English Mythology

"The Other Crowd", "The Good People", "The Wee Folk", and "Them" are a few of the names given to the fairies by the people of Ireland. Honored for their gifts and feared for their wrath, the fairies remind us to respect the world we live in and the forces we cannot see. In these tales of fairy forts, fairy trees, ancient histories, and modern true-life encounters with the Other Crowd, Eddie Lenihan opens our eyes to this invisible world with the passion and bluntness of a seanchai, a true Irish storyteller.

In the US and Canada, spiritualism's primary focus was on communication between the living and the dead. The spiritual tradition traveled around the world, especially in Latin America, where it evolved in different ways. The Puerto Rican influence on modern Western magic is profound but largely unheralded. Beginning in the early 20th century, Puerto Rican immigrants to the US introduced espiritismo to the US spiritual landscape, strongly affecting the way magic was practiced. Hector Salva's book places Puerto Rican espiritismo in this broader perspective.

Lythlet and her only friend Desil are shackled to a life of debt and poverty that she fears they will never escape. Desperate for money, they sign up as conquessors: arena combatants who fight sun-cursed beasts in the seedy underworld of the city. Match-master Dothilos is initially enamored of Desil’s brawling reputation, but after seeing Lythlet lead the pair to triumph with her quick cunning, he takes her under his wing, scorning Desil. Ambition takes root in Lythlet’s heart as a life of fame and wealth unfolds in her imagination.

Odin as Ancient Serpent: The Coiling Wisdom of the Hanged God Odin is more than a god—he is a serpent, coiling through the Nine Worlds, shedding skins of illusion, whispering secrets in the language of runes. He is the Hanged One, sacrificing himself upon Yggdrasil not for power, but for wisdom—the wisdom of the Serpent that devours and renews, binds and frees, poisons and heals. This book unveils a side of Odin that has long remained in the shadows—not as the Allfather of war and sovereignty, but as the ever-winding force of transformation, trickery, and initiation. Like the Serpent ...

Ganga, joyful goddess of the river, serves as caretaker to the mischievous godlings who roam her banks. But when their antics incur the wrath of a powerful sage, Ganga is cursed to become mortal, bound to her human form until she fulfills the obligations of the curse. Though she knows nothing of mortal life, Ganga weds King Shantanu and becomes a queen, determined to regain her freedom no matter the cost. But in a cruel turn of fate, just as she is freed of her binding, she is forced to leave her infant son behind. Her son, prince Devavrata, unwittingly carries the legacy of Ganga’s curse.

Professional storytellers Richard Alan Young and Judy Dockrey Young have scoured the Ozarks to collect these authentic stories. They spin culturally reflective stories that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike, including: "The Meanest Man in Arkansaw", "The Cold-Trailing Coon Dog", "The Blacksnake Lie", "What the Doctor Said", "The 17-Minute Sermon", and more.

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian subcontinent and is a major text of Hinduism. Its discussion of human goals (artha or 'purpose', kama or 'pleasure', dharma or 'duty' and moksha or 'liberation') takes place in a long-standing tradition, attempting to explain the relationship of the individual to society and the world (the nature of the 'self') and the workings of karma.

Countless would-be readers and listeners of Finnegans Wake - James Joyce's 1939 masterwork, on which he labored for a third of his life - have given up after a few pages and "dismissed the book as a perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with novelist and poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first guide to understanding the fascinating world of Finnegans Wake.

Embark on a spellbinding voyage with "The Kid's Odyssey," the perfect introduction to Homer's classic tale for young readers aged 8-12. This beautifully illustrated book reimagines the legendary odyssey of Greek hero Odysseus as he faces mythical monsters, enchanting sirens, and the wrath of the gods on his quest to return home. After the Trojan War, Odysseus dreams only of reuniting with his beloved wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, in Ithaca. But the sea god Poseidon has other plans, casting Odysseus into a world of wonder and danger that will test his bravery, wit, and ...

Explore the stories from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain mythology that nurtured the idea of yoga and shaped the development of its most iconic asanas. Learn how svana-asana (dog pose) is connected to Shiva, bhujanga-asana (cobra pose) was inspired by shape-shifting beings who live below the earth, and much more.

