The Irish Story and Legend of Cu Chulainn

October 2, 2014, 6:57 pm

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Cu Chulainn is one of the most famous Irish mythological heroes. He appears in the stories of the Ulster Cycle, and Scottish and Manx folklore. He was said to be the son of Deichtine and the god Lugh, and the nephew of Conchobar mac Nessa, the King of Ulster. His given name at birth was Setanta but he gained the name Cu Chulainn, meaning ‘Culann’s Hound’ after he killed a ferocious guard dog belonging to a smith named Culann. Cu Chulainn offered to take the place of the guard dog until a replacement could be reared.

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The Intriguing Origins of Aphrodite

October 5, 2014, 5:56 pm

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Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, sex, and beauty.  In one of the most famous images of the goddess, we see her emerge from the sea, a reference to her origin story.

In this older of the two stories of Aphrodite’s birth, she emerges from the sea a grown woman.  Her father is Uranos, the god of the sky, and she has no mother.  This story takes place two generations before Zeus, when Uranos reigned with his wife Gaia, the goddess of the earth.  Uranos hated his children and hid them in the depths of the earth, until Gaia, loathing her husband, devised a plan with her son Cronus.  She equipped her son with a sickle and, when Uranos next came to sleep with Gaia, Cronus chopped off his genitals.  The severed parts fell into the ocean and sea foam enveloped them.  From this foam emerged the goddess Aphrodite. 

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The Sacred Sex and Death Rites of the Ancient Mystery Groves

October 9, 2014, 6:24 am

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In most of the civilised world, at least as far back as 5,000 years ago, there were women shamans or priestesses who represented the godhead in sacred sex rites and, in ancient Greece, they were known as hierodules.

A hierodule would have skills similar to the shaman in that she could journey, in trance, into other dimensions, and merge with her spirit lover  there.  Part of the hierodule’s role was to spend the night with a newly crowned king or queen, and while embodying her spirit lover, she would transfer the Sovereignty of the Land to the royal personage in sexual initiation.

The Sovereignty of the Land could only be passed on through this sort of inter-dimensional intercourse, and it was a sacred contract that most civilisations honoured until relatively recently. You will find it referred to in alchemical texts as the Divine Marriage, the Alchemical Marriage or the Hieros Gamos.

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The eerie masks that preserve history and breathe life into the dead

October 11, 2014, 4:58 am

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Masks are one of the few things on the earth that connect all of humanity throughout time. We have created masks since our very beginnings in order to disguise, protect, or entertain. They have been used by cultures around the globe for performances and rituals, ceremonies and festivals. Most notably, masks hide our identities, and allow us to become something we’re not.

Death masks are a continuation of an ancient tradition. However, far from being masks which conceal, they are masks created to reveal.

Faces of Death

Death masks are clay, wax or plaster casts of someone’s face, taken to preserve their image shortly after death. In antiquity, this was done often following a death to identify rank or standing, to use in funerary rites, and to perfectly preserve the image of honoured or eminent people.

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The symbolic spider that wove its way through history

October 16, 2014, 5:41 pm

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The spider is an ancient and powerful symbol found round the globe, and have always elicited a wide range of emotions in people: fear, disgust, panic, and sometimes curiosity and appreciation. This broad spectrum of impressions has influenced origin myths, legends, art, literature, music, architecture, and technology throughout history.

Certainly an enigmatic symbol, the spider has different meanings and purposes according to different cultures. Arachnids and their webs embody many traits and interpretations, including resourcefulness, creation and destruction, cunning, deception, intrigue, the feminine, wisdom, fortune, patience, and death.

Arachne the Weaver

In ancient Greek legend, the world’s first spider was born from the pride of a woman.

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In Search of Helen of Troy

October 18, 2014, 5:43 pm

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Her face was the face that launched a thousand ships. Considered to have been the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen would be seduced by the Trojan prince, Paris and travel to his homeland of Troy. She would leave behind her Spartan homeland and her husband, Menelaus. Enraged, Menelaus would convince his brother, Agamemnon, to set sail for Troy and to retrieve his wife. A war ensued and lasted for ten years. At least, that is how the Trojan Cycle depicts these events. Did a Helen, or a historical representation of Helen exist at some point during the Late Bronze Age of the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1500 - 1200 BCE)? Was a war waged between two power nations over a woman? A re-reading of a historical document may lead to some answers.

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The great and powerful Xiongnu

October 20, 2014, 5:31 am

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Between approximately 300 BC and 450 AD, there existed a nomadic group known as the Xiongnu. Their ethnic identity has been greatly contested, but they were a very powerful tribal confederation that were considered a great threat to China. In fact, it was their repeated invasions that prompted the small kingdoms of North China to begin erecting barriers, in what later became the Great Wall of China.

