Myths of the origin of the universe: Cosmogony and Cosmogenesis

Imagine an ancestral human being, thousands of years ago, sitting around a bonfire under a sky filled with stars. The wind whispers in the darkness, and a primordial question about the myths of the origin of the universe echoes in their mind: "How did all of this begin?"

Now, take a leap in time and visualize a modern scientist in a laboratory, facing a monitor displaying data from the cosmic microwave background radiation — the echo of the Big Bang itself. The question remains the same.

Throughout history, this search for the origin of the universe has followed two major interpretative paths: Cosmogony and Cosmogenesis.

Understanding these two narratives is essential to grasp how different cultures and fields of knowledge have explained — and still explain — the birth of the cosmos.

Cosmogony and Cosmogenesis

Throughout human history, the question about the beginning of everything has given rise to two distinct ways of interpreting reality, which have shaped our understanding of the universe along different paths: that of Cosmogony and that of Cosmogenesis.

This article serves as a conceptual starting point, designed for those who wish to understand the essential differences between these two narratives of the origin of the cosmos. More than academic definitions, this is an investigation into how human beings have sought — and still seek — meaning and explanation for their own existence.

On one side, Cosmogony — the realm of myths of the origin of the universe, of deities and sacred stories. It does not seek only a mechanical explanation, but meaning.

It tells us that a god dismembered a giant to form the earth and the sky, that a celestial hero separated the parents Heaven and Earth to create the world, or that a powerful Word pronounced “Let there be light!” over the abyss.

Cosmogony is a narrative woven with the language of symbolism, meant to tell us why we are here and what our place is in the grand scheme of things.

On the other side is Cosmogenesis — the domain of science, philosophy, and physical laws. It does not ask “why,” but “how.” Its stage is not the supernatural world, but the observable universe, governed by mathematical equations and natural processes.

Its epic narrative is that of the expansion of space-time, the formation of the first atoms from an incandescent plasma, and the slow aggregation of matter into galaxies, stars, and planets by the relentless force of gravity. Cosmogenesis is a story of mechanisms, not intentions.

By exploring these two paths, you do not need to choose one side. They represent different answers to different questions. Understanding this distinction is the first step to navigating clearly through the multiple debates and myths of the origin of the universe that will be explored further in other content here on the blog.

Defining the conceptual pillars

Now that we have established the general overview, it is time to lay the conceptual foundations. To navigate confidently through the vast ocean of myths and theories, we need a reliable compass.

Let us, therefore, seek to define precisely the two concepts that will guide our path: Cosmogony and Cosmogenesis.

Cosmogony: the narrative of meaning

The word Cosmogony comes from ancient Greek: kósmos (universe, order) + gónos (generation, birth). Literally, it means “the birth of order.” And this is the key: cosmogony is not just a story about the beginning, but about the imposition of meaningful order upon a primordial chaos.

Cosmogonies are, in essence, sacred narratives. They belong to the domain of religion, mythology, and culture. Some of the defining characteristics of cosmogony are:

• Supernatural agents: creation is an intentional act carried out by gods, deities, or conscious forces.
• Order versus chaos: almost universally, cosmogony begins with some form of chaos — primordial waters, darkness, a shapeless void. The creative act is the triumph of order (Cosmos) over this chaos.
• Explanation of present reality: cosmogony serves to validate and explain the world as it is today.
• Answer to the “why”: cosmogony answers questions of meaning and purpose.

In short, Cosmogony is the mythological biography of the universe, a story that gives meaning and purpose to existence.

Cosmogenesis: the narrative of process

Cosmogenesis, in turn, derives from kósmos + génesis (origin, formation). The terminological difference is subtle but crucial. While cosmogony speaks of the “birth of order,” cosmogenesis speaks of the “origin and formation of the cosmos” as a phenomenon to be investigated.

Cosmogenesis is the child of reason and observation. It inhabits the domain of philosophy, and later, scientific cosmology. Its characteristics directly contrast with those of cosmogony:

• Natural laws and processes: the creation and evolution of the universe are explained by impersonal mechanisms and physical laws.
• Process-oriented and continuous approach: cosmogenesis rarely sees creation as a single, isolated event in the past. Instead, it describes a continuous process of transformation.
• Evidence-based foundation: the narrative of cosmogenesis is built upon observation, experimentation, and mathematical modeling.
• Answer to the “how”: cosmogenesis is not concerned with ultimate purpose. Its central question is how things work.

