Word Finder - mythologies

definition

The collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.

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A similar body of myths concerning an event, person or institution.

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Pervasive elements of a fictional universe that resemble a mythological universe.

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The systematic collection and study of myths.

The Greeks recognized Hercules in an Egyptian deity Chons and an Indian Dorsanes, not to mention personages of other mythologies.

He attempted no subjects at all commensurate with those of his great woodcuts, but contented himself for the most part with Madonnas, single figures of scripture or of the saints, some nude mythologies of a kind wholly new in northern art and founded upon the impressions received in Italy, and groups, sometimes bordering on the satirical, of humble folk and peasants.

Mannhardt, and a lower stratum of beliefs and rites began to emerge into view beneath the poetic forms of the more developed mythologies.

Broadly speaking it may be said that a distinction may be drawn between " spirits " and " gods," but it is a distinction of degree rather than of kind, obvious enough at the upper end, yet shading off into manifold varieties of resemblance in the lower forms. Some writers only recognize friendly agencies as gods; but destructive powers like the volcano, or the lords of the underworld, cannot be regarded as the protectors of the life of man, yet they seem in many mythologies to attain the full personalised stature of gods with definite names.

But is there any known stage of the human intellect in which these divine adventures, and the metamorphoses of men into animals, trees, stars, and converse with the dead, and all else that puzzles us in the civilized mythologies, are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life?

Our answer is that everything in the civilized mythologies which we regard as irrational seems only part of the accepted and rational order of things (at least in the case of " medicine-men " or magicians) to contemporary savages, and in the past seemed equally rational and natural to savages concerning whom we have historical information.

That the humming-bird (Nuitziton), which was the god's old shape, should become merely his attendant (like the owl of Pallas, the mouse of Apollo, the goose of Priapus, the cuckoo of Hera), when the god received anthropomorphic form, is an example of a process common in'all mythologies.

Space does not permit us to recount the equally puerile and barbarous legends of Vishnu, Agni, the loves of Vivasvat in the form of a horse, the adventures of Soma, nor the Vedic amours (paralleled in several savage mythologies) of Pururavas and Urvasi.2 Divine Myths of Greece.

Did you ever play Mortal Kombat's spin off for the PS one called Sub-Zero Mythologies?"Yeah.

McLachlan termed the festival in honor of the figure of Lilith who appears in various mythologies.

While Celtic, German and other European mythologies offer up fairies as cautionary tales, modern literature embraces the array of dark to light by painting the dark, gothic fairies as misunderstood, troubled and layered creations.

He had conceived the project of a work which should set in a new light the phenomena, especially the languages and mythologies, of the ancient world; and, after his father's death, he went to Paris in order to be near the necessary books.

He is keen, positive, logical, combining with curious dashes of scepticism many genuine moral convictions and a good knowledge of the various national religions and mythologies whose relative value he is able to appreciate.

The honour paid by them to the serpent is connected with the old mythologies of Babylon and Egypt as well as with the popular cults of Greece and the Orient.

During the Macedonian period Greek influences had been steadily gaining ground in Phoenicia; relations with the Greek world grew closer; the native language fell into disuse, and from the beginning of the Roman occupation Greek appears regularly in inscriptions and on coins, though on the latter Phoenician legends do not .entirely vanish till the 2nd century A.D.; while the extent to which Hellenic ideas penetrated the native traditions and mythologies is seen in the writings of Philo of Byblus.

It is certainly true that divine beings in most mythologies are apt to acquire solar with other elemental attributes, including vegetable attributes.

But we can scarcely think the main conception late, as it is so widely scattered that it meets us in most mythologies, including those of Chaldaea and Egypt, and various North-American tribes.