Gorgons

Snake haired, fanged furies of Greek myth. Popular mythology concentrates on Medusa, but there’s much more to these ladies than we learn from monster movies.

In fact, there’s some doubt as to whether there are one or three of them. And if there are three, why are two immortal (Sthenno and Euryale) and poor Medusa the only mortal?

The tales of one Gorgo come from the oldest myths, told by the poet Homer. The head of the Gorgo was taken to form the aegis of the shield of Athena. Even Euripides believed in only one monster. It’s Hesiod who transformed the tale to include three sisters, the daughters of Phorkys and Keta. He portrayed them with snakes and fangs, but Aeschylus gave them wings.

The early Classical poets agreed on one thing. The Gorgons were horrible to observe. Some of the images were incredibly creepy. It wasn’t until the later Classical period that poets and artists humanized Medusa from a monster to a beautiful, but cursed woman.

So back to my original question. How do you end up with two out of three immortal daughters? Wicked bad luck, is what I’m thinking.

Mortal Medusa was a beauty, the stories say. Some believe that she compared her beauty to that of Athena. We’ve already seen how that works out. *cough*Arachne*cough* But others feel that her fate can be laid at the feet of another god. One who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Medusa was a servant of Athena, but the great sea god Poseidon was enchanted by her beauty, so he seduced her in Athena’s temple. The virgin goddess turned her eyes away in horror, then punished Medusa by turning her lovely hair to snakes.

WTH?!? Girl has sex, so you turn her into a monster? Wow. That’s some seriously messed up logic (as well as a seriously uptight and repressed goddess), but Medusa’s tragedy doesn’t end there.

Now she’s even more super special than just being the gorgeous daughter of gods. No. Now she can turn men to stone with a glance because they’re so filled with dread at her hideous appearance.

See, now she’s a weapon, and we know how gods and warriors and heroes get all excited about new weapons. King Polydektes had challenged Perseus to bring him the head of the Gorgon, so he set off on his heroic quest, aided by Hermes, Athena (traitor!) and Hades.

The Graiaie guarded the cave where the Gorgons slept, but they had only one eye between them. Perseus stole the eye and bargained it for entrance to the cave. He used the reflection of his polished shield to find Medusa and cut off her head with one stroke.

However, in her death, Medusa gave birth to new life. The winged horse Pegasus and the giant Khrysaor sprang from her death-wound.

Perseus then brought her head back to his enemies, flying over Libya to get home. As he flew, drops of the Gorgon’s blood fell to the sand, creating fatally poisonous vipers in the desert there.

Medusa’s head was used to vanquish armies as well as the odious Polydektes, then turned over to Athena as the centerpiece for her aegis.

The End. *sniffle* She picked the wrong guy and died for it. No HEA for our girl Medusa.

But...could there be? I’ll let you know when I finish writing my current story, inspired by Medusa’s tale.

Finnish Mythology

I’m back to my favorite topic today: Mythology!

I’m telling you, though, it’s getting kind of difficult to find Western mythologies to talk about. I really don’t know enough about Eastern cultures to feel comfortable with them, not to mention that some of what I consider mythology is still alive and well in some Asian countries, which makes it more of a religion discussion and to be honest, I don’t want to go there.

However, after some due diligence, I realized that there was one more untapped Norse civilization that I hadn’t discussed. The Finns!

Yep, we’re headed to Finland today.

Now, y’all know that I’m a language geek, yes? So it’s not going to surprise you when I tell you that the Finns have a fascinating and unique language. For its place on the map, Finland shares more linguistic heritage with Estonia and Hungary than with its Norse/Germanic-speaking neighbors, but it’s not mutually understandable with either Estonian or Hungarian. Essentially, Finland is a linguistic island in a continent of Indo-European languages. There. Geekness over. On to the fun stuff.

Today’s New Word is: MONOLATRY. According to Dictionary.com, it means “the worship of only one god although other gods are recognized as existing.” The Finns were monolatrists. And who was their supreme god? Ukka, the god of the sky, storms and lightning. As a sky god, he was literally the most highly positioned god in their pantheon.

The Finn’s mythic history, however, deals less with a pantheon of gods and more with an epic saga of heroes.

