Cosmogony — the narrative or speculative account of how the world came into being — occupies a privileged position within the depth-psychological corpus precisely because it is never merely an archaic curiosity but a living template for psychic regeneration. Eliade establishes the foundational case most systematically: the cosmogonic myth is the paradigmatic model for every creative act, every healing, every installation of sovereignty, and every New Year renewal; to recite it is to reactualize the primordial event, collapsing profane time back into sacred origins. Von Franz extends this framework into analytical psychology proper, treating creation myths cross-culturally as projections of unconscious processes — the unanschaulich archetypes finding their first imaginable form in the primordial egg, the sacrificed giant, the divine victim, and the chain of emanations. The tension between these approaches is instructive: where Eliade emphasizes the cosmic-religious function of cosmogonic recitation, von Franz pursues the intrapsychic dynamics that such myths encode. A further set of voices — Seaford, Vernant, Harrison — situates cosmogony within intellectual and social history, tracing how mythical accounts of origins gave way to philosophical monism or were shaped by political succession narratives. Rank foregrounds the sacrificial dismemberment motif. The Hesiodic Theogony, the Enuma Elish, Orphic egg-cosmogonies, Vedic hymns, and Polynesian chain-genealogies all recur as reference points, collectively establishing cosmogony as the master-symbol of creation, destruction, and renewal.
the cosmogony serves as the paradigmatic model for every creation, for every kind of doing... cosmogonic time serves as the model for all sacred times
Eliade argues that the cosmogony is the supreme exemplary model, providing the template for every human creative act, every sacred time, and every ritual of renewal.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
to emerge from the belly or the dark hut or the initiatory 'grave' is equivalent to a cosmogony. Initiatory death reiterates the paradigmatic return to chaos
Eliade demonstrates that initiatory death and rebirth structurally re-enact the cosmogony, equating emergence from symbolic darkness with the primordial act of world-creation.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
life cannot be restored but only re-created through repetition of the cosmogony... an essential element of any cure is the recitation of the cosmogonic myth
Eliade shows that among archaic peoples healing is effected not by restoration but by ritual re-enactment of the cosmogony, which provides the only valid model of total renewal.
, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, 1954thesis
the ritual recitation reactualized the combat between Marduk and the marine monster Tiamat... The battle between two groups of actors repeated the passage from chaos to cosmos, actualized the cosmogony.
Eliade analyses the Babylonian New Year ceremony as a ritual actualization of the cosmogonic myth, wherein dramatic performance literally re-enacts the primordial transition from chaos to ordered cosmos.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
every new construction reproduced the creation of the world. This second type of cosmogony is much more complex... it is with such a cosmogony that the countless forms of the building sacrifice are bound up
Eliade traces how the combat-cosmogony, exemplified in the slaying of Tiamat, becomes the paradigm for architectural sacrifice and all cultural construction.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
I want to convey an impression of this type of cosmogony. It is a Samoan cosmogony. The God Tangaloa lived in the far spaces. He created all things. He was alone, there was no heaven, no earth.
Von Franz uses the Samoan chain-cosmogony to illustrate the widespread archetypal pattern of creatio ex nihilo proceeding through sequential divine fission, mapping the psychological emergence of differentiated reality from an undivided ground.
, Creation Myths, 1995thesis
the germ upon which the Godhead broods is called the hiranyagharba, which is generally translated as a germ of gold, the golden germ
Von Franz traces the cosmogonic egg or golden germ motif from the Rigveda as an archetypal image of pre-differentiated totality upon which creative brooding produces the world.