Cosmogenesis is, therefore, the natural and physical history of the universe, an ever-evolving account of the mechanisms that shape reality.

Comparative table: a synthesis

Characteristic	Cosmogony	Cosmogenesis
Nature	Mythical, Religious, Narrative	Scientific, Philosophical, Processual
Focus	Origin and ordered structure of the cosmos	Process of formation and evolution of the cosmos
Agents	Gods, supernatural beings, conscious forces	Laws of physics, fundamental forces, natural processes
Basis	Tradition, faith, revelation, symbolism	Observation, evidence, mathematical models
Temporality	Single act in a mythical past	Continuous process over cosmic time
Central Question	Why? For what purpose?	How?

The world of Cosmogony: a journey through creation myths

If we understand Cosmogony as the narrative of meaning, then we are speaking of a treasure map of the human soul.

Through myths of the origin of the universe, each culture not only describes the birth of the world but also encodes its values, fears, worldview, and relationship with the divine.

The fertile crescent: order from aquatic chaos

• Sumerian Cosmogony and Babylonian Cosmogony (Epic of Enuma Elish): creation as an act of violence and sovereignty. The god Marduk kills the aquatic monster Tiamat and, with her corpse, builds the world. Humanity is created to serve the gods.
• Egyptian Cosmogony, Ancient Egypt (Heliopolis): creation as self-generation. The god Atum emerges from the primordial waters of Nun and, alone, gives rise to the first generation of gods. Air (Shu) separates the sky (Nut) from the earth (Geb), creating habitable space.
• Zoroastrian Cosmogony (Avesta and Bundahishn): creation as a cosmic moral conflict. The world is created good and perfect by Ahura Mazda, but is invaded and corrupted by Angra Mainyu, the principle of evil. Material creation becomes the battlefield between Light and Darkness, and humanity arises as an active ally of good, endowed with free will to influence the final outcome of the cosmos.

The Abrahamic Cosmogonies: word, logos, and sovereign will

• Jewish Cosmogony (Genesis): creation through the word of a single and transcendent God. The cosmos arises from a sovereign act of God who creates from nothing (ex nihilo) and orders chaos through speech. Creation is fundamentally good, and humanity, made in the image of God, is given the responsibility to care for and govern the world as steward of creation.
• Christian Cosmogony (Gospel of John and apostolic tradition): creation through the Logos that becomes incarnate. The agent of creation is identified as the eternal Logos, manifested historically in Jesus Christ. Creation not only originates in Christ but moves toward redemption and the “New Creation,” in which matter and history are restored and transfigured.
• Islamic Cosmogony (Qur’an): creation through the absolute will of Allah. The universe exists because Allah commands “Be!” (Kun fa-yakun). Creation is perfect, ordered, and entirely subject to divine laws. The human being emerges as khalifah (vice-regent) on Earth, responsible for recognizing the signs of God in the cosmos and acting justly before the Creator.

The Greek clearing and the Norse gods

• Greek Cosmogony (Hesiod, “Theogony”): the beginning is Chaos (the Void). From it arise Gaia (Earth) and other primordial gods. Creation is a succession of divine sovereignties marked by conflict between generations (Uranus versus Cronus, Cronus versus Zeus).
• Norse Cosmogony: creation from a cosmic sacrifice. The gods Odin and his brothers kill the primordial giant Ymir and use his body to construct the world. Order is built from the remains of chaos.
• Celtic Cosmogony: creation as mythical conquest and pact with the land. It narrates the origin of the inhabited world as a succession of invasions, battles, and agreements between divine and human peoples. Order emerges from the sacred relationship with the territory, where sovereignty depends on harmony between kings, gods, and nature itself, alive and immanent.

