Statue of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, photographed by Richard Croft and published as image in Wikipedia “Robin Hood” licensed for use under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

(10) ROBIN HOOD

“The legendary outlaw archer Robin Hood is an incredibly famous character of medieval folklore, so much so that he has been adapted into countless different media” – and so incredibly famous that for English historical legend he is perhaps exceeded by only one other figure, King Arthur.

“Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw from England. The character was first alluded to in William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman written in the year 1377, although the reference in this poem indicates Robin Hood existed much earlier than that in oral tradition.”

I’d say he needs little introduction, except elements of his legend originally varied from his subsequent adaptations. He is traditionally associated with Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire – hence the Sheriff of Nottingham as his antagonist – but an early ballad places him in Yorkshire, while later ones place him even further away in Scotland and London. “He is identified as a yeoman — a non-noble, free, small landholder — in his original incarnations. The Elizabethans would attribute a title of nobility to Robin as Earl of Huntingdon; several modern incarnations make him a knight (or at least a soldier) and treat The Crusades as some sort of medieval Vietnam.”

More religious elements, such as his devotion to the Virgin Mary, have been replaced by his iconic charity to the poor.

He is the archetypal archer hero – an archetype that has proved surprisingly enduring in the modern age of firearms or squires – combined with “association with nature” and “rebellious personality”.

“The possible inspirations for the myth are equally varied and unclear. While there is limited evidence that he may have been a historical figure, or at least named after one, the modern consensus is that he is a distillation of multiple figures — historical and mythical — from the early 2nd millennium.”

Although there are also theories identifying him as a “a remnant of pre-Christian pagan belief in some form of nature spirit” such as “Robin Wood”, the “Spirit of the Forest”. I’ve read one such version which also conflated him with the folklore figure Robin Goodfellow.

Robin Hood is accompanied by a cast of other characters in legend, perhaps most famously Maid Marian, and his Merry Men – including Little John, Will Scarlett, and Friar Tuck.

RATING:

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I will never tire of this promotional still featuring Grendel’s hot mother with heels from the 2007 Beowulf film. Or in other words – phwoah!

(9) BEOWULF

“I…AM…BEOWULF!”

The most enduring mythic character – along with antagonists Grendel and Grendel’s mother (with the subsequent dragon tending to be overlooked for that more intriguing mother and son duo) – from “the oldest surviving work of fiction in the English language, written sometime between 700 and 1000 AD”.

Indeed it’s so old – how old is it? Older than yo momma (but not Grendel’s momma) – “that the language it’s written in is barely recognizable as English” and it is more correctly described as Old English.

Like the Iliad and Odyssey earlier in these special mentions, it is an epic poem, but in Beowulf’s case it is “in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend”. The story, set in pagan Scandinavia, is reasonably well known, at least in outline, and is in an effective three-part structure that perhaps has added to its enduring appeal.

Beowulf, a “hero of the Geats” (in southern Sweden), “comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes” (once again gloomy Denmark pops up in classic literature), “whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years”. In the first part, Beowulf faces off with Grendel, tearing off his arm and slaying him. In the second, Beowulf faces off against Grendel’s monstrous mother out for vengeance and slays her too. Yass hero, slay! Although he slays her in a very different sense in the 2007 film adaptation – not surprisingly given she appears as a golden form of her voice actress Angelina Jolie, complete with high heels! In the third, Beowulf, now a king in his elderly years, faces off and defeats a dragon, but “is mortally wounded in the battle”.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote on the difficulty of translating Beowulf in an essay (“On translating Beowulf”). On the subject of J.R.R. Tolkien, here’s a shoutout to him as an enduring influence on adapting or interpreting Beowulf through his study of the epic poem, in lectures or his essay, as well as Beowulf as an enduring influence on Tolkien (“Beowulf is among my most valued sources”) – and through him on modern literary fantasy.

You might know Beowulf’s influence on Tolkien and modern literary fantasy through a little book Tolkien wrote called The Lord of the Rings. Although personally I tend to see more of the direct overlap through The Hobbit – with Bilbo as Beowulf, Gollum as Grendel, and Smaug as, well, the dragon. Sadly, no Grendel’s mother though.

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Prometheus Brings Fire – painting by Heinrich Fueger

(8) PROMETHEUS

The Rock – the People’s Champion!

No, seriously. Prometheus was the people’s champion – the champion of humanity – in classical mythology. The Rock comes later…

Unlike the Olympian gods or other gods in general (and Prometheus was a Titan which might account for some of the difference), he was consistently in humanity’s corner. In some versions of the myth, he created us (from clay) – which would also account for why he looked out for us.