Inanna is an impossibility. The first full Anunnaki born on Earth in Ancient Mesopotamia. Crowned the goddess of love by the twelve immortal Anunnaki who are worshipped across Sumer, she is destined for greatness. But Inanna is born into a time of war. The Anunnaki have split into warring factions, threatening to tear the world apart. Forced into a marriage to negotiate a peace, she soon realizes she has been placed in terrible danger.

Petra Kurková—a witch who wields magic worth its weight in gold—is tasked with combating the undead on World War I’s eastern front. The battlefield has yielded a newfound closeness for her spellbound team, especially for Josef Svoboda, a recruiter for the Order of the Seven Stars. But Josef was bitten at the start of the war, leaving his blood tainted by a strain of the vlkodlak curse, which makes him a target of the Order’s latest mission: slay the werewolves prowling the eastern front under the moonlight.

The mythologies of the world are collective cultural dreams, and as such should be analyzed first from cultural perspectives. How do myths of the ancient Egyptians or Greeks, for instance, reflect the realities of the Egyptian and Greek cultures? When compared, however, mythologies reveal certain universal themes or motifs that point to larger trans-cultural issues such as the place of the human species in creation or the nature of deity as a concept. World Mythology: A Very Short Introduction is organized around the universal motifs.

Captured centaurs and satyrs, incompetent seers, people who suddenly change sex, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh—these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives. Together they created an incredibly rich body of popular oral stories that include, but range well beyond, mythology—from heroic legends, fairy tales, and fables to ghost stories, urban legends, and jokes. This unique anthology presents the largest collection of these tales ever assembled.

Alan Watts is today remembered as a trailblazing interpreter of Eastern philosophy, but The Two Hands of God reveals a different side of his multifaceted genius. In this ambitious work, Watts takes listeners on a fascinating journey through the mythology of China, Egypt, India, the Middle East, and medieval Europe. His theme is the human experience of polarity, a condition in which opposing qualities define and complement each other. Watts illustrates the way great sages and artists across time have seen beyond the apparent duality of the universe to find a deeper unity.

In our modern age the biblical Genesis flood account has been probed and analyzed for answers to scientific, apologetic, and historical questions. It is a text that has called forth flood geology, fueled searches for remnants of the ark on Mount Ararat, and inspired a full-size replica of Noah's ark in a biblical theme park. Some claim that the very veracity of Scripture hinges on a particular reading of the flood narrative. But do we understand what we are reading? Longman and Walton urge us to ask, what might the biblical author have been saying to his ancient audience?

Evander is beloved by his people. He leads his band of hunters into the foothills, snatching food from the mouths of the Shadow Wolves. He rides out against the dragons that descend from their lairs in the Pallid Peaks. He shelters an orphaned girl who escapes the wolves and appears on his doorstep in the heart of winter. The people of Holt would follow him anywhere. Or so it seems.His mother's visions of a great light called "the sun" have driven her mad. But they've shaped her son's mind and invaded his heart. He begins to think it possible that a sunlit world could indeed lie somewhere ...

The legends of the Norse and Germanic regions of Europe—spanning from Germany and Austria across Scandinavia to Iceland and England—include a broad range of mythical characters and places, from Odin and Thor, to berserkers and Valhalla, to the Valkyries and Krampus. In this encyclopedia, Claude Lecouteux explores the origins, connections, and tales behind many gods, goddesses, magical beings, rituals, folk customs, and mythical places of Norse and Germanic tradition.

Herc Beal knows who he's named after—a mythical hero—but he's no superhero. He's the smallest kid in his class. So when his homeroom teacher at his new middle school gives him the assignment of duplicating the mythical Hercules's amazing feats in real life, he's skeptical. After all, there are no Nemean Lions on Cape Cod—and not a single Hydra in sight.

From the author of the DRAGONOAK trilogy. Metis is a frozen wasteland of a moon. The sea grows smaller every year, and the blue-green planet thrums in the sky, mocking it. Castle Bitfrost, imprisoned in unmeltable ice, stands as a monument to everything humanity will never understand of their world. Driven to the equator, the population has dwindled to near-nothing, animals hunted to extinction, forests burnt in great swathes. Zaun sees the world through the crack in her skull. As a former soldier, she’s survived the impossible, only to record Metis’ last days in the journals her mother...