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A deep exploration of the regenerative and magical secrets of sacred masculinity hidden in familiar myths both ancient and modern• Reveals the restorative fungi archetype of Osiris, the Orphic mysteries as an underground mycelium linking forests and people, how Dionysus teaches us about invasive species and playful sexuality, and the ecology of Jesus as depicted in his nature-focused parables• Liberates Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell's hero's journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledgeLong before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, trickster harpists, and vegetal magicians with flowering wands. As eco-feminist scholar Sophie Strand discovered, these wilder, more magical modes of the masculine have always been hidden in plain sight. Sharing the culmination of eight years of research into myth, folklore, and the history of religion, Strand leads us back into the forgotten landscapes and hidden secrets of familiar myths, revealing the beautiful range of the divine masculine, including expressions of male friendship, male intimacy, and male creative collaboration. In discussing Dionysus and Osiris, Strand encourages us to think like an ecosystem instead of like an individual. She connects dying, vegetal gods to the virtuous cycle of composting and decay, highlighting the ways in which mushrooms can restore soil and heal polluted landscapes. Exploring esoteric Christianity, the author celebrates the Gnostic Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, imagining the ecology that the Rabbi Yeshua would have actually been referencing in his nature-focused parables. Strand frees Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell's hero's journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledge. Strand reseeds our minds with new visions of male identity and shows how each of us, regardless of gender, can develop a matured ecological empathy and witness a blossoming of sacred masculine powers that are soft, curious, connective, and celebratory.

The myth of the hero, the grand motif of folklore, is a three-part story that is found in human cultures across time and terrain, ever since we were hunter-foragers. Here, a veteran teacher shows that the myth of the hero best reveals itself through a jewel of many facets rather than a single clear lens. You have to stand back at the proper distance from the painting in order to see the myth of the hero pop out. He explores the essential features of the myth, where these stories came from and what they are really about, and analyzes how regular people see these stories, revealing an unexamined dimension.

This volume explores the dynamics of myths throughout time and space, along with the mythmaking processes in various cultures, literatures and languages, in a wide range of fields, ranging from cultural studies to the history of art. The papers brought together here are motivated by two basic questions: How are myths made in diverse cultures and literatures? And, do all different cultures have different myths to be told in their artistic pursuits? To examine these questions, the book offers a wide array of articles by contributors from various cultures which focus on theory, history, space/ place, philosophy, literature, language, gender, and storytelling.Mythmaking across Boundaries not only brings together classical myths, but also contemporary constructions and reconstructions through different cultural perspectives by transcending boundaries. Using a wide spectrum of perspectives, this volume, instead of emphasising the different modes of the mythmaking process, connects numerous perceptions of mythmaking and investigates diversities among cultures, languages and literatures, viewing them as a unified whole. As the essays reflect on both academic and popular texts, the book will be useful to scholars and students, as well as the general reader.

This examination of the heroic journey in world mythology casts the protagonist as a personification of nature--a'botanical hero'one might say--who begins the quest in a metaphorical seed-like state, then sprouts into a period of verdant strength. But the hero must face a mythic underworld where he or she contends with mortality and sacrifice--embracing death as a part of life. For centuries, humans have sought superiority over nature, yet the botanical hero finds nothing is lost by recognizing that one is merely a part of nature. Instead, a cyclical promise of continuous life is realized, in which no element fully disappears, and the hero's message is not to dwell on death.

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Mandaeism Chapter 2 - Sabians Chapter 3 - Prophets in Mandaeism Chapter 4 - Kurdish Religions

Famed anthropologist Andrew Lang takes a look at mythology around the world, in particular looking at the relationship of myths to earlier forms of folk tales.

Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 16, 2013).

