Free ‘divine gallery’ sample art from OldWorldGods
I live in a mythic world.
Mythology has been a subject that has fascinated me since childhood, when I read it avidly – and still does as I read it now, hence my Top 10 Books of Mythology.
These are my books of myth and mystery. I’m not going to seek to define mythology for this top ten. It seems to me that people who have studied it far more than I have differ substantially in their definitions of it and I’m not sure that there’s any easy or singular definition in any event. By its nature, myth overlaps with mystery. It is what it is.
Nor am I going to seek to distinguish myth or mythology from overlapping categories such as folklore or legend. If I might use religious metaphor, mythology tends to be defined in a ‘high-church’ sense involving divine beings or sacred narratives, while folklore or legend tend to be defined in a more ‘low church’ sense involving figures or narratives closer to humans and nature. And while we’re on that point, I’m not going to seek to distinguish myth or mythology from the overlapping subjects of religion or ritual. To extend that metaphor, I’m going with a broad church approach here. I don’t have a religion – I have a mythology.
The only thing I would seek to distinguish myth or mythology from is the colloquial or popular usage of the word myth to connote some collectively or commonly held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story. I use myth or mythology without any implication as to whether any belief or narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.
So that said, here are my Top 10 Books of Mythology. You know the rules – this is one of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves. Tenth place is my wildcard entry for the best entry from the previous year (2024).
But wait – there’s more! The subject is prolific enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten and for honorable mentions beyond that.
(10) NATALIE LAWRENCE –
ENCHANTED CREATURES: OUR MONSTERS AND THEIR MEANINGS (2024)
“I began as a scientist and became a hunter of monsters. It is only relatively recently that I have been able to fully articulate why they attracted me so much. I began with the monsters of hundreds of years ago, when the world was an almost alien place, but they taught me how to see what monsters do for us today.”
I tend to award my wildcard tenth place, if I can (or if my top ten subject permits), to best entry for the previous or present year – and this book by Natalie Lawrence was my favorite mythology book from 2024.
Natalie Lawrence taps into our universal fascination with monsters – the titular enchanted creatures from mythology to modern popular culture – and what they mean to (or for) us.
The book is divided into three thematic sections – Monsters of Creation, Monsters of Nature, and Monsters of Knowledge – each of which is divided in turn into thematic chapters.
For the Monsters of Creation, the chapters are The Horned Sorcerer (through the lens of the antlered shamanic figure in Palaeolithic cave art at the Cave of the Trois-Freres in France, a personal favorite of mine as well), Dragons of Chaos, and The Minotaur and the Labyrinth.
For Monsters of Nature, the chapters are Snake Women (through the lens of the recurring dangerous combination of woman and serpent from Eve onwards), Grendel, and Leviathans.
For Monsters of Knowledge, the chapters are Scaly Devils (featuring the fabulous beasts found by Europeans after the Age of Discovery, even if they had to stich them together) and Terrible Lizards (featuring dinosaurs and their fossils).
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
(9) NATALIE HAYNES –
DIVINE MIGHT: GODDESSES IN GREEK MYTH (2023)
When it comes to classical mythology, I’m in it for the nymphs.
So naturally I’m up for the goddesses in this book by English classicist Natalie Haynes.
Where her previous book Pandora’s Jar celebrated the women of classical mythology, Divine Might playfully worships the goddesses, not surprisingly given the title (and subtitle) – “focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin”.
As one might expect, the six Olympian goddesses – Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter, Hestia and Athene – take center stage. Through the lens of these goddesses, it does detour into other female figures or more minor goddesses, notably (and again not surprisingly) the chapter on Demeter detours into Persephone and Hecate. I hope for a sequel or companion volume extending that detour through the many minor goddesses or demi-goddesses in classical mythology.
The book also reminded me of the odd fact that fully half of the Olympian goddesses – Artemis, Hestia, and Athene – were virgins, which Haynes notes is strikingly at odds with the usual status of women at that time as one in which marriage and children would be expected. But then, the divine make their own rules and break them anyway.
