Instagram Posts — Amber Of The Sea

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At some point in their initiation the shaman must meet the dark side of his or her consciousness, just as the neophyte must “take the plunge into Chaos and Old Night, the undifferentiated state of the womb where distinctions, like beautiful and ugly, have not yet emerged.” This is reminiscent of the most intriguing concepts in High Magick, the mystical guardian known as the Dweller on the Threshold. D.J Conway offers one interpretation, in how “the door to other-worlds lies deep within each individual. The Dweller is the guardian of a magician’s sanity; without the correct mental and spiritual preparation, the magician can run into serious trouble if he manages to force his way into unknown realms, such as with the use of drugs.”
Joseph Campbell spoke of three stages that initiates undergo; he calls them Separation, Initiation and Return. Separation is when the novice or initiate lets go of any “preconceived ideas about reality; something snaps and he is faced with admitting that he knows little, if anything, about true reality, particularly of the mind and other-worlds. This leads him to deeper levels of his subconscious mind where he encounters the Dweller. It can be a frightening experience, particularly if one has no preparation. The Dweller appears to be all things that make up the personality, good and bad. Seeing oneself as one really is takes a tremendous amount of courage, but this must be accomplished and acknowledged if the magician is to pass safely through the door to other-worlds.” Carl Jung seems to have been alluding to something similar when he wrote, “whenever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fear and many run away… the risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is troubling to them.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Artwork: Artem Demura

In some Northern European tales second sight is sometimes brought about by an ointment which is dabbed onto the eye. In a Cornish tale called The Fairy Midwife, a woman is summoned at midnight by a strange, ugly, little man to attend to his wife. After the baby is born, the midwife rubs some fairy ointment on her own eye, and the young mother instantly appears to her as a beautiful lady dressed in white, while her baby is swaddled in cloth of silver gauze. It is then that the woman realises she is among the fairies.
This is also found in another tale from Southern Germany, where a midwife followed an Earthman “through the forest with his lantern… until they came to a moss door, then to a wooden door, and lastly to a door of shining metal, whence a staircase went down into the earth, and led them into a large and splendid chamber where the Earthwife lay.”
A similar tale is told in Southern Scotland, where a young mother was called upon to nurse a fairy babe. She was taken through a door in the green hillside, before the fairy dropped three drops of precious dew in the young mother’s left eye, and soon she saw “a beautiful land watered with meandering rivulets and yellow with corn, where the trees were laden with fruits which dropped honey. The nurse was here presented with magical gifts, and when a green dew had baptized her right eye, she was enabled to behold further wonders.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Artwork: from The Silmarillion by Ted Nasmith

“The steeds of the Valkyries are supposed to be impersonations of the clouds; and hoarfrost and dew are said to have dropped from their glistening manes as they rushed hither and thither through the air. Because of this important function they were held in very high honour, for to their activity was ascribed the fruitfulness of the earth. Their maiden riders were looked upon as divinities of the air, and were sometimes called Norns or Wish Maidens. They often visited the earth arrayed in swan plumage. They were eternally young and beautiful, and had flowing golden hair and arms of dazzling whiteness. When they visited the battlefields they wore blood-red corselets and helmets of gold or silver.”
“In Scandinavian mythology, two horses pull the Sun’s chariot, their names being Arra’kur (the Early Waker) and Alsvin (the Rapid Goer). Sol, the Sun-maid, daughter of the giant Mundilfari, and spouse of Glaur (Glow) was appointed to be the charioteer, and guide the steeds across the heavens. Dag, the Norse God of Day, was drawn in his chariot by a most beautiful white steed called Skin-faxi (Shining Mane), from whose mane the light darted forth in golden gleams lighting the whole world, and giving health, joy, and gladness to its inhabitants.“
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From: The Horse in Magic & Folklore by M. Oldfield Howey
Artwork: by Lin Sun on Artstation

Connected to the Great Mother Goddess, “pearls acquired the reputation of being the ‘givers of life’ par excellence.” The wearing of a pearl was thought to be healing because, as Ernest Ingersoll explains, “it is like wearing a ray of the moon.”
In China, we find the belief that the ‘moon pearl’ or the ‘moon blossom’ was “thought to fall on the Earth from time to time, making any woman who swallowed it pregnant,” and at the close of life, pearls were placed in the mouths of the dead.
From a mystical perspective, Manly P Hall explains that the transmutation of the earthly into the heavenly is “like the oyster that forms a pearl, we must learn to live with irritation and toil in order to transmute the divine spark into the elixir of life.” Similarly, the Gnostics held the pearl as a symbol of hidden truth, while to the poet Dante, the moon was ‘the eternal pearl.’ Elsewhere, the pearls found in oysters were thought by the ancients to be ‘little moons, drops of the moon-substance, or dew, which fell from the sky into the gaping oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of ‘shining by night’ like the moon from which they were believed to have come.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Artwork: detail from: ‘Mermaid Sleeping’ by Victor Nizovtsev. Oil Painting on Canvas.

