www.RodnoVery.ru DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY MYTHOLOGY By William Harwood, Ph.D. www.RodnoVery.ru © 2002 by William Harwood, Ph.D. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. ISBN: 0-7596-9763-9 ISBN: 0-7596-9762-0 This book is printed on acid free paper. 1stBooks - rev. 03/07/02 www.RodnoVery.ru INTRODUCTION Dictionary of Contemporary Mythology is not intended to be an encyclopedia. Entries are accordingly limited to the amount of information necessary to identify a person, place or concept, and delineate its connection with mythology. For the purpose at hand, I have defined mythology very widely. Entries pertaining to grammar, for example, are included to illustrate the myth that sub- standard English is as valid a dialect as Standard English, a myth that limits any student who believes it to the lowest-paying menial occupations. The most numerous entries are those devoted to topics that are widely recognized as mythological: religion and metaphysical subjects, parapsychology and paranormal subjects, the supernatural, the occult, tabloid tipsters, and folk legends. Many ancient gods are listed, not because they have modern-day believers but because myths once told of older gods continue to be told in connection with newer gods. Entries pertaining to historical beliefs are strictly factual. That does not mean that when Osiris is described as a “resurrected savior-god,” the reader should believe Osiris really rose from the dead. It means, rather, that the ancient Egyptians believed that Osiris rose from the dead. Entries calling for value judgments, such as those pertaining to political philosophies or non- empirical theological propositions, are treated from what is commonly termed a “liberal” perspective. Persons who believe that an identical act in identical circumstances can be evil when Hitler does it but virtuous by definition when a tribal god does it, or that a society should allow persons who cannot find employment to starve to death, will find no comfort here. A few entries are intended only to be comical. A reasonable reader will have no difficulty identifying them as such. A small number of entries include references for further reading, particularly where persons emotionally committed to a relevant belief system may question facts stated in the entry. I have not, however, given a reference for any fact proven in my: Mythology’s Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus. Most such facts are, in any case, widely agreed upon by biblical historians, and disputed only by practitioners of theology, a discipline in which evidence is manipulated to fit predetermined conclusions. Information herein is bound to be very different from what is to be found in dictionaries and encyclopedias compiled by proponents of the belief systems with which this book deals. iii www.RodnoVery.ru Dictionary of Contemporary Mythology A Aaron According to the Yahwist, a Levite and the natural brother of Moses. In fact Aaron was neither a Levite nor Moses’ brother, although Moses may well have had himself adopted by Aaron’s father in order to make himself, an Egyptian prince, acceptable to the Israelites. Aaron was Moses’ interpreter, since Moses could not speak Hebrew. Aaron was an Israelite, whereas the Levites were a Jewish tribe. Prior to the Israelites and Jews forming an alliance after Moses’ death, the only connection between the two peoples was that they spoke mutually comprehensible Semitic languages. Aaron was the Israelites’ high priest c 1240 BCE, and from the time of King David, Jewish high priests claimed descent from him. Abaddon In JOB, a consciously metaphorical personification of destruction; literally personified in REVELATION as the messenger demon who was king of the locusts. abbot (= “father”) Dictator of a monastery. Abd-Er-Rahman III Caliph, 891-961 CE, who turned Spain into an oasis of culture and learning at a time when Christian Europe was at the height of a Dark Age of ignorance and church-enforced stupidity. The Caliph’s lifestyle, based on defiance of the Koran, leaves little doubt that, like a number of medieval popes, he was an atheist. Abdon, Saint Canonization of Abaddon. Abednego In DANIEL, Babylonian name of Azaryahuw, one of three Jews thrown into a furnace for refusing to pay homage to Babylonian gods, and miraculously rescued by Yahweh. The myth of a Jewish hero saved by his god when thrown into a furnace was previously told of Abraham, who was so treated by King Nimrod of Assyria. Abednego’s fellow furnace fodder were Shadrakh (Hananyahuw) and Meshakh (Miyshael). Abel According to the Yahwist, victim of the first homicide. The origin of the myth was the practice, which lasted about 2000 years from the late fourth to the late second millennium BCE, of appointing sacred kings who would reign as consort of a ruling