The primary myth is that he stole fire from the Olympian gods to give to us and hence gave us the means for civilization. In some versions, he added to that by teaching us the actual arts and sciences of civilization as well. As part of his character as benefactor to humanity, he was the classic guile hero or even benevolent trickster, relying on intelligence – with his very name usually argued to mean forethought.

Some versions of his myth have him playing another trick on the gods which compounded his theft of fire from heaven – swindling their sacrifices. That is, he instructed humanity when the gods were choosing their portion of animal sacrifice to disguise the bones under a glistening layer of fat. The gods chose that portion, so that humans were able to retain the meat from animal sacrifices.

Unfortunately, you can only play so many tricks on the gods – only the one as a general rule, two if you were lucky or on a winning streak – before they came down on you with their wrath. The house always wins – and in classical mythology, Olympus was the house.

And so Prometheus literally was bound to a rock as people’s champion – perhaps not so bad of itself, but the eagle eating his liver daily was the true torment, the liver of course regenerating overnight to be eaten again the next day. I told you the Rock comes later. However, Zeus just couldn’t stay mad at Prometheus forever and allowed him to be freed by Heracles. Some versions of his myth attributed that to Prometheus finally confessing the secret of Zeus’ downfall but there was not too much attention given to what Prometheus did after he was unbound.

“In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving (particularly the quest for scientific knowledge) and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences.”

Hence, Prometheus has lent his name to common usage as the adjective Promethean, meaning “daringly creative” or innovative but also often rebellious and defiant of authority (or even “suffering grandly”).

“In particular, he was regarded in the Romantic era as embodying the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy” – as with the lesser known subtitle Mary Shelley gave her novel Frankenstein, “The Modern Prometheus”.

“The myth of Prometheus has been a favourite theme of Western art and literature”, particularly “in the post-Renaissance and post-Enlightenment tradition” – including popular culture, notably as the title of the Alien film prequel-sequel (presequel?).

RATING:

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The standard design of Gilgamesh in the Smite video game from the wiki

(7) GILGAMESH

Epic!

No, seriously – the first epic hero, Mesopotamian mythic hero and titular protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The first surviving version of that epic apparently dates back to the 18th century BC, in turn originating from Sumerian poems which may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur in 21st century BC.

“He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified”. That’s certainly how he was presented by my favorite adaptation of him by Robert Silverberg, who had him as the protagonist of posthumous fantasy in Silverberg’s novel To the Land of the Living. Silverberg obviously had an enduring interest in Gilgamesh, featuring him in a more straightforward adaptation Gilgamesh the King. Indeed, Gilgamesh has been surprisingly enduring and prolific in adaptation in art and popular culture, not just by Silverberg.

Gilgamesh is perhaps most famous for his epic quest for immortality – in which he failed, ironically perhaps for its fame but not surprisingly given how much any such quest is defying the odds. The house of mortality always wins.

Gilgamesh and his epic are even more impactful from their influence on both Biblical and classical mythology, particularly the latter as an influence on the Iliad and the Odyssey.

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“Archangel Michael defeats Satan” painting by Guido Reni at some time between 1630 and 1635

(6) ANGELS & SAINTS

Well, you simply can’t feature a list of mythological heroes without featuring angels and saints, even if they aren’t always straightforward as heroes.

That’s particularly the case for angels – even in the Biblical text, they can be as ineffable as the God for whom they serve as supernatural intermediaries or messengers. All too often they are agents of His wrath. Not to mention they are literally looking like some sort of eldritch abomination:

“Six wings, four faces, a wheel of fire with eyes lining the rim — you name it. Benevolent or not, these angels were the stuff of nightmares. They didn’t traditionally introduce themselves with “Fear not!” for nothing. Those that were winged tended to stay in heaven or looked… different”.

Of course, angels were also depicted as appearing human, defaulting to the modern archetype of winged (and haloed) humans. Careful with those wings, though – bird wings good, bat wings bad. It’s interesting how the wings of fallen angels seem to transform from good bird wings to evil bat wings – insect wings tend to be reserved for fairies. (Some works also transform angelic halos to something more sinister when they fall).

Also interestingly – and somewhat surprisingly – there are only a few named angels, most notably Michael and Gabriel, demonstrating the usual -el suffix for angel names although there are exceptions.

Michael is the archetypal heroic angel – or is that angelic hero? – famously as the warrior of God and leader of Heaven’s host of angels against Satan, in which role he doubles up as dragonslayer, albeit he casts down rather than slays Satan in the latter’s form as dragon.

