Comparative World Mythology
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Truth Behind Noah's Deluge
Geography within a Historical Myth – Truth behind Noah’s Deluge Dr. Saswati Roy Assistant Professor, Sarsuna College, Calcutta University Prof. Malay Mukhopadhyay Former Head of the Geography Department Visva Bharati, Santiniketan Myths about great floods Mexico • There are a large number of Mesoamerican flood myths like the Nahua (central Mexico), Tarahumara (Northern Mexico), Michoacan (Mexico), Cora (east of the Huichols), Totonac (east of Mexico), Aztec Flood Myth and others. The great Maya civilization also have documentation of such a mythical flood. India • Satyavrata, the 7th Manu considered the first king to rule this earth, who saved mankind from the great flood — after being warned of it by the Matsya avatar of Vishnu, who had also advised him to build a giant boat. China • We can see those elements in the Chinese myth where Gong Gong, so ordered by the head of the gods, created a flood as a punishment for human misbehavior. It lasted 22 years, until the hero started to dam the waters. The hero was killed for this act, but from his corpse sprang a son who finished his father's project. Rome • The Greco-Roman story, recounted by Ovid, is another tale of collusion among the gods to punish evil humanity. Jupiter persuaded Neptune to flood all the earth except for the summit of Mt. Parnassus. THE MYTHICAL NOAH’S FLOOD The story most familiar to many people is the biblical account of Noah and his ark. Genesis (A chapter in Old Testament) tells how “God saw that the wickedness of man was great” and decided to destroy all of creation. -
'Myth' and 'Religion'
THOUGHTS ON MYTH AND RELIGION IN EARLY GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY Robert L. FOWLER University of Bristol [email protected] RESUMEN: El artículo examina el nacimiento del concepto de mythos/mito en el contexto de la historiografía y la mitografía de la Grecia arcaica. La posibilidad de oponerse a relatos tradicionales es un factor crítico en este proceso y se relaciona estrechamente con los esfuerzos de los autores por fijar su autoridad. Se compara la práctica de Heródoto con la de los primeros mitógrafos y, aunque hay amplias similitudes, hay diferencias cruciales en el tratamiento de los asuntos religiosos. Los escrúpulos personales de Heródoto responden en parte a su bien conocida reserva en lo referente a los dioses, pero es también relevante su actitud acerca de la tarea del historiador y su noción de cómo los dioses intervienen en la historia. Mientras que los mitógrafos tratan de historicizar la mitología, Heródoto trata de modo notable de desmitologizar la historia, separando ambas, pero al mismo tiempo definiendo con más profundidad que nunca sus auténticas interconexiones. Esta situación sugiere algunas consideraciones generales acerca de la relación entre mito y ritual en Grecia. ABSTRACT: The article examines the emerging concept of mythos/myth in the context of early Greek historiography and mythography. The possibility of contesting traditional stories is a critical factor in this process, and is closely related to the efforts of writers to establish their authority. Herodotos’ practice is compared with that of the early mythographers, and though there are some broad similarities, there are crucial differences in their approach to religious matters. -
Working out Minerva: Narrative Formulation of Religious Divinity in Ovid’S Metamorphoses
Working Out Minerva: Narrative Formulation of Religious Divinity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Scholarship on the Arachne narrative in book 6 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses focuses on the meta-poetic or meta-political implications of the two tapestries. Barbara Pavlock (2009), for example, suggests that one can identify Ovid’s poetic persona within Arachne’s weavings. Ellen Oliensis (2004) suggests that the competition between Arachne and Minerva represents a contest between Ovid and the Augustan regime. This paper will examine the link between Minerva’s religious affiliation to weaving and crafting, and Ovid’s narrative structure of the Metamorphoses. For this presentation, I will argue that the organization of Minerva’s tapestry reflects the narrative organization of other stories in the Metamorphoses where Minerva’s divinity is mentioned. Ovid was well aware of Minerva’s association with weaving and crafts—in the Fasti he refers to “the goddess of a thousand crafts” (3.833), a loose translation of the title of Athena Ergane who received cult worship from craftsmen and weavers alike at a shrine located on the Athenian acropolis (cf. Mikalson 2005). I will argue that Ovid’s ekphrasis of Minerva’s tapestry in Metamorphoses reflects her divine status as the goddess of crafting. In contrast to Arachne’s tapestry, Ovid frames Minerva’s work in a pattern which William Anderson (1972: 162) calls a “perfectly centered, balanced, and framed” formulation. Ovid begins the ekphrasis with the description of the tapestry’s centerpiece. The ekphrasis starts with the twelve Olympians being present during the certamen between Minerva and Neptune (6.72-72). -