The Xiongnu formed their tribal league in the area that is now known as Mongolia. It is believed that they stemmed from the Siberian branch of the Mongolian race, although it has been hotly debated whether they are ethnically Turkic, Mongolic, Yeniseian, Tocharian, Iranian, Uralic, or some mixture. Some say the name “Xiongnu” has the same etymological origin as “Hun,” but this is also controversial. Only a few words from their culture, mostly titles and individual names, were preserved in Chinese sources. 

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Asia

Moses: Myth, Fiction or History?

October 23, 2014, 6:09 am

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In the early days of biblical archaeology there was a lot of optimism that the new science could verify the existence of Moses by proving that there was indeed a great migration of people from Egypt who eventually conquered and settled Canaan. This premature optimism was dashed by the stark reality of subsequent excavations.

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The Ancient Art of Magic, Curses and Supernatural Spells

October 25, 2014, 2:56 pm

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As long as humanity has had beliefs in deities, the supernatural, and the power of magic, the use of magic, spells, and curses have featured widely across cultures. Very much entwined with human nature, such beliefs and practices have continued to the present day. Archaeological finds show evidence of a plethora of ancient curses and protective spells, such as the discovery of cursed tablets, evil eye talismans, and warding items.

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Necromanteion – The Ancient Temple of the Dead

October 26, 2014, 5:13 am

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The Necromanteion was an ancient temple dedicated to the god of the Underworld, Hades, and his consort, the goddess Persephone. According to ancient Greek beliefs, while the bodies of the dead decayed in the earth, their souls would be released, and travelled to the Underworld via fissures in the earth. The spirits of the dead were said to possess abilities that the living did not have, including the power to foretell the future. Temples were therefore erected in places thought to be entrances to the Underworld to practice necromancy (communication with the dead) in order to receive prophecies.

Hades taking Persephone into the Underworld. (Wikipedia)

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The Chickasaw Migration Story: Journey from the Place of the Setting Sun

August 19, 2014, 2:28 pm

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From their prehistoric migration to present-day Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee, to the purchase of their new homeland in south-central Oklahoma in the mid 1800s, Chickasaw culture and heritage has always had roots in nature and the elements. In ancient times, Chickasaws placed great importance and meaning on the locations significant to their history and religion. The great migration legend, which described how the tribe moved from the “place of the setting sun” to the east as ordained by Abaꞌ Binniꞌliꞌ (the Chickasaw creator god), is central in explaining the importance of the homelands.

Before the Chickasaws were forcibly removed in the 1830s from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, their vast domain extended northward from the northern portions of Mississippi and Alabama to the Ohio River, and eastward from the Mississippi River to the headwaters of Elk River in Tennessee.

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The Lioness of Brittany and her Black Fleet of Pirates

August 22, 2014, 6:33 am

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In the midst of the Hundred Years War between England and France, an enraged French woman named Jeanne de Clisson took to the sea with a fleet of warships, where she mercilessly hunted down ships of King Philip VI to avenge her husband’s death. For her ferocity, she eventually acquired the name The Lioness of Brittany. Jeanne and her crew would slaughter the crew of the King’s ships, leaving two or three sailors alive, so that the message would get back to the King that the Lioness of Brittany had struck once again.

Jeanne de Clisson was born into an affluent French family in 1300 and spent most of her life as a noblewoman. She was married off to a wealthy man, Geoffrey de Châteaubriant at the age of 12 and had two children. Some time after his death, Jeanne remarried, this time to Olivier de Clisson, who was an important Breton noble that spent years in service defending Brittany against the English. 

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The Fiery Cosmic Egg of Hildegard von Bingen

August 22, 2014, 4:28 pm

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The language of prophecy is frequently enigmatic, bewildering, and even disconcerting. Most of us are familiar with some of the cryptic messages of Nostradamus, Mother Shipton, Edgar Cayce, and other seers. Hildegard von Bingen is another in history’s long line of clairvoyants and prognosticators. Born the tenth child of a knight, she was, according to custom, destined to devote her life to the Catholic Church. She entered the convent either as an older child or a young teenager at Disibodenberg, Germany. By the mid-12th century she was serving as the mother superior of the monastery she had founded at Rupertsberg on the banks of the Rhine River.

At a very early age Saint Hildegard had begun experiencing regular holy visions that continued throughout her lifetime. In addition to being a nun with mystical and prophetic insights, she was a true pre-Renaissance polymath: political and social moralist, musical composer, poet, naturalist, herbalist, gemologist, author of medicinal and botanical texts, and playwright. She even penned the earliest morality play. 