The main character of the Kalevala is Väinämöinen. He is the eldest and wisest of the Finns, possessing a powerful, magical voice. His quest to find a wife is what ties the first cycle of the Kalevala together. On his journey, he is accompanied by Lemminkäinen, an arrogant, handsome young god as well as the smith, Ilmarinen.
Love is gained and love is lost. The cycle of young Kullervo is rife with grief, rage and tragedy. But the thing that ties the Kalevala together is a magic mill of plenty called the Sampo. Ilmarinen forms the Sampo as a gift to the Maiden of the North, the daughter of the hag who rules Pohjola, which is the land to the north of Finland.

It’s a full, mythic tale, complete with the origin of man, death, self-sacrifice, rebirth and the end of the age of magic. Sound familiar? That’s because J.R.R. Tolkien borrowed heavily from the Kalevala for his LOTR legendarium.

From that historical tidbit alone, I think that the Finnish hero saga is worth further investigation.

You can find out more about Finnish mythology at these sites:
Godchecker.com
Wikipedia
Virtual Finland

For more about the Kalevala, look here:
Molly Kalafut’s site
Virtual Finland
Wikipedia

And just for fun, don’t forget to check that ultimate source, Scrooge McDuck! There’s an old Disney comic called The Quest for Kalevala. It’s from 1999, so I bet there are still copies out there at used comic places. Go forth and search!

Breton Mythology

At the very northwestern tip of France lies a region called Brittany, or Bretagne. Directly north of it, across the English Channel, is Cornwall. And a very long time ago, they weren’t so different from each other.

When the Romans came to Gaul, they called the area “Armorica.” Trade between Armorica and Britain had been long established and Brittany had far more in common with Cornwall than with its Frankish neighbors to the south. They even shared a language across the strip of sea.

So it’s no surprise that they also shared a mythology. It’s difficult, however, to find much information about it. The French are a trifle tetchy about their Barbarian roots, so there hasn’t been much research forthcoming from them. What survives are the folktales of the area and a strong link to the Arthurian cycles that come from Cornwall, Devon and Wales.

I’m not going to go into the Arthurian legends in this article, but talk about some of their folklore instead. First, we’ll start with the Grim Reaper himself – Ankou. That’s a picture of the jolly guy himself. Charming.

But the mythology indicates that we base our modern image of the Reaper on Ankou. Tall, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long coat. He doesn’t carry a scythe, but rattles along on a rickety wooden cart, into which his skeletal helpers toss the bodies of the dead. If you ever hear the rattle of his cart on a misty Breton moor, you’d better run before you end up as cargo!

The Breton Korrigan is, in some tellings, very similar to the Cornish pixie. Troublesome, but not usually malicious, depending on the tale. If these female sprites steal a mortal baby, they raise it as their own. They’re also associated with water and in these instances are beautiful creatures with long flowing hair – but their sexuality is dangerous. If a mortal man falls in love with a korrigan, he is usually doomed to die.

Other tales of the Korrigan can be found at Celtic Twilight

Morgens are also water sprites (Brittany is a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water – no wonder there are so many water sprites in their mythology). Again, like the Korrigan, her beauty is dangerous. She lures men to their deaths by showing them glimpses of undersea treasures. But her power isn’t always deadly. The Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend, is named Morgen. And the story of Morgan Le Fay, Arthur’s half-sister, may have risen from Breton tales.

The last water-spirit of Brittany is the cannard noz. She’s the Washer Woman common in almost all Celtic mythology. In Breton, her name means “night duck” because she has webbed feet. In Ireland, she’s the Bean Nighe. She washes the grave clothes of the dead and is a portent of death. You don’t want to catch a glimpse of her at work.

Finally, we come to the legend of Ys. Ys is the Celtic version of Sodom and Gomorrah. There was a good and faithful king named Gradlon, who ruled wisely and well, but his daughter, Dahut, was a wicked young woman who reveled in sin. The city of Ys was built below sea level and protected by a dike. The king kept the key to the dike on a chain around his neck.

Dahut stole the key to let her lover – supposedly the Devil himself – into the city and retribution arrived. The entire city was swallowed up and only King Gradlon was saved. He went on to found the city of Quimper and when he died, a statue was erected of him on horseback, pointing back to Ys.

Dahut became a mermaid who haunts the waters in the Bay of Douarnenez and in stormy weather, the bells of Ys still toll to warn seafarers from the shore.