Completing our conscious evolution by releasing our collective fear of catastrophes • Explains how we are on the cusp of an era of incredible creative growth • Shows how we are about to overcome the collective fear caused by ancient catastrophes as we awaken to the memories of our lost prehistory • Examines legendary cataclysms and scientific evidence of a highly advanced global culture that disappeared 11,500 years ago In this completely revised and expanded edition of Catastrophobia, bestselling author Barbara Hand Clow explains how we are on the cusp of an age of incredible creative growth made possible by restoring our lost prehistory. Examining legendary cataclysms--such as the fall of Atlantis and the biblical Flood--and the mounting geological and archaeological evidence that many of these mythic catastrophes were actual events, she reveals the existence of a highly advanced global maritime culture that disappeared amid great earth changes and rising seas 14,000 to 11,500 years ago, nearly causing our species'extinction and leaving humanity's collective psyche deeply scarred. Tracing humanity's reemergence after these prehistoric catastrophes, Clow explains how these events in the deep past influence our consciousness today. Guided by Carl Johan Calleman's analysis of the Mayan Calendar, she reveals that as the Earth's 26,000-year precessional cycle shifts, our evolution is accelerating to prepare us for a new age of harmony and peace. She explains how we are beginning a collective healing as ancient memories of prehistory awaken in our minds and release our unprocessed fear. Passed from generation to generation, this fear has been responsible for our constant expectations of apocalypse. She shows that by remembering and moving beyond the trauma of our long lost past, we bring the era of cataclysms to an end and cross the threshold into a time of extraordinary creative activity.

Jacob Bryant (1715–1804) was an eminent scholar and mythographer, who has been described as “the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.”His work, An analysis of Antient(sic) Mythology, has been regarded as one of the most in-depth Classical works on Ancient Greece and contemporary areas within the ancient world.

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The authoritative 1890 edition with an introduction by Cairns Craig and Frazer's own afterword. Published originally in two volumes in 1890, this extraordinary study of primitive myth and magic led Scottish anthropologist J.G. Frazer to identify parallel patterns of ritual, symbols and belief across many centuries and many different cultures. His observations on the mysteries of fertility and death, and the rites of the sacrificial king who must die to save his people, overturned much of contemporary intellectual thinking, not least because of the enlightening or ‘heretical'parallels it suggested with the Christian religion. Frazer's elegant and authoritative style, and the breadth of his learning inspired a whole generation of ethnographers and comparative anthropologists, and had a particularly powerful effect on many other thinkers and writers such as Sigmund Freud, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce, Yeats and T.S. Eliot. This definitive volume includes the unabridged original 1890 edition as well as several essays and lectures by Frazer. ‘Frazer's work has epic scale yet mesmerizing fineness of detail. We see the great structures of civilization forming and melting against a background of elemental mystery. The effect is cinematic and sublime.'Camille Paglia

Twenty years ago, in England, author Richard Leviton'discovered the planet.'Following quite specific guidance, he began a long process that amounted to an apprenticeship.'My mentors dispatched me to various specific locations in the Somerset landscape, and at all hours of the night and day. I sat on hills and valleys and rocks under sunlight, moonlight, rain, snow, and fog, and had visions. I started to see another landscape behind the apparent landscape. It was an apparitional landscape with stars, planets, galaxies, angels, spirits of Nature, mythic deities, divinity.'As time went on, he found himself talking with angels, visiting celestial cities, and following gnomes. He came to understand that at one level we are the planet, and that both we and it have an intimate relationship with our galaxy.'I found myself living inside the myths of the world as if they were expert scripts for real-life inner adventures. I never once thought I was crazy. Why should I? Quite the opposite. I believed I was finally getting grounded in something real. But it would take me twenty years to make sense of it. That sense is embodied in The Emerald Modem.'The Emerald Modem includes:direct correspondences between human chakras and the Earth's energy features--and the galactic originalstables listing locations of sacred sites around the planet where you may experience this relationshipexplanations of world myths, which provide clues to this unsuspected visionary world around usThis is the first book to synthesize all the fragments of geomantic perception (sacred sites, energy points, vertexes, etc.) into a global interactive model that ties human consciousness directly to it. Leviton describes 85 subtle features in the planetary landscape, places you can go for mystical experiences. They are features of the Earth's energy body, almost all invisible to conventional sight. But psychic cognition can be trained, and you can usefully interact with any of these types of sites today without seeing what you're doing. Your intent to interact for the benefit of yourself and the planet is all that's required.Just as modems dial us into the Internet, so the features of the Earth's energy body described in The Emerald Modem help us get online with the galaxy. You can learn to visit Grail Castles, experience a Mount Olympus, or walk through the stars in a landscape zodiac--and you can learn enough to become confident that you're not traveling alone.

Title from eBook title screen (viewed Feb. 6, 2007).