There are two types of the world-parent creation. One involves the union of sky and earth—Heaven and Earth as father and mother of the universe. In association with this archetype is almost always the story of the separation of the parents so that further creation may occur. The second type of world-parent creation is that of the dismemberment of a single primordial being so that he or she literally animates every aspect of creation.

Examples of Sky Father and Earth Mother are ubiquitous. In Sumer it was An and Ki uniting to form Anki. In India, Dyaus was Sky and his consort, Earth, was Prithvi. In Greece it was Gaia and Uranos; in China, Tian and Di, forming Tian Di, or Yin as Earth uniting with Yang as Sky.