Here’s the thing. There’s a good deal of evidence pointing to the fact that Ys was apparently real. There are Roman roads that lead to it, Gradlon is pointing to it, and several of the locations mentioned in the legend are real. In addition, there’s a 5th century account of a Breton city being swallowed by a deluge.

You can find more information about Ys at The Legend of the City of Ys and Brittany’s Legends.

So there you have it. The folklore of the Breton. It’s easy to see the links to other Celtic and Welsh myths and the history that binds the cultures together.

For more information on Breton mythology, see Legends and Romance of Brittany by Lewis Spence, compiled in 1917.

Slavic Mythology

I apologize for missing my last turn, but I’m making up for it today with a short article about Slavic Mythology.

Sure enough, there be gods in Eastern Europe. From Macedonia (just above Greece) all the way to Latvia (just south of Finland) and including more than a dozen countries both large and small with ever changing regimes, borders and dialects.

In fact, there is a movement in the Baltic (Northern Slavic) countries to return to an ethnic polytheistic pagan religion called Romuva, which worships the old gods and is important in preserving Baltic folk traditions.

If you remember, we talked about Basque mythology recently and one of the problems in researching is that Christianity had been around for so long that many of the traditions were forgotten. You know, what with the Inquisition burning thousands of Basque pagans and all. The issues surrounding research into Slavic mythology have some of the same issues. Not necessarily due to the Spanish Inquisition – totally unexpected – but because of centuries of Christian influence in the area. In addition, the Slavs had no written language prior to their Christianization, and many stories were no doubt lost in the mists of time.

One thing that struck me in my study was the recurrence of a World Tree, which we’ve seen in Norse mythology and in Central American mythology. As in other cultures, the tree – an oak this time – was symbolic of the different levels of existence. The crown represented the heavenly deities, the trunk was the realm of mortals and the roots of the tree stretched into the underworld.

As opposed to many of the cultures we’ve studied, the underworld of Slavic mythology was actually very nice – not a world of fire and judgment, but of eternal spring. The tree was also organized along the four cardinal directions of the wind (horizontal axes) and the various levels of the tree (vertical axes). To correspond, there was the three-headed god, Triglav, the god of prophecy and soothsaying, and Svantevit, the four-headed god of both war and harvest. An unusual combination.

As to major gods, there were a few. Perun was the top guy. The god of the thunder, lightning and fire. He was also a dry god. This is important in a minute. He drove a chariot across the sky (Apollo, much?), hurled a hammer (Thor, much?) at evil spirits and lived at the top of the World Tree. His opposite number is Veles, the god of the underworld. Naturally, they were enemies. Veles was a god of peasants, cattle and wealth. He was a wet god. Represented as a dragon or serpent, he would steal Perun’s cattle. Dry periods were the result of Veles thievery and trickery of Perun. When Perun went after him to get his cattle back, a great battle would ensue – big storms with lots of thunder and lightning. The battles would result in the defeat/death of Veles – when his body was split open by Perun’s sword, the great rains would fall and order could be restored.

There are a number of smaller deities who controlled or symbolized other aspects of life for the Slavs. Czernobog represented the darkness of winter and was accordingly a bleak and forbidding god. His position was overtaken in the spring by the other half of himself, Bielobog, a god of sun, light, and life. The Czernobog/Bielobog deity, however, is unsubstantiated by modern research because of the dearth of proof. Indeed, while Czernobog is fairly certain to have existed within the pantheon, the only theory of Bielobog’s existence is merely the conjecture of a 12th century priest who assumed that the evil of Czernobog *must* have some balancing force – not necessarily true.

The Zorya were a trilogy of sister goddesses who symbolized the passage of the sun and moon. They are the Morning, the Evening, and the Midnight Star, guarding the gates of heaven for the passage of the sun. They also stand guard over the doomsday hound, who, if he ever breaks his chain, will eat the constellation of Ursa Minor. If he ever does, the universe will end.

The Slavs also have a rich and varied folklore consisting of goblins, fairies, witches, dragons and firebirds. For more information on that, see this University of Alberta link and this one from the University of Alabama. Those are also good sources for the mythology we’ve discussed here. See also the Slavic Pantheon. Wikipedia, as always, is a good jumping off point for further research, but my other two favorite pantheon sources, Godchecker and Encyclopedia Mythica, are sadly lacking in this area.

Basque Mythology

Basques had mythology? Huh. Who knew?

