Various types or schemes have been applied to classify creation myths found throughout human cultures. Marta Weigle’s Creation and Procreation: Feminist Reflections on Mythologies of Cosmogony and Parturition presents a most precise study and interpretation of these myths. Weigle constructs a 9-part classification: “1) Accretion or conjunction; 2) Secretion; 3) Sacrifice; 4) Division or conjugation; 5) Earth-diver; 6) Emergence; 7) Two creators; 8) Deus faber; and 9) Ex nihilo.” For the purpose of this paper we will look briefly at Weigle’s study and classifications related specifically to the Book of Genesis and Hesiod’s Theogony.
Secretion Stories describe the cosmos as developing from “bodily fluid emissions. (e.g. sweat, blood, vomit and defecation).” In Theogony, “Aphrodite is born when Zeus emasculates his father, Kronos, and several drops of blood from the severed genitals fall upon Ocean.” Aphrodite then emerges from “blood tinged foam,” which becomes symbolic of the “beginning of generative life on earth.” Subsequently, Aphrodite is known as “the goddess of sexual attraction.” Weigle comments that early Greek mythology “places very little emphasis on human creation. People and the earth’s flora and fauna seem to appear as a…show more content… Eventually, with Gaia’s help, Ouranos’ son Kronos overcomes him, separating earth from sky through castration. Kronos himself proves no less tyrannical than his father, eating his children as they emerge from the womb. Eventually, with his mother Rhea’s help, Zeus borrows his father’s sharp sickle and repeats cosmic history by emasculating Kronos.”