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The Ancient Grotto of the Seven Sleepers

October 27, 2014, 2:54 pm

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The short story Rip Van Winkle, written in 1819 by an American writer, Washington Irving, is about a man who woke up after a sleep of more than two decades. Although such a work of fiction is a relatively modern piece of writing, tales of people who fall asleep for an extraordinarily long period of time before waking up is a common motif in various cultures. One such story is the Grotto of the Seven Sleepers. Unlike the story of Rip Van Winkle, however, this story has a strong religious aspect attached to it.    

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Europe

The legendary Furies of ancient Greek mythology

October 28, 2014, 5:06 am

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The Furies of Greek mythology are monstrous women who lived in the underworld and avenged murders, particularly matricides.  In Greek they are called Erinyes, a name thought to have come from the Arcadian word meaning, “to be angry,” hence the English name “Furies.” 

The creatures first appear in Homer’s Iliad as punishers of oath-breakers and as embodied curses of parents wronged by their children.  Their function would eventually narrow to be primarily avengers of the angry dead, but in Homer they are more generally enforcers of the proper order of things.   In this role, they are even said to be responsible for stopping the warrior Achilles’ horse from talking, since a talking horse is outside of the natural order of things.

Hesiod was a Greek poet of an age with Homer, and his Theogony was heavily influential in the way Greeks thought of their gods.  In this story, Gaia, the goddess of the earth, convinces her son Cronus to castrate his father Uranos, the god of the sky.  Cronus castrates and deposes his father, then takes his place as ruler of heaven.  From the blood of Uranos’ severed genitals landing on the earth, the Erinyes are born.

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Crossing the Veil: The Pre-Christian Origins of Halloween and Samhain

October 30, 2014, 2:46 pm

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Halloween, or the ancient Samhain, is considered the time of year when the veil between our world and the spirit world is at its thinnest. As darkness falls and families light their pumpkin Jack-o'-lanterns, they are, perhaps unknowingly, repeating the ancient traditions of honoring the dead and marking the beginning of the ‘dark half’ of the year.

Halloween is an annual celebration held largely in the western world on October 31^st. Starting in the evening, children, and sometimes adults, dress in masks and costumes, traditionally as ghostly figures, witches, or the undead – vampires, zombies, skeletons. They go knocking door-to-door, requesting treats, or else threatening a mischievous trick upon the household. Typical activities of the modern observance can include costume parties, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, lighting bonfires, playing pranks and more.

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Beware the Wandering Wilas

October 31, 2014, 5:29 am

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In Slavic mythology, there is a form of nymph which lies somewhere between a ghost and a fairy.  The Wilas (pronounced viwa and also called Vili or Vilas) are fair-haired female creatures who have died but remain trapped between this world and the next.  Mysterious beings similar in appearance to the European tales of fairies, they are the lost women who died unbaptized or the betrothed ones whose lives ended before marriage.  Thus, unlike the European fairies, the mythological Wilas are not born as spirits of nature but rather become them with death, gaining power over the winds in lieu of the lives they would have led.

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Hopi Prophecy and the End of the Fourth World - Part 1

November 2, 2014, 4:44 am

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More than any other tribe in North America, the Hopi Indians have developed according to the dictates and demands of what may be called a legacy of prophecy. The predictions of the life to come do not merely pertain to the Hopi themselves but deal with impending events on a global scale. These prophecies began to be made public shortly before the mid-20^th century. The Hopi are an aggregation of clans that came together at the “center-point” (Tuuwanasavi) in northern Arizona during the course of their migrations. Because they are not a monolithic tribe, the sources of their prophecies are fragmentary and multifarious. Part of the lack of narrative clarity also has to do with the secretive nature of the Hopi. These isolated, sedentary farmers living in unpretentious pueblos (basically stone apartment buildings) on the high desert of the American Southwest have looked into the future from their kivas (subterranean, communal prayer-chambers) and have seen some rather disturbing scenarios. Many times they simply do not wish to share these visions with the outside world.

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Americas

Hopi Prophecy and the End of the Fourth World—Part 2

November 2, 2014, 1:54 pm

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In the summer of 1958 a minister named David Young was driving across the Four Corners region of the U.S. when he picked up an old Hopi man named White Feather by the side of the road. This spiritual elder of the Bear Clan (the most sacred of all the Hopi clans) confessed that all his sons ...

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Tracing the origins of a mysterious ancient Queen of Ethiopia

November 8, 2014, 4:24 am

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According to local tradition, the fall of the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia toward the end of the 10^th century A.D. was attributed to a queen who invaded from the south. This queen is said to have laid waste to the city of Aksum and the countryside, destroyed churches and monuments, usurped the throne from the ruling Aksumite king, and attempted to wipe out the remaining members of the royal family. Yet, this queen is a great mystery, and opinions about her vary from one scholar to another.

For a start, the queen seems to have different names. Although she may have been known as Gudit, Judit, Yodit or Judith (which are similar), she is also known as ‘Esato in Amharic, and Ga’ewa in Teltal.

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