Before I begin this post, I need to include a few disclaimers: First, the Spanish Conquistadors were very effective in destroying Meso-American culture. Now, there were sympathetic Spaniards, often…

As with so many of the myths and folktales that we’ve discussed, this tale has many variants; it also has several players, so it probably behooves me to start with a brief cast of characters:…

As we sit munching on our toast each morning, there are few of us that would even think to thank the demi-god Triptolemus. The one who, according to Greek mythology, presides over the sowing of gra…

Mary Bateman nee Harker was many things: a servant girl, a dress maker, a fortune teller… She was also a compulsive thief, a religious charlatan, and an occasional poisoner. Born in England i…

As with so many of the myths and folktales that we’ve discussed, this tale has many variants; it also has several players, so it probably behooves me to start with a brief cast of characters:…

Imagine this: You’ve gone away from home for a while. Now, as we all know, time is a relative thing. For some people, a long time away might be a day trip into the city, or a weekend on the c…

The texts from which we gather knowledge of the Egyptian Underworld (Duat) include the various funerary texts which also served as guides to the underworld.

Have you ever felt that you can see a path of events unfolding, but as much as you try to warn others of the dangers you are either ignored or dismissed as alarmist? There is one figure from Greek …

Enjoy Loki as a hermaphroditic were-horse who engages in bestiality, resulting in the birth of a cryptozoid

The Romans were very good at spreading their Empire; part of their efficacy was in allowing their new occupied territories to retain their own cultural and spiritual heritages. Pax Romana, the peac…

Snow White is one of the staples of the modern fairytale cannon, and as a feminist, I would not be the first to take umbrage with some of the more troubling themes. The most obvious of these, as wi…

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley in Germany is a protected UNESCO World heritage site. Dotted with ancient castles and fortresses which were largely abandoned by the 17th Century this area b…

Once upon a time in Kashmir, there was a Sultan (the VIth, to be precise) named Sikandar who was a religious zealot. He destroyed Hindu temples, persecuted his non-Muslim subjects, and banned their…

Imagine this: you’re a peasant farmer living in Ulster, in Northern Ireland. Your wife died young, leaving you with small brood of children. Your house is in shambles; the kitchen’s a d…

Imagine this: two men, one a farmer, the other a shepherd, attempt to win divine affection. In the end, the deity favors the shepherd. Now, this might make you think of Cain and Abel from the Bibli…

The story of Hathor’s Rage and the Destruction of Mankind perfectly illustrates the complexities of the Egyptian deities, and how they function together both in combination and separately and…

Imagine this: You have Magic Powers. And instead of being celebrated, you are being vilified. By whom, you ask? The WWF. (That’s World Wildlife Federation, not to be confused with the former …

If you do any digging into the history of Robotics, you’ll eventually hear the tale of Talos, a ‘machine’ that guarded the Isle of Crete. Now, let’s consider the tale as tol…

The Goddess Seshat was related to Thoth, the God of wisdom and learning, who brought writing and Hieroglyphs to the Egyptian people. Most accounts consider Seshat to be Thoth’s daughter, but …

There are easy ways out of our mortal coils: dying in one’s sleep, carbon monoxide poisoning, or as rumor has it, pulling a Genghis Khan, which while potentially traumatic for one’s par…

In Japanese mythology lives a giant catfish, Namazu. For thousands of years, he swum around in the underground rivers and lakes that ran beneath the earth, but the problem was that as he wriggled h…

Protecting food and grain stores was a vital element of survival in ancient times, so while ancient Egyptians were busy breeding domesticated cats to keep mice and rats at bay, the ancient Greeks p…

Discover the intriguing world of salamanders, their regenerative powers, and the folklore intertwining magic and medicine throughout history.

There is no single definitive Egyptian creation myth, rather a collection of stories that have been transmitted and revised over time. This is partly due to the structure of Egyptian religion, whic…

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The Land of Cockaygne was a fictional land of plenty popularized in the Middle Ages throughout the European continent. It was described as a magical utopia where the peasantry was free from labor a…

The Ages of Man were theoretical ages of humanity that existed before current day human being was created and formed a part of the greater cosmological understanding of both the Greek and Roman civ…

The following tale is from the Navajo, or more precisely, the Diné people. Among their extensive traditional lands is Monument Valley, along the Utah/Arizona border, where the picture above was tak…

Before getting into the origin(s) and function(s) of Batara Kala, the Javanese/Balinese God of the Underworld, a little back story is necessary. Hinduism enjoyed a brief but vibrant period of re-im…

Yes, magnets are cool, but there’s also something downright magical about them…

Romania is home to many a folk creature; vampires, werewolves, wizards and dragons have all been known to haunt the Romanian countryside.  Not to mention fairies, and their Queen, Doamna Zînelor, a…

Explore how ancient cultures interpreted dreams, from Greek mythology to modern psychology. Unlock the mysteries behind your nightly visions.

YouTube video by Journey to the Goddess TV

In the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, after an awful, brutal war that made brother turn on brother, student turn on teacher, and saint turn on God, only six people remained. They left the plain …

What do two enlightened Buddhist beings, a mythical Wind Horse, and a Russian painter with ties to Tibet and the highest levels of the U.S. Government share in common? They all possess(ed) the Cint…

One of the interesting features of the Norse Gods (as well as their distant relatives, the Vedic Gods of Southeast Asia) is that they are mortal. Yes, they can die. For the Vedic Gods, the cure lay…

The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Erected in Rhodes to commemorate the successful defense of the city after a yearlong siege by Demetrius I, a Macedonian Kin…

Triệu Thị Trinh was born in the Nông Cống district of Vietnam in 226, a time where the Chinese occupied much of Vietnam, persecuting the native inhabitants of the land. From a young age Triệu Thị T…

ALT: a statue of a woman holding a snake with a cat on her head

A blood moon is a foreboding sight. While technically it is just an eclipse caused by the Earth passing directly between the sun and moon, here the sunlight becomes refracted by the Earth’s a…

Many of us know the urban legend of albino alligators that live in the sewers beneath New York City, but records of sewer monsters can be seen as far back as 2CE.

Imagine this: your father was a powerful Samurai, who led an unsuccessful revolt against the emperor. And so, in the (Western) year 939 C.E., the Emperor had him beheaded (this part of our tale is …