Cosmogony and Conception: A Query

TLDR: The role of cosmogony in primitive religions is too well known to need a lengthy argument as mentioned in this paper, and the immense importance of cosmymymy in many so-called primitive religions has been discussed extensively.

Abstract: 1. The immense importance of Cosmogony in many so-called primitive religions is too well known to need a lengthy argument. Although the cosmogonic myth in its essence constitutes a \"sacred history,\" which describes the beginnings of the world, the role which this primordial stage plays in man's religious conception of his world differs widely. Mircea Eliade in his study \"Cosmogonic Myth and 'Sacred History' \"1 states that in most mythologies this primordial stage of the world ends at a certain moment, and that the supernatural beings, after having shaped the cosmos, abandon the earth and disappear: \"We can also say that any mythology that is still accessible in an appropriate form contains not only a beginning but also an end, determined by the last manifestation of the supernatural beings, the cultural heroes or the ancestors\" (p. 174). He stresses the importance of \"the myth of the estrangement of the creator, and his progressive transformation in a deus otiosus.\" Man focuses his attention more and more upon those primordial creative events \"which are of consequence for human life. In other words, the coherent series of events which constitute the sacred history is incessantly remembered and extolled, while the previous stage, everything which existed before that sacred history -first and above all, the majestic and solitary presence of the 1 Religious Studies 2 (1967):117-83.