, Creation Myths, 1995thesis
First there was Chaos and night and the dark abyss... night with her dark wings gave birth to a wind egg. From it sprang in the course of time the God Eros
Von Franz examines the Orphic cosmogony as a variant of the egg-birth motif in which Eros — desire and creative impulse — emerges from primordial darkness, linking cosmogony directly to the psychology of creative energy.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
P'an Ku is also not only the artisan who created the world, but the first victim as well, and from his corpse the world is created
Von Franz shows that in Chinese cosmogony the creator-god is simultaneously the sacrificial victim whose dismembered body constitutes the material world, a pattern paralleling Vedic and Germanic traditions.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
the gods made the world from the dismembered body of the primitive giant Purushu: the heavens from his head, the earth from his feet, the sun from his eye, the moon from his spirit
Rank identifies the dismemberment cosmogony of the Vedic Purusha as a primary mythic structure in which the sacrificed primal being furnishes the material substance of cosmic order.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932supporting
one of the most widespread and recognized cosmogonic theories in physics was that of George Gamow... at the beginning of the whole universe there were fiery gas nebula from which everything arose
Von Franz demonstrates continuity between ancient fire-cosmogonies and modern astrophysical models, arguing that the same archetypal image governs both mythological and scientific accounts of cosmic origins.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
he, the never-aging, the always Jung, male-female, embracing the cosmos, but unembraced by it, lives with his Ennoia, a female power, within him
Von Franz reads the Gnostic Valentinian cosmogony as a psychological drama in which the primordial Self-Father's inner feminine impulse (Ennoia) initiates the entire chain of creative emanation.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
Of old times the Sky and the Earth were not yet set apart the one from the other, nor were the female and male principles separated. All was a mass, formless and eggshaped
Von Franz presents Japanese cosmogony as a further instance of the egg-chaos motif, in which primordial undifferentiation of sky, earth, and gender polarity precedes world-formation.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
Zeus's fight against Typhon for the title of king of the gods has lost its cosmogonic meaning... the account of the genesis of the world describes a natural process with no connection to ritual
Vernant traces how Hesiod's Theogony marks a transitional moment in which cosmogonic combat is progressively detached from ritual enactment and reconceived as a natural, proto-philosophical process.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
The Hesiodic theogony, it is well known, was influenced (even if only indirectly) by myths known to the Babylonians, the Hurrians, the Hittites, and the Phoenicians
Seaford situates Hesiodic cosmogony within a broader Near Eastern tradition of succession-narrative and primordial combat, connecting the political logic of divine sovereignty to cosmogonic structure.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
Mythical cosmogony and mythical anthropogony are shaped by the formation of
Seaford argues that mythical cosmogony and anthropogony are not autonomous narratives but are structurally shaped by the socio-political and psychoanalytic formations of the cultures that produce them.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
practically all the important emotional states from which we suffer are collected in the different creation myths... emanating something from our body... has been used as a symbol or analogy for creation
Von Franz proposes that creation myths catalogue the full range of affective states and bodily processes, functioning as symbolic maps of the psychic dynamics that accompany every genuine creative act.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
boredom are some of the motifs which we find pretty often in creation myths... they all belong to what the alchemists call the afflictio animae, the depression and sadness which precede a creative act
Von Franz reads the affective prelude to cosmogonic action — boredom, depression, restlessness — as a psychic analog to the alchemical afflictio animae, a necessary precondition for creative emergence.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
These creation myths... are very typical for primitive and semi-primitive civilizations which have never disintegrated... a civilization which has never been cut off from its original primitive roots
Von Franz argues that elaborately sequential creation myths characterize cultures that maintain living continuity with their archetypal roots, making the cosmogony an index of cultural and psychic wholeness.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
the most all-powerful and eternal, and at the same time indefinite, powers are condensing, like a chemical substance which is precipitated, slowly condensing into concrete reality
Von Franz describes the Gnostic emanation cosmogony as a process of psychic condensation, in which infinite divine power progressively precipitates into multiplied, differentiated, and diminished concrete forms.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
all the creation myths which attribute the origin of the world to the sexual union of father and mother very quickly skip over the beginning and go on to the next step
Von Franz critically notes that sexual-generative cosmogonies substitute one mystery for another and therefore represent a less penetrating engagement with the ultimate question of origins.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
the mother of heavenly chaos, Eurynome, who appeared naked from the original no-thing. She separated the sea and sky, and performed her solitary dance upon the waves
Hoeller presents the Pelasgian creation myth as one of the oldest cosmogonies, linking it to Jung's archetypal deities and highlighting the feminine principle as the initiating agent of cosmic differentiation.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
the erection of an altar to Agni is nothing but the reproduction on the microcosmic scale of the Creation... the building of the altar is accompanied by songs that proclaim which cosmic region has just been created
Eliade demonstrates how Vedic fire-altar construction ritually reproduces the cosmogony at a microcosmic scale, so that every consecrated territory becomes a recapitulation of original world-making.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957supporting
the new creation is identified with the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly city, which... is definitely thought of as a mandala
Von Franz interprets the eschatological new creation of the Apocalypse as a mandala-symbol, connecting cosmogonic renewal to the individuation symbol of the Self.
, Creation Myths, 1995aside
Tell how at the first gods and earth came to be, and rivers, and the boundless sea with its raging swell, and the gleaming stars, and the wide heaven above
Hesiod's Theogony provides the primary Greek cosmogonic source text to which multiple depth-psychological and classical authors repeatedly refer as a foundational example of mythic world-genesis.
aside