The Symplegades were the “Clashing Rocks which smashed together upon any ship passing between them. They appear in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and were said to be in the strait between the Aegean and the Black Sea. As a motif, the Clashing Rocks are curiously found the world over in varied shamanic and after death accounts.
The Diné tell a story of Tse’Yeinti’li, or the rocks that crush. Way back in time, “there was a piece of rock brought up from the underworld; and people were told that at times rocks would hurt them. There was a place called Tse'a haildehe', a narrow place between two cliffs, where, if one started to step over it, it widened or drew apart, and then returned to its first position crushing the person who had fallen into the crevice. The Chumash also tell of three lands to the west, where the soul first comes to a deep ravine, and here two huge stones that continually clashing rocks the soul comes to a place with two gigantic birds (qaq), each of which pecks out an eye as the soul goes by. The soul quickly picks two of the many poppies growing there in the ravine, inserts them into its eye sockets and so is able to see again immediately. When the soul finally gets to Similaqsa, it is given eyes made of abalone shell.”
The Inuit hero Giviok was said to have had to pass through clashing icebergs, or great stones in constant motion, in order to enter the underworld. In Gypsy folklore there are seven mountains that clash together, while the Maori tell of how ‘the deceased must pass through a very narrow space between two demons that try to capture him.”
These images may be seen as “the strait gate” that forbids access to the plane of higher being, to anyone but an initiate, that is, anyone who can act like a “spirit.”
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Sources: The Dîné: Origin Myths by A. O’Bryan and Shamanism by M. Eliade
Artwork: Styx by Mariusz Lewandowski. Instagram of the artist @mariusz_lewandowskiart

“Harmony is a state recognized by great philosophers as the immediate prerequisite of beauty. A compound is termed beautiful only when its parts are in harmonious combination.
“The highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment.”
“In the Pythagorean concept of the music of the spheres, the interval between the earth and the sphere of the fixed stars was considered to be a diapason--the most perfect harmonic interval. The allowing arrangement is most generally accepted for the musical intervals of the planets between the earth and the sphere of the fixed stars: From the sphere of the earth to the sphere of the moon; one tone; from the sphere of the moon to that of Mercury, one half-tone; from Mercury to Venus, one-half; from Venus to the sun, one and one-half tones; from the sun to Mars, one tone; from Mars to Jupiter, one-half tone; from Jupiter to Saturn, one-half tone; from Saturn to the fixed stars, one-half tone. The sum of these intervals equals the six whole tones of the octave.”
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~ first quote from The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P Hall, second attributed to Pythagoras, and the third from Stanley's The History of Philosophy
Artwork by Xích diễm cô tích

One of the mystic Greek names of the Gnostic Goddess Sophia was Pneuma, “Breath.” The Muse, who was always female, brought the inspiration or “inbreathing” that gave seers and poets the power of understanding and creativity. Exhaling is almost always associated with death, as to “expire in death means literally to breathe out, that is, to return the air-soul to the atmosphere.” In many widespread traditions, it was thought that “a woman such as a dakini, shakti, vila, or priestess should inhale the last breath of the dying person, to ensure his/her re-conception and eventual rebirth. This was the original meaning of what male theologians later diabolized as the demoness’s kiss of death. It was then feared as a death-bringing ritual, rather than the favour and comfort of the Goddess.”
Breathing, and in particular control of the breath is an integral part of many yogic and occult or meditative practices. Through the breathing exercises disseminated by Babaji’s school of Kriya Yoga, a “yogi gradually learns to suspend the breath for greater and greater periods of time. These techniques cause the breath or prana to circulate in such a way as to clear out all the 72,000 energy channels or Nadia within the body and thereby transform the physical vehicle into a super-efficient conduit for the universal life force. Eventually the kundalini is awakened … and ultimately, Immortality is achieved.”
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From my book The Bronze Serpent now available for pre-order on my website www.amberofthesea.uk
Art: The Witness by Tomas Sánchez 1948-

