In this Chippewa-Ojibwa myth, a young boy goes off on the traditional vision quest to find his adult name and his mission in life. Uppermost in his mind is his desire to find a way to provide a constant food source for his people. He is visited by his Guardian Spirit, who challenges him to a series of wrestling matches. Though the boy loses the first three matches, his courage and determination so impress the Great Sky Spirit and his Guardian Spirit...
martes, 7 de junio de 2016
Prometheus and Pandora
In this Greek myth, the god Prometheus enrages Zeus by bringing the gift of fire to human beings. With this gift, humans are able to make tremendous changes that improve their lives, which is exactly what Zeus did not want to happen. To punish Prometheus, Zeus tries to tempt him into marrying Pandora, a human woman created for this purpose and sent to earth carrying a mysterious lidded jar. The ware Prometheus gets his brother Epimetheus to marry...
The Story of Oisin
In the Celtic myth, the king of the mystical land of Tir na N-og is told that he will lose his power if his daugther marries, for then his son-in-law would become king. To destroy her changes of finding a husband, the king changes the hapless girl's head into the head of a pig. Advised by a Druid that she will regain her beauty if she can get a human named Oisin to marry her, the princess goes to Eire (Ireland), finds Oisin, and so moves him with...
Thor & His Hammer
In this myth from Scandinavia, Thor the Thunder god loses his hammer through his own carelessness. Helpless to defend Asgard, the home of the gods, without his hammer, Thor must find a way to get it back from the Frost King who has stolen it. The Frost King says he will return the hammer only if the goddess Freyja consents to marry him. Because Freyja refuses such a marriage, Thos disguises himself as the goddess and goes with the trickster god Loki...
lunes, 6 de junio de 2016
Orion and the Sisters
Orion was a giant-sized hunter of prodigious strength. He was created by Zeus at the request of King Hyrieus of Boeotia, who had entertained Zeus most hansomely and who dearly wanted a son. Orion was such a passionate hunter that he offended even Artemis, the patroness of hunters, because he killed off all the wild animals of Crete. Orion then began to hunt young women, mainly the seven daughters of Atlas. Fleeing form the giant, the sisters prayed...
Chih-nii, the Heavenly Spinner
In this Chinese myth, Chih-nii, the daughter of a major deity, comes down to earth to bathe in a river. A simple cowherd, not knowing her identity, steals her robe and hides it, and -when the goddess comes to fetch it- convinces her to marry him. Unable to return to the heavens without her robe, Chihh-nii consents to the proposal. Years later, Chih-nii cajoles her husband into giving the robe back to her. She returns to the kingdom in the sky. Through...
The Dancing Children
This Onondaga myth tells of seven children who dismay their elders by dancing and frolicking all night on the shore of a lake where a group is camped for the winter. In spite of warnings from a mysterious wise man, the children continue their capers. Then, on one special night, the children ascen into the sky and become seven stars. In this form, they dance foreve...
Athena & Arachne
Among her many superhuman talents, the Greek doddess of wisdom, Athena, had some human ones, too, and one of them was weaving. In this myth, Athena challenges a skilled human weaver, Arachne, to a weaving contest. When Arachne's tapestry is judged to be the winner, Athena is enraged. In revenge, she turns Arachne into a new creatures, a spider, and condemns her to spin until the end of tim...
The Crane Wife
In this legend from Japan, a poor man rescues a creane from a fisher's net. Shortly thereafter, a beautiful woman appears at the man's doodr and convinces hiim to marry her. Whenever the man complans of his poverty, his wife relieves it by retiring to a small room and emerging many hours later with fabric so beautiful that her husband is able to sell it to the Emperor for a great price. Though the wife has made her husband promise not to intrude...
The Talking Bird
This Persina legend, a retelling of one in the Arabian Nights, tells of a gullible and foolish ruler, the Sultan Kohs'roo Shah, who is tricked by his jealous sisters into abandoningn his three infant children. The babies - two boys and a gril- are rescued and raised by a gatekeeper and his wife, who educate the children, give them every material advantage, and provide the love and guidance that enables them to grow up wise and brae; that is, having...
Plumed Serpent
In Aztec mythology, Quetzalcoatl, or the Plumed Serpent, and his people, the Toltec, brought civilization to Mexico. The story in this collection tells of how Plumed Serpent established peace in his kingdom through his own bening rule and through the simplicity, prayerfulness, and dedication to ceremony of his own daily life. Smoking Mirror, the god respresenting war, disorder, and bloodshed, is determined to establish his own rule in Tula, the...
Theseus and the Minotaur
There are many stories about Theseus, the mythic hero whom Greeks considered the ideal ruler because of his civilizing influence and insistence on "law and order". The myth here tells of his birth, of his journey to Athens to join his royal father, of how he slew monsters and established peace of the countryside, and finally of his encounter with the Minotaur on the Island of Crete.
The Minotaur, a creature half human and half bull, lived in...
Daughter of the Star
In this myth told by the Nilotic Alur in Africa, a heavenly princess whose kingdom in a model of order falls in love with and marries a mortal king. When the king's subject follow the princess's orders concerning the wedding feast, all goes smoothly. But when the princess returns to her sky kingdom to visit her parents, her husband's servants who accompany her disobey her instructions not to open a lidded jar. As a result, a swarm of locusts and...
Origin of Disease and Medicine
In this Cherokee legend, animals seek ways to fight back against the humans who kill them. Afflicting humans with disease seems to be the only retribution. It is only the deer who decide that a human hunter will be spared disease if he or she offers thanks to the animal he or she killed. The kindgom of Plants, friendly to humans, provides remedies for many diseases inflicted by other endangered animal...
How the Horse-Head Fiddle Came to Be
In this legend from Mongolia, a young boy, lovingly raises a white pony. The pony, fleet of foot, is taken by the Khan, who subsequently kills the animal when it rears and throws him. The spirit of the pony returns to Suho and suggests a way for them to be together always: Suho is to use the bones, tendons, and hair of the pony to make an instrument that will provide music. Suho does this, and the horse-head fiddle, accompanied by song, becomes...
The Origin of the Volcano
In this Hawaiian myth, Pele takes her younger sister Hi'iaku along with her as a companion as she seeks an island on which to build a home for their family. Because the family's spirits are made of fire, the home must be dug out of the earth where water cannot touch them and where the falmes can escape through a cone. During her search for such a locations, Pele meets and falls in love with a young man on the island of Kauai. Later, she sends Hi'iaku...
domingo, 5 de junio de 2016
Origin of the Seasons: Demeter and Persephone
In this Greek myth, Demeter, the beneficent goddess of the earth's crops and soil, throws the world into year-round cold and famine when her beloved daughter Persephone is stolen from her by Hades, the god of the Underworld. Though Demeter succeeds in rescuing her daughter, there is a hitch: each year Persephone must return to Hades for seven months of the year. It's only for the five months that Persephone is returned to her mother that the earth...
