Brother G’s Cyclopedia Of Comparative Mythology 380+ building blocks for the aspiring mythopoet Dedicated To Messrs. Mircea Eliade and Hugh Nibley, who introduced a young boy to comparative mythology. To Lord Dunsany and Mr. H. P. Lovecraft, who pioneered the art of literary mythopoeia. And To Messrs. M. A. R. Barker and J. R. R. Tolkien, who taught us that master worldbuilders must be referred to by three initials and a last name. Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………...................................1 From Acosmism to the Year-King...………………………………………………………….....3 Appendix A: Non-Standard Portfolios………………………………………………………...52 Appendix B: Epithets and Fusions……………………………………………………………..55 Appendix C: Meta-Theory…………………………………………………………………......... 56 Appendix D: Story-starting Phrases…………………………………………………………… 62 Appendix E: Random Tables…………………………………………………………………... 65 1 Introduction What is this? Why is it here? Where is it going? Why, for the sake of all that’s holy, do I think that you care about yet another book on mythology? Surely, you must be thinking to yourself, you have no need for one (even if it is free). You have three already. Maybe even more! Here’s the difference: Those books that you have will tell you who Hades was. Maybe it’ll be incredibly in-depth and inform you of every variation of every myth that ever featured him. You’ll know a lot about Hades after you read that incredibly thorough book. And after you read the entries on a dozen or so other death divinities, you’ll have a pretty good idea of their common traits. This book approaches the matter from the complete opposite direction. It tells you about death divinities as a class, and then it casually mentions Hades as a number of examples. This is a book written with worldbuilders in mind. I’m sure that other people can use it. I hope that other people can use it. But its primary purpose is to aid worldbuilders. Mythologies are built out of tropes called mythemes. Just as in literature, Tropes Are Not Bad. If divinities of a given type generally act in a certain way, then by all means write your own divinities of that type in the same way. Tropes Are Not Good, though. They’re pretty amoral. What they amount to is how you do or don’t play with them and why that’s so. If you don’t know the building blocks, though, then you can’t make any decisions at all. You’re locked into repeating the same patterns without realizing it, and any innovation that you make will be accidental. This book is meant to facilitate a kind of freedom, then. I don’t know how much you know already, but I’m sure that there’s something in here that will make the book worth reading. The main body of the text, entitled From Acosmism to the Year King, is basically what I’ve just told you about. It talks about EMERGENCE MYTHS. It talks about WORLD TREES. It talks about BEAR WORSHIP. CAPS AND CLOAKS OF INVISIBILITY, and TABOOS AGAINST NAMING THE DEAD. There are five appendices attached to this book, though, and so long as you’re still reading I may as well give you the rundown so that you know what to expect from it. Appendix A: Examples of divinities with portfolios that you might not expect them to have but in hindsight seem completely reasonable, and why you should go consider doing the same in your constructed mythologies. Appendix B: What names can tell you about a divinity. Appendix C: If the main entry concerns itself chiefly with ideas of religion and mythology, then this appendix concerns itself chiefly with ideas about religion and mythology. Appendix D: A list of phrases like “Once upon a time” and “They lived happily ever after” that are traditionally used to open and close stories in different languages. They’re especially good when you want something fairy tale-ish to open your story with (or close it) but are tired of the two that I just mentioned. Appendix E: Random tables for building new gods. If nothing else, it can be a fun exercise in figuring out how to justify random portfolios and that kind of thing. The tables come from Rolang’s Creeping Doom at rolang.com. They have been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. 2 I must admit, with regret, that I cannot consider this to be a finished project. There’s so much more that I could add. Why, if I took just one more month, I’m sure that I could add many more entries and flesh out the others that much more. But if I took one more month, then I’d take another, and another. It would never end, my friends. This is a perpetual work in progress. It will never end. This is something that I’ve just had to resign myself to. But as I continue to add to it, in-between other projects, I’ll make What I’ve Got So Far available to you. If you have any thoughts at all, any comments, any suggestions, then please, let me know. This is for you. Whether you have something to say about this book or absolutely anything