“Midas Has Donkey Ears,” Whistleblowers and Wikileaks
You’ve heard of King Midas of the “Golden Touch,” monarch of ancient Phrygia (See theoi.com’s Midas entry for classical Greek and Roman sources.) Probably you’ve heard Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version,...
View ArticleThe Meaning of Samhain/ Hallowe’en: Past and Future
I love both the old Celtic holiday of Samhain and the modern secular holiday of Hallowe’en, despite the over-commercialization of the latter. They are two different holidays. For me, they are both...
View ArticleThe Ritual of the Gift
A Time magazine article this week notes that traditional ink-and-paper paper books are seeing a surprising spike in sales this year, as they did last year, despite the meteoric rise in popularity of...
View ArticleScience May Explain Why Egyptians Worshiped Dung Beetle as Sun God
My mother sent me a link to a fascinating Scientific American article about zoologist Emily Baird’s research on dung beetles. Egyptologists give these poo-pushing champions the more dignified name of...
View ArticleSecret Service Code Names: The Power of Names in Politics
U.S. Secret Service code names have been used to refer to the president and VIPs since the Truman Administration. I find them fascinating, because they are a modern expression of a very old...
View ArticleAndroids, Electronic Sheep, Psychology and Mythology
Many science fiction authors have written about androids — robotic humans simulating human intelligence with powerful software — and as usual, science fiction (20th century mythology) is becoming...
View ArticleWhat Ancient Art Tells Us About Pinboards
What do "pin boards," social media websites designed around sharing pictures, have in common with Stone Age cave paintings and Egyptian funerary art?
View ArticleSand Stories of Kseniya Simonova
Mythos means “a thing told,” an utterance, a story. Mythology is the art of passing down culture, lessons, ideas through stories which pluck at our souls, our dreams, our emotions, not just our...
View ArticleThe Transit of Venus and of Ray Bradbury: June 5, 2012
It had been raining for seven years; thousand upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers...
View ArticleBrave: “The Bear and the Bow”: Bear Mythology
Having just watched the Disney / Pixar movie Brave, I'm pondering the vaguely Scottish-Irish-Celtic-European mythology and motifs buried in this film. There's a lot of bear + mother goddess symbolism...
View ArticleFlower Crowns: Ancient & Modern
The interwebs are an ever-changing culture, and the blooming trends of today will have withered by next week. Nevertheless, the recent fad of Photoshopping “flower crowns” on popular figures from TV,...
View ArticleHow an Ice Butterfly Taught Me Time
When I was about ten years old, my parents traveled from Pennsylvania to California. Naturally, they took me to Disneyland. I learned an important lesson that day. Not how to dress like a princess, or...
View ArticleIn the Steps of Finn MacCool (Giant’s Causeway)
This October I had a chance to mix two of my hobbies, geology and mythology, on the Giant’s Causeway in northern Ireland. Geologists tell us that the Giant’s Causeway is a beautiful example of...
View ArticlePoem: The Historian
History repeats itself, history unmakes itself. Seething masses struggle and swelter and starve. The boy flees floods, one mote among billions. But gradually, year by year, Turbulent skies grow gentle,...
View ArticleMadame Pele Gives and Takes Away
"We stayed until close to midnight, watching a bright orange lava flow as it slowly consumed stubborn trees that don't yield easily to fire. Walking back to the car, my mother tapped my shoulder and...
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