First off, a little World Geography 101. Find Europe. Find France. Find Spain. Then, right in between them, from the western Pyrenees down to the Bay of Biscay, you’ll find the Basque Country. Although it’s not technically a country on its own, it’s defined as an “autonomous community” as well as a historical region.

The Basque Country, or as they call it, Euskal Herria or Euskadi, is unique in western Europe. It possesses a language and culture unlike any other surrounding it. In fact, let me go language geek on y’all for a moment and say that Basque (euskara) is known as a “language isolate.” There is no other language like it. In fact, the roots of their language were in place when the Romans came, but it was not subsumed to Roman culture. Therefore it’s no surprise that it’s mythology is unique.

The Basques came to Christianity fairly late in the game, as Europeans go, but when they did, they left behind their pagan roots so completely, that it’s difficult to find much information on it. This is probably due to the Catholic Inquisition of the 15th century. Thousands of so-called witches and heretics were tortured and burned at a placed called Logrono – an ancient ritual site.

But historically, Basque mythology seems to be less pantheonic than many other cultures we’ve discussed. There are few actual gods in it, but many spirits and creatures. This seems to be common among chthonic mythologies. Seriously. Chthonic. I just had to get that word in there. It means “earth-based.” As opposed to many of our other studies, where gods live in the heavens or in the specter of death, Basque mythology is very centered on what’s in front of them, what’s part of their land.

Their sprites and spirits populate the earth in caves, in forests and in rivers. The sky is a way for them to travel, referred to generally as Osti. The moon is called Ilazki, neither good nor evil, but she plays a role in guiding the spirits of the deceased.

The highest god in the Basque pantheon, such as it is, is actually a goddess called Mari. She is benign and helpful, protecting travelers and herds and giving good council to those who need it. The goddess of thunder and wind, she is the personification of the earth, similar to the Greek Gaia. Mari drives a chariot of four white horses across the sky and when she appears, she is a beautiful woman adorned with rainbows.

Her counterpart and consort is Maju/Sugaar. I give both names because they’re so tightly linked, it’s difficult to tell whether they are two separate gods or whether they are interchangeable. In any case, Maju is no fluffy bunny and he doesn’t seem to get on very well with his wife. Their encounters are often heralded by terrible storms. Maju/Sugaar are divine thunder and lightning – the destructive kind. Sugaar appears as a serpent or dragon, living in subterranean caves.

Their son, Atarrabi, takes after his mother. He is connected to a star and when it shines, it’s said that good fortune will come to the Basque.

Their other child, however, Mikelats, (stories differ on whether it’s a son or a daughter) brings landslides, and crushing rock falls. Her star brings evil times to the Basque people.

Mari is served by genie-witches called Sorgin. They manipulate the Adur, the mystical force that links things with their representation. A symbolic action towards an image has a corresponding real impact on the actual thing. A name is even a sound image of a tangible object, therefore, by saying a name with intent, you influence its Adur.

Lamia in Greek mythology are horrible, man-eating creatures. In Basque stories, however, they are lovely water nymphs. In typical mythological form, however, they are also Sirens who can either lure men to their deaths in the water or give them gifts. The Laminak, likewise, are fairies who live in beautiful underground castles.

The Basajun is a Wild Lord or a sort of wild man of the woods. He’s another earth spirit who protects the flocks.

As always, the Encyclopedia Mythica was a very helpful resource.

The Wikipedia entry on Basque Mythology provided a useful jumping-off point.

MythHome has an entry about Basque spirits.

Arcadia Esoterica had a fascinating article concerning not only the Basque pantheon, but also the regions religious and arcane history.

Finally, Buber’s Basque Page had a lengthy entry on “Basque Astronymy [sic].” It’s a unique look at Basque mythology through linguistics. Serious language geek stuff.

Gods of Central America

According to the Popol Vuh, the gods first made men of mud, but they were too soft, malformed, and stupid. They were washed away in the rain.
Then the gods made men of wood, but though their faces and forms were perfect, they had nothing in their heads and did not respect the gods. They were also wiped away by the floods.
Then the gods made men of masa, or dough made from maize. Then they were satisfied.

Wow. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to the corny joke, doesn’t it?

Sorry. Couldn't help myself. *gg*

After man was created, twin hero gods, Hunahpu and Ixbalanque, had to go into the underworld to defeat the lords of Xibalba who reigned there. They perished and were miraculously reborn, thus proving the agricultural cycle of life that dominated Mayan culture.

