Ashur
West AsiaIn Assyria, Ashur took over the roles of Marduk and Enlil, and was also, as might be expected in this military civilization, the god of war. It was usual practice to parade through the ...
Aztec Creation
In this world‐parent separation myth, it is said that two gods, Quetzalcoatl (the Plumed Serpent) and Tezcatlipoca, pulled the earth goddess, Coatlicue (Lady of the Serpent Skirt), down from the ...
Basque mythology
The mythology of the non–Indo-European Basques, whose language and culture have survived defiantly into the present era and who inhabit the mountainous region between Spain and France, was greatly ...
Batara Guru
In the pre-Islamic mythology of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Batara Guru was the primal being, the creator of earth and the first ancestor of humans. The Batara Guru myth ...
Biblical creation
The creation myth of Genesis in the Torah, the first part of what Christians call the Old Testament section of the Bible, is, in fact, at least two myths influenced ...
Cerebus
Originally a monster with one hundred heads, resembling his hundred- headed father, Typhon, Cerberus later came to be depicted as a terrifying dog with three heads, the tail of a ...
Chibinda Ilunga
The descendant of the Luba kings in Africa, Chibinda Ilunga met and married Lueji, the Lunda queen and granddaughter of the serpent king Chinawezi. Serpents are frequently closely related to ...
chimera
A wild fancy. In Greek mythology, a fire-breathing monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
Chinawezi
In African mythology, Chinawezi (Chinaweji) is a name given to the primordial serpent Mother Goddess of creation whose husband for the Luba Lunda people was Chibinda Ilunga, and for others ...
Chinese Emperors
The stories of the ancient rulers of China are part of a mythology created by scholars at the end of the last millennium bce. The myth of the three Huang, or the August Ones, and the Di (see Di), the ...
Churning of the Ocean
An Epic and Purāṇic myth telling how the devas (gods) and daityas (demons) churned the primeval ocean at the beginning of time to obtain amṛta, the nectar of immortality, and, through the chaos ...
Coyote
Coyote—sometimes called Old Man—is one of the prevalent forms of the trickster figure among Native Americans. He is often the assisting agent by whom the supreme deity creates the world. ...
Dayak Myths
The Dayak people of Borneo, like many people in the world, see their territory as sacred space surrounded by chaotic foreignness. They are the people of the supreme being, who ...
Divine child
The divine child, or puer aeternus, is the hero of the monomyth or sometimes the god as a child. Typically, he or she is miraculously conceived, like Jesus, Horus, Zoroaster ...
Etana
West AsiaKing of Kish. A Babylonian fragment relates an attempt he made to ascend to heaven on the back of an eagle in order to obtain ‘the plant of birth’, since his queen was unable to bear a son. ...
Furies
In Greek mythology, spirits of punishment, often represented as one of three goddesses (Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone) with hair composed of snakes, who executed the curses pronounced upon ...
Garuda
In Indian mythology, a class of large bird-like beings, ever in a state of enmity with the nāga serpents whom they eat.
Genesis
The first book of the Bible, which includes the stories of the creation of the world, Noah's ark, the Tower of Babel, and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.The name, recorded from late ...
Gnostic mythology
Generally speaking, the Gnostics were Egyptians and Essene Jews, early Christians, and certain Christian medieval “heretics” who practiced mystery cults based on the idea of “knowing” the divine. ...
Goddess
The source of life and being, once prevalent in religious imagination, but much suppressed during the millennia of male control of religions. The same observations about the provisionality of ...