Speaking of virgin goddesses, her chapter gave me a new appreciation of Hestia, a goddess that all too often is told to stay in the hearth, when she is not forgotten or overlooked altogether for the more glamorous Olympian figures. One might extend that by way of alliteration from Hestia to Hera – as the latter’s chapter also gave me a new appreciation of a figure often seen, conveniently for Zeus, as something of a shrew (and bunny boiler).
Aptly enough, both for symmetry and as representative of divine female figures in classical mythology, the book started with the Muses and ended with the Furies – dare I quip, not unlike my ex-wife.
My only complaint? It needed more nymphs! One can only hope for a book of nymphs – perhaps even a dictionary of nymphs…
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
Oxford University Press
(8) RONALD HUTTON –
TRIUMPH OF THE MOON (1999)
The history of what Hutton portrays to be the only religion England has ever given the world, modern pagan witchcraft or Wicca.
Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specializes, among other specialties, in the history of the various strands of contemporary paganism – particularly in this book, which might be regarded as his magnum opus.
It may be somewhat deflating or disillusioning for those who like to imagine modern paganism or neopaganism as descending from an unbroken lineage or tradition back to historical paganism, but Hutton presents Wicca definitively as a twentieth century reconstruction, often artistic or literary in nature.
However, Hutton clearly writes from a respect for the new paganism, consistent with his paean to it as the only religion England has given the world (and I understand that he was actually raised as a pagan in his youth).
And for that matter, what does it matter that it is a reconstruction of historical traditions, rather than a genuine continuation of, as neopaganism likes to present itself, longstanding hidden pagan traditions? Scratch beneath the surface and much the same can be said of other religious traditions. After all, if a historian can characterize even Christianity, from a historical perspective, as a Greek hero cult devoted to a Jewish messiah, then what of reconstruction? And that’s setting aside how much of either side of that characterization – Greek and Jewish – might be further characterized as reconstruction, or at least synthesis of other traditions.
Among his other books prior to Triumph of the Moon, Hutton deflated much the same claims of the ritual year in English paganism or at least tradition in Stations of the Sun – demonstrating the various celebrations to be of much more recent vintage than is often claimed for them.
And after Triumph of the Moon, Hutton has gone on to look at other strands within modern paganism in a similar vein (as more reflecting modern reconstruction than genuine historical tradition) – shamanism, druids, and most recently, various ‘pagan’ goddess figures of folklore in his Queens of the Wild.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
The Ghost Dance of 1889-1891 by Frederic Remington, 1890
(7) WESTON LA BARRE –
THE GHOST DANCE: THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION (1970)
A sweeping “psychoanalytic account of the birth of religion through the lens of his treatment of the ghost dance religion of native America”.
A sadly elusive and overlooked classic, particularly as anthropologist Weston La Barre regarded it as his magnum opus.
It’s also deliciously snarky, particularly about founding religious figures and classical philosophies.
Essentially, he presents all religion – not just native American – as shamanic in nature. All religions are ghost dances at heart. Indeed, this book led me to see the Bible as the Hebrew dreaming and the great messianic ghost dance.
Don’t get me wrong – I have a soft spot for the ghost dance, both the historical native American ghost dance and its metaphors. Hell – I usually feel my life has been one long ghost dance…
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(6) PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS
The Penguin dictionaries are usually of high quality whatever the subject, but the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols is the standout for me.
That might be attributed to the collaboration of its original authors – French writer, philosopher and theologian Jean Chevalier, with French poet and explorer Alain Gheerbant. Their literary background shines forth in the lyrical quality or poetic resonance of the entries – although at times the entries can be somewhat overwhelming in the density of their style.
As for the book itself, well, it’s a dictionary…of symbols. Obviously. Although that understates just how comprehensive the entries are, both in quantity and quality – devoted to the symbolism of myths, dreams, habits, gestures, shapes, figures, colors, numbers, plants, animals and more found in mythology and folklore.
I’ll let Penguin’s own publishing entry speak for it – “This is a remarkable dictionary, exploring the vast and various symbols which abound in literature, religion, national identity and are found at the very heart of our dreams and sub-conscious…each entry is given its complete range of interpretations – sexual and spiritual, official and subversive, cultural and religious – to bring meaning and insight to the symbol”.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Pierrot Publishing, 1st edition
(5) PETER DICKINSON –
THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS (1979)
Here be dragons!
