Netherlandish Proverbs – painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder 1559

(4) FOLKLORE INDEX

Well, Folklore Indices to be precise – two of them, usually used in tandem, the Thompson Motif-Index of Folklore, and the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index of folklore tale types.

Both are regarded as standard tools of folklore studies – and are endlessly fascinating to browse even for those outside folklore studies with a general interest in mythology or culture.

As its title indicates, the Thompson Motif-Index was compiled by American folklorist Stith Thompson (at the substantial length of 6 volumes) as a catalogue or index of motifs – the granular elements of folklore or folktales.

As Thompson himself defined it, “a motif is the smallest element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition. In order to have this power it must have something unusual and striking about it”.

Although in compiling the index, Thompson used a broader-brush approach to motifs as anything that goes to make up a traditional narrative.

Obviously a full summary even of the categories of the Thompson Index would be too exhaustive, let alone the thousands of motifs themselves, but the categories are organized by broader themes denoted by letters from A (Mythological Motifs) to Z (Miscellaneous Groups of Motifs).

This includes animals, taboos, magic, the dead (including ghosts and vampires), marvels, ogres (and monstrous figures in general), tests, deceptions, reversals of fortune, ordaining the future, chance and fate, society, rewards and punishment, captives and fugitives, unnatural cruelty, sex, the nature of life, religion, traits of character and humor.

And as its title indicates, the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU or AT Index) also involved Thompson – but as originally compiled by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne and as further expanded and revised by German folklorist Hans-Jorg Uther, classifying tales by their type.

As defined by Thompson, “a type is a traditional tale that has an independent existence. It may be told as a complete narrative and does not depend for its meaning on any other tale. It may indeed happen to be told with another tale, but the fact that it may be told alone attests its independence. It may consist of only one motif or of many”.

The Index divides tales into sections with an AT number for each entry, which also have their own broad title and including closely related folk tales – for example, 545B “The Cat as Helper” includes folk tales with other animal helpers. Similar types are grouped together – “tale types 400–424 all feature brides or wives as the primary protagonist”.

To illustrate further, 510A is their Cinderella entry (including other versions and similar variations), itself a subcategory of 510 Persecuted Heroine, and noting other entries with which it is commonly combined.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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That’s one trippy cover – from a 2023 reprint edition by Martino Fine Books

(3) PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA

Or how I found Goddess and what I did to Her when I Found Her.

No really, that’s the subtitle of the book. The Goddess in question is the playful goddess of chaos in classical mythology, Eris or Discordia, but as the object of the Discordian “religion”, which is either a joke disguised as a religion or a religion disguised as a joke.

The Principia Discordia is the central Discordian “religious” text – and much briefer than other such texts. Written by the pseudonymous Malaclypse the Younger and Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, it is full of contradictions and humor:

“Is Eris true?”
“Everything is true.”
“Even false things?”
“Even false things are true.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know man, I didn’t do it.”

At the same time, as noted in its Wikipedia entry, it contains several passages which propose that there is serious intent behind the work, for example a message scrawled on page 00075: “If you think the PRINCIPIA is just a ha-ha, then go read it again.” Also, it is is quoted extensively in and shares many themes with the satirical science fiction book The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, one of my top ten SF books.

“Notable symbols in the book include the Apple of Discord, the pentagon, and the “Sacred Chao”, which resembles the Taijitu of Taoism, but the two principles depicted are “Hodge” and “Podge” rather than yin and yang, and they are represented by the apple and the pentagon, and not by dots. Saints identified include Emperor Norton, Yossarian, Don Quixote, and Bokonon. The Principia also introduces the mysterious word “fnord”, later popularized in The Illuminatus! Trilogy”.

“I can see the fnords!”