The Myth of Redemptive Violence by Walter Wink
THE MYTH OF REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCE BY WALTER WINK The story that the rulers of domination societies told each other and their subordinates is what we today might call the Myth of Redemptive Violence. It enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right. It is one of the oldest continuously repeated stories in the world. Here Walter Wink describes just how pervasive this myth still is in the mores of Western culture. The belief that violence ”saves” is so successful because it doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. If a god is what you turn to when all else fails, violence certainly functions as a god. What people overlook, then, is the religious character of violence. It demands from its devotees an absolute obedience- unto-death. This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today. When my children were small, we let them log an unconscionable amount of television, and I became fascinated with the mythic structure of cartoons. This was in the 1960s, when the ”death of God” theologians were being feted on talk shows, and secular humanity’s tolerance for religious myth and mystery were touted as having been exhausted. I began to examine the structure of cartoons, and found the same pattern repeated endlessly: an indestructible hero is doggedly opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible villain. -
Archons (Commanders) [NOTICE: They Are NOT Anlien Parasites], and Then, in a Mirror Image of the Great Emanations of the Pleroma, Hundreds of Lesser Angels
A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES WATCH THIS IMPORTANT VIDEO UFOs, Aliens, and the Question of Contact MUST-SEE THE OCCULT REASON FOR PSYCHOPATHY Organic Portals: Aliens and Psychopaths KNOWLEDGE THROUGH GNOSIS Boris Mouravieff - GNOSIS IN THE BEGINNING ...1 The Gnostic core belief was a strong dualism: that the world of matter was deadening and inferior to a remote nonphysical home, to which an interior divine spark in most humans aspired to return after death. This led them to an absorption with the Jewish creation myths in Genesis, which they obsessively reinterpreted to formulate allegorical explanations of how humans ended up trapped in the world of matter. The basic Gnostic story, which varied in details from teacher to teacher, was this: In the beginning there was an unknowable, immaterial, and invisible God, sometimes called the Father of All and sometimes by other names. “He” was neither male nor female, and was composed of an implicitly finite amount of a living nonphysical substance. Surrounding this God was a great empty region called the Pleroma (the fullness). Beyond the Pleroma lay empty space. The God acted to fill the Pleroma through a series of emanations, a squeezing off of small portions of his/its nonphysical energetic divine material. In most accounts there are thirty emanations in fifteen complementary pairs, each getting slightly less of the divine material and therefore being slightly weaker. The emanations are called Aeons (eternities) and are mostly named personifications in Greek of abstract ideas. -
Roman Gods and Goddesses
History Romans History | LKS2 | Romans | Gods and Goddesses | Lesson 5 Aim • I can understand what religious beliefs the Romans had and know about some of the gods and goddesses that they worshipped. SuccessSuccess Criteria • IStatement can explain 1 Lorem the different ipsum dolor elements sit amet of Roman, consectetur religion. adipiscing elit. • IStatement can tell you 2 the names of some of the main Roman gods and • Sub statement goddesses and write about what they represented to the Roman people. Roman Religion In the earlier Roman times, the Roman people believed in many different gods and goddesses whom they believed controlled different aspects of their lives. They did not have a central belief system of their own as such, but rather borrowed gods, rituals and superstitions from a number of sources and adapted them to suit their own needs. The Romans believed in good and bad omens and they performed many rituals in the hope of receiving good luck. Prayer and sacrifice was important and the Romans held festivals every month to honour the gods. They would worship their gods and goddesses at temples. Elements of Religion Read through the Roman religion information text. Discuss the words below with your partner and work out what they mean. You can use dictionaries to help you. Why did the Romans have/do these things? omen prayer ritual superstition sacrifice festivals worship Roman Gods and Goddesses The Romans had lots of gods and goddesses. Many of their gods and goddesses are the same as the Greek gods, but with different names. They make things very confusing! We are going to look at some of the more popular Roman gods and goddesses. -
Mythology and Destiny Albert Doja
