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East Asian Mythology: China and Japan

The Chinese War in Heaven, Creation, and Flood

What is the myth of the separation of Heaven and Earth?

A form of the fall from grace archetype in China is the story of the separation of the world parents, Heaven and Earth. The world-parent separation motif occurs in many creation myths around the world, as, for instance, in the myth of Uranos and Gaia in Greece and of Geb and Nut in Egypt. In the Chinese myth, Earth and Heaven were tightly attached to each other when Chiyou’s rebellion caused the people to become corrupt, leaving the supreme being no choice but to instruct the gods Zhong and Li to break the connection between the two worlds. From then on, the people were separated from their gods.



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