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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
The Museum of
Lost Wonder
by Jeff Hoke
Weiser Books - August
2006
Four
Creation Tales
No one really knows where we come from,
but as you'll see, a lot of people had a
good time imagining it. Some of these
stories are theories, some are myths. The
theories want to be facts. The myths want
to be truths. Both are useful in combating
the dreariness of the waking hours.
Ever since Hegel in the 1800s,
philosophers seem to have given up
worrying about first causes and ultimate
purposes. We at the Museum of Lost Wonder
think they've been missing out on a lot of
fun. The following stories are provided to
incur doubt, inspire wonder, help spur the
imagination, and provide fodder for
creating your own myth.
The Big Bang Theory
Big Bang is a marvelous term
coined as a joke by the astronomer Fred
Hoyle. (He actually believed in a steady
state theory.)
According to this popularly held
theory, before there was anything there
was less than nothing. Not only was matter
and energy created at the first moment,
but so was space and time. So there's no
sense in worrying about what, where, or
when it was before it happened because
those things didn't exist, not to mention
anybody to worry about causing it.
* Day One was the moment of the
Big Bang. It was infinitely dense, and
time didn't exist yet.
* Day Two is called the
"Particle Epoch" a period of expansion
when subatomic particles were formed that
lasted only an instant.
* Day Three is called the "Grand
Unification Epoch" where four great forces
organized matter. The weak, the strong,
the electromagnetic, and gravity. Only
10-32 of a second had
passed.
* Day Four is called the "Era of
Nucleosynthesis" where particles formed
into atomic nuclei. It lasted 1 to 100
seconds.
* Day Five, the "Era of
Recombination" is when particles and
energy linked together to form different
matter. This day lasted a million
years.
* Day Six is the "Era of Galaxy
Birth." Gravity condenses baryonic matter
into clouds of gas. It lasted a billion
years.
* Day Seven, the "Modern Era" is
10 to 20 billion years old.
Superstructures of galaxies form,
stretching as gigantic sheetlike filaments
spanning hundreds of billions of
light-years. It makes you wonder. If the
universe is still expanding,
Where is it expanding to?
What's on the other side of
a hundred billion light-years?
Genesis Myth
Genesis is from the Greek
"gignesthai," meaning origin or
birth.
This popular myth also holds that the
universe was created in seven days. Myths,
unlike theories, elaborate on feelings to
explain how things happened. This story
credits the beginning of the universe to a
very human and moody creator, who, when
done, takes the day off. It maps the first
geography of the planet and goes on to
describe how life began.
Everybody has a job to do. For the
first two humans life consists of
gardening and naming everything in Eden.
The fun doesn't start until, on their time
off, they seek wisdom. Once they get
wisdom (that's supposed to make them
godlike), all they realize is that they're
naked. The search for wisdom only ends in
embarrassment. This embarrassment is the
birth of shame . . . which explains all
the sorrows to come.
The first couple have two kids. They
have jobs too. One becomes a farmer, and
the other, a rancher. One kills the other
because the creator, having no experience
in child rearing, compliments one's work
and not the other, which creates jealousy.
Shameful. (Must not have been a lot of
thinking going on between naps on that
seventh day.) The remaining kid has to
leave home and goes off to the next town,
Nod, to find a wife and start a family of
his own.
It makes you wonder. If Eden was the
first inhabited place in the world,
How did Nod get there? And
if we're still in the seventh day of
creation . . . When is the
creator going to wake up from that
nap?
Alternative Theories
to the Big Bang
These latest theories contest the
validity of the Big Bang. Recent data from
our new Hubble telescope find young things
at the edge of the known universe when
there should only be older cosmic
structures. Both of these theories infer
that "the universe is dynamic with
creation and destruction ongoing and
continuous."
The new steady state theory sees
galaxies as "huge recycling systems that
go on forever." Here matter is ejected out
of a central "neutroid" and after
millennia of spiraling outward falls back
into itself.
In the symmetric theory the engine of
the universe is located in black holes.
The center of a black hole is so
infinitely dense that its gravitation
pulls in everything around it. Even
itself. This force is so powerful that
even time and space become warped,
meaningless, and cease to exist. Adjacent
to the central black holes are white holes
that eject the stuff of the cosmos
simultaneously. The known universe seems
to be scattered with these holes.
