MYTHOLOGY: TOP 10 BOOKS (HONORABLE MENTION)

 

I live in a mythic world – and I don’t just have a top ten mythology books or my usual twenty special mentions, I also have honorable mentions.

Indeed, I have honorable mentions for books in selected subjects of mythology, where there are enough entries for that subject (potentially racking them up for a top ten in that subject) – hence my honorable mentions for the Bible and Biblical mythology, classical mythology, Norse mythology, Arthurian legend, and zen or tao.

These are the rest of my honorable mentions for mythology books, in general or other subjects of mythology, in chronological or date order, usually date of publication for books.

 

 

 

(1919-1932) CHARLES FORT –

THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED / NEW LANDS / LO! / WILD TALENTS

 

“Charles Hoy Fort, an eccentric American who meticulously collected and catalogued anomalous phenomena inexplicable or thought impossible by orthodox science – giving his name to ‘Fortean’ and ‘Forteana’ to characterize such phenomena, as in the ongoing online Fortean Times which effectively carries on Fort’s legacy.

I have a soft spot, as did Fort himself from evident from the prolific reports he compiled, for strange “falls” raining from the sky – fish (like on the book cover in my feature image), frogs, and so on.

They also are a good example of the anomalous phenomena Fort researched by visiting libraries in New York and London for more than 30 years “assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines” and compiling thousands of notes “on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes”. From this research, Fort wrote the four books in this special mention.

He was also ahead of his time, writing of UFOs – before 1947 and the usual start of “modern UFO allegations”. That might be reflected in why he wrote of triangle UFOs rather than the discs that were more in vogue from 1947, although triangle UFO sightings persist.

I also have a soft spot for his theory of a Super-Sargasso Sea to which he attributed strange falls and UFOs – a “sea” where all lost things go and occasionally rain back down on Earth – and an even softer spot for him effectively dismissing that and all other theories in his work (such as his “cosmic joker” theory), noting “I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written”.

Like H.P. Lovecraft (with whom he was effectively contemporaneous), he was not the best prose stylist – although unlike Lovecraft he had much more of a sense of humor about it, tongue firmly in cheek – but created a modern mythology similar to that of Lovecraft and became a similar cult figure.

 

 

 

 

 

(1955) HUSTON SMITH –

THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS

 

The classic work on the subject of its title, by leading scholar of religious studies Huston Smith – himself almost the literal embodiment of that title, raised in China as a child of a Christian missionary family and student of philosophy in the United States.

By necessity, it uses a broad-brush approach to the eight world religions it examines in their respective chapters – Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and what it calls primal or tribal religions. It prompts to mind German philosopher Karl Jasper’s characterization of an Axial Age as the crucible of modern world religions, Jasper ended his Axial Age prior to Christianity or Islam – but it is striking that no major world religion has yet emerged since either.

As per its subtitle “Our Wisdom Traditions”, it seeks to put each religion’s best foot forward and look past caricatures or stereotypes – perhaps most memorably expressed by Smith when it comes to Islam as a common perception of a religion of sword and harem.

My personal favorite chapter, and unfortunately also its shortest, was that on the primal or tribal religions, which despite its brevity, impressed upon me the most the merits of the primal or tribal worldview – including the lost strengths and versatility of an oral culture as opposed to a literate one, despite the obvious advantages of literacy to our society.

 

 

 

 

(1964) MIRCEA ELIADE –

SHAMANISM

 

“The nostalgia for Paradise…the desire to find oneself always and without effort in the center of the world, at the heart of reality”.

Behold the monomyth!

Campbell’s term of monomyth may be somewhat unfair for Eliade, since he established multiple paradigms in mythology or religion “that persist to this day” – hierophany, sacred space and time, the nostalgia for Paradise, the axis mundi or Center of the World, all myths as creation or origin myths, the eternal return, the terror of history, the coincidence of opposites, deus otiosus, and homo religiosus.

On the other hand, all of his paradigms might be considered permutations of his core concept of hierophany, the manifestation – or intrusion – of the sacred in the world, including but not limited to the earlier concept of theophany or manifestation of a god. In turn, it is hierophany that creates sacred space and time, or rather, divides the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time.

And the rest of his paradigms really flow from that. The mythic or religious connotes the nostalgia for Paradise or desire to return to sacred space or time, which is also the axis mundi or center of the world.