Mythology and Destiny Albert Doja To cite this version: Albert Doja. Mythology and Destiny. Anthropos -Freiburg-, Richarz Publikations-service GMBH, 2005, 100 (2), pp.449-462. 10.5771/0257-9774-2005-2-449. halshs-00425170 HAL Id: halshs-00425170 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00425170 Submitted on 1 May 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. H anthropos 100.2005:449-462 1^2 Mythologyand Destiny AlbertDoja Abstract.- In Albaniantradition, the essential attributes of larlyassociated with the person's spirit, with their the mythologicalfigures of destinyseem to be symbolic lifeand death,their health, their future character, interchangeablerepresentations of birth itself. Their mythical theirsuccesses and setbacks. the combatis butthe symbolic representation of the cyclic return Theysymbolize in thewatery and chthonianworld of death,leading, like the person'sproperties, are thespiritual condensation vegetation,tothe cosmic revival of a newbirth. Both protective of theirqualities. They have suchclose mystical anddestructive positions of theattributes of birth,symbolized tieswith the person that merely the way they are by the amnioticmembranes, the caul, and othersingular dealtwith or theaim are ascribeddetermines ofmaternal they markers,or by the means of the symbolism water, theindividual's own and fate. -
Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) As an Environmental Cinematic Midrash Lila Moore Zefat Academic College & Cybernetic Futures Institute, [email protected]
Journal of Religion & Film Volume 22 Article 35 Issue 1 April 2018 3-30-2018 Humanity's Second Chance: Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) as an Environmental Cinematic Midrash Lila Moore Zefat Academic College & Cybernetic Futures Institute, [email protected] Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro Zefat Academic College & Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, [email protected] Recommended Citation Moore, Lila and Ruah-Midbar Shapiro, Marianna (2018) "Humanity's Second Chance: Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) as an Environmental Cinematic Midrash," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 22 : Iss. 1 , Article 35. Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol22/iss1/35 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Religion & Film by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Humanity's Second Chance: Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) as an Environmental Cinematic Midrash Abstract This article proposes an interpretative study of Daren Aronofsky and Ari Handel's film Noah (2014). Our main assertion is that the film attempts to present a contemporary interpretation of the biblical flood ts ory by incorporating values and urgent issues of the 21st century Western society, such as environmentalism, fundamentalism and eco-feminism. The ap per details various traditions that serve as inspirations to the filmmakers in the re-telling of the flood ym th, and elaborates on the midrashic traditions that were intertwined – or else omitted – in the process of creating the innovative cinematic midrash. It also points to the psychologization of God in the film and its theological implications. -
Coming to Terms: Fundamentalists Or Islamists? by Martin Kramer Middle East Quarterly Spring 2003, Pp
Coming to Terms: Fundamentalists or Islamists? by Martin Kramer Middle East Quarterly Spring 2003, pp. 6577 http://www.meforum.org/541/comingtotermsfundamentalistsorislamists No one who reads or writes about events in the Muslim world can avoid the question of how to label those Muslims who invoke Islam as the source of authority for all political and social action. Should they be labeled Islamic (or Muslim) fundamentalists? Or are they better described as Islamists? The issue has been the subject of a heated debate for two decades. For a while, both general and scholarly usage in America accepted fundamentalism. Islamism emerged in the late 1980s in French academe and then crossed into English, where it eventually displaced Islamic fundamentalism in specialized contexts. More recently, the term Islamism has gained even wider currency, and since September 11, 2001, it may even have established itself as the preferred American usage. Still newer terminology may lie over the horizon. Behind the battle over usage lies another struggle, over the nature of the phenomenon itself. In fact, the two contests, over English usage and analytical understanding, are inseparable. Nor are they free of associations left by past usages. Here follows a short history of changing usage—itself a history of changing Western perceptions of Muslim reality. The Debut of Islamism The term Islamism first appeared in French in the mideighteenth century. But it did not refer to the modern ideological use of Islam, which had not yet come into being. Rather, it was a synonym for the religion of the Muslims, which was then known in French as mahométisme, the religion professed and taught by the Prophet Muhammad. -
Do Creation and Flood Myths Found World Wide Have a Common Origin?
The Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism Volume 5 Print Reference: Pages 517-528 Article 47 2003 Do Creation and Flood Myths Found World Wide Have a Common Origin? Jerry Bergman Northwest State College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings DigitalCommons@Cedarville provides a publication platform for fully open access journals, which means that all articles are available on the Internet to all users immediately upon publication. However, the opinions and sentiments expressed by the authors of articles published in our journals do not necessarily indicate the endorsement or reflect the views of DigitalCommons@Cedarville, the Centennial Library, or Cedarville University and its employees. The authors are solely responsible for the content of their work. Please address questions to [email protected]. Browse the contents of this volume of The Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. Recommended Citation Bergman, Jerry (2003) "Do Creation and Flood Myths Found World Wide Have a Common Origin?," The Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 5 , Article 47. Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol5/iss1/47 DO CREATION AND FLOOD MYTHS FOUND WORLD WIDE HAVE A COMMON ORIGIN? Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. Northwest State College Archbold, OH 43543 KEYWORDS: Creation myths, the Genesis account of creation, Noah’s flood ABSTRACT An extensive review of both creation and flood myths reveals that there is a basic core of themes in all of the extant creation and flood myths. This fact gives strong evidence of a common origin of the myths based on actual historical events. -
Mercury (Mythology) 1 Mercury (Mythology)
Mercury (mythology) 1 Mercury (mythology) Silver statuette of Mercury, a Berthouville treasure. Ancient Roman religion Practices and beliefs Imperial cult · festivals · ludi mystery religions · funerals temples · auspice · sacrifice votum · libation · lectisternium Priesthoods College of Pontiffs · Augur Vestal Virgins · Flamen · Fetial Epulones · Arval Brethren Quindecimviri sacris faciundis Dii Consentes Jupiter · Juno · Neptune · Minerva Mars · Venus · Apollo · Diana Vulcan · Vesta · Mercury · Ceres Mercury (mythology) 2 Other deities Janus · Quirinus · Saturn · Hercules · Faunus · Priapus Liber · Bona Dea · Ops Chthonic deities: Proserpina · Dis Pater · Orcus · Di Manes Domestic and local deities: Lares · Di Penates · Genius Hellenistic deities: Sol Invictus · Magna Mater · Isis · Mithras Deified emperors: Divus Julius · Divus Augustus See also List of Roman deities Related topics Roman mythology Glossary of ancient Roman religion Religion in ancient Greece Etruscan religion Gallo-Roman religion Decline of Hellenistic polytheism Mercury ( /ˈmɜrkjʉri/; Latin: Mercurius listen) was a messenger,[1] and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx ("merchandise"; compare merchant, commerce, etc.), mercari (to trade), and merces (wages).[2] In his earliest forms, he appears to have been related to the Etruscan deity Turms, but most of his characteristics and mythology were borrowed from the analogous Greek deity, Hermes. Latin writers rewrote Hermes' myths and substituted his name with that of Mercury. However, there are at least two myths that involve Mercury that are Roman in origin. In Virgil's Aeneid, Mercury reminds Aeneas of his mission to found the city of Rome. In Ovid's Fasti, Mercury is assigned to escort the nymph Larunda to the underworld. -
How the World Was Made a Cheyenne Creation Myth
How the World Was Made A Cheyenne Creation Myth At the beginning of time, there was nothing but darkness. Maheo the All Spirit lived alone in this darkness. He was tired of the dark—there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. Maheo was very powerful and he decided to use his power to create the world. Maheo created water in the form of a great salty lake and decided that all life would come from this water. At first, he made animals that swim in the water like fish. Next, Maheo created the sand at the bottom of the giant salty lake. Then he created bottom-feeding creatures like snails, lobsters, and mussels to live on that sand. 1 © 2018 Reading Is Fundamental • Content and art created by Simone Ribke How the World Was Made Next, Maheo made animals that live on the water. These included many types of birds such as geese, terns, loons, and ducks. Maheo delighted to hear their wings flapping and their feet splashing on the water. But Maheo could only hear them, he could not see them. “I would like to see the things I created,” Maheo said to himself. So Maheo created light and delighted in seeing all the fish swimming in the water and all the birds swimming on the water. “How beautiful,” Maheo said to himself, for he was truly amazed by his creations. Soon, a goose called out to Maheo: “Great Maheo, thank you for making this wonderful world. We are so happy, but the birds are not fish.