Is Veeky Forums an appropriate board to discuss mythology? If so, what's your favorite god/god archetype...

That's an excellent idea. Mythological stories and religious superstitions are well rooted in all of the worlds literature. Ought to be discussed here in a more varied way, as opposed to jebus jebus jebus

I got into a conversation with my ex once about the importance of mythology and how it shapes history and our present because she told me it was all a waste of time to study and that nonfiction was better because it was real.

She had no appreciation for how fiction has shaped human history. She was a good person but she had a childish worldview.

Absolutely. There's loads of genealogical and psychological insight in folklore from different places. For Anons to analyse old stories on this board eould be great.

Hope you didn't break up over that!

No, we broke up for grounded reasons. We're on fairly good terms.

But I agree with your sentiment. Folklore and mythology should absolutely be discussed here.

You know there is a Jebus in the Bible - he was the king of Salem (later Jerusalem) - the capital of the Jebusites before the Israelites conquered it.

Trickster gods best gods, Irish Pantheon best pantheon - being a trickster was practically a requirement

I WANT AN ATHENA GF DESU

I'm a sucker for the greek stuff. I think the Dionysian Mysteries and Maenads are rad. I've been wanting to dive into the Egyptian mythologies recently though.

I can't remember what exactly it was but I recall someone explaining Irish mythology to me through one particular story that pretty much summed it up.
>hero gets told a giant is harassing the countryside
>hero comes up with genius plan
>hero has women of village knit him a giant blanket, shaves his head of all hair
>after blanket is finished, has them swaddle him up like a baby and leave him on the hill where the giant comes down
>giant comes grumbling down the hill, spots hero
>hero starts wailing like a baby
>giant think hero is actually a large baby
>giant exclaims "Holy shit, if that's the baby, how big is the Daddy? I'm getting the fuck outta here before that big bastard shows up!"
>giant NOPEs out and is never heard from again
>hero is celebrated and smug as a motherfucker
I was in tears desu

I think it's just sad that people eat so much of the modernist universalist interpretation of mythology, popularized by Jung and Campbell and so on, in which every religion or story can be positioned precisely in accord with some patterns and talked about in archetypes. From the 19th to the 20th century, the eurocentric view of the rest of the world transformed the "uncultured barbarians" into something sophisticated but nevertheless romanticized, because they realized their stories had something parallel to either christian themes, greek mythology, or european fairy tales. It's when Picasso and Modigliani started imitating african art, when anthropology and social sciences had much to grow, when translations of chinese and other oriental texts started popping up in the west mistranslating certain terms as "god" or "heaven", and when psychology took us out from the center of ourselves and gave the distance necessary for us to observe how we relate to these other cultures. It's fantastic that there are similarities and that they are noticed and I say this with zero ressentment towards the jungian interpretation, which is an amazing turn of events and a product of its time. But I feel that a lot of people stop there, firstly because it is very much of a comfortable explanation on how religion and storytelling comes about, secondly because we are not in touch with these cultures as much as we think we are by reading about it or looking at artifacts in museums. Even if it might serve to compare and to name it as such at giving circunstances, please realize that each culture is different, that there hundreds of thousands of ways to tell stories, that most of them are completely unaccessible to us (not because of our incompetence to see, but because of impossibilities, lost registers and so on), that every translation differs from the original material, that archetypes are an invention, a tool created to talk about mythology, rather than something that precedes and dictates its content. There are bizarre ways (to us) to get married and to get old, to pay respect, to heal, different senses of community, individuality and subjectivity, there are taboos to others which are normalized in our society and vice-versa, each tribe, each group changing in time, before and after encounters with white man, and there are as many gods and ways to relate to these gods as there are people in the world, so much so that the word "god" itself ceases to refer to sense in specific.

that kind of synthesis also happened traditionally, it was not invented by Jung and Campbell and predates archetype theory. See for example the equalization of many pagan gods when cultures came into contact, like Mercury (roman) = Hermes (greek) = Thoth (egyptian) = Odin (germanic) and stuff liek that

yeah lots of them go that way
>hero gets into argument with giant who's been terrorizing the locals
>giant's all, you bullshitter why start fight with giant
>hero's like, i could eat things bigger than you for breakfsat
>giant's like, fine, see you at breakfast, whoever eats more wins
>hero makes false stomach from hundreds of cows and conceals it under shirt
>starts breakfasting at dawn with the giant
>by lunch, fake stomach is almost full
>hero groans, omg ate too much
>giant, haha manbaby can't eat
>hero's like, no it's fine, i'll just cut open my stomach and then i can eat more
>slits open fake stomach
>keeps eating
>giant's like, hey that's a good idea man baby
>giant disembowels himself
>hero has leftovers for dinner

has anyone got a really high res version of this?

i'm asking for a fiend

Sure. It happends when one culture touches the other and they try to assimilate/destroy/transform/understand/integrate each other in several ways. Eventually, one's traces on the other leaves a mark one cannot ignore, just like we have greek gods at the top of our mind even if very few people actually read the myths directly or studied ancient Greece.

