large stone blocks and open huge stone doors. The Great Platform served as a landing site for their spaceships. Sanchoniathon claims that these demigods possessed light and other more complete ships. Under the supervision of Taautus, their progeny (from the daughters of earth) established Byblos. They then spread into the Levant and further into Egypt. Halfway between Baalbek and the Pyramids, Jerusalem was made into a mission control area. The demigods took the Cedar Mountain that separated Baalbek and Byblos for their abode.1 The Theogony So long as human beings worshipped the abstract principle of creation, the manifestations of which proceed from the earth and sun, they doubtless reasoned little on the nature of its hitherto inseparable parts. They had not at that early period begun to look outside of Nature for their god-idea, but when through the peculiar course of development which had been entered upon, the simple conception of a creative agency originally entertained became obscured, mankind began to speculate on the nature and attributes of the two principles by which everything is produced, and to dispute over their relative importance in the office of reproduction. Much light has been thrown upon these speculations by the Kosmogonies which have come down to us from the Phoenicians, Babylonians, and other peoples of past ages. In the Phoenician Kosmogony, according to the Mokh doctrine as recorded by Philo, out of the kosmic egg Toleeleth (female) "sprang all the impregnation of creation and the beginning of the universe." In this exposition of the beginnings of things, it is distinctly stated that the spirit which in after ages came to be regarded as something outside or above Nature, "had no consciousness of its own creation."2

POPOL VUH (Mayan Creation Myth) The PopolVuh is the creation story of the Maya. Below is one part of this story that recounts the first attempts of the creator, Heart of Sky to make humans. The story goes on to explain that the final attempt, that resulted int the "True people" was accomplished by constructing people with maize. This is a very reasonable explanation since, in essence, it was the cultivation of maize that gave the early Maya culture the means to change from hunters gatherers to their highly advanced civilization. I have edited this sample, based on the wonderful translation by Dennis Tedlock. His book is available through Amazon.com and is listed below. I've also included here a few preliminary illustrations I would like to use on an interactive CD someday. THE CREATION Here is the story of the beginning, when there was not one bird, not one fish, not one mountain. Here is the sky, all alone. Here is the sea, all alone. There is nothing more no sound, no movement. Only the sky and the sea. Only Heart-of-Sky, alone. And these are his names: Maker and Modeler, Kukulkan, and Hurricane. But there is no one to speak his names. There is no one to praise his glory. There is no one to nurture his greatness. And so Heart-of-Sky thinks, "Who is there to speak my name? Who is there to praise me? How shall I make it dawn?" Heart-of-Sky only says the word, "Earth," and the earth rises, like a mist from the sea. He only thinks of it, and there it is. He thinks of mountains, and great mountains come. He thinks of trees, and trees grow on the land. And so Heart-of-Sky says, "Our work is going well." Now Heart-of-Sky plans the creatures of the forest -birds, deer, jaguars and snakes. And each is given his home. "You the deer, sleep here along the rivers. You the birds, your nests are in the trees. Multiply and scatter," he tells them. Then Heart-of-Sky says to the animals, "Speak, pray to us." But the creatures can only squawk. The creatures only howl. They do not speak like humans. They do not praise Heart-of-Sky And so the animals are humbled. They will serve those who will worship Heart-ofSky. And Heart-of-Sky tries again. Tries to make a giver of respect. Tries to make a giver of praise. Here is the new creation, made of mud and earth. It doesn't look very good. It keeps crumbing and softening. It looks lopsided and twisted. It only speaks nonsense. It cannot multiply. So Heart-of-Sky lets it dissolved away. Now Heart-of-Sky plans again. Our Grandfather and Our Grandmother are summoned. They are the most wise spirits. "Determine if we should carve people from wood," commands Heart-of-Sky. They run their hands over the kernels of corn. They run their hands over the coral seeds. "What can we make that will speak and pray? asks Our Grandfather.

What can we make that will nurture and provide?" asks Our Grandmother. They count the days, the lots of four, seeking an answer for Heart-of-Sky. Now they give the answer, "It is good to make your people with wood. They will speak your name. They will walk about and multiply." "So it is," replies Heart-of-Sky. And as the words are spoken, it is done. The doll-people are made with faces carved from wood. But they have no blood, no sweat. They have nothing in their minds. They have no respect for Heart-of-Sky. They are just walking about, But they accomplish nothing. "This is not what I had in mind," says Heart-of-Sky. And so it is decided to destroy these wooden people. Hurricane makes a great rain. It rains all day and rains all night. There is a terrible flood and the earth is blackened. The creatures of the forest come into the homes of the doll-people. "You have chased us from our homes so now we will take yours," they growl. And their dogs and turkeys cry out, "You have abused us so now we shall eat you!" Even their pots and grinding stones speak, "We will burn you and pound on you just as you have done to us!" The wooden people scatter into the forest. Their faces are crushed, and they are turned into monkeys. And this is why monkeys look like humans. They are what is left of what came before, an experiment in human design.