priestess-queen for a limited period, and then be ritually sacrificed by their successors. Somewhere along the line a sacred king conceived the idea of extending his life and reign by sacrificing a substitute “king for a day.” The substitute, prior to his execution, would be ritually married to the priestess-queen, and adopted by the mother-goddess through her mortal incarnation, thereby becoming the killer’s brother and father, as well as his mother’s husband. The incestuous and patricidal elements of the myth were omitted from the Abel fable, but can be found in the equivalent Greek myth of Oedipus, Laios and Iokasta. Abelard, Peter Christian mythologian, 1079-1142 CE, who wrote, “The suffering of hermits and martyrs is all wasted, for God is a gentle and friendly God who derives no pleasure from such things.” As an opponent of masochism and proponent of a non-sadistic god, Abelard was inevitably condemned as a heretic in 1141, and his condemnation was upheld and reaffirmed by Pope Innocent II. Abiymolokh According to the Yahwist, the Palestinian king of Gerar to whom Isaac pandered his wife Rebekah; according to the Elohist, the Palestinian king of Gerar to whom Abraham pandered his wife Sarah. In both versions of the myth, the patriarch informed Abiymolokh that his wife was merely his sister. In fact no Palestinians, also called Philistines, settled in Phoenicia in large enough numbers to build a city until four centuries after the latest date that the Jewish patriarchs could have lived. 1 www.RodnoVery.ru William Harwood, Ph.D. abominable and detestable crime against nature Just what this peculiar crime was, was never defined, and for that reason the Supreme Court of the United States declared that laws criminalizing it were unconstitutional. However, in all prosecutions under AADCAN statutes, evidence was introduced that the accused had engaged in pederasty, a form of sexual recreation first criminalized by Zarathustra c 650 BCE. If there indeed exists an abominable and detestable crime against nature, it is surely the perversion of sexual abstinence. abominable snowman see yeti abomination Anything that is anti-human and lacking any redeeming social value—such as godworship. abomination, desolation-inducing In DANIEL 12:11, the statue of Olympian Zeus that Antiokhos IV placed in Yahweh’s temple in 168 BCE; in MARK 13:14, the occupation of the temple by Zealots in 66 CE. The author of MARK knew that the Nazirites had fled Jerusalem soon after that event, and accordingly put into the mouth of Jesus a retroactive prophecy that his future followers should escape before the outbreak of the Roman-Jewish War that was currently in progress at the time that MARK was written. abortion Spontaneous or, more commonly, deliberately induced, expulsion from the womb of a non-viable fetus. At no time in human history, including the present, has abortion not been the most widely practised form of birth control on earth. Prior to the nineteenth century CE, belief that abortion might be immoral was about as widespread as belief that table tennis might be immoral. Then in 1830 the United States defined abortion as a criminal offense, primarily because such a law was expected to prevent whites from under-breeding while their black slaves over-bred into a majority. The Roman Catholic Church continued to adhere to the Doctrine of Passive Conception, under which abortion prior to quickening was not a sin because an unquickened fetus was soulless, until 1869, when Pope Pius IX reversed his predecessors and ruled that a fetus possesses a soul from the instant of conception. Modern enforcement of anti-abortion laws constitutes state endorsement of a religion, and is based on the godworshippers’ ignorance of how recently religion changed its position on this issue. The Catholic Church in particular has never opposed killing the unborn, since the Inquisition burned pregnant women by the thousands, and cases are on record of a woman giving birth on the stake, and the presiding priest throwing the infant into the flames. The abortion of a non-sentient pre-human tadpole is about as immoral as killing any other tadpole, which also has the potential to evolve into a human being in a few million years. In an overpopulated world, enforced prevention of abortion, if effective, will and must result in the starvation-extinction of the human race. Abraham Character in GENESIS who, although partly a historical Jewish sheikh of c 1800 BCE, is also a composite of several other holders of the same sheikly title from the third, second and first millennium BCE; promoted to demigod status by his ancestor-worshipping tribe after his death. The earliest Abraham who contributed to the biblical character was a volcano-worshipper associated with the last eruption of Mount Yahweh in Anatolia, which buried Sodom and Khomorah.