Nerdology 101: Mythology
Hey everyone! Welcome back to Nerdology 101, the bookish blog fulfilling all your nerdiest desires. Have you ever wanted to learn more about mythology, but felt clueless on where to start? If so, you’re in exactly the right place. Mythology is such a vast subject that covers many different cultures and time periods—modern and ancient alike. It can feel like you’re being pulled in every direction if you don’t have a clear starting point. Even if you do have one, understanding the structures and archetypes that we see appear in multiple cultures over and over is a critical part of being able to not just understand an isolated pantheon, but understand the relationships pantheons have with each other and the relevant historical context that allowed the archetypes to appear in so many different places across time. So, let’s talk about the starting point that comes before the actual mythology first.
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
This is likely the absolute best place to start understand the archetypes of mythology. Whether you’re a writer or not, mythology and religion as a whole is ultimately always going to be a story one generation passes to the next by teaching them that same story. Mythic structure is the foundation for so much of our understanding of character development, mythology, and more. Since the dawn of time, we’ve seen the story of the gods told in so many ways across so many cultures, languages, periods, and contexts. But, many of them have these reoccuring themes and strikingly similar gods. This book will help you understand a bit about why these stories rely so heavily on those roles being filled.
The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth & The Hermetica
I say to do these two books next because they are going to help you understand how one god can evolve when real people from different cultures meet. What one has intrigues the other and next thing you know, they’re carrying their new knowledge back home. The story catches on, they adopt it to their tongue, and next thing you know, a new god exists. Also, these books are foundational to understanding three major pantheons: The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythologies are all connected strongly to what you’ll learn here. Why? Because history. Greco-Roman, Hellonism, etc. The Greeks went to Egypt, brought stories back when them, the Greeks interacted with Rome, etc. Think of it like the way a cold spreads from person to person until next thing you know, everyone has it. Except, in this case they were spreading gods. Therefore, these three cultures, and every culture they touched, and so on, are bound to have this connection.
Chinese Mythology (Library of the World's Myths and Legends) & Buddhist Myths: Cosmology, Tales and Legends
Just like the last two, these two are going to help you with a foundational understanding of another chunk of the world’s mythology. China, historically, was a very massive, very powerful empire that did a lot of invasions on it’s neighbors. So, if you want to understand other Asian mythology’s like Japanese mythology an Shintoism, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., understanding China helps give you context you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Keep applying that concept
That’s right. When you’re done, read up on Mesopotamian mythology because it’s going to affect a lot of what happens in Southwest Asian mythologies. Read on Aztec, Inca, and so on. Learn about different indiginous tribal beliefs.
Be Respectful
Most of these cultures, aren’t extinct. Many of the mythologies here aren’t even extinct. There is absolutely no reason you should be studying their beliefs while ignoring their existence. Make sure you pay attention. A lot of the more accessible books are whitewashed in some way, shape, or form. There’s no avoiding that because colonialism requires pretty much any mass-produced text petaining to non-white cultures and beliefs to be whitewashed in some way. Cross-reference them with information coming directly from the people when you can.
Don’t be afraid to challenge the modern mythologies
All religions are mythology. I make no distinction between the two because I am not religious. I STRONGLY encourage you to treat it as such and learn more about it’s evolution through texts like Christian Mythology: Revelations of Pagan Origins and The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy. You’ll never truly understand mythology if you aren’t willing to learn things that may or may not make you uncomfortable as fuck. Around here, though, we don’t ignore information just because it doesn’t suit our beliefs. That’s not my nerdy way (the Naruto reference was there, I couldn’t help it, leave me aloneee).
Anyway, that’s about it for this segment of Nerdology 101. Stop back next Friday for another. Until then, have yourself a nerdy week!
