As both modern scientific theories and ancient religious myths alike demonstrate, the interplay of creative forces constitutes a standard theme of creation narrative―the stories we tell about creation.  The scientific Big Bang theory, the most recent version of the creation theme (which can in fact be reduced to the interaction of a handful of physical forces¹), is but a modern technical version of this story whose truth―or confirmation―is ongoing.  And the Snake-Bird motif, a narrative scenario that constitutes a primary mythic representation of the theme, expresses our earliest awareness of this interplay of forces.  A glance at the many early instances of this motif, found in myths around the world, will make this clear.

    Prior to the genesis of the world as represented in myth, we typically find perhaps two or three basic elements―the two most commonly noted being the Dark Sky above and the Deep Waters below.²  Appropriately, as consistent with our theme, these two elements typify the two earliest meanings given to the term ‘chaos’: for the Dark Sky is nothing but empty space―the Chaos of Hesiod’s Theogony³ and the Ginnunga Gap of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda⁴―and the Deep Waters are nothing but a diffuse mass―the “chaos” of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.⁵  As a result, the most common primeval cosmic situation that existed before creation, as depicted in myth, consists of two forms of Chaos.  In contrast to this doubly chaotic precosmic situation, at the very moment of genesis order is introduced from on high, when a point of light―often represented in narrative iconography as a bird―appears in the Dark Sky.  This white Sky-Bird, the first star, is the embodiment of divine Order that―as celestial goddess―flies down from the Dark Sky, hovers over the Deep Waters, and searches vainly for a place to nest.  Fortunately for this wayward Bird, the wind created by the beating of her wings whips the surface of the Deep Waters into a frenzy, a tornado-like turbulence swirls the chaotic incipient elements in the water into a congealed mass, and the first land, in the form of a coiled Water-Snake, the embodiment of terrestrial order, at last emerges.  In the end (actually, “In the beginning . . .”), the Sky-Bird mates with the Water-Snake that surrounds this new-formed island, and their offspring, the Cosmic Egg, nestles in the coils of its father, brooded over by its mother.