The philosophies and cycles of the East

• Hindu Cosmogony: based on two views. While the Hymn of Creation (Nasadiya Sukta) expresses cosmic doubt about origin, the Hymn of Purusha describes creation as the dismemberment of a primordial cosmic being, whose parts form the universe and society.
• Buddhist Cosmogony: rejection of an absolute beginning. The universe is seen as cyclical and without a discernible starting point, with countless “world-systems” arising and dissolving driven by karma.
• Jain Cosmogony: an eternal cosmos, without a creator and governed by impersonal laws. Reality consists of six eternal substances (dravyas), including souls (jivas) and matter (pudgala), which interact over infinite cycles of time. There is no creator or intervening god: the universe is self-sufficient, and liberation depends exclusively on individual effort to purify the soul from karmic matter.
• Chinese Cosmogony (Taoist): origin from Wu Ji (the Void), which differentiates into Tai Ji (the Great Absolute), generating Yin and Yang. The myth of Pangu narrates how a giant emerges from a cosmic egg and, upon dying, his body transforms into all parts of the world.
• Shinto Cosmogony: creation as divine procreation and sacralization of Japan. The world is born from the union of Izanagi and Izanami, who generate the Japanese islands and the Kami, establishing the origin of life, death, and purification rituals, as well as legitimizing the imperial lineage as directly descended from the divine.

African cosmogonies: cosmic order, ancestry, and sacred knowledge

• Dogon Cosmogony (Mali): creation as vibration, sacrifice, and stellar order. The universe is born from the World Egg conceived by Amma and stabilized by the sacrifice of Nommo, integrating word, mathematics, and remarkable astronomical knowledge linked to the Sirius system.
• Yoruba Cosmogony (Nigeria/Benin): the god Oduduwa, sent by Olodumare, creates solid land (Ilê-Ifé) by spreading earth over primordial waters with the help of a hen.
• Coptic Cosmogony (Christian Egypt): creation ex nihilo and rupture with the pharaonic pantheon. The cosmos arises from a sovereign act of a single transcendent God, replacing Egyptian divine emanation with creation from nothing, based on word and divine will.

The voices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas

• Aztec Cosmogony: the universe is born and sustained through cycles of creation and destruction. The Five Suns reveal a cosmos maintained by divine self-sacrifice, where human blood nourishes the sun and delays the final collapse.
• Mayan Cosmogony (Popol Vuh): creation through trial and error. The gods finally create humanity from maize, establishing a deep connection between people and agriculture.
• Tupi-Guarani Cosmogony: the world is born from the breath and the song of Nhanderuvuçú and remains incomplete. Human existence is a ritual pilgrimage guided by the sacred word, in search of the Land Without Evil, origin of lost perfection.
• Inca Cosmogony: the world is created by Viracocha and sustained by the continuous imposition of sacred order. Myth, territory, and state merge in Tawantinsuyu, where the Sapa Inca governs as mediator between the cosmos and humanity.
• North American Cosmogonic Patterns: instead of a single myth, recurring themes emerge such as the Creator-Trickster (Raven or Coyote), the Emergence from underground worlds, and the notion of cosmic kinship. Creation is seen as a relational, ethical, and continuous process, deeply connected to territory, community, and balance with nature.

The voices of the indigenous peoples of Oceania

• Australian Aboriginal Cosmogony: the “Dreamtime” is a timeless era in which Spiritual Ancestors sang the world into existence. Creation is an ongoing process, kept alive through rituals.
• Maori Cosmogony (New Zealand): the tragic and loving separation of the parents Ranginui (Sky) and Papatūānuku (Earth) by their son Tāne Mahuta, creating the world of light.

The emergence of Cosmogenesis: from philosophy to science

The philosophical beginnings

The Pre-Socratic philosophers in Ancient Greece sought the Arché (original principle) in natural elements, not in gods.

• Thales of Miletus: proposed Water as the principle of everything.
• Anaximander: postulated the Ápeiron (the Infinite) as the impersonal source.
• Democritus and Leucippus: developed Atomism, a mechanistic theory in which everything is composed of atoms moving in the void.

The scientific revolution: the universe-machine

• Isaac Newton: his laws described a deterministic universe, like a perfect clock, leading to the idea of a “Clockmaker God.”
• Pierre-Simon Laplace: took mechanism to the extreme, stating that he did not need the “hypothesis” of God to explain the universe.

The modern paradigm: the Big Bang Cosmogenesis

The Big Bang theory is the central cosmogonic narrative of modern science, supported by evidence:

1. The Expansion of the Universe (discovered by Hubble).
2. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (the “fossil echo” of the Big Bang).
3. The Nucleosynthesis of Light Elements (the correct prediction of the abundances of hydrogen and helium).

