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 that he is allowed to win the fourth match and ultimately gain his wish: from Guardian Spirit's body comes the first crop of corn.
Unravel Myths of Origin.
Discover the stories behind Greek, American, Mongolian and Hawaiian myths.
Read about Myths that Set Order in Society
These African, Greek, American and Persian myths will give you examples.
Learn about Myths about Transformationt
These myths will exemplify things or people that are transformed.
Explore Myths of Wisdom!
Will they make you wiser? More intelligent?
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 Pandora instead. Epimetheus removes the lid from the jar, and a hoard of miseries escape to plague Earth forever. Still yearning for revenge, Zeus then has Prmetheus chained to a mountaintop and sends an eagle to pluck at his body and eyer forever, or until prometheus repents and swears allegiance to Zeus. Proud and stubborn, Prometheus endures his agony for thousands of years. Finally. Zeus relents and sends Hercules to break the chains and free the captive.
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 her sad story that he consents to wed her. He goes to Tir Na N-og with the princess -now restored to her original beauty- and becomes ruler of the happy land where no one ever grows old. In time, Oisin yearns to see his homeland and his family again, even though his wife tells him that three hundred years have passed since he was there. Oising, warned to never let his foot touch the earth, travels back to Eire on his wife's white horse. Leaning from the saddle to see his father's gravestone, Oising slips from the srirrups and falls to the ground. Immediately, he becomes an aged and feeble old man and can never return to Tir Na N-og.
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 to present himself as the bride. The Frost King is taken in by the ruse and gives the hammer to his "bride". Thor then throws off his disguise, slays some of the Frost Giants, and returns with his hammer to Asgard.
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 to Zeus for help. IN response, Zeus turned them into doves; when they reached the sky, the doves became the star cluster called the Pleiades. Then Zeus, to keep Orios out of further mischief, also chaged him, alng with his dog Sirious, into a constellation.
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 good offices of a genie-ox, the cowherd rises into the sky and is reunited with his wife in the eastern sky. Her father appints the cowherd to the guardianship of a star in the wet. Each year the couple is reunited for a brief time by traveling a bridge over the Milky Way.
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 forever.
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 time.
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 on her while she is spinning, the man's curiosity eventually leads him to open the door to the spinning room. There she sees the wite crane wif flies awaya and never returns.
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 all the qualities a good rules should have but which their royal father lacks.
The foster parents die, and young Princess Palizade and her brothers Bahman and Perviz are still unaware of their noble birth. A mysterious old woman tells them a Talking Bird, a Singing Tree, and Golden Water. Determined to acquiere these magical things, first Bahman and then Perviz sett off to find them. Both young men are turned to stone when they forget to heed a dervish's warning about the dangers they will meet in their quest. Palizade, however, is successful: she brings her brothers back to life and three carry the bird, the tree, and a flagon of the Golden Water back to their home. The Shah, journeying through the land, stops for a meal there. The Talking Bird tells him who the exemplary young people really are. The Shah repents of this past foolishness and names his children his rightul heirs.
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 majestic capital. He accomplishes thsi by showing Plumed Serpent his own image in a mirror. Aghast at how he has aged, Plumed Serpent begins to mourn his lost youth and forget his responsibilities to his people. To completely undermine Plumled Serpent, Smoking Mirror tempts him into a night of drunken reverly.
In the morning, saddened at what he has done, Plumed Serpent has his place set afire and leaves his kingdom forever, so that it becomes the domain of the bloodthirsty Smoking Mirror.
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 a labyrinth beneath the palace of King Minos, who demanded that Athenians send fourteen young men and women each year to satisfy the Minotaur's appetite. Theseus sails to Crete as one of the year's supposed victims. Ariadne, Mino's daughter, gives him a ball of twine, which he unwinds as the gropes through the dark labyrinth. He finds and slays the Minotaur, follows the twine back to the gateway, frees the other young Athenians, and salis home with them Ariadne.
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 other insects is released and attacks the servants. Unlike the similar story of Pandora, in this tale the pestilent insects are put back into the jar, and the servants thus learn to obey their rulers' instructions.
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 animals.
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 an integral part of the Mongolian culture.
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 back to fetch him. The errand is delayed by dangerous adventures. Angry and jealous, Pele throws the young man into the vulcona. Hi'iaku rescues him. According to the myth, Pele and her family inhati volcanoes to this day.
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 becomes warm and fruitful again.