And how! It’s like Jurassic Park, only even more awesome – with dragons! This is a work of “speculative natural history”, which addresses that most awesome question – how dragons might have really existed?
Or more precisely, is there an evolutionary hypothesis that could explain the existence of dragons of mythology and lore?
In doing so, it addresses the question posed by the title – the flight of dragons. Clearly, something extra is needed for the mass of dragons to be lifted by their limited wing area – and if not magic, what?
The answer is the central hypothesis of the work – that dragons were essentially fantasy dirigibles, held aloft by sacs of hydrogen, produced from their own digestive hydrochloric acid. From that, we have their evolution from dinosaurs to most of the tropes of dragons in fantasy, not least their fiery breath, evolved to burn off excess hydrogen but finding use as a weapon – although it also offers explanations for their toxic (or more precisely acidic) blood, their hoards and most other dragon tropes, with an element of legendary embellishment thrown in (intelligence and speech for example).
It also offers explanation for the saddest dragon trope – their absence from reality. Obviously, they were hunted to extinction by humanity and their acidic blood dissolved any bodily remnants that remained behind (so no dragon fossils – alas!)
It’s a nice fantasy theory, even if it seems somewhat contrived or forced at times by standards of biology – but damned if I don’t half believe it, and even more damned if I don’t totally wish that somewhere here or there be dragons…
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(4) KATHARINE BRIGGS – A DICTIONARY OF FAIRIES (1972)
What it says on the tin, the definitive guide to that classic subject of British folklore – fairies.
A classic book, alternatively titled An Encyclopedia of Fairies, which now seems sadly out of print (but still available online), by a classic British folklorist – indeed THE classic British folklorist.
Of course, the term fairies now conjures up images of cute little gossamer-winged pixies like Tinkerbell.
In British folklore, fairies were much different, most aptly styled as the Fair Folk, itself a euphemism for things that would flay you and walk around in your skin – because you sure as hell didn’t want to draw their attention or conjure them up by using names more true to their nature, or worse yet, their true names. In fairness (heh), they weren’t always as extreme as to literally flay you and walk around in your skin, only on occasion and only some of them. Some of them were more neutral or even nice, although even the nice ones were usually weird or had weird alien morality. Indeed, alien is an apt description, as in many ways, the fairies of British folklore have been replaced with the aliens of modern folklore. And this book is a fascinating exploration, arranged as a dictionary in alphabetical entries (cross-referenced to other entries) of the various beings, creatures, attributes, themes and tropes of fairy folklore.
Also there’s an annual Katharine Briggs Folklore Award from 1982, named and awarded by the Folklore Society in honour of Briggs (who served as their president).
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(3) BARBARA WALKER – WOMEN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS (1983)
She is the goddess and this is her body!
Also behold the monomyth! Not of Joseph Campbell’s universal hero, but of the universal goddess (although all heroes are her heroes). Or rather – the Goddess, since she is ultimately all goddesses. Virgin, mother, crone – god the mother and mother of god.
Now we get into my top trinity of my top ten books of mythology. Interestingly, Barbara Walker has also written a number of classic references to knitting. Obviously our interest here consists of her books in neo-pagan feminism, of which this entry was first and foremost – as an encyclopedia reference to mythology and religion through the lens, or rather the dance, of the Goddess. Essentially, throughout all entries there is Walker’s monomyth of the archetypal Goddess throughout mythology and history – or rather prehistory (or perhaps herstory), as the Goddess was displaced, firstly into many goddesses, and secondly by male gods or God.
However, like neo-paganism or the goddess movement in general, Walker’s monomyth is not so much a matter of historical accuracy (as many of her historical sources and interpretations don’t hold up under scrutiny) as it is historical reconstruction – the goddess as sacred poetry rather than sacred history. Or as sacred dance – the ghost dance of the Goddess as it were.
Walker herself is an atheist, so she doesn’t believe in the Goddess as a supernatural entity but as a symbol – and one she proposes as healthier for our society.