The differences are always in our blind spot. After the initial strangeness, it's easier to see the similarities (or invent them) than to admit to the actual novelty of it

It was actually Fionns wife that came up with the plan, some other fun details:

>The giant of Scotland couldn't swim so he laid down the Giants Causeway to get to Eire, you can still see it today
>while the giant was waiting for Fionn to get home, his wife had him do tasks she made up that Fionn would normally do such as turning the house around so she could catch the sun in the evening
>what ultimately scared the giant of was when she offered him food after the hard days work he'd done for her, she gave him pies filled with rocks and the "baby" regular pies, telling him they were the same and the babies favorite meal. The giant broke his teeth and ran home to Scotland, lifting up half the causeway behind him

>She was a good person but she had a childish worldview.
>We're on fairly good terms.
>expects women to have adult (mannish) worldviews
>wants to be ex-girlfriend's friend
What's your favorite flavor of Soylent?

I don't know, but it was children's books in elementary school how I learned about Anansi. Not sure how mythology went or just the adaptations were, but I seem to remember that Anansi didn't get away with half the things he did.

L O R K H A N
O
R
K
H
A
N

Tarstedion is the only true God.

Im very interested in gods like Baldr, and the concept of going through the world of the dead, and the way they come out again, forgetting everything from before. Im going to read the egyptian book of the dead soon, and Im pretty certain that relates to this, Just have to read the secret of the she bear before.

I didn't say we were friends, I just said we didn't break up on bad terms.

Thoughts on Proto-Indo-European religion?

So what are good books for learning more mythology? I've read the Metamorphoses and the Theogony but haven't learned about much beyond the Greek pantheon.

where does Crom take inspiration from?

>He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?

someone post Conan pepe

>Mercury (roman) = Hermes (greek) = Thoth (egyptian) = Odin (germanic)
???
Those gods have extremely few similarities (except for Hermes and Mercury).

the tain bo cuailnge's like a prehistoric city slickers. kinsella translation

I like the Jesus eh's a cool guy

If you're talking about the Irish Crom, a lot of the malevolence attributed to him is because the Christians were the first people to write anything about him, the Irish had an oral tradition so a lot of their gods are characterised as evil and demonic in the written accounts that survive.

hawaiian pidgin bible is the best translation.

>Jesus Guys
>Wat Dey Wen Do
>[acts of the apostles]

Jesus Promise Fo Send God's Spirit

1Aloha, Teofilus! I wen write one nodda book fo you befo, an I tell you all da stuff dat Jesus wen do an teach from da start, 2till da time God take him up inside da sky. Befo he go up, he tell da guys dat he wen pick fo send all ova, wat dey gotta do. God's Spesho Spirit wen tell him all dat. 3Now, afta Jesus wen suffa, he let da guys dat he wen pick see him, an he prove dat he stay alive fo real. He stay show up by dem fo forty days, an wen tell dem how everyting stay wen God stay King.

4One time wen Jesus wen stay wit his guys, he tell dem, “No go way from Jerusalem, but wait ova hea till you guys get da Spirit my Fadda wen promise fo send. You guys wen hear me tell bout dat Spirit. 5Befo time, John Da Baptiza Guy wen baptize peopo wit water, but pretty soon God goin baptize you guys diffren kine: he goin let his Spesho Spirit take charge a you.”

Jesus Go Up Inside Da Sky

6One time, da guys dat Jesus wen pick wen come togedda wit him, an dey aks him, “Boss, you goin come King now fo da Israel peopo, jalike had king befo time?”
7He tell dem, “Not yoa kuleana fo know da time o da day da Fadda wen pick. He da One goin do dat. 8But you guys goin get spesho kine power wen God's Spesho Spirit take charge a you. An den you guys goin tell da peopo in Jerusalem wat you know bout me, an da peopo all ova Judea, Samaria, an all ova da world.” 9Afta he wen say dat, God wen take him up in front dem, an den one cloud wen move unda him, so dey no can see him no moa.
10Dey still stay looking in da sky real good wen he stay going, an right den an dea two guys wit white clotheses wen stand by dem. 11Dey say, “You guys from Galilee, how come you stay standing hea an stay looking in da sky? Dis guy Jesus, God wen take him from you, up inside da sky. He goin come back da same way you wen see him go.”

It just makes you want to believe.

elder Scrolls lore is more interesting than any religion or mythology

it's also that a lot of words which turned out to translate from hebrew to latin as demonic, in hebrew to irish translations became things like "witch" or "changeling", so the meaning of "witch" or "changeling" is then taken to be "demon" in irish to latin translations working through a common source in hebrew.

the easiest example is that "duine dubh" probably originally was a púca appearing in a human form.
but in translation to latin you'd probably call him "lucifer" which changes his colouring completely.
celtic stories about the devil falling into brambles on michaelmas often depict him as a black horse, like a púca or "duine dubh" more than as the lightbearer/accuser.
it came to mean the one and only christian devil in irish, but it's likely it originally meant any given one of many possible pucks, of which there were many of varying dispositions and histories and not united against "god".

a lot of the terms like cailleach/cailín, amaid/amadán change and depart from each other over time to mean different things to their origin in "magical person" to more pejorative or diminutive things like "girl" and "fool".

"geasa" are seen as spells like abracadabra now in the irish language, but in myths are often treated like throwing down the gauntlet, contracts, taboos, or OCD compulsions, even where they're heavily christianized versions of the myth.

language shifts have coloured some of the meaning as much as christianity did deliberately in reworking the tales initially while first writing them down.

The misunderstanding of geas is one that really gets me, it's such a cool concept and ties in so well with the Irish idea of honour and word keeping which is very different to anything we have in a modern context