I particularly enjoy how it deems every single man, woman and child on Earth as “a genuine and authorized pope of Discordia” – even including an official pope card that may be reproduced and distributed to anyone and everyone. Or that it has five classes of saint as exemplars and models of perfection – with the lowest class of saint being for real people, deceased or otherwise, as the higher classes of saint are reserved for fictional beings, who by virtue of being fictional, are better able to reach the Discordian view of perfection. The canonization of Discordian saints was a profound influence upon myself to canonize my own saints of pagan Catholicism – and apostles of the Goddess.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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0 The Fool – Rider-Waite Tarot (A.E.Waite & Pamela Colman Smith as artist)

(2) TAROT – RIDER-WAITE & CROWLEY THOTH

The Tarot earns special mention in my Top 10 Mythology Books for the decks of cards, particularly the two iconic and definitive modern decks.

Of course, there are a plethora of modern Tarot decks, most of which originate from those two definitive modern decks (named for their creators) which were themselves substantial reconstructions from earlier tarot decks, pumping up their esoteric mystique – the Rider-Waite deck and the Crowley-Thoth deck, my Old Testament and New Testament of Tarot respectively. (And like Martin Prince in The Simpsons dismissively handwaving away Ray Bradbury from his ABC of science fiction with “I’m aware of his work”, I’m aware of the third most common modern Tarot deck – the Marseilles Tarot).

Interestingly, both these two definitive decks were by female artists, Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite deck and Lady Frieda Harris. My personal preference is for the artwork and themes of the Crowley-Thoth deck (even if Crowley himself was one generally weird dude and sick puppy), albeit still shaped by the influence of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Homer Simpson as Odysseus from “D’oh, Brother Where Art Thou?” in “Tales from the Public Domain” (episode 283 – S13 E14) – aptly enough and still one of the best televised adaptations of the Odyssey

(1) 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*****
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Free “divine gallery” art sample from OldWorldGods

I live in a mythic world – and I have special mentions!

That’s right – I don’t just have a top ten mythology books, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions for each top ten, where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty if you want to look at it that way.

My special mentions are also where I can have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

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*****
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Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

(2) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY (1867)

I believe in all the gods –
especially the goddesses.

Now we get into the second of my three B’s, the top trinity of my top ten books of mythology. And we’re going old school for this one, as in nineteenth century old school – named for its American author Thomas Bulfinch and published as a collection of three volumes after his death in 1867. Yet Bulfinch’s Mythology still remains a classic reference (and handily in the public domain) – as indeed it was for me as my introduction as a child to the world of classical mythology. Well, technically that was the first volume – the Age of Fable – which also featured a briefer recitation of Nordic mythology, admittedly a close second to my love for classical mythology. (The second volume – The Age of Chivalry – featured Arthurian legend, while the third volume The Legends of Charlemagne is pretty much what it says on the tin).

Looking back to it now, it’s somewhat dated and has its flaws as a reference – particularly as his obituary noted, it was “expurgated of all that would be offensive”. Or in other words, half the fun of classical mythology or all the sex and violence. (Indeed, his Wikipedia entry includes an uncited reference that Bulfinch was an anti-homosexuality activist in his final years. If true, that would have made for some awkwardness when compiling classical mythology – those gods tended to swing all ways). Which is somewhat disappointing, because having learnt that Bulfinch was a merchant banker, I fondly imagined him as staid banker by day and Bacchanalian by night, similar to the hedonistic heathen imagined by Chesterton in The Song of the Strange Ascetic.

However, it remains one of the most accessible single-volume references to classical mythology for the general reader – as Bulfinch wrote in his preface:

“Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”

Anyway, its impact as an introduction to classical mythology remains profound – if, deep within my psyche, there is any mythology that tempts me to actual religion, it’s classical mythology.

Yes – it’s the nymphs.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(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 – the three B’s as I like to call them, although admittedly I have to force that a little for this entry from the first letter of the author’s first name. 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*****
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(4) KATHARINE BRIGGS –
A DICTIONARY OF FAIRIES (1976)

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****
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1st edition, Pierrot Publishing, 1979

(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****
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