Creation Hymn (Naśadiya)

By the end of The Creation Hymn, I was as clueless as I was before reading it, but that didn’t depress or anger me. The hymn is genuine in simply relaying thoughts that all human beings have about how the world was created. We are curious and clueless. We don’t actually know how the world was created, but we can pretend to. And we trick ourselves into believing we do know what happened because the truth, being that we don’t know, is too hard to handle. The narrator’s tone is curious and wondrous about the truth, just as I am, and that is why is didn’t depress or anger me but rather–liberated me. 

The narrator doesn’t pretend to have answers and thousands of years later and we still… well, don’t know have answers. 

Initially, the hymn frightened me. This is because I didn’t really understand it the first, or second time, I read it over. I knew that it was about the creation of the universe and that it was honest and profound, but I couldn’t fully understand it just yet. So after reading it time and time again and going over it in class–I finally understood it. And surprisingly enough, there were some answers.  

“Was there water, bottomlessly deep?” and “With no distinguishing sign, all this was water,” states that water came first. I am relieved by that fact as  water has always been a source of cleanse and liberation for me, the ocean a place of renewal and rebirth. “The power of heat,” and “first seed of mind,” assure me that a thought of desire was what came after water. That comforts me because it isn’t innocent at all, it is true. Living creatures want, for everything. And my favorite and the most satisfying line of the entire hymn, “The one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows–or he perhaps he does not know.” I am thankful for this hymn because through is curiosity and honesty it is comforting–by not comforting you at all.