Sep 26, 2014 What did the ancient people think of the axis mundi (world axis)? In the footsteps of Mircea Eliade, mythologists and anthropologists tend to think of the axis mundi or ‘world axis’ as a straight object running through the cosmos vertically. While this is, of course, correct for…
Sep 24, 2014 A failure to consult original, primary sources often leads to errors, both in science and the humanities. One link in a chain of citations may misrepresent its source one way or another, be it by cherry-picking, misunderstanding the meaning of the original or presenting a paraphrase…
Sep 22, 2014 An essential building block of a sound theory is the recognition that Jewish legend was considerably more elaborate than the sterile version of the story come down in the ‘first book of Moses’. More than a hint of an intended coup d’état is gleaned from the…
Sep 19, 2014 From a comparative viewpoint, perhaps the most common ‘contaminations’ in mythological data are distorted echoes of the Hebrew myths of paradise, Noah’s flood and the tower of Babel, conveyed to exotic societies by Christian missionaries. Similar to stratigraphical clues in archaeological excavations, elements of language, style…
Sep 11, 2014 Many cultures recalled a period of unbearable cold, which they associated with a distant mythical age of ‘creation’, when the sun did not yet shine or fire had not yet been obtained. Such tales are hardly surprising for higher latitudes, such as the Viking sagas of…
Sep 09, 2014 Things may be carved in stone and still be nebulous. Petroglyphs come without captions; clues of their intended meanings are more often missing than not. Yet though certainty is rarely to be had, the quest for the meaning of rock art is as legitimate as any…
Sep 04, 2014 In the study of myth, the question of metaphors presents many a challenge. When does a ‘sun’ literally refer to the quotidian sun and when is it a metaphor for some other bright sky light? Hard-and-fast rules are risky; every tradition is best examined in its own…
Jul 03, 2014 If folk memory is anything to go by, global warming in its most dreaded form is a thing of the past. The universality of flood myths is widely known, but fewer people are aware that traditions of unbearable heat, often leading to a devastating Weltbrand, are just…
Jul 01, 2014 Did Helena Blavatsky and Sir William Crookes inadvertently help to discredit early theories of electromagnetism in the cosmos? Long before the Space Age, theories of a fourth, ‘radiant’ state of matter and electromagnetic explanations of the polar aurora, the zodiacal light, comets, the sun and indeed…
Jun 26, 2014 Shell gorgets were found in mounds of the prehistoric Mississippian culture, often still reposing on the chest of the wearer. The spider is a recurrent theme on gorgets in mounds in Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. The early anthropologist William Henry Holmes (1846-1933) observed that the above specimen…
