I'm kinda sentimental. I like simple myths. My favorite is more of a scene than a story:

Hercules has to hold up the world for a while (while Atlas goes and does something else). Athena is there with Hercules and she gives him a pillow for his neck and then puts up one hand to help him hold up the world.

Apparently the sculptural version of this is in the Louvre.

So many favorites, it's impossible to chose one. A myth I've recently stumbled onto has immediately earned a place in my heart. It is the myth of Erysichthon. He cuts down all of the trees in Demeter's sacred grove for which he is punished by the goddess with insatiable hunger. Erysichthon eventually devours himself in his vain attempt to sate his hunger.

It's a fairly simple myth, warning against greed. The context focuses on the natural world, making the myth extremely relevant today when man is busy devouring the earth's resources in his insatiable appetite for more money, leaving only one possible result - consumption and destruction of the earth that causes his own demise. But it's poignant regardless of the sort of greed, because it is true of all greed unchecked.

The story of the last days of Christ is probably my favorite myth. The blood thirsty God who can't help but demand blood for sin. The God finds the perfect sacrifice to end his hunger: his own son. And the details of the plot are so interesting: The last supper, the kiss of betrayal, vox populi: "Give us Barrabbas!", Pilate washing his hands, the cross, "Why have you forsaken me", the spear of Longinus, the crypt, the defeat of Death and the resurrection. This is great stuff. Anyone who can't see that is taking it too seriously.

The Selfish Gene
R. Dawkins


I like an escape from reality.

Jesus. The Totality squeezed into an individual human. The God-man. The man-God.

Agreed. Greek mythology is often some of the most thought-provoking, as the gods themselves are perceived to have emotion and conflict. It makes it easier to sympathize and understand the story.

I would have to go with either the Cthulhu Mythos, or Egyptian mythology as my favorites.

i find the Egyption god Bes very interesting. His name is related to a Spanish island named Ibiza, Cartagenian for Isle of Bes. Still a sort of extatic place to be!

My point is as follows. Bes was a sout-Egyption/Sudan deity, depicted as a pygmee from dark Africa. He became a popular patron for the working class to protect their houses, fields and his cult was spread by Carthagenian sailors who had adopted him. Over time more and more powers were attributed to Bes, but the elite in Egypte and Carthago hang on to their ancient gods. So not only religions change, deities as well.

---------- Post added 01-31-2010 at 07:07 AM ----------

I once visited the temple of Hera on Samos. Where Pythagoras was born. My mother was more interested in the nice shaped butt of a Kouros and the spring flowers.

Try understanding predestination...genetics is only part of it All.:a-thought:

That's a good question. My answer is odd, because although I'm not a Christian, I think my favourite myth is that of a crucified God. Either that, or Lieutenant Columbo always outwitting those clever and powerful murderers. Or Adrian Monk, ditto. Always an underdog myth, anyway!

I like elements of Gnostic mythology which I've stumbled into on the Internet (but don't yet really know much about). 'The demiurge' and 'Sophia' have a lot of resonance for me.

I liked Philip Pullman's reversal of Christian mythology in His Dark Materials (although I never got round to finishing the third volume, where it all came to a head).

I'm getting sort of hooked on thinking of things in Star Wars terms, too - mere padawan that I am!

Not sure that this is answering the question. I enjoyed reading about the Greek myths a lot when I was a child, but I don't remember them at all well.

Creation myths and father-God myths leave me stone cold. The myth of Eden and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil seems to me to teach exactly the wrong lesson, although I suppose it depends how you interpret it. (It leads to deep questions about the nature of moral judgement.)

Nietzsche leaves me utterly cold.

I love the Sufi story about Mullah Nasrudin looking for his key in the wrong place because there was more light there. Is that a myth, or just a parable?

I'm extremely ambivalent about Freudian mythology: like Christian mythology, it often seems to me to teach exactly the wrong lessons. But perhaps if you put Freud and Jesus together, you get something. (Jung?)

"Mental illness" is indeed a myth. And not one of my favourites. Like the other myths, it does contain some truth, perhaps a half-truth. (I certainly don't agree with everything said by Thomas Szasz, or the Church of Scientology for that matter.)

