The Prenatal Origin of Myth, Religion, and Ritual

It has been a century since Otto Rank boldly broke away from Freudian orthodoxy and declared that babies at birth are sentient and highly impressionable human beings. Since then, evidence for embryonic consciousness has been firmly established with data from neuroscience, biology, psychiatry, and medicine, always tending to earlier prenatal awareness models. Some have even made the case that we remember our intrauterine lives back to existence as a single fertilized cell. And yet, the methods by which we measure and assess the emotional universe that precedes birth are limited. Mythobiogenesis, a theory developed by the author, draws on the insights of prenatal pioneers in order to open a true window into the womb. That window, not so surprisingly, is mythology, inclusive of fairy tales, sacred scripture, religious belief, and ritual. Donnalt Winnicott put it economically, “Mythology may be the key to our embryological experience.” Following Winnicott’s intuition, Mythobiogenesis asserts that much of what we call mythology, fairy tales, and even sacred scripture derives from a fundamental impulse to tell the universal intrauterine experience of life before birth in culturally specific ways. We remember conception. We tell of it in our stories. In this article, we explore the biblical narrative of Noah, correlating each story point with those found in other traditions, leading to the conclusion that Noah and his ark are nothing more, nor less, than a single fertilized cell floating toward implantation.