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Tag: Mythology
The Great Myths #16: The Story of Taliesin (podcast)
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Copies of “To the House of the Sun” on Sale
To anyone who has thought about buying a copy of To the House of the Sun, now would be the time. Amazon is selling copies of them for $4.95 (80% off). Not sure how long that will last, so go get em. “An incredibly well executed epic saga in a poetry format, To The House […]
The Great Myths #15: The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne (podcast)
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The Great Myths #8: The Dream of Oengus (podcast)
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The Great Myths: The Egyptian Book of the Dead (podcast)
Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other Episodes on Religion & Myth from Ancient Egypt:
The Great Myths: Osiris (podcast)
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The Great Myths: Gilgamesh (podcast)
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The Great Myths #14: The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel (podcast)
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Virgil’s Great Poem of Nature: Starting the Georgics (podcast)
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The Great Myths #13: Oisin in the Otherworld (podcast)
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The Great Myths #11: How Cuchulainn Got His Name (podcast)
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Human Voices Wake Us (podcast)
After 150 episodes, I figure it’s time to mention my podcast here, Human Voices Wake Us. I started it last October. It is available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and elsewhere. There will also be a tab on this website with the ten or so most recent episodes available for listening. Please subscribe if you’re interested, […]
The Great Myths #67: The Origin of the Buffalo Dance (Blackfoot)
Read the other Great Myths here George Bird Grinnell’s classic account (from 1892) of the origin of the Blackfoot Buffalo Dance. It culminates with the buffalo freely offering themselves to the Blackfoot tribe, but only after teaching them the dance that will resurrect the buffalo herds: The people had built a great pis’kun [a buffalo […]
Isis in Old Age (story)
Originally published at Bold+Italic It was one of those across the room things, even though the women were both old and long past love, and weren’t even one another’s type. Isis was back at that pub over in Bayswater, the kind chain restaurant London had that served English food to tourists: the interiors dark wood […]
The Great Myths #63: Ragnarok (Norse)
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 […]
The Great Myths #62: Loki is Captured & Punished (Norse)
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 […]
The Great Myths #61: Thor Goes Fishing for the World Serpent (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths here Thor went out across Midgard having assumed the appearance of a young boy, and arrived one evening at nightfall at a certain giant’s; his name was Hymir. Thor stayed there as a guest for the night. And at dawn Hymir got up and dressed and got ready to row […]
The Great Myths #60: The History of Odin’s Horse (Norse)
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 […]
The Great Myths #59: Odin Talks About Valhalla (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths here Then spoke Gangleri: “You say that all those men that have fallen in battle since the beginning of the world have now come to Odin in Val-hall. What has he got to offer them for food? 1 should have thought that there must be a pretty large number there.” […]
The Great Myths #58: The Love Story of Freyr & the Giantess Gerd (Norse)
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 […]
The Great Myths #57: Loki’s Monstrous Children (Norse)
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 […]
The Endless Variety of Hinduism
Gandhi himself said that, “If I know Hinduism at all, it is essentially inclusive and ever-growing, ever-responsive. It gives the freest scope to imagination, speculation, and reason.” Here are a handful of quotations from Wendy Doniger’s astonishing book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, that say much the same thing. Religion, as always, is variety, response, […]
What To Expect When You’re in Love with a Writer
When in 1937 the mythologist Joseph Campbell began dating his future wife, the dancer Jean Erdman, he gave her a copy of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, an odd courtship gift indeed. While visiting Erdman’s family, they discussed the book. Later: …At the end of a pleasant evening Joseph offered to walk Jean home; […]
Death in Ancient Egypt
Here, Erik Hornung refutes the old cliché that ancient Egyptian religion was “death obsessed,” or that constructions like the pyramids are nothing more that huge tombs. In fact I can think of few religions both more anxious to deny death and affirm, somehow and some way, the continuation of life: For the Egyptians even […]
The Religion of Ancient Egypt
A handful of passages from one of the best books on religion I’ve ever read, Erik Hornung’s Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. His eloquence on religious ideas foreign to so many of us today is astounding. As he asks rhetorically at one point: “Did the Egyptians think wrongly, imprecisely, […]
The Mind as a Mountain & Creativity its Tree
A drawing from 2015 that I suddenly found again today:
