Ex Nihilo Creation

The central fact of the creation from nothing, or ex nihilo, creation myth type is a
supreme deity, existing alone in a pre-creation emptiness or void, who consciously
creates an organized universe on his own. Thus the God of the Hebrews in Genesis
simply decides to create, and He made Heaven and Earth.
The ex nihilo creation is firmly imbedded in the collective psyche in the parts of the
world dominated by the monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
religions centered on an all-powerful supreme deity who embodies in himself all of the
elements assigned to various deities
in polytheistic systems.
But the ex nihilo creation is not limited to the three Abrahamic religions and is not the
exclusive product of the monotheistic cultures. In fact, it is ubiquitous in all parts of the
world and is arguably
the most common of the five types. It existed in ancient Egypt, in the ancient Rig Veda
of India, and is present to this day in the mythologies of many animistic cultures of
Africa, Asia, Oceania, and
North America.
The mythological ancestors of the ex nihilo creator are, in all likelihood, the sky gods of
earlier religions; the personifications of the elements of nature we associate with the
heavens. The ex nihilo creator often maintains characteristics of ancient storm and
weather gods and embodies the power of the sun. For example, the creator of Genesis
can divide seas and inundate the world with flood waters. The creator gods of Egypt are
closely associated with the blazing desert sun. The ex nihilo creator also owes
something of his personality to the ancient role of the father god who fertilizes the
earth. The creative acts of the Zuni sky father or the Rig Veda creator are acts of
fecundation.
.
The person of the supreme deity creator who existed before existence teases the
human mind and leads to inevitable questions: where did the ex nihilo creator come
from and how did he come about in the void, what was there before there was
anything? These are, of course, unanswerable questions; the human mind is a product
of existence and inevitably fails in its attempt to imagine pre-existence.
Jinasena, the Jain sage, suggests that people who think of a creator are misled.
If God is the creator, where was He before creation and how could a nonmaterial being
make anything so material as this world?
In short, the ex nihilo creator always was; he is not controlled by time or by any
previous creation.
Material creation can emerge from the ex nihilo creator in a myriad of ways.
The creator can create from his mouth by way of saliva, from his genitals as semen,
even from his anus as fecal matter.
The Egyptian Atum created by masturbating or, as some texts claimed, by
expectorating.
In some northern myths the popular trickster-creator Raven defecated the world into
existence.
The Boshongo creator vomited the universe into existence.
The Bagobo of the Philippines say that the creator, who lived in the sky, was white. He
constantly polished his whiteness and he made the earth out of the dried skin that
came from this polishing.
The creator can create from his mind as thought or word. In some places in Egypt the
original god created himself by calling out his own name.
The Hebrew, Maori, Swahili creator words said let there be light and there was light.

The creator, Io, was alone and inactive. So as to overcome the inactivity he used
words, calling on darkness to become light- possessing darkness
The Islamic-influenced creator has always existed; he is
beyond birth and death and he creates by words:
An important stage in the ex nihilo myth is the creation of humans. The Creek Indians of
North America say that the Creator decided to make the animals to enjoy his newly
created world, that
the animals felt a lack of purpose in their lives, so the creator made humans for the
animals to teach and assist in learning to survive.
The Hebrew god, like many others, made humans in Genesis 1 male and female . . . in
His image and gave them guardianship over his creation (In Genesis 2 the story is
different; we are told that Eve was created from one of Adams ribs).
The fact that Our Father lacks a mate and is notably alone in many cases especially
those of the monotheists suggests a source outside of the generative cycle of birth, life
and death; a source that is eternal and that by so being provides some sort of
immortality to his creation. This vision of the ex nihilo creator is expressed best
intellectually in non-personal concepts such as the Vedic/ Hindu Brahman, the essence
of existence that is neither male nor female and is everywhere and nowhere. For most
ex nihilists, however, an Our Father is a more comforting idea.
The Supreme Being typically exists in the Void, a difficult concept for mortal humans to
comprehend. Perhaps empty space is the closest we can come to a vision of no-thingness. The ex nihilo creator creates from nothing, and nothing is a concept that negates
time and place.
More important, since the Void is timeless and without boundaries, he presents us with a
vision of eternity, possibly suggesting eternal life.
The Supreme Being who exists as eternal potential energy in the Void seems suddenly
to awaken. In his aloneness he longs for something more, the way a baby one day
seems suddenly to awaken to his surroundings.
Once the creator has completed the realization of his consciously developed plan for the
created world, usually after he has established the sky, the earth, the plants, seas,
rivers, and mountains,
and even the animals, he realizes that something is missing. The paradise is complete,
but somethinga tension, a provocation, an element of the creator himselfis needed to
give life to the creation. This is where we come in. The Supreme Deity is said to have
created a being in his imagethe humanto watch over his creation, thus, in fact,
establishing the fact that humans, the creators of the story, see the god as being like
them . In this assumption, humans inject the element of pride into creation and both
undermine its perfection and provide it with the energy of life. If we are made in the
image of the god we can act like the god. So enters the devil figure who personifies the
sensuality, the roving imagination, the duality, the ambiguity, and the imperfection of
humansthe qualities that are precisely the elements that characterize their greatest
creative works. The devil infects the paradise of the eternal ones creation and endows
it with the possibility of new creative powers and, of course, also with the power to
destroy. The price we pay for these powers is death, death being a necessary
component of the procreative process by which we participate in the life cycle and also
part of the related process by which we make cities, objects of art, and other
creative forms that mirror our image of the original planned creation of the ex nihilo
creator.
But to Our Father all of this adds up not to the healthy development of his children into
adulthood, individuality, and creativity, but to disobedience and corruption. The natural
instinct of the

defied patriarch is to punish the wrongdoers, those who defy him even as they imitate
him and his creation. So comes the flood that will wipe the slate clean and provide the
possibility of a new creation.
The waters are, of course, a model for the waters of birth and the ark is the placenta of
rebirth. Chosen representatives of an obedient humanity become the fetuses of that
rebirth and will participate in a new creation, the success of which, of course, remains to
be seen. The assumption of the obedient descendants of the chosen is that the
Supreme Deity is still there controlling his creation.