Book excerpt: This work, in 6 volumes, is a compendium of traditional cosmologies worldwide. The material includes the global mythology of creation and destruction, but also comprises information drawn from other areas of traditional knowledge, ritual, iconography, shamanism, costume, and dance. Relying on original sources, universal points of agreement are identified, often on counterintuitive ideas. These suggest a single template, a blueprint for a universal mythology of origins with local variations. This volume examines a miscellany of traditions. Salient examples are the beliefs that the seasonal cycle was not always stable; that the morning or evening star used to be a comet or meteor; that objects or deities fell out of the sky; that the earth once turned over or changed places with the sky; that fossils are the remains of former giants; and that specific areas now under water were originally dry land.