HOW THE WORLD WAS MADE The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock.
When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again.
The Indians are afraid of this.
When all was water, the animals were above in Gălûñ′lătĭ, beyond the arch; but it was very much crowded, and they were wanting more room.
They wondered what was below the water, and at last Dâyuni′sĭ, “Beaver’s Grandchild,” the little Water-beetle, offered to go and see if it could learn.
It darted in every direction over the surface of the water, but could find no firm place to rest.
Then it dived to the bottom and came up with some soft mud, which began to grow and spread on every side until it became the island which we call the earth.
It was afterward fastened to the sky with four cords, but no one remembers who did this.
At first the earth was flat and very soft and wet.
The animals were anxious to get down, and sent out different birds to see if it was yet dry, but they found no place to alight and came back again to Gălûñ′lătĭ.
At last it seemed to be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told him to go and make ready for them.
This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now.
He flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and it was still soft.
When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very tired, and his wings began to flap and strike the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there was a valley, and where they turned up again there was a mountain.
When the animals above saw this, they were afraid that the whole world would be mountains, so they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of mountains to this day.
When the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track to go every day across the island from east to west, just overhead.
It was too hot this way, and Tsiska′gĭlĭ′, the Red Crawfish, had his shell scorched a bright red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the Cherokee do not eat it.
The conjurers put the sun another hand-breadth higher in the air, but it was still too hot.
They raised it another time, and another, until it was seven handbreadths high and just under the sky arch.
Then it was right, and they left it so.
This is why the conjurers call the highest place Gûlkwâ′gine Di′gălûñ′lătiyûñ′, “the seventh height,” because it is seven hand-breadths above the earth.
Every day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns at night on the upper side to the starting place.
There is another world under this, and it is like ours in everything—animals, plants, and people—save that the seasons are different.
The streams that come down from the mountains are the trails by which we reach this underworld, and the springs at their heads are the doorways by which we enter it, but to do this one must fast and go to water and have one of the underground people for a guide.
We know that the seasons in the underworld are different from ours, because the water in the springs is always warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the outer air.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The narrative is populated by animal agents (Beaver, Buzzard, Crawfish) who possess human-like agency, speech, and responsibility for shaping the physical world, reflecting a worldview where nature is inhabited by plural, embodied spirits.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text explicitly states that the underworld is 'like ours in everything' except for the seasons, illustrating a structural reflection between the upper and lower worlds.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The entire text is a narrative account of the origin of the world, detailing how the earth was formed from mud, shaped by a buzzard, and how the sun was positioned.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
The text assigns specific cosmological significance to the number seven, noting the sun is raised 'seven handbreadths' and the highest place is called 'the seventh height'.
Guided passage of the soul through afterlife realms.
The passage describes a specific ritual method for entering the underworld involving fasting and the necessity of having 'one of the underground people for a guide' to navigate the transition.
The living practitioner's deliberate trance-journey into spirit, underworld, or upper realms — Lemminkainen's descent into Tuoni and Wainamoinen's entry into Wipunen's body in the Kalevala, the Siberian shaman's drum-mediated travel, Inuit angakkuq's submarine journey to Sedna, classical katabasis as ritual technique. The practitioner returns with knowledge, songs, lost-words, or a recovered soul. Distinct from psychopomp_journey (which guides the *dead* soul through afterlife realms) and from spiritual_ascent (which is the soul's *upward* return to source); shamanic_journey is the *living* practitioner crossing into ordinarily-inaccessible domains as a worked technique.
The text outlines a deliberate ritual practice (fasting, going to water) for a living person to cross into the underworld with a spirit guide, fitting the definition of a shamanic journey.