The Great Myths #56: The Early History of Yggdrasil (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths here Then spoke Gangleri: “Where is the chief center or holy place of the gods?” High replied: “It is at the ash Yggdrasil. There the gods must hold their courts each day.” Then spoke Gangleri: “What is there to tell about that place?” Then said Just-as-high: “The […]
Images: The Earliest Stone Buddhas
Among the earliest sculptures of the Buddha, from Heinrich Zimmer’s Art of Indian Asia. Click on each to enlarge:
The Great Myths #55: An Island is Cut Away & the Prose Edda Begins (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths here The Prose Edda, one of the greatest sources for Norse mythology, begins with the following simple frame story: a king named Gylfi is tricked out of a good deal of his land, and he goes to the home of the gods to question them. His questions, and the […]
The Great Myths #54: A Native American Orpheus (Tachi Yokut)
Read the other Great Myths here As the compiler of this myth notes: “The Orpheus myth is also popular among North American Indian tribes, especially in the western and eastern parts of the continent.” A Tachi had a fine wife who died and was buried. Her husband went to her grave and dug a hole […]
The Great Myths #53: Thor Goes Fishing for the Serpent that Surrounds the World (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths here Long ago the slaughter-gods were eating their hunting-prey in the mood for a drink, before they were full; they shook the sticks and looked at the lots: they learned that at Ægir’s was a fine crop of cauldrons. The cliff-dweller [Ægir] sat there, child-cheerful, much like Miskorblindi’s boy; the […]
Joseph Campbell’s Hero Sets Out
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 […]
The Great Myths #52: Ríg Gives Advice (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths here Here is Andy Orchard’s translation of the Rígsthula, where the culture hero Ríg wanders the earth & sorts everybody out: People say that in the ancient tales one of the Æsir, who was called Heimdall, went in his travels along a certain sea-shore; he came to a farmstead and […]
Understanding Religious Fundamentalism
I am always thrilled to reread these two passages by Erik Hornung, and to find in them just about the wisest things I’ve ever read about religion in general, and fundamentalism in particular. Although he hopefully assumes (the book was first published in 1971) that just because fundamentalism will become increasingly “inhuman” it will lose […]
Humanity’s Earliest Rituals
Three passages on prehistoric religion from the book Becoming Human: One of the pervasive themes of [this book] is that spirituality and materiality cannot be separated. The roots of religion are to be found in ritual practice. And ritual practice, as documented by the material record goes back before the Franco-Cantabrian “explosion”, back indeed […]
The Archaeology & Mythology of Caves
The archaeologist Jean Clottes writes that, besides the more famous paintings in the ice-age caves of France and Spain, it has also been observed that “various objects have been either deposited or stuck into cracks of the walls, or even stuck into the ground. Those apparently non-utilitarian gestures have been noticed from Asturias in Spain […]
The Great Myths #51: Enkidu in the Underworld (Mesopotamian)
Read the other Great Myths Here Just before his death, Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu dreams of the Underworld. While what remains of the story is fragmentary, it is remarkable in part for being one of the earliest descriptions in literature of an Underworld. In this case, it is less a place of punishment than one of […]
Understanding Religion
I’d been interested in religion and mythology long before 2004, when I first read this opening page of Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas. But from that day until now I have still not come across so brief and powerful a statement about why the study of religion is important, whether for scholars or believers, […]
The Great Myths #50: Aeneas in the Underworld (Roman)
Read the other Great Myths Here In an immensely moving scene, after traveling to the underworld, Aeneas encounters his deceased father there: But in the deep of a green valley, father Anchises, lost in thought, was studying the souls of all his sons to come – though now imprisoned, destined for the upper light. And […]
The Great Myths #49: Odin Sacrifices Himself (Norse)
Read the other Great Myths Here Here are a handful of translations of verses 138-145 of the Hávamál, found in the Poetic or Elder Edda. The Hávamál is a loose collection of sayings and advice – at times cryptic and at times playful – all attributed to Odin. Among the more cryptic parts, these verses […]
The Goddess Instructs the Gods (Kena Upanishad)
Here’s one of my favorite bits from the Hindu Upanishads, chapters three and four from the Kena Upanishad. The goddess Una takes the male gods to school: Brahman, according to the story, obtained a victory for the gods; and by that victory of Brahman the gods became elated. They said to themselves: “Verily, this […]
“The Making of an Irish Goddess,” by Eavan Boland
The Making of an Irish Goddess Ceres went to hell with no sense of time. When she looked back all that she could see was the arteries of silver in the rock, the diligence of rivers always at one level, wheat at one height, leaves of a single colour, the same distance in the usual […]
Daedalus & Icarus (poem)
Daedalus & Icarus The old craftsman came to Cumae after a long life of art and flight, love and theft, came alone to the Sibyl’s Italian shore wasted with age and reputation to the one who knew every alphabet, the seeress who saw the future in driven leaves: and warped with the same old age […]
“The harlot and the child”: 2 Late Poems from W. B. Yeats