The Mayan civilization was extremely complex – as evidenced by the fabulous cities they built, their societal sophistication and intricate studies of the sciences. Therefore, it’s no surprise that their mythology also has many aspects. It should also come as no surprise that these gods and myths also display logical order.

The Mayan gods maintain associations with each point of the compass, with a color and meaning assigned to that compass point, as well as maintaining a link to a central point. This central point was conceptualized by a world tree. Think back to our discussion of Nordic mythology – Odin hung from the tree Yggdrasil for 9 days and nights to gain knowledge. In Mayan culture, that tree is called the ceiba.

Perhaps the most well-known Mayan god is Kukulcan, the winged feather serpent, and a powerful creator god. He is also known as Quetzalcoatl in the Aztec pantheon.

I suppose here is as good a place as any to note that Mayan and Aztec cultures overlapped in many, many areas. Olmecs, Toltecs, Mixtecs are all variants and predecessors of the same Mesoamerican mythology.

Gods within these societies were assigned specific duties and portions. Chac was the benevolent rain and thunder, with accompanying applications in fertility and agriculture was a powerful figure. In fact, anthropologists have discovered that there are still pockets of Maya farmers – though nominally Christian – who still pray to Chac seasonally.

Yumil Kaxob was the god of Maize, eternally youthful. However, he had very little intrinsic power. He needed protection from Chac, but when Yah Puch, the god of the Underworld, brought drought and famine, Yumil Kaxob suffered.

All in all, a society devoted to harmony with the natural world, whether it was for celebration or suffering.

More information can be found at these websites:

Wikipedia
God-checker
Lost Civilizations
Encyclopedia Mythica

The Muses

As writers, we love to talk about our Muses. Ethereal beings who carry our ideas, our motivation, our art with them. And when they flee, we're helpless.

*snort* I'm extremely hard-headed regarding that idea, believing rather that our creative ability stems from within, but that's not the point of today's post.

Today, I'm going to talk about the actual Muses of mythology. I know. You're expecting another pantheon. Next time, I promise.

Originally, there were only three, Aoede (song), Melete (practice), and Mneme (memory). Other tales suggest that nine were named by Pierus the Macedonian, but for today's purposes, we'll go with this version. Zeus, before he married Hera, was the lover of Mnemosyne, the personification of Memory. He slept with her nine nights, begetting nine Muses:

Calliope ~ The eldest child, leader of her sisters and muse of philosophy and epic poetry.
Clio ~ muse of history.
Melpomene ~ muse of tragedy. Not sure why, really, because she's also known for her singing and chanting. She's the mother of the Sirens -- beautiful singing monsters.
Euterpe ~ muse of music, especially the flute. She is also a muse of lyric poetry, a quality she shares with her sister, Erato.
Erato ~ muse of love poetry. Lyrics for music, especially marriage songs, stem from her.
Terpsichore ~ muse of dance, which was considered an important aspect of being civilized.
Urania ~ muse of astronomy and astrology, two very different approaches to reading the stars. She also represents philosophy, along with her sister Calliope.
Thalia ~ the muse of comedy (my personal favorite). She's also the muse of idyllic or bucolic poetry. Lots of comedy in trees and sheep, apparently.
Polymnia/Polyhymnia ~ the serious one. She is the muse of sacred poetry and she brings everlasting fame to writers. She is also a muse of religious dance, mime, and, oddly enough, agriculture.

Yet what is their true function for us as writers -- as people? To inspire. Temples were built to the muses to inspire people to beauty. Whether in art, song or literature, the muses brought people together and promoted peace and harmony.

So whether you take a particular Muse to heart, create your own, or believe in your own ability to create, the power and purpose of the Muses remain the same. They inspire us.

Tell me about your own Muse. Which one speaks most powerfully to you?

Keeping Ka and Ba Together

An earlier discussion on Ancient Egypt revolved around Ra – simply because I had to focus somewhere! Egyptian mythology is complex and vast and the fact is that most of it centers around the Afterlife.

These people were obsessed with Death.

A book which we call The Book of the Dead is actually the name for a large collection of ancient funerary texts. It contains instructions on all the details of death and steps for getting to The Field of Reeds, like the Greek Elysian Fields or the Christian Heaven – the reward for a good life. The Book was not a set in stone (Ha! A little Rosetta Stone humor), but could be individualized to each person who wished to obtain one. Spells and passwords unique to each bearer were included so that the dead person could pass through the afterlife.

