Story of Myth

Sometimes encyclopedias are the best place to look for focused, direct information--especially since they name their sources!

• Walker, Barbara G. The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1996.

As dogs threw their lot in with humans centuries ago, it is no surprise that they have lived alongside us in myth and legend for millenia.

Dogs today are often thought to be symbols of loyalty, faith, and masculinity, giving them a definitively solar cast. Traditionally, however, in cultures around the world, dogs are the companions of goddesses and gatekeepers of the realm of the dead--as wild dogs are carrion eaters, like vultures, wolves, and jackals.

The Magician is a symbol of an ideal. He represents for us masculine force, yang energy, the active principle.

Long before the rule of the patriarchal system--before Gilgamesh, before Beowulf, before the Helenistic Greek legends, the hero was not courageous.

In the older tales, the hero, or to use modern terminology, the protagonist, was the Fool. We know him (or her!) today from fairy tales and old legends.

The moon is a symbol similar to the sun. Before the current (Copernican) heliocentric model of the universe, we believed the Earth was the center of the universe, and the sun and moon circled us:

Courtesy of Dr. Jim's Thinking Shop & Tea Room

The sun has long been a symbol central to the human psyche. The origins of the meaning of the sun as a symbol begins in pre-Copernican times, when the earth was the center of the universe, not the sun.

The use of symbols in modern times are rare, and most Americans (thanks in part to the Puritanistic exclusion of images) don't pay much attention to the possible underlying meanings of images and objects in their everyday life.

We can never see past the choices we don't understand.

- The Matrix Reloaded

Always something to remember. What if the programs in the Matrix are patterns--like our patterns of behavior. They are neither good nor bad, but sometimes we find it would serve us better to establish new patterns. And what if Agent Smith is an old pattern that does not want to give way to the new....because old patterns sometimes put up a fight....

The Zen of Zero blog is written by a very well-educated atheist. From the description found in the related book he is posting online (about his view of why he thinks being an atheist is a neat idea), he is a scientist of the physicist sort.

In the research for his book, he's done a fabulous job of digging up some of the connections between the different religions of ancient times and how their central stories bled into each other.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of About.com. But reading the entries on N.S.Gill's Ancient History Blog has been a delight, so I'm happy to make an exception.

Gill's blog focuses mainly on random tidbits about the Roman Empire. Mythologically speaking, this era in history was beautifully steeped in cults and religion.