The beginning of the world

According to the "three-five calendar", there were no humans, no universe, only chaos. Just as an egg breeds life, this chaos breeds everything in the world. Pangu, the primitive god of our universe, was born long ago.

Pangu was born in chaos, and at the same time, heaven and earth slowly separated and formed with Pangu's metaplasia. 18000 years later, the yang-clear qi gradually rose to the sky, and the yin-turbid qi fell to the ground. Pangu changed endlessly in it. He is a god in heaven, a saint on earth, integrated with heaven and earth, and the spirit of heaven and earth. Pangu grows ten feet every day, the sky grows ten feet every day, and the ground is ten feet thick every day. In this way, after 18 thousand years, the sky has risen to a very high height, the land has grown to a very thick degree, and Pangu has grown and formed with heaven and earth. After such a long time, the world was finally opened.

This is an early version of Pangu's creation legend. Later, with the change of human concept and acceptance, this legend was constantly modified and packaged. As some later versions said, at first, heaven and earth were interlinked. When Pangu woke up, he only saw darkness. In a rage, he split the place where heaven and earth are connected with a giant axe, and then spread them out with his body. As his body grew, heaven and earth became farther and farther away. This version obviously adds more secular content, which makes the myth superficial and naive, loses its profound truth, and is easier for ordinary people to understand, but the plot also becomes bizarre.

Another version says that our world belongs to Pangu's body form. When Pangu died, he turned himself into nature, his breath into clouds in the wind, his voice into thunder, his left eye into the sun, his right eye into the moon, his limbs and head into the four poles and five mountains of the earth, his blood into rivers, his muscles into fields, his hair and beard into stars in the sky, his fur into vegetation, his teeth and bones into minerals.

Others say that Pangu's tears turned into rivers, his breath turned into wind, his voice turned into thunder, and his eyes turned into lightning. It was sunny when he was happy and cloudy when he was angry. ...

Portrait of Pangu. (public domain)

These are all versions of Pangu's epoch-making myths and legends, and they are a kind of gratitude and description of human beings' infinite compassion for the God of Creation. China is a country of etiquette. Since ancient times, the biggest ceremony in China culture is to worship heaven and earth. Pangu is a god in heaven, a saint on earth, a unity of heaven and earth, and a spirit of nature. He opened heaven and earth and became a natural thing. The ancients believed that heaven and earth were the embodiment of God, dominating all things and caring for mankind. The ancient people's worship of heaven and earth is actually a reverence and gratitude for the god of heaven and earth, and it is also a way to communicate with the gods in ancient times.

Creation legends of other nationalities

There is a similar legend in Rigveda in ancient India. Rigveda? The song of primitive man records that the universe was originally born from the body of primitive man. Primitive man is a great god and a master of immortals. He has thousands of heads, eyes and feet, which is everything in the present, past and future.

The four major Indian castes were born from primitive people: Brahman was born from the mouth, Kashatri was born from the arm, Vedas were born from the legs, and sudra was born from the feet. In addition, primitive people gave birth to the moon in their chests, the sun in their eyes, Raytheon in their mouths, Fengshen in their breath, the celestial sphere on their navel, the celestial sphere on their heads and the celestial sphere on their feet ... thus our universe was born.

There is a similar legend in ancient Egyptian mythology, saying that the oldest god is Tam (or Atmu), and the sun and moon are his eyes. When he existed, there was no universe and no gods were born. He once lived alone, but after hard thinking, he created heaven and earth, celestial bodies, gods, men, women, animals, reptiles and so on in his mind. These creative ideas and concepts were translated into words by Tan's wisdom. When he said these words, everything was created.

There are many similar records in legends around the world. From these creation legends, we can extract the essence of myth: the human world was created by God, and the world we know is only a part of God's body, perhaps just a cell of God. The creator turned his body and wisdom into everything in the universe and somehow dominated everything.

Synthesizing various versions of the creation myth, we can also see that there are different kinds of gods, which are hierarchical and have gods at different levels. When God created everything in the world and human beings, he also created different gods at the following cosmic levels, which finally corresponded to human beings.

The ancients believed that all things have spirits, and all individual lives and materials have spirits, which are dominated by spirits. Generally speaking, there are different gods behind the whole nature, which constitute greater life in a larger scope. The creator created all natural things and endowed them with individual spirituality. At the same time, he also created various gods who dominated these natural things, such as Mountain God, Heluo God, Emperor Heaven, Hou Di, Lei Gong and Dian Mu. These different levels of gods are the spiritual masters of all things in nature, integrated with nature and everywhere. They have their own division of labor in nature, and they perform their duties, but generally they exercise the will of the creator in the deep layer of the world, which is a different embodiment of the spirit of the creator. There is a story in Shan Hai Jing that Nu Wa's intestines become ten gods, which may have this meaning.

For example, Chinese medicine believes that the human body is composed of various organs such as the internal organs, and there are different gods in each organ, which preside over different human functions and perform their duties. Generally speaking, all organs, like the human body, exercise the will of the subject Shen Yuan. Modern biology also recognizes that the human body is composed of countless cells, and each cell is an independent small life, which contains a complete set of life information and performs its duties. On the whole, all cells constitute the human body, and the human body exercises the will of the whole.

Modern science has found that the rotation of electrons around the nucleus follows the law that planets revolve around stars. Their operation and existence are very similar, except that one exists in the micro world and the other exists in the macro world. Therefore, Taoism often says: the human body is a small universe. It means that the universe and the human body are interlinked and similar in some ways.

According to this statement, the same is true of the universe as we know it from a macro perspective. Pangu transformed the body into a natural thing, into the sun, the moon and the stars, and into the universe in which we live. Aren't our world and galaxies all part of Pangu's huge body? Human beings and all things in nature are independent individuals and small life, but on the macro level, will all these be part of the somatic cells of larger life? Will this vast universe we live in be the body of a great god, and our world exists in him? Will our earth, solar system and galaxy be just a particle of his huge body, just like the molecules or atoms that make up the human body?

"I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but toward which corner of the mountain." Human beings are too small in the universe, too limited in wisdom, and the field of perception is pitifully narrow. Facing the infinite universe and gods, human beings can only hold a heart of awe forever, but can't be arrogant.

References:

1。 Calendar for March 5th.

2。 "The Era of the May Calendar" (quoted from Yi Shi)

3。 The story of difference

4。 Shan Hai Jing? Wild west classic

5。 Rigveda