As she quotes Eugene O’Neill in one of her entries:
“We should have imagined life as created in the birth-pain of God the Mother. Then we would understand why we, Her children, have inherited pain, for we would know that life’s rhythm beats from Her great heart, torn with the agony of love and birth, and we would feel that death meant reunion with Her, a passing back into Her substance, blood of Her blood again, peace of Her peace.” – Eugene O’Neill, “Strange Interlude”
Of course, Walker’s not just talking your New Age Goddess here, all sweetness and light or maiden and mother – baptized between her breasts. She’s also talking your Old Testament bitch-goddess, apocalyptic wh*re or classic White Goddess of Graves – crucified between her thighs.
But meh – that’s no different from my life anyway:
“Sometimes I am the sister who befriends you, sometimes I am the mother who holds you, and sometimes I am the lover who sticks one in your back.”
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS-TIER?)
Homer Simpson as Odysseus from “D’oh, Brother Where Art Thou?” in “Tales from the Public Domain” (episode 283 – S13 E14) – aptly enough given his namesake and still one of the best televised adaptations of the Odyssey
(2) HOMER – ILIAD & ODYSSEY
“Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles”.
Also “tell me, Muse, of the cunning man who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famed city of Troy”
We’re going old school here, the oldest school there is – the Iliad and the Odyssey, the rosy-fingered dawn of Western literature, preceding even literacy as those two epic poems were performed or sung rather than written by their author Homer, with tradition holding that he memorized both and probably changed the story each time he told them. (And no, not that Homer, although I couldn’t resist using him as my feature image). Although everything about Homer – or is that Homers? – is contested, such as whether he was indeed illiterate, or blind, or a man (I do have a soft spot for the theory that while a male Homer authored the Iliad, a female Homer authored the Odyssey), or Greek, or indeed even existed at all, at least as a single person.
“The Greeks held Homer in something like reverence” – as they and everyone else damn well should have or should – “viewing his works as the foundation of their society, in much the same way as modern Europeans view the Bible”. As do I and have since childhood, in which they (or at least the Odyssey) have been hugely influential for me personally, comparable to my god-tier mythologies or books of mythology, such if you were to peel back the layers of my psyche you’d find them deep within it. Of course, that wasn’t because anyone sung them to me – although again they damn well should have – or even that I read them in their original poetic form, but as a prose adaption of the Oydssey for children, which still remains the version of the Odyssey lodged within my psyche. Sadly, I can’t recall the name of its author, except that it was female – aptly enough for that female authorship theory for the Odyssey or both, and aptly enough in that I recall it brought the female characters, upon which its protagonist heavily relies, vividly to life.
Indeed, the Iliad is my Old Testament and the Odyssey is my New Testament. Aptly enough, given the Bronze Age battle hymns of Iliad and Old Testament, or the hero’s return from death in Odyssey and New Testament.
And while we’re on such comparisons, the Second World War is the American Iliad and the Cold War the American Odyssey.
However, I have always preferred the Odyssey to the Iliad. When people think of the Iliad, they usually think of all the things that aren’t actually in it – the whole mythos of the Trojan War in what is usually referred to as the Trojan Cycle. Instead, the Iliad is an incredibly brief snapshot of the Trojan War – a few weeks or so in the final year of a legendary ten year war. And of course most of that is the greatest Greek warrior Achilles sulking in his tent, because the Greek leader Agamemnon deprived him of the booty, in both senses of the word, of a Trojan girl taken captive. Until of course Achilles’ boyfriend Patroclus is killed by the greatest Trojan warrior Hector – at which time, it’s personal. Well until the Trojan king Priam begs Achilles if the latter could please stop dragging Hector’s dead body behind him while doing victory laps in his chariot.