Michael also demonstrates some other angelic features. Firstly, that angels have been depicted as a hierarchy of different ranks or types – Michael himself is an archangel. Secondly, Michael has been canonized as a saint as well as an angel – Saint Michael – such that he offers a nice segue into featuring saints as heroes.

Saints of course are almost always depicted as human, at least originally, with a few exceptions of angels characterized as saints or the singular case of Mary, rendered semi-divine through her own immaculate conception. However, saints transcend their humanity to partake of divine or semi-divine nature – becoming saints – by the power of their faith or grace, “having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God”.

As such, they are heroic by nature, albeit usually of a gentler or more pacific nature than other mythic heroes – very often, the only violence is of a self-sacrificial nature, as martyrs. However, there are warrior saints – even at least one dragonslayer saint in the form of Saint George, the archetypal heroic saint.

Really, angels and saints could well be the subject of their own top ten list – indeed, many such top ten lists, including their various elements, tropes, and types, not least angelic hierarchies and patron saints. They came very close to having their own entry in the special mentions for my Top 10 Mythologies, except that they primarily appear in Biblical mythology and associated religions – although there are analogies and counterparts in other mythic or religious traditions such as Buddhism.

RATING:

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Collage of a masque monkey photographed by Shantanu Kuveskar as feature image for Wikipedia “Monkey” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en and coyote photographed by Yahtin S Krishnappa as feature image for Wikipedia “Coyote” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(5) TRICKSTER – MONKEY & COYOTE

“Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah

Some call me the gangster of love…

‘Cause I’m a picker, I’m a grinner

I’m a lover and I’m a sinner

I play my music in the sun

I’m a joker, I’m a smoker

I’m a midnight toker

I sure don’t want to hurt no one”

I don’t know – the lyrics of the Steve Miller Band’s The Joker just seemed apposite to trickster heroes (or Dionysian heroes for that matter, although there’s a large overlap between the two), just as the lyrics to Queen’s theme for Flash seem apposite to more conventional savior heroes (or Apollonian ones).

Tricksters need little introduction as archetypal characters, except to note there’s enough of them for their own top ten – or at least two top ten lists, one for trickster heroes and one for trickster villains, as it is the nature of tricksters to break rules and cross boundaries, including between heroism and villainy, even if they tend to prefer mischief to outright evil. If a villain uses deception and manipulation as well as brute force, they tend to have something of a trickster nature to them – including arguably my top mythic villain, Satan. I’ve already featured heroes and villains in my Top 10 Heroes & Villains of Mythology that could be characterized as tricksters – most demonstrably two that are counterparts to each other, Odin and Loki in Norse mythology.

“And the nature of Monkey was…irrepressible!”

Tricksters can be “god, goddess, spirit, human” or anthropomorphic animal spirits. Indeed, the last tend to be the best tricksters or at least my favorites, hence the two I’ve included as representative for this entry – Su Wukong, the Monkey King of the Chinese Buddhist legendary tract Journey to the West, and Coyote, the leading trickster of Native American mythology (albeit the Raven figure comes close as it plays the same role in other cultures).

“As one of the most enduring Chinese literary characters, Wukong has a varied and highly debated background and colorful cultural history. His inspiration might have come from an amalgam of influences, generally relating to religious concepts.”

Apparently, sources or influences for Su Wukong include Taoism and legends about monkeys or gibbons from the Chu kingdom of China onwards, but it’s hard not to suspect some influence from the Hindu god Hanuman.

“The Coyote mythos is one of the most popular among western Native American cultures, especially among indigenous peoples of California and the Great Basin”.

Personally, I like to trace a line of descent from the Coyote figure in native American mythology to Wile. E. Coyote in Looney Tunes cartoons – heck, he’s even in the same geographic area. (I also do another bit tracing his line of descent from Sisyphus as hero of existential philosophy). Of course, poor Wile E. Coyote is out-tricked by the Roadrunner (perhaps reflecting the same avian trickster spirit as Raven) or is just too tricky for his own good.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Clipped cover of Jesus & Buddha: The Parallel Sayings by Marcus Borg and published by Ulysses Press in 2004 – an interesting book and also apt illustration for this special mention entry

(4) SAVIOR – JESUS & BUDDHA

By definition, mythic heroes tend to be saviors on a mythic scale, even on the scale of saving the world.

Jesus and Buddha are the definitive world saviors – indeed, so much so that one might wonder why I don’t rank them higher than this special mention entry.

