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 rational minds. Bards are the purveyors of mythology in many societies. A bard is more than a storyteller, although a bard works [...]
Mythphile
all the myth that’s fit to print
Browsing the archives for the symbol tag
13 Apr 12
What 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?
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 [...]
21 Dec 11
The 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 ebook readers. The article flails for causes: “The holiday spike may reflect this year’s partial lifting of economic gloominess.” If that’s true, why was there one [...]
20 Feb 11
In Memoriam: The Shoe Tree of Nevada
The Shoe Tree is dead. Long live the Shoe Tree. I learned about Nevada’s Shoe Tree on the “Loneliest Road in the World” from a touching article in the Los Angeles Times. In December 2010, this modern-day sacred tree was cut down by vandals with a chainsaw, after serving as a curious and cryptic symbol in [...]