The universe can be imagined as a huge
mass of spaghetti, like some big,
intertwined Möbius strip or even a
massive bedsheet with no edges that
perpetually folds in and through
itself.
It makes you wonder? When
did all this infinite creation and
destruction start? And Who
cooked it all up in the first place?
Creation Myth
This tale is adapted from the Zohar, a
medieval commentary on the
Kabbalah.
In the beginning is EIN SOF ("without
end"), an undifferentiated light-filled
essence without being, which permeates the
universe in every direction. Needing to
define itself, EIN SOF makes room for
creation by withdrawing into itself. This
withdrawal, or "TSIMSTUM," creates a
vacuum in its center which is called
"AYIN," or nothingness.
"The light withdrew like water in a
pond displaced by a stone . . . Descending
into the vacuum, it transformed into an
amorphous mass . . . For in its simple
desire to realize its intention, the
emanator relumined the mass with a ray of
light . . . As this light began to enter
the mass, vessels were formed." *
There are ten vessels, or "SEPHIROTH."
Each holds a particular essential quality
of their creator. Out of this
configuration of vessels four worlds are
organized: Emanation, Creation,
Formation, and Actualization. As the
light breathes energy into these vessels,
the first, and strongest, vessel
withstands the force, but the others
shatter, or "SHEVIRAH." The pieces of
these vessels fall to the ground with
essences of light within them. All the
pieces get trapped in material
existence.
Our jobs as humans is to reconstruct
these shattered remains by "TIQQUN," or
mending. Thus restoring these
essence-filled vessels to their original
divinity.
It makes you wonder. Why couldn't EIN
SOF make unbreakable vessels? And why are
we left to pick up all the pieces?
* From the Essential Kabbalah by
Daniel C. Matt
The Reverberating Yawn
or How to Get Something From
Nothing
Yes, you can do this at
home!
Try This With a Friend. No tools
required.
Find a quiet and comfortable place to
sit. Position yourself within two feet of
your friend. Start by taking a deep breath
and make a smooth, even
"ooooooo" sound. The exact
note isn't important as long as it's a
sound you can easily hold for a while. At
the same time, your friend should also
take a deep breath and try making a tone
that matches yours. Practice this a few
times until you find yourselves making the
same tone. Once you think you've got it,
listen carefully. When you are very close
to creating exactly the same note, you
should start hearing a third tone. This
will sound like a warbling sound. The
warble will start out slow and will get
faster and faster in frequency as you get
closer to making the exact sound.
You'll both think that the other person
is making the warbling sound! You're
not. The phenomena is called binaural
beats and is caused by similar
frequencies canceling each other out near
the same harmonic.
Do-it-Yourself Creation
Myth
This is a nifty little exercise that is
assured to bring hours of amusement. A
springboard for the mind sure to flex that
flabby imagination muscle!
Conception
Many myths are created to explain the
existence of something unusual or painful.
(In "Genesis" the pain of childbirth is
explained as a punishment for Eve eating
an apple!) Start out with something
that has always puzzled you. Something
awesome, irksome, or just plain
irritating.
Execution
"Get your facts first, then you can
distort them as much as you please."
--Mark Twain
1. After you've chosen
What it is that seems to have no
good reason for being, you should decide .
. .
2. Who created it? What is the
essential agent of change. Whose fault is
it anyway? This can be a human or an
animal, a force, an idea, an action, or a
feeling.
3. How was it made? What is the
action that caused the creation to be
made? What was used to make it?
4. Why was it made? One
should usually be sympathetic to creators.
They generally have something that
bothered them in the first place.
Something that caused them to create. This
creation is customarily made to satisfy
some need.
5. Where was it made? In outer
space? Inner space? Or somewhere in
between?
6. When was it made?
A sequence of events will be important
to your story. It will help give your
universe the appearance of order where
there wasn't one before -- which is why we
create myths in the first place.
From
the book The Museum of Lost Wonder
by Jeff Hoke. Published by Weiser Books;
August 2006; Copyright © 2006 Jeff
Hoke. Reprinted here by
permission.
Jeff
Hoke has been creating museum exhibits for
the last twenty-five years and has
recently been awarded the 2003 Curator's
Award for Exhibit Design at the Monterey
Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California,
where he currently holds the position of
Senior Exhibit Designer.
Read Dr.
Dolhenty's Review of this Book
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