Many funerary texts were translated by a Cornishman named E.A. Wallis Budge, including this Book of the Dead for the Scribe Ani.

They believed in an immortal soul. A soul which would be judged by its actions here on earth. But the soul in Egypt was a complicated thing, comprised of many different parts.

The Ba – the closest approximation is the Western idea of the soul. The a was a person’s personality. What made them unique.

The Ka – the life force. The difference between dead and alive is the Ka.

So when a person died, their Ka left their body. The Ba might remain trapped within unless priests performed certain spells to release it. When the Ka and Ba rejoined in the afterlife, they created a unique entity called the Akh. The Akh was the form in which the deceased occupied the afterlife. The true expression of the self, one might say.

Mummification was a vital part of the trip to the afterlife, so that the Ba and the Ka might recognize each other to form the Akh. More info here on burial rituals.

The journey of the soul in the afterlife includes a visit with Osiris, the king of the Underworld.

Quick aside: In the previous article, comments point to Anubis being the god of the Dead. In a spectacular bit of religious evolution, the legend of Osiris and Isis sprang up during the Middle Kingdom and by the New Kingdom, Osiris was the accepted leader in the Guide to Who’s Who in the Underworld.

In a related timeline, The Book of the Dead originates from funerary texts collected during the time of the New Kingdom. Hence, we deal with Osiris rather than Anubis.

Back on topic now.

After a person dies, they’re taken into the Hall of Two Truths. Thoth, the Divine Mediator, would read out the person’s deeds, then the heart would be weighed against the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of Justice.

If the heart was pure, the person could pass on to the realm of the blessed. If not, (I love this part – I’m just a wee bit bloodthirsty, it seems) Ammit, the Devourer of the Dead, would slither up from under the throne of Osiris, and eat the heart, condemning it to eternal restlessness. In some traditions, she didn’t eat the soul, but rather cast it into a fiery lake. Another example of religious synchronicity.

In any case, the amount of information about Ancient Egyptian death practices is enormous. Most of the sources I cited here are from Wikipedia, but also from the Encyclopedia Mythica and Ancient Mythology.com.

Egypt Art Site contains some excerpts from the Papyrus of Ani, plus a link to the Budge translation.

Finally, although the Egyptologist in “The Mummy” warns against it – for further information, I strongly suggest that you DO Read From the Book!

The Gods of Egypt

I’ve bitten off a chunk today as I begin a brief study on the Egyptian pantheon.

The Old Kingdom had it’s fair share of gods who occupied levels within levels of deity – the vast majority of them concerned with the afterlife, which was a vastly complicated realm.

However, the pantheon was also split into geographical regions, with different cities worshipping different sets of gods. Each mini-pantheon included a creator deity at the head with various other gods as back-up singers. Gods of destruction and death, gods for sickness, for fertility, for agriculture. Plenty of gods related to water and the Nile.

There’s no possible way I could take on all the different sets of gods in one blog post. In fact, Egyptian mythology twisted in on itself as time went on and by the time of the New Kingdom (about a dozen dynasties after the Old Kingdom), many gods had found common identities and shifted their names accordingly.

Let’s take, for instance, Ra. Or Re (don’t even get me started on trying to work out the different spellings. Let’s just say that hieroglyphics are phonetically and linguistically…fluid). Ra was an important figure in Egyptian mythology because he was the god of Sun. This being Egypt, the Sun was a big part of their lives. Legend says that the Egyptians were created from Ra’s sweat and they called themselves the Cattle of Ra.

In the Old Kingdom – by the way, when I say Old Kingdom, I mean 3rd millennium BC – Ra, the god of Sun, was It. All other gods had some relationship with Ra in his forms as morning sun, mid-day sun and evening sun. But there were other powerful gods, such as
• Amun: chief creator god of the pantheon in Thebes
• Atum: creator and sun god of the pantheon in Heliopolis
• Horus: god of the sky, portrayed with the head of a falcon

By the time of the New Kingdom – 11th-16th centuries BC – Egypt was less a conglomeration of city-states and becoming a united country. Therefore, they had to adjust some of their religious beliefs to accommodate that unification.

Ra, therefore, became joined with other gods, creating the deities of Amun-Ra, Atum-Ra and Ra-Herakhty (a Horus-Ra combination).