How many favourites are we allowed?

I meant to include Plato's myth about us being creatures who were split in two (for hubris?), and are always looking for our other halves; but I am embarrassed by my lack of scholarship in Plato, and didn't want my bluff called!

I'm fond of a lot of science fiction myths in general: aliens, robots, and so on. These seem to help us to think about ourselves in this alien world we have created.

I'll stop here, although I could probably go on.

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 11:49 PM ----------

The Mahabharata! How could I forget? I must admit I've only seen the television series (and heard an unbelievably short, but good, radio adaptation), and don't even know which English translation of the written form I should go for (if I ever have the time). But it's a wonderful story, very deep (and confusing, like all the best stories - and philosophy?). Karna was my favourite character. I don't know what that says about me (except that it's another underdog character)!

(Just guiltily reading through the thread, seeing what I should have been writing about.)

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 11:52 PM ----------

There are some great stories in the Mabinogion as well. Damn, there's so much to read!

---------- Post added 02-27-2010 at 12:01 AM ----------


Have you by any chance read Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon? If so, what did you think of it? I was strongly recommended to read it, but, like so many other things (Plato, The Mahabharata, The Mabinogion, ... the list is endless!), I haven't got around to it.

---------- Post added 02-27-2010 at 12:25 AM ----------

Talking of fantasy novels: I'm not nearly well enough read to know the classical mythological roots of it, but Tim Powers's novel The Stress of Her Regard, about the Romantic poets tangling (sometimes fatally) with women made of stone - part lamia, part vampires, part something else entirely - left a very powerful impression in my mind. As did Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, a wonderful extension and re-imagining of the Dracula myth. And then, of course, there's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which, although of course it is based on the classical myth of Prometheus, adds something of its own, and has a resonance for us (or for me, at any rate) greater than the classical myth itself.

It's Spring A-Gain. I say lovely Narsicus. My morther was write to skip the rest of the Museum. We went to a bakery-shop where I bought my first muffin-plate. Now just Remnembering is Bes(T).

Here is an Inuit myth. In the beginning of times, an Inuit married a goose. They had several children. Now since his wife was a goose, she would only eat plants, wild berries, grass, etc.and she only fed plants to her children. Her mother in law was the first to notice this and found her daughter in law's behaviour quite odd. She told her son about this saying that she was very worried that the children will not grow properly since they were never given meat to eat. Her son responded harshly saying "Mother do not make it your business; my wife is my children's mother and she decides what she feeds them!"
But one day the man came home from hunting. He killed a seal and dragged it on the shore. His wife, the goose watched as he was cutting up the animal and suddenly some blood burst from the animal and splashed all over the husband and wife. The goose loked at her white dressed stained with blood and became disgusted and horrified so she flew away taking her children with her. The husband saw them fly away and went after them. When the goose would get back on the ground to rest, the man would try to catch her but she would fly away. This went on for some time (the story describes the different stopping places of the geese during their annual migrations), until finally the man caught his wife and killed her. The end.
At first I found it odd to find the issue of vegetarianisme in Inuit culture. Clearly it's not about that though I don't know exactly what the story says...that one must avoid falling in love with his food? Or perhaps that one should marry one's own kind.

I think Eskimo's as we call them can not survive on a strictly vegetarian dieet. It is difficalt to eat healthy as it is.

I would not eat my own wife though !

"What's your favorite Myth?"

UFO

My "favourite" myth is about Jaweh, a horror god, saying he is good and true. Since I was 6 I was convinced I would not serve such a harsh ruler. Made Abraham nearly sacrificing his son, and did not do anything when Jezus died.

I believe in Jezus a one of the great Human teachers. He taught us Love. I don't care for the Father very much. Tech time is over. Mother Earth and her Wisdom will help US.

Mine would have to be hercules and the titans!

Mine would have to stay the Same...

Favourite modern tale would be Semen by Ronald Dahl


Pepijn Sweep
Magister Ox

COOL yeh i just love greek mythology but not so much with the romans...

never heard of Semen by Ronald Dahl ?

I am sorry for confusion, but with Same I ment first post.

Semen was a wordplay with Seaman.