Cosmogony

Cosmogony is any model concerning the origin of the cosmos or the universe.

Quotes

• Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science.
  • Cheikh Anta Diop The African Origin of Civilization : Myth or Reality p. xiv (1954)

• Miró... showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction.
  • Marcel Duchamp quoted in: 'Appreciations of other artists': Joan Miro (painter, sculptor author) 1946, by Marcel Duchamp; as cited in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159

• Perhaps, with the introduction of more rational views of cosmogony and anthropology, and broader and more generous principles of psychology into our elementary text-books, through the union of a sounder physics with a larger metaphysics, our children's children may finally learn that there are inalienable animal as well as human rights, and that, in respect to the ties of moral obligation and the claims to kind and just treatment which they imply, not only "all nations of men," as Paul affirmed on Mar's Hill, but, as the Indian sage declared, "all living creatures are of one blood." "Metempsychosis", p. 164
  • Edward Payson Evans, Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology (1898)

• The cosmogony of the Manava Dharmashastra is the broadest and most comprehensive we have thus far encountered.
  • Joseph Guigniaut , in Jain, S., & Jain, M. (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. vol 4. Introduction

• Urusvati knows that cosmogony and religion should be carefully studied. One should appreciate the words of the Great Pilgrim when He said that He had come to fulfill the previous Law. 170.
  • Koot Hoomi , Supermundane (1938)

• Your accepted conceptions of cosmogony — whether from the theological or scientific standpoints —do not enable you to solve a single anthropological or even ethical problem and they stand in your way whenever you attempt to solve the problem of the races on this planet... Go on saying, Our planet and man were created — and you will be fighting against hard facts for ever, analyzing and losing time over trifling details—unable to even grasp the whole. But once admit that... both planets and man are — states for a given time; that their present appearance — geological and anthropological — is transitory and but a condition concomitant of that stage of evolution at which they have arrived in the descending cycle — and all will become plain. You will easily understand what is meant by the one and only element or principle in the universe and that androgynous; the seven-headed serpent Ananda of Vishnu, the Nag around Buddha, the great dragon eternity biting with its active head, its passive tail, from the emanations of which spring worlds, beings and things. You will comprehend the reason why the first philosopher proclaimed all — maya...
  • Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 75-76 (1923)

• If Gods are made in the image of men, cosmogonies reflect the forms of terrestrial states. In an empire ruled absolutely by one man the notion of an universe under the control of a single God seemed obvious and reasonable.... The Christian God was a magnified and somewhat flattering portrait of Tiberius and Caligula.
  • Aldous Huxley, One and Many. Also quoted in Ram Swarup, On Hinduism: Reviews and Reflections (2000), Ch. 5

• Radha’s elevated status, her role as a cosmic queen equal to or superior Krishna giving her a central role in the cosmogony in the Brahma Vivarta Purana... As creator of the universe we find Radha playing a role that is extremely atypical of her earlier history, the role of a mother. In the Brahma Vaivarta Purana, however, she is often called by names that suggest that her motherly role, vis-à-vis the created world. She is called mother of Vishnu, mother of the world, and mother of all.
  • David R. Kinsley, in Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (19 June 1988), p. 93

• Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress.
  • Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain (1924)

• Uru and Svati are found in cosmogony. The signs of approaching Aquarius and its combination with Saturn are again being repeated. One can see once more how the cosmogony of the Atlanteans was on the right path. Not only was the chemism of the rays known at that time, but also the actual cooperation of the luminaries. After long wanderings, humanity again approaches just that. 516.
  • Morya, Agni Yoga (1929)

• Amid all the beliefs of Europe, and of Asia, that of the Indian Brahmins seems to me infinitely the most alluring. And the reason why I love the Brahmin more than the other schools of Asiatic thought is because it seems to me to contain them all. Greater than all European philosophies, it is even capable of adjusting itself to the vast hypotheses of modern science. Our Christian religions have tried in vain, when there were no other choice open to them, to adapt themselves to the progress of science. But after having allowed myself to be swept away by the powerful rhythm of Brahmin thought, along the curve or life, with its movement of alternating ascent and return, I come back to my own century, and while finding therein the immense projections of a new cosmogony, offspring of the genius of Einstein, or deriving freely from the discoveries, I yet do not feel that I enter a strange land. I yet can hear resounding still the cosmic symphony of all those planets which forever succeed each other, are extinguished and once more illumined, with their living souls, their humanities, their gods – according to the laws of the eternal To Become, the Brahmin Samsara – I hear Siva dancing, dancing in the heart of the world, in my own heart.
  • Romain Rolland, Life of Ramakrishna (1929)

• Man hath ever made a cosmogony in keeping with his views in physics; a scheme of government in keeping with his cosmogony; a theory of ethics in keeping with his government, and a code of law and theology in keeping with his ethics. Every perception of the human mind modifies human practice. Science is but the theory of art.
  • Frances Wright, "An Exposition of the Mission of England: Addressed to the Peoples of Europe" in The Reasoner, Vol. 3, No. 54 (1847), p. 321

See also

• Cosmology