“Myth, then, is always an account of creation” – the primordial time “when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world’s structure”. By enacting myths and rituals, one doesn’t simply commemorate them but participates in them – one “detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time”, or the eternal return.

On the other hand, “yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a terror of history” – the desire “to escape the linear succession of events” – “Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its terror, is one of the reasons for modern man’s anxieties”.

As for the coincidence of opposites, “Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a “coincidence of opposites” or “twofold revelation” – “they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled…the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on”.

Deus otiosus – the inactive (or leisurely) god – is perhaps my favorite paradigm by Eliade. Contrary to those who proposed that religions evolve from polytheism to monotheism, Eliade argued that supreme heavenly beings were less common in advanced cultures.

“Eliade speculates that the discovery of agriculture brought a host of fertility gods and goddesses into the forefront, causing the celestial Supreme Being to fade away and eventually vanish from many ancient religions. Even in primitive hunter-gatherer societies, the High God is a vague, distant figure, dwelling high above the world. Often he has no cult and receives prayer only as a last resort, when all else has failed. Eliade calls the distant High God a deus otiosus (idle god)”.

His book on shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, applied his ongoing ideas to shamanism, whicn in turn he saw as the ongoing death and resurrection of shamanic figures.

 

 

 

 

(1977) WIL HUYGEN & RIEN POORTVLIET –

GNOMES

 

“Yeah, Rien Poortvliet just called. He wants you to pose for him…Oh come on, beloved illustrator of Gnomes? Jesus, read a coffee table book!”

Archer, “Sea Tunt: Part I”

 

It always surprises me that gnomes are of such recent vintage, compared to other legendary creatures – “A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century”.

He introduced them as earth elementals – to match sylphs as air elementals, undines as water elementals, and salamanders as fire elementals. Note to self – air and water are the s€xy ones.

Anyway, they were “widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature” and “typically depicted as small humanoids who live underground”.

So what’s the difference from dwarves? The short answer is not much, at least in depiction (as opposed to origins in folklore), and any difference is really a matter of stylistic choice. Apparently kobolds or Germanic mine spirits also overlap with gnomes.

Although probably the most famous gnomes are garden gnomes – garden or lawn ornaments crafted as statues of gnomes, typically with beards and pointed conical caps (in the style of those old school dunce caps), that originated in the nineteenth century.

Essentially, Poortvliet’s illustrations of gnomes in this book, written by Wil Huygen, follows the visual depiction of gnomes in the style of diminutive garden gnomes. Ironically, it distinguishes gnomes as always bearded from dwarves as always beardless, which is the opposite of their most popular contemporary depiction as character races in Dungeons and Dragons – arguably following the books of Tolkien, except with gnomes as similar to hobbits or halflings (without the hairy feet).

As for the book itself, it “explains the life and habitat of gnomes in an in-universe fashion, much as a biology book would do, complete with illustrations and textbook notes” – often with astonishingly intricate fictional detail. The titular gnomes are also depicted as living harmoniously with animals and nature, evoking contemporary environmental themes.

 

 

 

 

(2023) FRANCIS YOUNG –
TWILIGHT OF THE GODLINGS

 

Small god-shaped holes – or everything you know about fairies is wrong.

Well, perhaps not quite everything, but at least the belief that Britain’s fairies and supernatural beings are the direct preservations or survivals of pagan gods.

But they are small god-shaped holes – filling the niche through many cultures, particularly European folklore or mythology, for ‘godlings’ or what Francis Young dubs small gods (borrowing from Terry Pratchett), although I’d have been tempted to go with hemi-demi-gods.

Essentially those supernatural beings ranking beneath the top-tier gods or major cult figures, somewhere between the human and divine – such as fauns and nymphs in Roman culture, not coincidentally one of the influences Young traces for fairies.

Young argues that earlier folkloric beings (albeit probably only as far back as those Roman godlings) were reinvented within Christianity to fill the niche – or the small god-shaped holes of culture.

 

 

 

(X) THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EROTIC WISDOM

 

The subtitle of the original version of this alphabetical reference book by Rufus Camphausen says it all – “A Reference Guide to the Symbolism, Techniques, Rituals, Sacred Texts, Psychology, Anatomy, and History of Sexual Sexuality”. As indeed does the subtitle of the later version – “From Aphrodisiacs and Ecstasy to Yoni Worship and Zap-Lam Yoga”.

 

You can return to or find more top tens in my indexed page for top tens of mythology.