Those Images What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There’s better exercise In the sunlight and wind. I never bade you go To Moscow or to Rome. Renounce that drudgery, Call the Muses home. Seek those images That constitute the wild, The lion and the virgin, The harlot and the child. […]
The Great Myths #47: Sacred Language & the Limitation of Words (Taoism)
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 […]
The Great Myths #46: Sacred Language & Homer’s Poets (Greek)
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 […]
The Great Myths #45: Sacred Language Creates the World (Jewish)
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 […]
The Great Myths #44: Sacred Language & Two Hymns to Speech (Hindu)
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 […]
The Great Myths #43 Sacred Language & the Story of Gwion Bach & Taliesin (Welsh)
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. […]
The Great Myths #42: Sacred Language & the Story of Caedmon (Christian)
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 […]
The Great Myths #41: Sacred Language & the Mead of Poetry (Norse)
…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 […]
The Great Myths #40: Enkidu Comes of Age (Mesopotamian)
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 […]
The Great Myths #39: Arrow Boy (Cheyenne)
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 […]
The Great Myths #38: Baldr’s Dreams, Baldr’s Death (Norse)
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; […]
The Great Myths #37: Icarus Falls (Ovid & Virgil)
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 Great Myths #36: Parzival Grows Up & Leaves Home
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 […]
On “Bone Antler Stone”: Ancient Europe, the Narrow Book & Finding Poetry Again
My poetry collection Bone Antler Stone—a panorama of ancient Europe from the painted caves of Lascaux to contact with Greece and Rome—comes out on Thursday. You can order it here. Here’s an essay on how it came to be written: The poems of Bone Antler Stone go way back, as a book about ancient history […]
The Great Myths #35: A Child During the Trojan War (Greek)
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 […]
The Great Myths #34: A Hausa and Swahili Story of Childhood (African)
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 […]
The Great Myths #33: The Child Cúchulainn Gets His Name (Celtic)
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 Great Myths #32: The Childhood of Jesus (Christian)
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 […]
The Great Myths #31: The Child Krishna & the Universe in His Mouth (Hindu)
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 Great Myths #30: The Holy Grail Appears (Middle High German)
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 Great Myths #29: Learning Poetry in the Giant’s Stomach (Finnish)
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 […]
The Great Myths #28: Odysseus Outsmarts the Cyclops
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 […]
The Great Myths #27: The Monster Bear & the Making of Thunder (Miwok)
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 […]
The Great Myths #26: Sigurd Kills the Monster Fafnir & Understands the Language of Animals (Norse)
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 Great Myths #25: The Monster Kirttimukha & the Face of Glory (Hindu)
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 […]
The Great Myths #24: The Monster Satan (Dante)
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 […]
The Great Myths #23: The Monster Grendel (Anglo-Saxon)
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 […]
The Great Myths #22: The Monster Humbaba (Mesopotamian)
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 […]
The Great Myths #20: The Holy Grail Appears (Middle English)
Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder, that them thought the place should all to-drive. In the midst of this blast entered a sunbeam more clearer by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost. Then began every knight to behold other, […]
The Great Myths #19: The Sacrifice of Ymir Made into the World (Norse)
From a dialogue about the beginning of the world; at one point, a giant called Ymir is mentioned: “Where did Ymir live, and what did he live on?” “The next thing, when the rime dripped, was that there came into being a cow called Audhumla, and four rivers of milk flowed from its teats, and […]
The Great Myths #18: The Sacrifice of Isaac (Jewish)
And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham. And He said to him, “Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of […]
The Great Myths #17: A Sacrifice for the Feast (Greek)
The cow came in from the field, and the companions of great-hearted Telemachos came from beside their fast black ship, and the smith came, holding in his hands the tools for forging bronze, his handicraft’s symbols, the anvil and the sledgehammer and the well-wrought pincers with which he used to work the gold, and Athene […]
The Great Myths #16: A Siberian Horse Sacrifice, and the Shaman’s Ascent to the Sky (Altaic)
The first evening is devoted to preparation for the rite. The kam (shaman), having chosen a spot in a meadow, erects a new yurt there, setting inside it a young birch stripped of its lower branches and with nine steps (tapty) notched into its trunk. The higher foliage of the birch, with a flag at […]
The Great Myths #15: The Horse Sacrifice (Hindu)
Rig Veda 1:162 – The Sacrifice of the Horse Mitra, Varuṇa, Aryaman the Active, Indra the ruler of the Ṛbhus, and the Maruts – let them not fail to heed us when we proclaim in the assembly the heroic deeds of the racehorse who was born of the gods. When they lead the firmly grasped […]
