TOP 10 MYTHOLOGIES

(SPECIAL MENTION: SACRED SPACE & CHTHONIC RANKINGS)

 

I don’t have a religion – I have a mythology.

Indeed, I have a top ten of them, ranked by my personal interest in them, albeit overlapping with their iconic status and enduring cultural or even religious influence.

But how do they rank by their sacred space and chthonic blues? That is, how do they rank by their mythic cosmology and geography – or by that most common chthonic denominator, their underworlds (and afterlifes – or is that afterlives – in general)?

Well, surprise! It’s the same rankings – at least in order of rankings, although with some slight shuffling of tiers – but perhaps not surprising that their sacred space and chthonic rankings coincide with my personal interest in them, given how definitive those features are for mythology in general.

 

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(1) BIBLICAL – HEAVEN & HELL, BABYLON & JERUSALEM, EDEN & ARMAGEDDON

 

Biblical mythology tops my rankings for sacred space – mythic cosmology or geography – and chthonic rankings as it does for mythology in general.

After all, its cosmology of Heaven and Hell have become the default setting for mythic cosmology and the afterlife in popular culture and imagination, beyond any element of religious belief. Although ironically much of the detail of those settings comes not so much from the Bible but from its “fan fiction” – foremost among them Dante’s Divine Comedy, particularly its Inferno.

And from mythic cosmology to geography, albeit of actual locations transformed into symbolic manifestations of Hell and Heaven on earth respectively, we have Babylon and Jerusalem. I was born again in Babylon and torn apart in Jerusalem.

Wrapping up our trinity of opposing poles of mythic cosmology and geography within Biblical mythology – Heaven and Hell, Babylon and Jerusalem – we also have two opposing poles that are much more mythic than historic, the paradise in the beginning of creation to the war at the end of the world, Eden and Armageddon.

 

(2) CLASSICAL – OLYMPUS & TROY (HADES)

 

Classical mythology ranks in second place for the enduring iconic nature of its mythic geography and underworld.

I say geography because its mythic geography tended to be actual locations in historical geography, particularly within Greece, albeit transformed with a heroic or numinous nature – with Troy as perhaps the most famous but even the realm of the gods had its portal at Mt Olympus

Best of all, you have classical mythology’s recurring tendency to populate virtually every geographic feature with a hot nymph – now that’s sacred space!

As for chthonic ranking, there’s the enduring iconic nature of Hades as underworld – with most of its features being adapted wholesale in Western culture and imagination. You could do a top ten just of those features, with perhaps the rivers Styx and Lethe being most prominent.

 

(3) NORSE – ASGARD & VALHALLA (HEL)

 

Norse mythology has one of the best known of all mythic cosmologies with its Nine Worlds. One of those is of course our own mortal world Midgard, which lent itself to the name of one of the most famous fantasy worlds, Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

However, while there is reference to the Nine Worlds in the original texts of Norse mythology, it is never clearly identified what those Nine Worlds are. Instead, scholars speculate what they are from references to various realms as they occur elsewhere – Midgard or the realm of humanity, the realm or realms of elves and dwarves, the realm of giants, and the realms of fire and ice.

The most famous mythic realm in Norse mythology is Asgard, the realm of the gods (or more precisely one of the two families or tribes of gods in Norse mythology, the Aesir, with the other, the Vanir, having their own realm) – which also has the even more famous Valhalla as afterlife abode of the heroic dead.

As for chthonic rankings, Norse mythology also has one of the most famous underworlds (sometimes reckoned as one of the Nine Worlds of itself, or as part of the mythic realm of ice) – named for the goddess of the dead who reigned there, Hel, and that lent its name to (or came from the same source as) that of an even more famous underworld.

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(4) CELTIC (ARTHURIAN) – OTHERWORLD (AVALON)

 

The Celtic Otherworld is perhaps one of the best known and most definitive concepts of the mythic realm in mythology – that realm of the deities or the dead, often overlapping, although the Celtic Otherworld “is more usually described as paradisal fairyland than a frightening place”, or more fey than infernal.

The Otherworld looms large in Arthurian legend in various guises – a recurring numinous presence depicted well in the film Excalibur. One guise is as the realm of fairies but even more so as that mystical place ranking among the highest name recognition for mythic worlds – Avalon, which overlaps with the underworld as King Arthur’s final resting place.

Celtic mythology in general and Arthurian legend in particular also have their distinctive mythic geography in our world, particularly in Britain with its historical sites as identified with locations in myth or legend.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(5) EGYPTIAN

 

Egyptian mythology may well be the most chthonic of mythologies – albeit not so much in name recognition of its underworld Duat in popular culture but more in terms of the afterlife in general. Indeed, ancient Egypt almost seems a necropolis, with its religion and ritual predominated by preparation for the afterlife – and its monumental statues or architecture, such that Egypt itself appears as its own mythic realm, with a mystique that has been a subject of recurring fascination in its own time and ever since.

 

 

(6) MIDDLE EASTERN – BABYLO-SUMERIAN

 

The concept and very word of paradise itself originates from the Middle East – Persia in particular – but the ranking of Middle Eastern mythology for sacred spaces and mythic worlds is more a matter of its enduring influence for the paradises and underworlds of subsequent mythologies, particularly Biblical mythology.

Speaking of underworlds, the Mesopotamian underworld was almost as influential as Persian paradise, not least for the descent of Inanna or Ishtar into it.

 

(7) HINDU

 

Hindu mythology has its sacred spaces and mythic worlds, including a number that would be described as hells or underworlds but without widespread name recognition beyond Hinduism.

For that matter, the world itself seems mythic in Hindu mythology, as “maya” or illusion (personified as the goddess Durga) – or as “lila” or divine play. India itself has its own mythic or sacred geography in Hinduism but I don’t know as much about it as I do for Western mythologies.

 

(8) MESO-AMERICAN – AZTEC

 

One of the most chthonic mythologies, since the Aztecs had nine levels of its underworld known as Mictlan – although it sometimes seems hard to distinguish the Aztec underworld from Aztec history, what with those pyramids slippery with blood and hearts from human sacrifice.

 

(9) NATIVE AMERICAN – LAKOTA

 

I don’t know much about the mythic worlds of Native American mythology other than references to their belief in an afterlife as “the happy hunting ground” that is attributed to them, although that probably originated in the interpretation by British settlers. Apparently the phrase first appeared “in 1823 in The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper”.

 

(10) AFRO-AMERICAN – VOODOO

 

To be honest, I don’t know too much about the mythic worlds of Afro-American mythologies or voodoo within and beyond our own. I was not surprised to learn upon looking it up that there is a realm of ancestral spirits – but I was surprised to learn that Haitian vodou does have its holy sites of pilgrimage that overlap with Christian sites in Haiti.