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Day Two: Cosmology

I actually kind of want to re-write this at a later date. I think this sucks major ass and balls, but I don't want to fall behind because I keep going back to edit previous days.

Presumably, this is asking about the cosmology of the specific path I follow, but I worship multiple pantheons so, there's a handful of ideas out there. I started getting really deep into cosmogony because I got sidetracked, so this might end up being poorly written because I accidentally burnt myself out on that lol.

For Hellenic paganism, the creation myth is outlined in Theogony. The world came from Chaos (void, nothingness) and eventually the first race of gods (Titans) would come into being, the first one being Gaia who was born presumably from herself. Early Greek cosmology centered around a flat earth. Basically, the edges of the flat earth were home to monsters and mythological creatures. Outside the bounds of earth was a large, cosmic ocean. Heaven is solid and flat and supported by pillars. Under the earth is Tartarus.

Norse cosmology is pretty well known by this point. The world exists on the world tree Yggdrasil. The nine worlds exist around Yggdrasil: Asgard (realm of the Aesir), Vanaheim (realm of the Vanir), Alfheim (home of the light elves), Midgard (home of humanity), Jotunheim (land of the Jotun), Muspellheim (realm of fire), Svartalfaheim (land of the dark elves), Niflheim/Hel (land of the dead), and Nidavellir (land of the dwarves). There are specific locations within these realms (ie Valhalla, Folkvangr) and there are creatures that dwell on the world tree itself. Examples of some of the denizens of Yggdrasil include Nidhogg, Ratatoskr, and sacred stags. Of course, another well known aspect of Norse cosmology is Ragnarok.

Irish cosmology is hard to figure out, but it was probably pretty similar to other Indo-European cultures (realm of the gods/heaven, underworld, cosmic ocean).

There's others I could go over (ie Egyptian, Mesopotamian), but these are the most important ones to me. I personally tend to focus on the parts where they overlap (ie axis mundi, underworld and the river going through it, the gods having a seperate realm), but I also don't spend a lot of time thinking about cosmology.

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