The Great Myths #14: The Sparrow in Northumbria (Christian)
Around the year 627, when King Edwin of Northumbria and his advisors were discussing the possibility of converting to Christianity, one of them replied this way: Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight […]
The Great Myths #13: The Two Men Who Became Bulls (Irish)
One of the many preludes to the great Irish epic, The Táin: What caused the two pig-keepers to quarrel? It is soon told. There was bad blood between Ochall Ochne, the king of the síd in Connacht, and Bodb, king of the Munster síd. (Bodb’s síd is the “Síd ar Femen,” the síd on Femen […]
The Great Myths #12: The Corn Mother (Penobscot)
When Kloskurbeh, the All-maker, lived on earth, there were no people yet. But one day when the sun was high, a youth appeared and called him “Uncle, brother of my mother.” This young man was born from the foam of the waves, foam quickened by the wind and warmed by the sun. It was the […]
The Great Myths #10: The Holy Grail Appears (Old French)
In the clear light Of the fire, [Perceval] could see, behind him, The page in charge of his weapons And armor, and handed him The sword, to hold with the rest. And then he rejoined his host, Who’d done him so great an honor. They sat in a hall lit As brightly as candles can […]
The Great Myths #9 Wild With Divinity (Greek)
In ancient Thebes, the king, Pentheus, has refused to worship the god Dionysus; the god in turn has driven the women of Thebes into an ecstatic religious frenzy, as a messenger describes to the king: Messenger: […]
The Great Myths #8: This Whole World is Dwelt in by the Lord (Hindu)
This whole world is to be dwelt in by the Lord, whatever living being there is in the world. So you should eat what has been abandoned; and do not covet anyone’s wealth. Just performing works in this world, you should desire to live your hundred years. Thus, and not otherwise, in fact, does work […]
The Great Myths #7: The Tree of Souls (Jewish)
God has a tree of flowering souls in Paradise. The angel who sits beneath it is the Guardian of Paradise, and the tree is surrounded by the four winds of the world. From this tree blossom forth all souls, as it is said, “I am like a cypress tree in bloom; your fruit issues forth […]
The Great Myths #6: Enkidu in the Underworld (Mesopotamian)
[Amid the long illness that leads to Enkidu’s death:] As for Enkidu, his mind was troubled, he lay on his own and began to ponder. What was on his mind he told his friend: “My friend, in the course of the night I had such a dream!” “The heavens thundered, the earth gave […]
The Great Myths #5: A Ghost Story (Icelandic)
After Thorolf died, a good many people found it more and more unpleasant to stay out of doors once the sun had begun to go down. As the summer wore on, it became clear that Thorolf wasn’t quiet, for after sunset no one out of doors was left in peace. There was another thing, too: […]
The Great Myths #4: The Round Dance of the Cross (Christian)
[Before the crucifixion] Jesus told us to form a circle and hold each other’s hands, and he himself stood in the middle, and said, “Respond to me with ‘Amen.’” The Song So he began by singing a hymn and declaring, “Glory be to you, father.” And we circled around him and responded to him, “Amen.” […]
The Great Myths #3: A Kakadu Creation (Australian)
Wuraka came from the west, walking through the sea. His feet were on the bottom but he was so tall that his head was well above the surface of the water. He landed at a place called Allukaladi, between what are now known as Mts. Bidwell and Roe, both of which he made. His first […]
The Great Myths #2: The Dream of Óengus (Irish)
Óengus was asleep one night when he saw something like a young girl coming towards the head of his bed, and she was the most beautiful woman in Ériu. He made to take her hand and draw her to his bed, but, as he welcomed her, she vanished suddenly, and he did not know who […]
The Great Myths #1: The Old Woman & the End of the World (White River Sioux)
Somewhere at a place where the prairie and the Maka Sicha, the Badlands, meet, there is a hidden cave. Not for a long, long time has anyone been able to find it. Even now, with so many highways, cars, and tourists, no one has discovered this cave. In it lives a woman so old […]
Don’t Be Such a Boar
After receiving an email from a reader interested in the mythology surrounding bears, I remembered my own obsession with the boar. This was written some time ago, and one day will hopefully be expanded for a small illustrated book. Forgive the in-line citations, which may be an eyesore, but it would take too long to […]
To the House of the Sun: A Poem by Tim Miller
“An incredibly well executed epic saga in a poetry format, To The House Of The Sun is complex, with manifold characters, plot developments, and internal rhythms. Simply stated, To The House of the Sun is a literary phenomenon on a scale with the Iliad or the Odyssey.” — Midwest Book Review To the House of […]
Classic Jam Hits
Listen to the latest episodes of my podcast, and subscribe to it here. Going through my computer the other day, I found the .pdfs of these classic book sets, and thought to post them here for whoever wants them: Frazer’s The Golden Bough, The Mythology of All Races, and Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to […]
Young Krishna & the Universe in His Mouth
Listen to the latest episodes of my podcast, and subscribe to it here. One of my favorite stories from Hinduism comes from the Bhagavata Purana, on the childhood of Krishna: ….One day when Rama and the other little sons of the cowherds were playing, they reported to his mother, “Krishna has eaten dirt.” Yasoda took […]
Tim Miller 
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