Well, firstly and most fundamentally, Jesus and Buddha are world saviors as the foundational figures of the world religions named for them (or technically, Jesus’s title as Christ). Other heroes of mythology, notably those of classical mythology, may have had their cults, but the hero cults of Jesus and Buddha – if one calls them that, as at least one historian did when observing Christianity to be a Greek hero cult devoted to a Jewish messiah – persist in contemporary religious belief. Accordingly, as heroic figures they are regarded with reverence that requires them to be ranked separately, even uniquely – hence this special mention. Indeed, even ranking them together or among the heroes of mythology might be regarded as controversial to that reverence.

There’s another reason I rank them as special mention. Jesus and Buddha are similarly unique as heroes in that they are not saviors by the use of violence, even that violence used against the forces of evil or chaos that is characteristic of other heroes. Instead, they defeat those forces and save the world by other means, spiritual rather than physical – Jesus by belief or faith, and Buddha by enlightenment.

Indeed, it’s a plot point in Buddha’s legendary biography that he renounces his princely status – and the prophecy of more conventional heroic conquest, eschewing conquering the world for saving it. He effectively renounces it again when tempted in his fabled meditation under the Bo Tree by the forces of evil represented by the demon lord Mara. Jesus similarly renounces such things as all the kingdoms of the world when offered to him instead of his path to salvation, in his even more famous trial of temptation. Jesus also famously inverts the model of heroic conquest even more so than Buddha, saving the world not by conventional victory or violence but by self-sacrifice – the ultimate gambit of winning by losing, as it were.

Otherwise, they are so well known as religious figures, even outside their respective religions – albeit more so for Jesus due to the more pervasive extent and influence of his religion – that it would be redundant to recite further details, other than to observe that each could be the subject of their own top ten, indeed of many such lists.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Collage of The Fool (left) and The Hanged Man (right) from the most iconic modern Tarot deck, the Rider-Waite Tarot deck designed by A.E. Waite and Illustrated by Pamela Colman-Smith (first published by William Rider & Son in 1909, hence the name) – public domain image

(3) TAROT – FOOL & HANGED MAN

The Tarot may have its mystique and even its mythos, but does it have heroes?

O yes – hence this special mention, drawn from the archetypal characters of individual cards, particularly those of the more iconic Major Arcana or “trumps” of the Tarot. Indeed, there are enough ‘heroic’ cards of the Tarot for their own top ten and a few special mentions beyond that.

However, as the title of this special mention entry indicates, two cards stand out above all others as heroes of the Tarot – the Fool and the Hanged Man.

At first glance, both might seem unusual choices. There are cards that might seem more conventional heroic figures by the metric of power – the Magician, the Emperor, the Hierophant, the Chariot, and the Sun.

However, it is the Fool that is the true hero of the Tarot. In its modern form, the Major Arcana has its own mythic narrative, essentially a version of the archetypal hero’s journey, with the Fool – traditionally numbered zero or just unnumbered – as its hero, similar to the figure of the holy fool. The Fool sets out on his quest, innocence in search of experience, poised to fall or fly. The rest of the Major Arcana depicts the figures he encounters, as well as ultimately his descent into and triumphant return from the underworld.

Coming in close second place is the Hanged Man, a self-sacrificial mystical inversion of the Fool, that the Fool either encounters or – in my preferred reading – becomes, in his descent into the underworld. Indeed, the image of the Hanged Man is parallel to that of the Fool. Where the Fool innocently and seemingly inadvertently is poised to step off a precipice while gazing (or perhaps dreaming) skywards, the Hanged Man is more deliberately poised to descend into the Underworld, hanging by his foot in seemingly mystical pose with head downwards.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Collage of public domain images – “Sweet, piercing sweet was the music of Pan’s pipe” in captioned illustration of Pan by Walter Crane (Wikipedia “Pan”) on left and trace of an image of Abraxas stone or gem “The Gnostics and their remains” by Charles W. King, 1887 (Wikipedia banner image for gnosticism) on right

(2) PAN & ABRAXAS

Io Pan! Io Pan Pan!

Iao Abraxas!

Pan, the original horny god with the groin of a goat or as Bill Hicks styled him, randy Pan the Goat Boy. God of nature, mountains, shepherds and s€xuality – also the source of our word panic, for the divine mad fear he could inspire in people, including as savior of Athens, the invading Persian army at Marathon.

