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Category: Myth and Lore

  • Other Great Epics of West Africa: Kings, Warriors, and Wonder

    We Cover the Epic of Sundiata here, and the Epics of Ozidi, Dausi, and Askia Muhammad here. And now to the other great epics. Preface: A Map of Many Fires From the Sahel’s amber horizons to the green corridors of the forest and the salt breath of the Atlantic, epic song smoulders in many hearths.…

  • Three Major Epics of West Africa: Ozidi, Dausi, and Askia Muhammad

    I. THE OZIDI SAGA Cultural and Historical Background Along the mangrove-laced creeks of the Niger Delta, among the Ijaw (Ijo) peoples, epic does not sit politely on a page; it walks, drums, dances, and wrestles with spirits in the open air. The Ozidi Saga belongs to this riverine world. It is a full-body performance tradition—mask,…

  • The Lion of Manden: The Epic of Sundiata

    I. CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Long before “Mali” was a country on a modern map, Mali was an empire of memory stretching from the forest belt to the sand’s edge, its lifelines the Niger, the trade routes to the Sahara, and the stories sung in its towns and courts. In that world the Mandinka (Mandé)…

  • The Living Epics of West Africa: an Introduction

    A NIGHT OF STORY AND SOUND Night gathers over the Sahel. The sun leaves a last golden seam on the horizon and the air cools enough for breath to feel like silk. People drift towards the compound: not in haste, but with the sure-footedness of those who know exactly where their history will appear. A…

  • The Voyages of the Moana: Pacific Ocean Sagas

    In nearly every Polynesian language, moana simply means the open sea or vast ocean. It evokes not only the physical expanse of water but also ideas of horizon, depth, and the domain of Tangaroa/Kanaloa—the great Ocean‑God who links all islands. The word appears in: Because Polynesian cultures see the ocean as highway, larder, and ancestral…

  • Maori Whakapapa and Cultural Narratives Across Aotearoa

    Introduction Whakapapa (genealogy or lineage) lies at the heart of Māori world views. It is more than a family tree – it is the thread that weaves people, land, sky and all living things into one great whānau (extended family). In simple terms, whakapapa means the layering of one thing upon another. As Māori elder…

  • Myths and Folktales of Oceania

    1. Introduction The peoples who call Oceania home are sailors of mind and spirit. From the coral crowns of Micronesia to the green volcanoes of Melanesia and the wide‑flung triangle of Polynesia, they interpret the world not through stone monuments or written parchment but through moemoeā—dream‑vision—and through the pulse of oral story. To sit in…

  • An Introduction and Retellings of Foundational Aboriginal Narratives

    Preface This work offers a sweeping yet respectful journey through some of the most revered narratives of the Australian Aboriginal Dreaming—stories that breathe life, law, and landscape into the world’s oldest living cultures. Although they are arranged here in a single volume for ease of reading, each narrative properly belongs to specific language groups whose…

  • The Great Slavic Myths and Wonder Tales

    Preface Slavic myth is a forest at dusk. Step in and the path you thought was straight bends behind birch trunks; a clearing you glimpsed vanishes in mist; a hut turns on its own feet to face you. There is light, but it comes from embers, glow‑moss, the burning gaze of a skull on a…

  • The Rule of the Thumb, and Wife-Beating in Seventeenth Century England, [which the Americans immediately threw out.]

    Abstract “Rule of thumb” is a seventeenth‑century English expression meaning a rough‑and‑ready guideline based on practical experience—literally, on what one could measure with a thumb. It has nothing to do with any law about wife‑beating; that story is a much later myth. Earliest appearances and literal sense In an age before precision tools, many crafts used the…

  • The Deeds and Death of Yamato-Takeru (Japanese Myth Paper 8)

    1 — A Wild Cub in the Imperial Litter Long after Jimmu’s sun-bound march, the Yamato court has thickened into lineage after lineage of princely timber. From one such branch comes Prince Ōusu, second son of Emperor Keikō. Where elder brother Prince Ōusu-no-Miko is measured and courtly, Ōusu himself is volcanic: wrestling palace guards for…

