Carved out of marble in the first century CE, this Ancient Roman sculpture is one of the world’s most famous works of art. It showcases a tragic moment in the myth of Lacoon and his sons, when, in revenge for trying to alert the Ancient Trojans about a giant horse armed with secret enemies of […]
The Tragedy of Lacoon and the “Snake Detection Hypothesis” Read More »
This coin dates to the age of the Germanic ruler Clovis I (d 511 CE), and should immediately strike us with its mythological imagery — angels with swords aren’t things we actually see. We realize that the figure on the coin cannot correspond with a real-life person. A tricky thing about studying Early Medieval history,
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Dreams are universally experienced, but take on different meanings across time. In the Aboriginal cultures of Australia, “the Dreamtime” or “Alcheringa” in the Arandic central Australian language, refers not to an individual’s dreams, nor even to the images or narrations that come in sleep. Rather, it signifies an eternal space out of which comes creation,
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This Japanese sliding-door panel from about 1606 shows the allegedly immortal Liezi riding the winds. Although based on mythological stories, the flying figure also evokes a state of dreaming, since humans have recorded flying dreams across many civilizations. The Daoist text named after Liezi gives insight to a particular type of dream interpretation. In this
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Onto our third conspiracy theory in history for the week, which is the burning of Bridget Cleary. This takes us back to Ireland in 1895, when a man called Michael Cleary set his wife Bridget on fire because he believed that his “real” wife had been taken by fairies and replaced by a changeling. Several
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Wanna hear about the most famous witch in all of Scottish history? Who wouldn’t, right? This would be one Isobel Gowdie, who gave four testimonials in 1662 confessing her involvement in harmful magical practices and consorting with the devil.Gowdie’s trial is better documented than any other witchcraft confession. Although she was probably treated poorly during
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Many cultures have produced mythologies of the frightening undead. But in the modern American imagination, our ideas about Vampires can largely be traced to the early 1700’s. In Eastern Europe, tales of the deceased who somehow caused the deaths of their living neighbors began to arise.The first documented episode came out of the Serbian village
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The Rio Grande is just a dry riverbed this time of year at La Llorona park in Las Cruces, New Mexico.The area is named for an old Latinx legend common throughout Mexico and the American Southwest: La Llorona or “the Weeping Woman” usually tells of a beautiful woman with dark flowing hair wearing white robes
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Christmas traditions have a great many manifestations, and one of the most unusual is a practice from southern Wales surrounding the macabre figure of the Mari Lwyd, which is a horse skull decorated with glass eyes and bows, held up on a pole by a man under a white canvas sheet. (The first photo gives
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The story of the Tower of Babel from the Hebrew Bible’s _Genesis_ is a famous myth that explains the origin of the world’s multiplicity of languages. Surprise surprise, there are a whole lot of interpretations about the meanings of this story. But the human fascination about why there are so many languages cuts across many
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Chinese folklore has many accounts of female ghosts — the one featured here is the Nü gui, a terrifying vengeful spirit of a woman who committed suicide because of a crime against her, often rape. Such spirits might appear as beautiful ladies who sexually seduce their male prey and drain their “Yang” life-force essence.This type
Chinese Folklore the Nu Gui Ghost Read More »
For part of its history, the Byzantine Empire carried out an unusual tradition for selecting the women who would marry the emperors. These were the imperial “bride-shows,” in which the young emperor’s parents would have a variety of noblewomen who showed great beauty and moral character compete for the hand of the leader of the
Ancient Byzantine Marriage Read More »
The myth of Prometheus is one of the oldest in Ancient Greek mythology. In the _Theogany_, dating from around 700 BCE, the author Hesiod tells the story of how the God Zeus took vengeance on his Titan rival for giving humans the knowledge of fire — he had Prometheus chained to a rock, and each
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I have a good story for this Mother’s Day in the U.S.. It comes from a Hindu myth found in a sacred text called _The Bhagavata Purana_ (8th-10th c), which tells the story of the maternal love of Yasoda for her foster son, the God Krishna.Yasoda had no idea that she was raising a divine
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There is a stereotype about how vikings loved their beer and mead, and it wasn’t invented by Marvel Comics. Here, you see a stone carved with a scene of Scandinavians from the Early Middle Ages and they are enjoying their alcohol. In the Old Norse poem _Grímnismál_, some of the deceased warriors await the final
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Why do the same themes repeat in folklore — are they accidental? Do they reflect transmission of ideas? Or do they emerge out of a common social pattern? The tale of Bluebeard, first famously inscribed by Charles Perrault in 1697, tells a story featuring the trope of “young beautiful women whose curiosity results in bad
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You probably recognize the bird in this 13th-century Medieval illumination as the legendary Phoenix, who lived for 500 years and then cast itself into flames in order to be reborn. Medieval people had never seen such beasts, of course, but loved to imagine that fantastical creatures lived far away in exotic lands — and the
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Lots of animals love to play — many of us mammals will forgo food and sleep just to take part in exploratory fun. Humans have excelled at a specific type of play that comes in the form of games.Games are more formal than most types of play. They involve rules and have uncertain outcomes .
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Spooky season is almost upon us, and thus it feels appropriate to share this rural legend and roadside attraction near the border of Carbon and Luzerne Counties in the forested mountains of Pennsylvania’s mining communities. I am writing, of course, about the Cursed Stone Couch of Weatherly, PA. Folktales — especially frightening ones — often
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The Ancient Romans had a litany of holidays for all sorts of occasions. Every August 23 were the Vulcanalia, festivities honoring the Roman deity Vulcan, featured here in this palm-sized bronze relief from the 2nd or 3rd century CE.Worship of Vulcan shows the way that Romans often bifurcated their attitudes towards their deities. Vulcan was
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