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Fulani of Mali Creation Myth
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At the beginning there was a huge drop of milk.
Then Doondari came and created the stone.
Then the stone created iron;
And iron created fire;
And fire created water;
And water created air.
Then Doondari descended the second time.
And he took the five elements
And he shaped them into man.
But man was proud.
Then Doondari created blindness and blindness defeated
man.
But when blindness became too proud,
Doondari created sleep, and sleep defeated blindness;
But when sleep became too proud,
Doondari created worry, and worry defeated sleep;
But when worry became too proud,
Doondari created death, and death defeated worry.
But when death became too proud,
Doondari descended for the third time.
And he came as Gueno, the eternal one,
And Gueno defeated death.
(Eng. trans. by Ulli Beier in The Origin of Life and
Death, 1966)
At first there was only a great void, Ginnungagap. Eventually
a region of mist and ice, Niflheim, was formed in the
North and a region of fire, Muspellsheim, was formed in
the South. The great world-tree, Yggdrasil, reached through
all time and space, but was perpetually under attack from
Nidhogg, the evil serpent. The fountain of Mimir, source
of hidden wisdom, lay under a root of the tree. Niflheim
came into contact with Muspellsheim, and the fires melted
the ice, which yielded Ymir, the Frost-Giant with a human
form. From Ymir's sweat came a race of Giants, so that
a huge cow (Audhumla) was created to feed them.
One day the cow licked the ice and hair emerged, on the
next day a head, and on the third day Buri emerged, fully
formed. Buri begot a son, Bur, who in turn had three sons:
Odin, Vili, and Ve. These three were a new race, not Giants
but gods. They banded together and murdered Ymir. Most
of the other Giants drowned in Ymir's blood, which created
a great sea. From Ymir's body the three gods made solid
land, the earth, and from his skull they made the heavens.
They then created a race of dwarves from the maggots that
fed upon Ymir's body. This was followed by the creation
of the first man and the first woman. They shaped the
man from an ash tree and the woman from a vine.
The giants are the gods of old. In the first winter, a
mighty giant was created from hoarfrost. And when fire
came, he melted. From the enormous bulk of his body came
the world. From his blood flowed the sea, from his bones
the mountains, from his hair the forests, from his skull
the sky. In the centre of the Earth, on hills rising high
as mountains, live the gods, and below seethes the Underworld,
land of the dead and all their secrets.
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