Ra was also at the basis of Ancient Egypt’s sole brief bout of monotheism. During the reign of Amenhotep IV, the pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaten to honor the god, Aten. But Aten wasn’t so much a god as he was the Sun himself. Aten’s full title was “The Rahorus who rejoices in the horizon, in his/her Name of the Light which is seen in the sun disc.” Which is kind of a mouthful, so I’m glad they settled on just plain Aten.

Worship of Aten, however, faded away when Akhenaten died. So much for state-sponsored religion.

The cult of Ra, in one form or another, was a constant throughout Ancient Egypt and his power spread from the journey of the sun to the Underworld.

This blog post has become sufficiently lengthy and we’ve only touched on one aspect of the Egyptian pantheon. Next time, I’ll blog more about Egypt and their relationship with Death.

Velkommen til Asgard: Welcome to Asgard

The home of the Norse gods. According to legend, there were nine worlds. Two sets of gods, the Aeisir and the Vanir had their own worlds, Asgard and Vanaheim. Humans lived in Midgard, the world of the dead was an icy place called Niflheim, and elves, dwarves, giants, and fire had their own worlds.

Odin was the All-Father, but not so much a jolly kind of guy. He lost one eye when he traded it for a drink from Mirmir, or the Well of Wisdom. A strange sort of wisdome, for he was also a god of war and warriors. He was often accompanied by two wolves and two ravens, Hugin and Mugin, or Memory and Thought.

For nine days, Odin was hung from Yggdrasil – the Tree of Life – and a common motif in Viking art. Odin, who was also the god of the hanged, sacrificed himself to learn nine powerful spells and the secrets of the runes.

His wife, Frigg, was also the goddess of fertility and motherhood. It’s said that in order to keep her beautiful son Balder safe from everything, she asked everything on the earth for a promise not to harm him. The only thing she didn’t ask was the mistletoe because she thought it too insignificant. Later, Loki, the fire god of chaos and mischief, convinced blind Höd, Balder’s brother, to toss a mistletoe sprig at Balder. It struck him in the eye and killed him.

The pantheon of the Norse is extremely complex – necessarily so, with two sets of gods. In addition, there is a lot of crossover between the Norse gods and the Teutonic, or Germanic, gods. The Ring of the Niebelungen, Wagner’s famous opera, is based more on the Teutonic gods, but the similarities between the two pantheons is inescapable.

For a brief overview of the Norse pantheon, stop at the Norse mythology page of Timeless Myths.

From there, proceed to Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Mythica, and godchecker.com.

For books, I suggest The Prose Edda, The Poetic Edda, and The Volsung Saga.

Snorri Sturluson was a 12th century Icelandic poet and historian who wrote many, many books on the myths and sagas of his people. There are several modern translations of his work available.

In a moment of serendipitous timing, I happened to pick up and read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods this week. It brings together gods from all over the world in a beautiful and haunting tale about the ultimate mortality of immortal beings. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in mythology.

Pantheon

I blog here every couple of weeks and, as is typical, I leave it to the absolute last second. I don't know if I feel better or worse for admitting that I've been thinking about this post for several days and my subject only came to me this morning.

Nothing like a deadline to focus the mind, I always say.

But I did find a topic and it's probably something I'll expand on in the weeks to come. The pantheon of the gods.

Every culture creates its own gods. The Greeks, the Romans, the Norse, the ancient Mesopotamians, Native Americans, as well as various Eastern cultures. We might even say that modern Western civilazation is not immune from creating deities of its own.

But the myths of theism provide a fertile ground for paranormal writers.

Some of the first stories we learned came from Greek and Roman traditions. Zeus or Jupiter and his squabbling family: Hera/Juno, Apollo/Helios, Aphrodite/Venus, Ares/Mars, Artemis/Diana, Athena/Minerva. They provide stories of love, jealousy, infidelity, and life everlasting. The Elysian Fields for the good, the embrace of Hades for the evil.

The legends of them and their interference in human lives (how many bastards did Zeus spawn, anyway? Surely Hera didn't focus all her spite on poor Hercules) give us not only inspiration for plots, but also for emotional themes.

Bulfinch's Mythology is an invaluable resource for researching Greek and Roman myths. The Theoi Project provides information about Greek stories, while the Encyclopedia Mythica gives insight into several different pantheons.

Next time, we head north to Valhalla.