In the Rig-Veda, it is the Apsaras, or heavenly nymphs, who are connected with the celestial drink Amrita, Sanskrit: Immortal, or Soma.
The Apsaras first appear in the myth of The Churning of the Ocean of Milk, when the “battle flared up anew between the eternal antagonists, the gods and demons. Things went from bad to worse for the hosts under Indra’s command, while Sukra (Venus) guru of the demons, had found a powerful mantra which raised the fallen demons and titans back to life.” To stave off disaster, Brahma told the other gods that “only the Water of Life, Amrita, the Nectar of Immortality, hidden deep in the Ocean of Milk, can save us, but our strength alone will not be enough. We will have to make a truce and work together with the demons.” This was agreed and they all went to work churning the primordial waters, using Vasuki, the world serpent, as a rope. The Brahmins cast herbs into the sea and chanted over the waters, but Halahala, the deadly poison of the world, bubbled to the top. Both gods and demons fled as the vapours turned their skin blacker than night. Daunted, Vishnu and Brahma hastened to Mt Kailash to wake Lord Shiva out of his meditation.” To save the three lokas, to save all from death, he drank the poison. “It marked his throat with a sinister peacock beauty, dark blue as if a serpent had kissed it.” His consort, the goddess Parvati, helped Shiva to squeeze his throat to avoid the poison reaching his body, and so turning his throat blue. Resting his head in her lap, they began to churn the ocean once more and many beautiful things emerged. Among them were the asparas those celestial dancers, as well as Kalpavrikdha, the wish fulfilling tree, a white horse, and the moon, whose silver crescent Shiva fastened to his hair as a shining diadem, and finally, a beautiful goddess, born of the foam, whose name was Lakshmi.
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Quotes from Shiva by Vanamali
Artwork: detail from Aspara’s Orchestra (Buddhist Heaven) by Rowena Doge on Artstation

In Scottish folklore, a “Shellycoat, is a spirit who resides in the waters, and has given his name to many a rock and stone the Scottish coast, belongs to the class of bogles. When he appeared, he seemed to be decked with marine productions, and in particular with shells, whose clattering announced his approach. From this circumstance he derived his name. One of his pranks is recorded by two men, who on a very dark night, approached the banks of the Ettrick, and heard a doleful voice from its waves repeatedly exclaim, "Lost! Lost!" They followed the sound, which seemed to be the voice of a drowning person, and, to their infinite astonishment, they found that it ascended the river. Still they continued, during a long and tempestuous night, to follow the cry of the malicious sprite; and arriving, before morning's dawn, at the very source of the river, the voice was now heard descending the opposite side of the mountain in which they arise. The fatigued and deluded travellers now relinquished the pursuit, and had no sooner done so than they heard Shellycoat applauding, in loud bursts of laughter, his successful roguery. The spirit was supposed particularly to haunt the old house of Gorinberry, situated on the river Hermitage, in Liddesdale.”
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From ‘Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales’ by George Douglas, 1901. .
Painting: Misty Pond at Villenueve by Henri Biva

Dzyzlan the Mother of Water, is a water maiden from Georgian folklore. “A beauty with long golden hair, her eyes are said to sparkle like diamonds. Her feet are turned backwards, and for that reason, in wrestling with her, nobody can manage to throw her on her back.
Her mother Akhidzakhuazhv educated her daughter in her own image, she too has the habit of luring lone travellers into the water and sometimes she falls in love with mortal men.
Dzyzlan is said to go into the service of anyone who manages to cut off a lock of her hair. A pistol or a gun are useless against her, and she is not afraid of any weapon apart from a double edged kinzhal, a Caucasian double bladed knife. On meeting her a traveller must unsheathe his kinzhal, and raising it, pronounce “Uashkhua makyapsys” [a magic expression literally Uashkhua (a deity) makyapsys - a soft whetstone]. Then she submits. But most of all she prises her golden hair.”
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From Georgian Through Its Folktales by Michael Berman
Artwork: detail from ‘All comes to an End.’ by Artem Demura on Artstation

The connection between the Milky Way and a tree as a stairway to heaven, is found in many South American traditions where the Milky Way is said to be the ashes of a great tree that once contained all forms of life. Similarly, the Finns say that it was a huge tree, a great oak that fell across the sky and obstructed the passage of the sun, moon, and stars.
In Australia, the writer Mudrooroo recounts a Koori story from Victoria of how “in the Dreaming their ancestral spirits would go up into the sky by means of a giant Dreaming tree. Only the older, fully initiated men were allowed to do so. One day the taboo was broken by a young man who had lent his six hunting dogs to his brothers to go hunting in the sky world. That night, he noticed that there were only five dogs remaining. His brothers, unable to catch anything, had eaten the other dog. The young man decided on revenge and drilled a hole in the taproot of the giant dreaming tree into which he stuffed live coal which slowly burnt through the root. The next day the older brothers climbed the giant tree to hunt, then, as they were ready to descend, there was a great crack and the tree fell. This myth is etched in the heavens. The trapped brothers may be seen as a cluster of stars and the top part of the tree, which was wrenched away from the tree fell, is now a black patch in the Milky Way.”
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Included in my upcoming book. Available July 2022
Artwork: Miraculously Saved 2016 by Mariusz Lewandowski. Instagram account of the artist @mariusz_lewandowskiart