Ultimately though, the Iliad is just men killing each other and squabbling over women. The Odyssey on the other hand is a ten year maritime magical mystery tour – or dare I say it, Poseidon adventure, as the Greek hero Odysseus just tries to return to his kingdom Ithaca after the Trojan War, barely escaping death as he is tossed from flotsam to jetsam in one shipwreck after another from Poseidon’s wrath. I mean, seriously, he could have walked home faster from Turkey to Greece, although Poseidon probably still would have got him somehow. And he loses all his ships and men en route, returning home as lone survivor – and stranger, as even then he has to remain disguised as a beggar to infiltrate his own household and outwit his wife’s persistent suitors partying it up there. And let me tell you, every dog has its day. Literally and heartbreakingly, as he is recognized by his faithful dog Argos who has awaited his return for twenty years (only to finally pass away with that last effort). But also figuratively and with undeniable satisfaction as he outwits and defeats the suitors.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)
The title page to the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible
(1) BIBLE
The Hebrew dreaming and the great messianic ghost dance.
The holy book of smiting and begetting.
Chosen people and only son.
This is the big one – genesis and apocalypse, alpha and omega, allelujah and amen!
Readers of my top tens will be familiar with me playfully classifying the highest tier (or god-tier) entries as my Old Testament or New Testament – a tribute to the influence of the Bible. I do that in a few ways with my Top 10 Mythology Books (or Top 10 Mythologies), but of course at a fundamental level the Bible is itself my Old Testament and New Testament.
Of course, the Bible is helped into top spot in that for many people it is not just mythology but religion, in contrast to classical mythology or other ‘pagan’ mythologies it largely replaced . The Bible is also the heart, still beating in many ways, of ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture that is one of the two predominant cultural influences in what is often termed as Western civilization, along with the ‘Greco-Roman’ culture that vies with it as the other predominant cultural influence – sometimes in alignment and sometimes as rivals. Athens versus Jerusalem and all that – filtered through Rome. It is as the source for religion rather than mythology that most people come to it, as I did, even if I have lapsed from any religious belief in it.
However, it is the book that doesn’t stop giving, even after you stop believing. That is because of its enduring mythic resonance or narratives and language that in its best passages has an enduring lyrical or poetic quality.
In other words, I read the Bible as mythology rather than religion or in short, as poetry rather than history. Don’t get me wrong – my own hot take, to antagonize both believers and skeptics, is that the Bible is of course a lot less historical than fundamentalist believers usually maintain, but has more history than skeptics usually credit. This is a view influenced by Manfred Barthel’s What The Bible Really Says, which among other things proposes more naturalistic explanations of apparently supernatural miracles – even such things as the burning bush, and not in terms of what Moses was smoking. And also don’t get me wrong as to its literary quality – the Bible is an anthology after all, and one of uneven quality. It may be described by believers as the word of God but he could have used an editor. Or for that matter, better writers of a more modern novelistic style even for its better narrative parts, which tend to resonate more when adapted into more modern style – or screenplays.
I mean seriously, the Bible is the original Game of Thrones – people are often surprised just how much sex and violence is in it (or just how much sheer pagan enjoyment it can provide). It is the book of smiting and begetting after all. And as opposed to Game of Thrones, it finishes with a bang rather than a whimper with a much more sensational, if much trippier, finale, at least in the New Testament and the Book of Apocalypse, my personal favorite book in the Bible.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)
MYTHOLOGY: TOP 10 BOOKS
(TIER LIST)
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS TIER)
(1) BIBLE
(2) HOMER – ILIAD & ODYSSEY
(3) BARBARA WALKER – ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS
If the Bible and Homer are my Old Testament of my books of mythology, then Barbara Walker’s Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets is my New Testament. And yes – I know that in a literal sense the Bible is both my Old Testament and New Testament, although in a figurative sense I also claim the Iliad as my Old Testament and the Odyssey as my New Testament. That’s just how mythology is, ok?
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(4) KATHERINE BRIGGS – DICTIONARY OF FAIRIES
(5) PETER DICKINSON – THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS
(6) PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS
(7) WESTON LA BARRE – THE GHOST DANCE
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(8) RONALD HUTTON – THE TRIUMPH OF THE MOON
(9) NATALIE HAYNES – DIVINE MIGHT: GODDESSES IN GREEK MYTH
X-TIER (WILD TIER – BEST MYTHOLOGY BOOK OF 2024)
(10) NATALIE LAWRENCE – ENCHANTED CREATURES: OUR MONSTERS & THEIR MEANINGS
