Shiva is one of the most widely worshipped deities in Hindu traditions. He can be the supreme God, a great yogi, a householder, a dancer, a teacher, a fierce destroyer, and a source of grace. These forms are not pieces of one simple biography. Texts, temples, regions, and schools of thought emphasize different aspects of […]
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Mjölnir is Thor’s hammer in Old Norse myth. It protects the gods against the jötnar, appears in stories of cosmic conflict, and has a role in hallowing. Modern comics and films add features such as uru metal, a dying star, a worthiness enchantment, nanotechnology, and graviton emitters. None of those details comes from the medieval
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Samurai were members of Japan’s warrior class, not one unchanging type of swordsman. Warriors first become clearly visible in written records during the tenth century. Their institutions, weapons, work, and ideals then changed across the late Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, Sengoku, and Edo periods. What the Words Samurai and Bushi Mean Samurai comes from a verb
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Amaterasu Omikami is the sun kami and one of the central figures in Japan’s earliest surviving mythic chronicles. The Kojiki, completed in 712, and the Nihon Shoki, completed in 720, preserve related but not identical accounts of her birth, conflict with Susanoo, withdrawal into a rock cave, and connection with imperial rule. Birth of Amaterasu
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The story commonly called “Pandora’s box” comes chiefly from Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days. In the Greek text, Pandora opens a large storage jar, a pithos, not a small box. The familiar box entered later European tradition through a change in translation. Pandora in Hesiod Zeus creates Pandora as part of his response to
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Epona is a Celtic horse goddess whose worship is documented mainly through inscriptions and images from the Roman Empire. She appears with horses, foals, grain, fruit, and symbols of well-being and movement. Epona in the surviving tradition Images commonly show Epona seated beside or between horses, riding, or feeding an animal. A patera, basket, cornucopia,
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