In Slovenia, in the mist ringed mountains high above the lakes dwell mountain fairies known as the žalik žena, as well as the ‘White Ladies’. Associated with prophecy, fertility and fate, they were associated with a golden horned white chamois known as Zlatorog, who Monika Kropej explains “was immortal, but even if he is struck in his heart, from a drop of his blood blooms the miraculous healing flower of Triglav (Triglavska roza). As soon as the wounded Zlatorog eats the flower he is cured.”
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Included in my book ‘The Silver Bough’
Artwork detail: Crossing in a Moonlit Night' was created by Albert Rieger. Austrian. 1905

There is a Chinese folktale called ‘The Weaver Girl and the Cow Herd.’ A story with many variations, an ancient version tells of the romance between Zhinü and Niulang, symbolising the stars Vega and Altair respectively. However, their love was forbidden and they were banished to opposite ends of the heavenly river. In some versions they are separated by the god of heaven, or by Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West who appeared in The Elixir of Immortality. In other versions, the Milky Way separates the Western Mother and the Eastern King. One common theme, however, is the magpie who is sacred to Xi Wangmu. In the folktale it is magpies, ten thousand of them, who form a reunion bridge once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, so that the weaver girl and the cowherd could be reunited. Their tale inspired this beautiful poem by Qin Guan, 1049-1100:
“Meeting across the Milky Way
Through the varying shapes of the delicate clouds,
The sad message of shooting stars,
A silent journey across the Milky Way.
One meeting of the Cowherd and the Weaver
amidst the golden autumn wind and
Jade-glistening dew,
Eclipses the countless meetings in the mundane world.
The feelings soft as water,
The ecstatic moment unreal as a dream,
How can one have the heart to go back on the bridge made of magpies?
If the two hearts are united forever,
Why do the two persons need to stay together – day after day, night after night?”
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Art: Hand to the Stars by Willy Pogany 1882-1955
From my upcoming book of nature myths. Available Summer 2022

The Polynesian people of the Hervey and Cook Islands say that at one time the Pleaides were a single star, but “it was so flashy and overbearing that Tane, the god of celestial light, decided out of jealousy to douse its glow. Everybody on earth loved its radiance, but it submerged the rest of the stars with its light. Because it was no match even for the moon, people paid little attention to the other stars. Sirius, which in the absence of this perfect primeval Pleiades would have been honoured as the brightest of stars volunteered to help Tane punch out the star’s lights. Aldebaran smelled blood and also joined the pack. Together they planned an ambush, but the star was ready for them and ran for cover in the light of the Milky Way, Tane’s highway. Tane could see him, however, and fired Aldebaran at him like a shooting star. Struck by this missile, the great star broke into six pieces.”
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From my upcoming book of nature myths
Artwork: Nuit étoilée à Tiguidit (Starry Night in Tiguidit) , 2014 by Titouan Lamazou

“In Brazil, Holger Kalweit explains that a “really experienced Payé [which is the equivalent term for a shaman] is in control of himself and rose aloft into the Milky Way and consorted with beings living there. He then returns to his body which lies, quietly sleeping in a hammock.”
“A Carib shaman recounted a celestial journey where, “After many nights of fasting, dancing and intoxication the novice meets a benevolent spirit who tells him that ‘you shall go up to the sky by Grandfather Vulture’s ladder. It is not far.’ The apprentice climbs a sort of spiral ladder and thus reaches the first storey of the sky where he passes through villages inhabited by whites. Then the novice meets a Water Spirit (Amana), a woman of great beauty who urges him to dive into the spring with her. There she imparts magical formulas to him.” Their folklore also preserves the “memory of a time when shamans had great powers.”
For the Yupik of the Arctic, the stars are holes in the sky, and in one story of a shaman’s visionary journey to the sky world, “the sky seemed to fill with falling stars and then descend upon him as he slept on the top of a hill near the village. When the space between the earth and sky left the shaman with nearly no room to move, he climbed through one of the star holes and saw another star-filled sky above him. Those stars, too, were holes lit by light from beyond, and the shaman pulled himself through two more star-perforated heavens and found he had reached the men’s house of the spirit village.”
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From my upcoming book. Summer 2022
Art: František Kobliha (Prague 1877-1962)

There is a folk tale from Georgia known as The Beauty of Life, and in the story, a young prince named Rostomel becomes withdrawn and downcast. Growing up without his father who had died when he was a child, Rostomel ventures out into the world to seek immortality. He wandered for a long time through many lands, until at last he came to the edge of the world. Above an endless sea, a rainbow arced through sky, and at the rainbow’s end, “through a golden, pinkish haze, was shining a wondrous divine light.” It beckoned to Rostomel, and he felt it stir his soul, before, “in an instant, he found himself in a glittering, shining palace – and there before him, radiant in the light of a myriad of precious stones, he beheld the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen. He did not know who she was, but even the stars and the rays of the sun faded before her bright beauty.” She was the beauty of life, and offered him immortal life if he remained with her. This he does, but in time his heart begins to ache, and he returns to the earth, to his homeland of Georgia. However, he had been gone so long that all those who he had known were dead, the castle was a ruin and he was just a legend. Then he took out two flowers that the Beauty of Life had given him. One purple and one white. The first aged him, and the second took his life from him.
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From my upcoming book of nature myths. It will be available Summer 2022 through my website www.amberofthesea.uk
Artwork: The Evanescent by Norwood Hodge MacGilvary (American, 1874-1950)

