Why has mythology existed? What is the period of interregnum?

Dear Brother / Sister,

As it is known, the first man, Hazrat Adam (pbuh), is also the first prophet. The principal duty of a prophet is teach people the oneness of Allah and the belief of oneness. According to what the Quran tells us, every nation, every community was definitely sent a warner, a prophet throughout history. Prophets also died when their time of death came like other human beings. It is possible that another prophet was not sent just after the death of a prophet because the religion brought by the prophet that died was effective after his death for a certain time.    

The period between two prophets is called the period of interregnum. In those periods, on the one hand, people were affected by ignorance and on the other hand, they tried to fill the religious gap in their nature. When they could not find the truth, they tried to satisfy their needs ignorantly.

The feeling of worshipping Allah is probably the strongest element of conscience in the nature of man. Therefore, when they lost the belief of oneness and the real deity – in order to satisfy the natural feeling of worshipping – they started to look for new deities. They imaginarily attributed some attributes of Allah like power, knowledge and mercy to those deities so that they would serve the purpose; and they assumed deities that were in compliance with those attributes.     

As a matter of fact, all of the wrong totems in mythology are connected with something sacred. The sun, the moon, plants, seas, cows were all regarded as a divine beauty, majesty, perfection or source of bounties; and they were regarded as sacred because of their connection with Allah. However, the generations that followed transformed them into deities.   

As a matter of fact, according to the information given in hadiths, the idols that the nation of the Prophet Noah (pbuh), the second father of the mankind, worshipped and whose names are given in the Quran (Nuh, 71/23) were righteous people. The respect shown to their spiritual ranks were transformed into extreme commitment by ignorant generations and they were promoted to divinity. (see Tabari, Ibn Kathir, the interpretation of the mentioned verse).

We can think that there exist similar reasons behind other kinds of idolatries.

Questions on Islam