else at all, you can reach me at [email protected]. For free fiction, story ideas, and other assorted things, go to whitemarbleblock.blogspot.com. I also manage a twitter account at twitter.com/The_Idea_Bank, again for the purpose of throwing out ideas for stories like confetti and sprinkles at your birthday party. It updates 1-3 times every day. 3 Acosmism is a school of thought that “denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory.” This philosophy is most prevalent in Eastern religions but is also found in Christian Science. Alatry is a religious practice that involves the recognition of one or more divinities but with a refusal to worship any of them. This refusal may stem from antagonism toward divinities or a belief that divinities act as they will and are not influenced by the actions of mortals for either good or ill. Allotheism is the “worship of a god or gods that are foreign to one’s own land.” Ancestor veneration (ancestor reverence, ancestor worship) is the propitiation of one’s ancestors in order to receive their aid or avert their cursing. It serves to enforce kinship values. The ancestors may be approached because, as former humans, they understand their descendants better than would other divinities (especially useful if most other divinities are TRICKSTER DIVINITIES). They generally have some kind of existence which can be made better or worse according to the actions of people in the phenomenal world, just as the interference of the ancestors can make life in the phenomenal world more or less difficult. Offerings may be made to them not in return for anything but simply because they are so dependent on the intervention of their descendants.1 Veneration of the saints is probably an outgrowth of ancestor worship putting the saints in a position as (adopted) ancestors to all humankind. Despite the common term “ancestor worship” few, if any, religions that practice this believe that their ancestors have or ever will become gods. Examples include traditional Chinese religion, the Igbo, and Roman cults of the family. Animal cults come in a number of basic types. Pastoral cults refrain from harming the species and may pay homage to particular individuals of the species. Hunting cults ritually kill the species but also honor it, either before or after its death. Dread cults perform rituals to pacify the spirit of individual members of the species after they are slain or the whole species, out of fear of retribution. Embodiment cults believe that the species houses virtuous human souls and treat the animals accordingly. Ominous cults view the animal as an omen and may eventually develop it into a particular divinity. Magical cults associate the animals with some kind of magic, possibly as a source for ritual ingredients, and may eventually elevate them to the status of divinities (either all of them or through a personification). See BEARS; BIRDS; DONKEY WORSHIP; ELEPHANTS; HORSE WORSHIP; SACRED BULLS Animal kings were reputed to exist in some European stories, most often cat kings. These were members of their own species (generally) and ruled them as human kings ruled humans. Animatism is a “belief in a generalized, impersonal power over which people have some measure of control” and which is “found within any of these objects [people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects] that confer power, strength, and success. See MANA. Animism is the belief that the world is filled with intelligences or spiritual essences that inhabit everything from lower animals to rocks and in some cases even shadows, wind, and abstract concepts like words and stories. In animist thought things are generally considered to be not so much entities in themselves as they are “dividuals” or “bundles of social relationships.” See ANIMATISM. 1 Conservatives have yet to suggest that their ancestors are growing dependent on handouts and need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get spirit jobs 4 Apatheism is the belief that a/theism question is irrelevant and that their behavior would not change even if the question were proved one way or another. Apeirotheism is “the belief in the existence of an infinite number of gods.” The Apollo (archetype) is a Jungian archetype. It “is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony, and prefers to look at the surface, as opposed to beneath appearances,” and “favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, [and] objective assessment over subjective intuition.” Its positive aspects are “order, reason, moderation, harmoniousness, and unemotional perfection.” It “presents a pattern that is disastrous, destructive for psychological life, cut off from everything that has to do with feminine ways, […] whomever he touches goes wrong.” Apotropaic magic is that which is used to ward off or otherwise protect against evil powers, harm, and misfortune.