Think of how many creation myths start with murder. Kronos castrated and killed his father, Ouranos, and then Kronos cannibalized his own children until Zeus castrated and killed Kronos. In Norse mythology, Odin, Vili, and Ve killed their grandfather, the giant Ymir. So much blood flowed from his body that it flooded the universe and formed the oceans. His flesh became the land; they shaped the mountains from his bones and raised his skull up on four pillars to become the vault of Heaven. Man formed from the maggots that feasted on his corpse. From the beginning, this world has been built by cannibals out of the corpses of their forefathers. Mors janua vitae: death is the gate of life.

—“The Monsters, Our Makers: From the First Flood to the Final Girls” by Christine Mercer, first published in the Journal of Comparative Folklore, November–December 2009