In Japan, yosei or aspari, are fairy type beings often described as being wrapped or hidden in mist. In Africa, the people of the Congo, tell of river beings comparable to nymphs, who are said to be made of water and who may be seen only at nightfall and early dawn when they rise as mist. Tamra Andrews writes of how “in Wales, mist rising above a river was thought to be a spirit of the dead. In Iceland, the fog was thought to be the king’s daughter under some magic spell.”
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From my upcoming book of nature myths. Available Summer 2022
Art: Dancing Fairies (Swedish: Älvalek) is a painting by the Swedish painter August Malmström. 1866.
💗Via @lunainthelight on Instagram
💗edit by @classicnymph on Instagram

In Chinese folklore there is a tale known as ‘The Greedy Minister and the Serpent’, it tells of a schoolboy who once found an egg lying in the road. He took it home and when it hatched a serpent emerged. The boy took care of the serpent, until he grew up and left for the capital to take his examinations. Unable to take the serpent with him, he asked for a gift, and the serpent spat up a huge pearl that gleamed brightly. In the darkness it shone like the sun and illuminated all things. It was an incomparable treasure, and the boy was delighted, but in exchange for good favour with the emperor, he gave the pearl away, and although he became second in command, he returned home to find the serpent and ask for another pearl. Approaching the mountain cave, the serpent emerged, and went to attack the man until he recognised him and allowed him to explain why he had come. When he had finished the serpent opened its jaws, and thinking it was going to spit out another pearl, the greedy man stepped forward, but was swallowed by the serpent.”
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From my upcoming book. Summer 2022.
In China, serpents and dragons, for the two appear to be interchangeable elsewhere in the world as well, are frequent bearers of the life elements. This story is also included in the book A Serpent’s Tale by Gregory McNamee.
Artwork: Unlikely Companions by Shen Fang Teng on Artstation

In one of the most well known versions of the Holy Grail, the cup (sometimes bowl) was “fashioned by the angels from an emerald that fell from Lucifer’s brow at the time of his fall. This emerald is strikingly reminiscent of the urnā, the frontal pearl that in Hindu iconography often takes the place of the third eye of Shiva, representing what might be called the ‘sense of eternity.’ This comparison seems better suited than any other to clarify exactly the symbolism of the Grail; and it illustrates yet another relationship with the heart, which, for the Hindu tradition, as for many others - though perhaps in Hinduism more clearly so - is the centre of the integral being, to which consequently this ‘sense of eternity’ must be linked.
Indeed, the Holy Grail is the cup that contains the precious blood of Christ and which even contains it twice, since it was used first at the Last Supper and then by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood and water that flowed from the wound opened in the Redeemer’s side by the centurion’ s lance. This cup is a kind of substitute for the heart of Christ as a receptacle of his blood.
Everywhere the heart is considered to be the centre of the being, a centre that in many aspects of this symbol is both divine and human. Furthermore, the sacrificial cup everywhere represents the Centre of the Heart of the World, the ‘abode of immortality.’”
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All from ‘Symbols of the Sacred Science’ by René Guénon
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Milton’s Paradise Lost

“The circumpolar region has long been associated with stability, with the pole star being connected with the axis mundi, or the World Pillar. Long regarded as the fixed or still point in the turning world, it was widely believed that if the pillar or tree were to break, or the mountain crumble, this would signal a reversion to chaos, and the end of the world. This is illustrated in a Chinese legend, where the centre of the star system is the Pole Star, but that the Middle Kingdom is off centre because a monster named Kung Kung tried to seize power from Yao, the Fourth Emperor. Kung Kung failed in his attempt and in his fury, he impaled Mount Pu Chou, the cosmic mountain, with his horn. “This caused the mountain to break, tipped the sky to the northwest and tore a hole in the sky. The earth tipped in the opposite direction, and great floods rushed over the land.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: Aurora by William Crowder

