Page 83
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2025 9:21 am
So, another of the sections of the model of the world, of the middle of the world — this is structure. There it is mentioned that “the middle of the world is realized, as it were appears, in different mythological tales is associated with different objects, like the tree, the hearth, the altar. It is interesting that for ancient cosmography it is characteristic to place the inhabited space in the middle of the ‘Middle’ — Middle Earth (Midgard and others). Around it lies the domain of the unorganized. At the edge of the Earth live giants or other chthonic beings.
A variant of such a division of space may be considered the widespread conception of water surrounding the inhabited land, since water in most mythologies is usually connected with primordial chaos, some pre-eternal substance. In the mythological world the world ocean existed in the beginning before creation, which limited the ocean in time and in space. The cosmos or the Earth is destined to perish as a result of cataclysm from the ocean. Its waters will again become the only element in the world. The ocean may appear in various personified forms — in the guise of divine figures connected with chaos, of monsters, and also as an abstract and speculative principle. In many of the most ancient myths the ocean and chaos are equivalent and inseparable from one another. According to this conception, the ocean remains outside the cosmos even after the latter’s emergence. At the same time the capacities of the ocean for generation are realized in the appearance from it of land and in the presence in the depths of the ocean of a mythological being that contributes to generation or, on the contrary, zealously guards the old order and impedes the beginning of the chain of birth from the ocean.
Thus, the cosmological conception of the primacy of the ocean corresponds to the cosmological model of Land surrounded by the world ocean. The sky in this case is often conceived as something like an Upper Sea. The conception of watery chaos lies at the foundation of the widely spread motif of the Flood, occurring at the beginning of time. The appearance of the Earth from the water, the memory of the Flood or of subterranean waters, is usually represented as a factor of cosmic ordering.
The middle of the world is connected both with the inhabited world and with the heavenly, as well as with the heavens — the dwelling of the gods —
A variant of such a division of space may be considered the widespread conception of water surrounding the inhabited land, since water in most mythologies is usually connected with primordial chaos, some pre-eternal substance. In the mythological world the world ocean existed in the beginning before creation, which limited the ocean in time and in space. The cosmos or the Earth is destined to perish as a result of cataclysm from the ocean. Its waters will again become the only element in the world. The ocean may appear in various personified forms — in the guise of divine figures connected with chaos, of monsters, and also as an abstract and speculative principle. In many of the most ancient myths the ocean and chaos are equivalent and inseparable from one another. According to this conception, the ocean remains outside the cosmos even after the latter’s emergence. At the same time the capacities of the ocean for generation are realized in the appearance from it of land and in the presence in the depths of the ocean of a mythological being that contributes to generation or, on the contrary, zealously guards the old order and impedes the beginning of the chain of birth from the ocean.
Thus, the cosmological conception of the primacy of the ocean corresponds to the cosmological model of Land surrounded by the world ocean. The sky in this case is often conceived as something like an Upper Sea. The conception of watery chaos lies at the foundation of the widely spread motif of the Flood, occurring at the beginning of time. The appearance of the Earth from the water, the memory of the Flood or of subterranean waters, is usually represented as a factor of cosmic ordering.
The middle of the world is connected both with the inhabited world and with the heavenly, as well as with the heavens — the dwelling of the gods —