Poetry, Religion, History and Art
Read the other Great Myths here from the Prose Edda: Then spoke Gangleri: ‘What information is there to be given about Ragnarok? I have not heard tell of this before.’ High said: ‘There are many important things to be told about it. First of all that a winter will come called fimbul-winter [mighty or […]
Read the other Great Myths here Then spoke Gangleri: “It was quite an achievement of Loki’s when he brought it about first of all that Baldr was killed, and also that he was not redeemed from Hel. But was he punished at all for this?” High said: “He was requited for this in such a […]
Read the other Great Myths here Then spoke Gangleri: “Whose is the horse Sleipnir? And what is there to tell about it?” High said: “You do not know details of Sleipnir and are not acquainted with the circumstances of its origin!—but you will find this worth listening to. It was right at the beginning […]
Read the other Great Myths here [High said:]“There was someone called Gymir, and his wife Aurboda. She was of the race of mountain-giants. Gerd is their daughter, the most beautiful of all women. It happened one day that Freyr had gone into Hlidskialf and was looking over all worlds, and when he looked to the […]
Read the other Great Myths here High continued: “And Loki had other offspring too. There was a giantess called Angrboda in Giantland. With her Loki had three children. One was Fenriswolf, the second Iormungand (i.e. the Midgard serpent), the third is Hel. And when the gods realized that these three siblings were being brought up […]
A few years ago, the great historian William H. McNeill died. I still have surprisingly endearing memories of reading his A World History one winter, in the middle crowded New York City Wendy’s, surrounded by high school kids just done with their day, his narrative silencing every one and every thing. His obituary can be […]
A piece of the beginning and end of The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Whether we listen with aloof amusement to the dreamlike mumbo jumbo of some red-eyed witch doctor of the Congo, or read with cultivated rapture thin translations from the sonnets of the mystic Lao-tse; now and again crack the hard nutshell of […]
Two chapters from the Tao Te Ching, and each in three different translations, on the limitations of even the best words: Tao Te Ching #70 My sayings are very easy to recognize, and very easy to apply. But no one in the world can recognize them, and no one can apply them. Sayings have a […]
Here are two passages from Homer’s Odyssey featuring the common household bard of prehistoric Greece. The first poet, the description of which probably lent to the legend that Homer himself was blind, performs stories of the Trojan war before a disguised Odysseus, bringing him to tears. The second is the bard at Odysseus’ own home […]
Four stories from the great Jewish tradition of the sacredness of the Torah, of Hebrew, and of the letters of the alphabet themselves: Creation by Word In the beginning a word was spoken by the mouth of God, and the heavens and the earth came into being, as it is said, By the word of […]
Rig Veda 10:71: The Origins of Sacred Speech Bṛhaspati! When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love. When the wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve, then friends recognized their […]
One of the longer myths I’ll post here, the following story is well worth it, and is indeed a master-class in mythology and folklore. Containing shape-changes, chase scenes, mysterious births, borrowed identities, and competitions of all kinds, it is in the best sense a holy mess, including its sudden and (to us) perhaps unsatisfying ending. […]
A brother of the monastery is found to possess God’s gift of poetry [A. D. 680] In this monastery of Streanaeshalch lived a brother singularly gifted by God’s grace. So skilful was he in composing religious and devotional songs that, when any passage of Scripture was explained by interpreters, he could quickly turn it into […]
…And Aegir went on: “How did this craft that you call poetry originate?” Bragi replied: “The origin of it was that the gods had a dispute with the people called Vanir, and they appointed a peace-conference and made a truce by this procedure, that both sides went up to a vat and spat their spittle […]
One of the greatest stories of a person “living in nature” becoming “civilized” is perhaps the earliest one. Also here is an intense ambivalence towards the role of women in civilization, as well as the gifts of urban life, such as bread and beer. By the time Enkidu encounters all of them, something has certainly […]
After the Cheyenne had received their corn, and while they were still in the north, a young man and woman of the tribe were married. The woman became pregnant and carried her child in the womb for four years. The people watched with great interest to see what would happen, and when the woman gave […]
