Jan 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…
Jan 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…
Dec 30, 2013 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…
Nov 06, 2013 The story of the ‘making of the world’ is a global legacy of all traditional cultures. One of many angles from which it can be approached is an interplay between darkness and light. From an ancient point of view, cosmic ‘creation’ was a protracted ‘dawn’, a…
Nov 05, 2013 The proverbial ‘golden age’ is a classic case study in the difference between local and global themes in mythology. It was the German ethnologist Adolf Bastian (1826-1905) who first introduced a systematic distinction between universal ‘elementary ideas’ (Elementargedanke) and culture-specific ‘folk ideas’ (Volksgedanke) in 1860. Taken…
Oct 31, 2013 The discovery of ‘mega-lightning’, upper-atmospheric lightning or transient luminous events (TLEs) is relatively recent, due to the fleeting nature of these phenomena: most last no longer than a few milliseconds. A menagerie of types – such as the playfully labelled ‘sprites’ and ‘ELVES’ – discharge energetically…
Sep 27, 2013 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 25, 2013 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 line…
Sep 23, 2013 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…
Aug 14, 2013 To eyewitnesses, including those at lower latitudes, highly energetic formations produced by extremely vigorous aurorae have often suggested some form of painting or supernatural inscription on the canvas of the sky. This was the case with observers of the prominent aurorae spawned by the coronal mass…