  • The Eastward Expedition of Emperor Jimmu (Japanese Myth Paper 7)

    1 ― A Prince Looks East The story thus far has carried the imperial blood-line from Heaven to Hyūga: creation, descent, sea-marriage. Yet Kyūshū, though fertile, is a cul-de-sac. Trade routes, metal ores, and vast plains lie across the Inland Sea in the broad bowl of Honshū. Ugayafukiaezu’s youngest son, Hiko-hohodemi no Mikoto, known posthumously…

  • The Jewels of Tides: Hoderi, Hohodemi, and the Palace of Watatsumi (Japanese Myth Paper 6)

    1 — Brothers at Odds Ninigi’s three sons grow to manhood beneath Kyūshū’s peaks. Twin talents differentiate the elder two. Hoderi—“Fire-Shine”—revels in deep-sea fishing; his line rarely returns without silver flanks flashing. Hohodemi—“Fire-Subside”—is hunter of upland game, a marksman whose arrows never miss boar or stag. One spring they trade skills for sport. Hoderi takes…

  • The Descent of the Heavenly Grandson Ninigi (Japanese Myth Paper 5)

    1 ― A New Problem in Heaven With Susanoo tamed and the sun stable once more, Amaterasu Ōmikami surveys the reed-plain below. Earth is fertile yet fractious: rival clans vie for river mouths, mountains resound with half-tamed spirits, and no single order binds the land. Amaterasu concludes that Heaven’s radiance must govern Earth directly. But…

  • Susanoo and the Eight-headed Serpent (Japanese Myth Paper 4)

    1 — A God in Free-Fall Cast out of Heaven for vandalising the sun-goddess’s realm, Susanoo-no-Mikoto plummets along the Milky River, storms raging in his wake. Beard shorn, nails torn, divine weapons confiscated, he is all raw nerve and thunder. As his bare feet strike the reed-plain of Izumo (modern Shimane), the sky clears for…

  • Amaterasu in the Rock Cave (Japanese Myth Paper 3)

    1 — Setting the Fuse The previous paper ended with Susanoo’s wild spree in Heaven: flooding rice-fields, hurling dung, and finally pitching a flayed celestial horse through his sister’s weaving-house. One court maiden died of shock, looms splintered, and sacred cloth lay fouled with blood and hide. In the culture of early Japan—where weaving, rice…

  • Birth of Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo (Japanese Myth Paper 2)

    1 After the River of Purification The first paper ended with Izanagi wading into the Tachibana River to scour away the stench of Yomi. That scene matters, because it is in the very act of cleansing—water sluicing from brow, cheeks, shoulders—that three radiant beings are born. Creation in Japanese myth is rarely tidy: it bubbles up…

  • The Creation of the Islands and the Kami (Japanese Myth Paper 1)

    1. A Drifting Chaos Becomes Cosmos The Kojiki opens, famously, with a vision of formlessness: “In the ages when Heaven and Earth first parted, they were like floating oil. Silently, softly, something light and purer rose, and something heavy and turbid sank.” From that silent ferment five abstract deities crystallise in single blinding instants. They…

  • 平家物語 Heike Monogatari: The Tale of the Heike

    Prologue “The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the colour of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.” In these…

  • Icelandic Kings’, and Exploration Sagas

    Chapter 1: Introduction Beyond the realm of legend, medieval Icelandic writers also turned their quills to history and real-life adventures. Two important genres in this regard are the kings’ sagas and what we might call the exploration sagas. These sagas draw upon actual events and personages, blending fact with narrative art to illuminate the deeds…

  • Icelandic Legendary and Heroic Sagas

    Chapter 1: Introduction The Icelandic legendary sagas, also known as fornaldarsögur (“sagas of ancient times”), are thrilling tales set in a mythical past before the settlement of Iceland. These sagas are often termed heroic sagas because they revolve around legendary heroes, mighty deeds, and encounters with the fantastical. Unlike the more realistic Sagas of Icelanders…