Two bits of old Norse, first poetry & then prose, on the death of Odin’s son, Baldr: All at once the gods were gathered, and all the goddesses came to speak, the mighty deities had a discussion, why Baldr’s dreams were foreboding. Odin rose up, the ancient sacrifice, and on the Sleipnir placed a saddle; […]
But Daedalus was weary; by this time, he’d been exiled in Crete too long; he pined for his own land; but he was blocked – the sea stood in his way. “Though Minos bars escape by land or waves,” he said, “I still can take the sky – there lies my path. Though he owns […]
The sad early life of Parzival is narrated here. His father having died while out on crusade, his mother, Herzeloyde, tries to keep all knowledge of knighthood from her Parzival’s awareness. She retreats to the woods with a small retinue, and of course all of her attempts are in vain. This lady [Herzeloyde] quick […]
One of the great characters in Greek myth who never actually speaks is Astyanax, the son of Hector and the grandson of the king and queen of Troy. Below are two stories: he first appears in the Iliad as an infant, terrified when he sees his father in full armor, in one of the great […]
As usual with such stories, childhood is synonymous with the dangers of being children: The Swahili version of a very popular story runs as follows: Some girls had gone down to the beach to gather shells. One of them picked up a specially fine cowry, which she was afraid of losing, and so laid it […]
When Culand the smith offered Conchubur his hospitality, he said that a large host should not come, for the feast would be the fruit not of lands and possessions but of his tongs and his two hands. Conchubur went with fifty of his oldest and most illustrious heroes in their chariots. First, however, he visited […]
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 2:1-6: When this boy, Jesus, was five years old, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream. He was collecting the flowing water into ponds and made the water instantly pure. He did this with a single command. He then made soft clay and shaped it into twelve […]
One day when Rāma and the other little sons of the cowherds were playing, they reported to his mother, “Kṛṣṇa has eaten dirt.” Yaśodā took Krishna by the hand and scolded him, for his own good, and she said to him, seeing that his eyes were bewildered with fear, “Naughty boy, why have you secretly […]
The story of the Holy Grail’s appearance to a young man named Perceval/Parzival/Parsifal, is told in many places, and goes something like this: he comes by chance upon the Grail Castle, and is introduced to a wounded man, the Fisher King; during a feast that night, the Grail appears, and if only Parzival would ask […]
The poet/shaman Väinämöinen, in need of new poems and spells in order to build a boat, goes through an ordeal within the belly of a giant, the keeper of those stories. Here, the giant/ogre figure is more primordial and wise and not simply uncivilized and destructive: Steady old Väinämöinen when he got not words from […]
Odysseus and friends land on the island “of the lawless outrageous Cyclopes,” one-eyed giants who know nothing of planting and harvesting, and who live in caves. They find their way to one of these caves: Lightly we made our way to the cave, but we did not find him there, he was off herding on […]
From the Miwok tribe of California, who are now “practically extinct”: Bear’s sister-in-law, Deer, had two beautiful fawn daughters. Bear was a horrible, wicked woman, and she wanted the fawns for herself. So this is what she did. One day she invited Deer to accompany her when she went to pick clover. The two fawns […]
What is the reason for gold being called otter-payment? It is said that when the Aesir went to explore the whole world – Odin and Loki and Haenir – they came to a certain river and went along the river to a certain waterfall, and by the waterfall there was an otter and it had […]
The Indian legend of the “Face of Glory” begins, like that of the Man-Lion, with the case of an infinitely ambitious king who through extraordinary austerities had gained the power to unseat the gods and was now sole sovereign of the universe. His name was Jalandhara, “Water Carrier,” and he conceived the impudent notion of […]
In one of the great gymnastic feats of world literature, Dante and Virgil climb the body of Satan, located as it is in the center of the earth. Travelling upside down and changing hemispheres as they go, they emerge to see the Mountain of Purgatory, which was created by the crash of Lucifer’s body as […]
Then from the moor under misty hillsides, Grendel came gliding girt with God’s anger. The man-scather sought someone to snatch from the high hall. He crept under clouds until the caught sight of the king’s court whose gilded gables he knew at a glance. He […]
Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu face Humbaba, the guardian of the cedar forests of Lebanon. The tablets where the story is found contain many breaks, indicated throughout with an ellipsis; and the translation used here fills in some gaps by integrating other versions of the story. Also, in our day and age, the story can […]
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