The narrative is a continuous and epic process: from the initial singularity to cosmic inflation, formation of particles, atoms, and finally, to the evolution of galaxies, stars, and planets.

Dialogue or conflict? The coexistence of the two narratives

According to Stephen Jay Gould, Science and Religion (and, by extension, Cosmogenesis and Cosmogony) would be “Non-Overlapping Magisteria.”

• Cosmogenesis answers the “How?” (factual, theoretical).
• Cosmogony answers the “Why?” (meaning, value, purpose).

Sob esta visão, não haveria conflito, pois as narrativas abordam questões diferentes.

Points of inevitable friction

However, conflict arises when the narratives make competing factual claims.

• The First Cause: the explanation of a transcendent cause (God) versus scientific explanations (quantum fluctuations).
• The Age of the Earth and the Universe: estimates of thousands of years (literal reading of some cosmogonies) versus billions of years (scientific evidence).
• The Place of Humanity: anthropocentric view (purpose of creation) versus the view of a common planet in a vast and ancient universe.

From the creation of the cosmos to the human condition: the case of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Within Mesopotamian cosmogonies, the Epic of Gilgamesh perfectly illustrates how cosmogony serves as a foundation for other narratives.

The Enuma Elish (cosmogony) establishes the stage (a world created by gods) and the rules (humans as servants). Gilgamesh is the drama that unfolds on this stage, exploring what it means to live and die under these rules. The account of the Flood within the epic is a “post-creation” event that presupposes the cosmogony to explore themes of survival and meaning.

In this context, therefore, cosmogony is understood not as an end, but as a starting point for cultural and existential reflection.

A possible synthesis? Continuous creation and the participatory universe

For many, the synthesis lies in reinterpretation. The view of Continuous Creation understands God as an agent acting through the natural laws described by science. The Big Bang and evolution would then be the means of creation.

On the other hand, interpretations of discoveries in quantum physics and cosmology open space for visions of a participatory universe, in which human consciousness, a product of the cosmos, plays an active role in assigning meaning.

Conclusion

Cosmogony and Cosmogenesis represent the two arms of the human search for its cosmic roots: one that longs for an embrace, for belonging and meaning; the other that longs for understanding and for uncovering the mechanisms of reality.

Recognizing that both are legitimate and profound expressions of the human spirit does not mean abandoning critical rigor. It means understanding that the question “Where do we come from?” is as complex as we are. The complete answer may lie in the continuous effort to reconcile what we know with what we feel, to reconcile the how with the why.

From these understandings, when we look at the night sky, we can then see the stage of Marduk and Tiamat, the body of Ymir, the egg of Pangu, the “Dreamtime,” and also the field of expansion of space-time and the radiation of the Big Bang.

Cosmogony and Cosmogenesis are different narratives, but they share the same origin: the human mind, insatiable and astonished, trying to find its place in the silent vastness of the cosmos.

Thus, the two great rivers of thought that seek to explain our origins become clear: the deep and symbolic River of Cosmogony and the precise and empirical River of Cosmogenesis. They run parallel, sometimes intertwining, sometimes moving apart, but both feed the same ocean of human understanding.

But, after all, how do different cultures explain the origin of the universe and how can we navigate its immense diversity around the globe?

This article establishes the conceptual foundations of this debate. From it, it is possible to deepen each of these dimensions, exploring more thoroughly the universe of cosmogony, its cultural functions, its universal themes, and its variations around the world.

The expedition is just beginning!

May the Light of Love be the guide of all paths, at all times, in all circumstances, with all the people. And may Love foster Peace!

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Bibliographical references

1. ELIADE, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return: Archetypes and Repetition. Ed. Perspectiva, 1972.

Fundamental to understanding the function of cosmogonic myth in structuring traditional societies, contrasting with the linear historical view.

2. HUBBLE, Edwin. “A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae”. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1929.

Seminal scientific article that presented the first observational evidence of the expansion of the universe, the basis of the Big Bang theory.

3. LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude. Myth and Meaning. Ed. 70, 1978.

Offers a structural analysis of mythic thought, helping to uncover the common structures behind various cosmogonies.

4. HAWKING, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. Ed. Intrínseca, 2015.

Accessible exposition of modern cosmogony, from the Big Bang theory to black holes.