Often times “starlight is viewed as ethereal, star stuff that was thought to cloak astral bodies with ether. This ethereal body was the one the Gnostics referred to when they spoke of Jesus and other holy persons being given “bodies of light” for their lifetimes in heaven. The longing for the stars can be interpreted as a yearning for ascension, or simply for the divine world beyond our own. This latter view is found in an English fairy tale known as The Stars in the Sky. It tells of a girl who once longed to touch the stars, and one day she left home to seek them. She danced with fairies, and rode away on a silver grey horse, until at last she ascended the rainbow into the sky, and when she reached the top of the arch “all about her the stars darted, raced and spun in dazzling flashes of light. Below her, stretching down into darkness, were the brilliant colours of the Stairs Without Steps. She stood transfixed at the sheer wonder of it all.” In the icy cold she extended a hand and reached, further and further towards a flashing star. With a sigh she slid down through the darkness, until she found herself on her bed. ‘I did reach the stars,’ she thought, ‘Or did I dream it?’ Then she opened her hand and saw a brilliant speak of stardust.” This folktale is reminiscent of the Elders among the Sioux who say that their ancestors who participated in a ghost dance in 1890, “fell down in a trance and in that state of unconsciousness travelled to the morning or evening star, waking up with star flesh or moon flesh in their clenched fists.”
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From my upcoming book of nature myths
Art: Island Universe (colour linocut) by
William H. Hays. American, b. 1956

Mirrors were believed to “purify water, frighten away hostile spirits, avert disease and suffering, and contain or replace the soul or be used for divination. On the backs of the heavy bronze mirrors the twelve animals of time cycle may be depicted or the Chinese Buddhist ‘eternal knot’ The more mirrors a shaman has the greater his wisdom and intelligence, for all kinds of things are required through the mirrors including ‘natural things’, the sun, moon and stars, all are absorbed into your body.’”
Margaret Stutley in her excellent book Introduction to Shamanism, explains how during an exorcism, a Buriat shaman “rubbed his drum on his chest and heart-mirror, so empowering the air which he blew over the patient; he also blew sacred water from his mouth and stroked the patient’s body with his mirror…[here] the attacking spirit entered the mirror and then was transferred to a human shaped stone image called beemee. Fresh blood from a sacrificed chicken was put on the mouth of the image which was then burned.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: Space Mirror by Yaroslav Gerzhedovich
Contemporary Artist. Acrylic on paper, slightly photoshopped

The Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest say that the north is ruled by Tahit, and she is the one who decides “whether warriors and women giving birth would die, as well as what sex children would be. When souls in her domain prepared for battle, the Aurora Borealis would be red.” Something similar is found among the Chuvash of Siberia who called them Shuratian-Tura, meaning Birth-Giving-Heaven, and said that the display was the sky giving birth to a son. They also said that giving birth during a display came under her benefaction, and was supposed to be painless.
In the Southern Hemisphere, there are the aurora australis, or southern lights, and which are, according to the Kurnai Koori people of Victoria, a sign of anger from the All-father Mungan Ngour. Mudrooroo explains that “when Mungan Ngour laid down the rules for the initiation of boys into manhood, he placed his son Tundun in charge of the secret men’s ceremonies. Someone divulged them to the women and Mungun Ngour became angry and a time of great chaos endured in which people ran amok, killing one another, and the seas rushed in, flooding much of the land. This ended the Dreaming period and after this Tundun and his wife became porpoises. The All-Father ascended into the sky, and if his laws and customs are disregarded he shows his anger by lighting up the sky at night.” To the Maori’s the southern lights are the distant fires from their ancestors who had travelled south, and were now “signalling their relatives with hope of being rescued. They called it Tahu-Nui-A-Rangi, the Great Burning in the Sky.”
From my upcoming book of tales of earth, sea and sky
Art: by William Crowder. 20th century

“The creator once took out his bag and started gathering things: a spot of sunlight, a handful of blue from the sky, the whiteness of the cornmeal, the shadow of playing children, the blackness of a beautiful girl’s hair, the yellow of falling leaves, the green of pine needles, the red, purple, and orange of the flowers around him. All these put into his bag. As an afterthought, he put the songs of the birds in, too. When he walked over to the grassy spot where the children were playing. “Children, little children, this is for you,” and he gave them his bag. “Open it; there’s something nice inside.” He told them. The children opened the bag and at once hundreds of coloured butterflies flew out, dancing around the children’s heads, settling on their hair, fluttering up again to sip from this or that flower. All the children were enchanted, and said that they had never seen anything so beautiful.”
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A Tohono O’odham, also called Papago, legend which appears in the book ‘Butterflies’ by Maraleen Manos-Jones and is also available on www.firstpeople.us The Tohono O’odham traditionally inhabited the desert regions of present-day Arizona, U.S., and northern Sonora, Mex.
Art: by Friedrich Hechelmann, German artist b.1948

“Among the Mongolian peoples of Inner Mongolia, even today, there are traditions about tunnels and subterranean worlds. One legend says that the tunnels lead to the subterranean world of Antediluvian descent somewhere in a recess of Afghanistan, or in the region of the Hindu Kush. It is a Shangri-La where science and the arts, never threatened by wars, develop peacefully, among a race of vast knowledge. It is even given a name: Agharti.
Ferdinand Ossendowski, in his Beasts, Men and Gods, also mentions this strange kingdom of Agharti, which, he says, he has been told by learned Chinese Lamas and Mongolian princes, has many men and tribes of incredibly ancient races, long vanished from the kingdoms of day. He mentions an old Brahman of Nepal who, on a mystic pilgrimage, met a fisherman apparently in the interior or on the coast at Siam, or Thailand, etc, who ordered the Brahman to take a place in a boat, and obey the will of the gods by sailing with him to an Arabian Nights island where live people “having two tongues” which “can separately speak different languages.”
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From: Mysteries Of Ancient South America by Harold T Wilkins
Art: Mushy Land 2.0 by Raphael Lacoste on Artstation

