“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 pointed…”
Mythphile
all the myth that’s fit to print
Browsing the archives for the All Myth Posts category
18 Nov 14
In 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 columnar basalt, lava that cooled slowly and cracked into enormous columns of four to eight sides. The audio guide provided by […]
29 Jun 12
Brave: “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 which I find fascinating.
6 Jun 12
The 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 and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests […]
19 Jan 12
Science 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 “scarab,” after an ancient Greek word for beetle. Dr. Baird’s specialty is insect vision, flight and navigation (see her profile at Lund University). She wrote her thesis […]