Taiowa Creates the First World

In the beginning there is only Taiowa.

He is not in a place because there is no place. He is not in a time because there is no time. He is pure potential — the thinker before the thought, the singer before the song. The Hopi call him the Creator but he creates nothing directly; what he does is think.

He thinks of Sotuknang.

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Sotuknang comes into being from Taiowa’s thought and stands in the void, the first being of form, the first one to have a face. Taiowa says to him: I have created you, my nephew, as the first power, and now I give you the task of making what I have planned. Make it orderly, Taiowa says. Make it harmonious. Make it exactly as I have described.

Sotuknang does not have the tools of fine detail — he can make the large things, the cosmic structures — so he calls Spider Grandmother. She comes from wherever she was waiting, which is the place she has always been, the place between the nothing and the something. She is small and ancient and not frightened by anything.

Sotuknang says: the Creator wants a world. Make the first beings.

She takes a handful of earth. She mixes it with her saliva and the creative wisdom of Taiowa, the breath that animates matter. She shapes two small figures: Pöqánghoya, who will go to the north pole of the world, and Palöngawhoya, who will go to the south pole. Between them, when they call to each other across the axis of the world, the vibration will keep the earth rotating and all living things vibrating with the frequency of life.

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Then she makes the rest.

She makes the plants that will hold the soil and feed the animals. She makes the animals that will balance the plants. She makes the humans in four colors — yellow, red, white, and black — and breathes the breath of life into them, and they open their eyes and see the First World, Tokpela, the world of Endless Space.

Everything is perfect.

Sotuknang looks at what Spider Grandmother has made and reports to Taiowa: it is done. Taiowa looks at the world from his place outside all worlds and says: good. Keep the thread. Keep the connection between me and the living things. As long as the thread holds, the world holds.

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Spider Grandmother tells the people about the thread.

She says: there is a soft spot on the top of your head. This is the gate through which the breath of Taiowa entered you when you were made. Keep it open. Keep it sensitive. If you lose the feeling in that place — the place where the divine touches the skull — it means you have gone too far into the material world and have forgotten the thread.

This is the only law in Tokpela.

It is the one law that the people eventually break.

The world ends in fire. Not because Taiowa is angry, but because when the people forget the thread, the world they have made with their forgetting is not worth keeping. Sotuknang and Spider Grandmother carry the ones who remembered to safety, and the next world begins.

Taiowa has not changed. He is still thinking. The worlds that emerge from his thought are the records of how well the people remember where they came from.