“The Nepalese Magar tell of a primordial golden age that contrasts with the “blind land,” the dark age of today. Then there was neither sickness, nor old age, nor bad qualities. In the following, second age, sacrifices and rituals developed. In the third age, conflicting views and contradictory ideas emerged, resulting in in the appearance of passions and illnesses. In the fourth age, bloodthirsty rulers took over; greed servitude, suffering, and materialism gained the upper hand. In that iron age, death, danger, war, pain and material craving dominated humanity, but the first shaman, Rama Puran Tsan, also appeared. He immediately recognised that evil spirits and sorcerers were the cause of poverty and sickness. After major battles with the nine witch sisters in which they were unable to harm him, he concluded a pact with them: the witches could continue to bring down illnesses on humanity, but in exchange for payment and blood sacrifices, the shaman would heal them.”
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From Shamans, Healers and Medicine Men by Holger Kalweit
Art: The Queen’s City 2013 by Malene Reynolds Laugesen

“Women’s hair carried heavy symbolic and spiritual significance in Oriental religions. Tantric sages proclaimed that the binding or unbinding of women’s hair could control cosmic powers of creation and destruction. The hair of the Goddess Isis carried magical powers of protection, resurrection, and reincarnation; she gave rebirth to Osiris-Horus by “shaking out her hair over him.” Long, thick hair on male gods and heroes, like Shiva or Apollo-Heracles, indicated virility and vital power. One foundation of the myth of the sun hero lay in his sacrifice to the Moon Goddess who cut off his hair, a castration of his vital force. The biblical symbol of this Goddess was Delilah, “She Who Makes Weak,” and the shorn Samson was her sun hero, named after an Arabic title of the sun, Shams-On.”
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From Barbara Walker’s The Woman’s Dictionary of Sacred Symbols & Objects.
Painting: In the Grotto by Rudolf Rössler (1864-1934)

In the frozen north the Sámi hold Beive, Beive-neida, sometimes Beiwe, as their sun goddess, as well as a finder of the lost. A lost follower would take a “thin growth from the land, form the wood into a circle, a shape sacred to the sun. This sun ring would be offered up to the goddess with a prayer that she did not allow the darkness to envelop the wanderer until the visions of the tents of the campsite were seen to rise above the horizon.” Beive was also protective of the reindeer, especially the white reindeer, in her rites a white reindeer was often sacrificed to her. She presided over the nourishment of the winter-starved reindeer, and shone her light “upon the south-facing hillslopes, warming them, melting the snows and turning the winter bleached Earth green with new plant growth.” Janet McCrickard explains in her book ‘Eclipse of the Sun’ that the return of the sun was met with great joy, and “in the beginning of February, when she was visible above the horizon for a good part of the day, each Sámi woman would bake a special cake in honour of the sun goddess, kneaded from flour, reindeer blood and fat and then shaped into a disk. This was then suspended by a string above the tent door, so that the goddess would see it and be pleased.”
From my upcoming book.
Art: North Cape by Peder Blake c.1840s

There is a legend from the Lower Saranacs known as the “Birth of the Waterlily,” it tells of The Sun, chief of the Lower Sarancs who returns from his war against the Tahawi to the Lake of Ckustered Stars. Tall and invincible the people greet him happily, while a young woman known as Oseetah, the Bird, stands apart. She loves the young chief, but she knows that another has his promise, and she dares not hope; but the chief also loves her, and when the feasting is over he follows her footprints to the shore, where he sees her canoe turning the point of an island.
He draws near to her and asks her to sing, but she shakes her head and asks him to leave. He steps towards her but she runs to the edge of a steep rock and plunges into the lake. The Sun jumps in after her, but he does not find her, and sadly he returns to the village and tells the people what has happened. He comforts her grieving parents, until a hunter appears at noon and tells the people to row to the Island of Elms. The Sun leads the way, and there in a cove they find that the still water is enamelled with flowers, some as white as snow, filling the air with perfume, others strong and yellow, like the lake at sunset. Oseetah’s father tells them, “these flowers are our daughter. The white is her purity, the yellow her love. You shall see that her heart will close when the sun sets, and will reopen at his coming.”
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I’ve only been able to find this story in Charles M Skinner’s Myths & Legends of America, but it is similar to a Anishinaabe tale known as ‘The First White Waterlily.’ Both stories will be included in my upcoming book of comparative mythology and folklore re nature myths 🌼
Art: My edit, but then found out it is a painting by Michael Handt on Artstation, after the Czech artist Adolf Chwala 19th century.