As a Capricorn goat boy myself, I’ve long been a Pan fan. Ironically, the only classical Greek god reported as dead – in a historical legend by Plutarch, with a sailor during the reign of Tiberius reporting a divine proclamation from an island that “the great god Pan is dead” – but reports of his death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, were greatly exaggerated. Pan was the one god that endured more than all the others, even to the extent of embodying in horned and hooved form all classical paganism as a whole in modern romanticism and neo-paganism. Perhaps aptly enough, given the pun on Pan – as the word for “all” in Greek also being Pan.

One might call it Pan’s odyssey – from mythic Pan through medieval and early modern Pan to his romantic rebirth, Edwardian height of popularity, and ultimately contemporary Pan. There’s just too much Pan – or is that too many Pans? – out there.

Sadly, one of my favorite historical legends of how Christianity embodied Pan as its devil – may be just that, a legend dating back only to the nineteenth century (following the hypothesis of Ronald Hutton to that effect).

I still prefer the legend. In one of my story ideas, a somewhat lost and forlorn Satan muses to the protagonist (with whom he has occasional chats) of his origin from Pan (as one of his multiple-choice origin stories). The protagonist calls him out on his conflicting origin stories, to which Satan replies “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am legion, I contain multitudes”. But then he becomes sadly wistful “I would give anything just to dance in the moonlight again, when I was not evil but only wild and free”.

Another of my mythic idiosyncrasies is that I tend see a matching figure to Pan in Abraxas, even if the latter has nowhere near the classical pagan firepower as Pan in popular culture.

One reason is something of a physical resemblance in their half-animal half-human form. Where Pan is essentially a satyr as goat from waist down and with goat horns on his head, Abraxas is similarly animal from waist down and from neck up, only more so. For the former, Abraxas has much the same animal proportions of Pan – only more eerie or eldritch as instead of the lower half of goat, as Abraxas had a serpent (or serpentine tail) for each leg, anguiped rather than satyr. For the latter, Abraxas goes hard into animal head territory – instead of dainty goat horns on a human head, Abraxas has an actual animal head, with the head of a rooster. Serpentine legs and head of a rooster – if there’s a divine figure as more overt phallic symbol, then I don’t know what it is, particularly if you use the alternative word for rooster.

As to what sort of divine figure Abraxas is, well, that’s not entirely clear – Gnostic aeon or archon, classical or Egyptian god, or magical figure?

There’s even more direct parallels with Pan in the inscriptions and images on the prolific engraved ‘Abraxas stones’ that have been located in archaeology. There’s the salutation of Iao for Abraxas, echoing that of Io for Pan – and according to Egyptologist E. Wallis Budge, Abraxas was a Pantheus or Pantheos, that is, All-God.

I particularly have a soft spot for Abraxas from two sources for my personal mythos. One is the 1970 Santana album of that name, featuring its psychedelic cover art with the gloriously naked and voluptuous black magic woman as its centerpiece. The other is Piers Anthony’s Tarot trilogy, in which Abraxas is an unlikely candidate as the one true god, boosted by his golden priestess and devotee Amaranth, one of the s€xiest fantasy or SF female characters I have read. Iao Abraxas, indeed!

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Collage of statues – the head of the Apollo Belvedere statue in the Vatican photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen (left) and in wall protome of Dionysus in Kinsky Palace photographed by Zde (right) in Wikipedia “Apollonian and Dionsyian” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en and https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en respectively

(1) APOLLO & DIONYSUS

Nietzsche famously propounded a literary or philosophical dichotomy or duality (or duo, if you prefer) between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The classical Greeks themselves did not see Apollo and Dionysus as opposing figures but would probably applaud Nietzsche anyway, with all the reboots and retcons they gave the classical mythology.

The golden god of the sun, Apollo was the archetypal divine hero of classical mythology – the original Olympian Superman. His divine attributes or powers were extremely varied – the sun and light obviously but also archery (the symbolic equivalent of the sun’s rays), prophecy and truth (he was patron of the Delphic oracle), music and poetry, healing and more. In popular religion, he had a strong function as protector from evil – in short, he stood for truth, justice and the Grecian way. For Nietzsche, the Apollonian stood for the forces of reason and logic, control and clarity, structure and order, art and science – in short, the ideal of perfection

On the other hand, Dionysus was a foreign newcomer to Olympian pantheon and the god most associated with mortality – the son of a mortal mother (by Zeus) and a god who died to be reborn. He was also a darker figure as the god of intoxication in all its forms – ecstasy, fear and madness. What’s more, Dionysus was the god of the mysteries and theatre. For Nietzsche, the Dionysian stood for the forces of passion and emotion, chaos and mysticism, music and intoxication – in short, the ideal of a good night out…

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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