This VOLUME is concerned with some of the ways in which
people conceive of their society and the world in which it is
set. There seem to be certain virtually universal concepts which
are used to do this: a beUef in a Creator Spirit (or God), usually
remote from men although believed to have been in contact with
them at the beginning of the world; beliefs in various intermediaries
between this spiritual power and men-deities, ancestors
and so on; and beliefs in various himian mtermediaries who have
the power to move from the sphere of ordinary mortals to that
of the Creator Spirit—diviners, priests, prophets, shamans and
others. People express these and related ideas in various ways—by
myth, legend, folktale, by notions of time and space. They also
express them in action, by sacrifice, prayer and the like; but in
this volume we are concerned with the former only, with beUefs,
concepts and symbols. Other ways are described in the two companion
volumes of readings, Gods and Rituals and Magic, Witchcrafty
and Curing,
The study of myth and cosmology has a long history. They
have been studied by folklorists, interested mainly in motifs and
their evolution and distribution; by psychologists, interested in
what can be discovered from them about the individual psyche;
by linguists; by historians of religion, interested mainly in the
world religions; and lastly by anthropologists. The accounts in this
volume are by anthropologists who, despite many differences in
their views and aims, are nonetheless all concerned with a fairly
similar set of problems and who all have a fairly similar viewpoint.