“At the dawning of a new age, when the Hindu god Vishnu wakes, a lotus rises from his navel. This lotus is the throne of the god Brahma, who brings into being the four quarters of the universe, and so beginning the great work of creation. The word lotus - padma – is also a name of the goddess, of Vishnu’s Sakti, who is known as Lakshmi.
Native to many cultures of the world, the lotus is a symbol of “the universe divinely given,” as well as representing for wholeness, enlightenment, and of beauty rising from muddy and chaotic waters. In Ancient Egypt “a lotus emerges out of the dark waters of the primeval sea as emblem of the spirit of life, luminous and fragrant, disclosing, sometimes as a divine child, the sun god Re; in the form of a beautiful blue lotus of the Nile river, it is sacred to the goddess, the womb from which the golden life arises.”
The rising and falling, the inward breath and the exhalation, the two halves of the whole are mirrored in the lotus sinks into the water at night, before rising to the surface at dawn where it opens its petals. “Like the sun, who [rises] from the waters, the lotus was widely recognised as a symbol of life, fertility and resurrection.”
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Work from my upcoming book - last two quotes from the Taschen Book of Symbols
Art: Mermaid in a pool with Goldfish by Franz Hein (1863-1927)

The Glass or crystal mountain appears in many fairy tales, from the Scottish ‘Black Bull of Norroway’, the Polish ‘Glass Mountain’, the German ‘Old Rinkrank’, or the Red Knight, The ‘Seven Ravens’ and ‘The Iron Stove’. The Norwegian ‘The Princess on the Glass Hill, & in an Estonian fairy tale where a princess falls into a deep sleep and is placed by a magician into a glass coffin on top of a glass mountain. A final example comes from Bohemia, collected by Theodor Vernaleken, it is known as The Maiden on the Crystal Mountain. In the story, a young man named Hans sets out to find the maiden, and with the help of a raven, a wolf and a bear, he shifts his shape three times, and as a raven he flies to the summit of the mountain. After many trials a city is revealed to him crowned with a castle built of garnets. At the gate of the castle stands the maiden who agrees to marry Hans and the two of them live happily until the end of their days.
In her excellent book Fairy Tales: Allegories of an Inner Life, J.C Cooper explains how “crystal has magic powers and the same qualities were attributed to glass. In alchemy glass, like crystal, was regarded as a symbol of spiritual perfection. Crystal and glass are the self-luminous, perfect insight and purity. The insulating property of glass makes it typify the change from one state to another.”
In Latvian folklore, a crystal mountain symbolises the height of achievement – something not easily attainable but full of rewards for those who make the commitment to reach its peak.” In Slavic tradition the dead were buried with the claws of a bear so that they could climb the crystalline mountain of heaven. Similarly, the Russians buried their dead with pairings of an owl’s claws and of their own nails which would help the dead scramble up the steep side of the glass or iron hill that leads to paradise, while the Lithuanians “used to burn the claws of wild beasts on their funeral pyres.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Painting: Stairway to Heaven by Michael Z Tyree

There is a story that tells of “a hunter in Tibet who once spotted a deer and gave chase but was unable to catch it. The deer led him away to a distant snow mountain, where it banished into a crevice. Since the opening in the rock was only large enough for his body, he left his bow and arrow behind and went through it unarmed. On the far side he found a place of great beauty and joy: instead of water, milk flowed in streams, and in the place of stones, there were delicious things to eat. Thinking of how happy his wife and children would be there, he marked the crevice and went home to get them, but when he came back with his family the mark was gone, and he could not find the place again.
The theme of those stories seems to reflect the dilemma we experience in trying to capture this happiness: Whenever we seek it, we never seem to find it; it only comes upon us spontaneously, in unexpected moments. Like the characters in the stories, we must stumble on it, as if by accident. When we do, we seem for a brief time to enter a different world, a sanctuary of peace and happiness outside our usual harried state of existence.”
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From: The Way to Shambhala by Edwin Bernbaum (if you have read my book The Silver Bough you may notice a similarity between this story and the German folk tale The Goddess of the Mountain.)
Art: Untitled 2013 by Toshio Ebine - Instagram of the artist: @ebineyland (If you know the title please let me know, I searched but couldn’t find it)

“Butterflies have existed on earth for about 75 million years, and they are found on every continent apart from Antarctica. At this time, there are about 17,000 known species of butterflies, and among the many varied tales of butterflies there are some less benign beliefs and traditions. Maraleen Manos-Jones in her beautiful book *The Spirit of Butterflies: Myth, Magic and Art*, explains that “in many parts of Europe, including Scotland, Germany and the Baltic countries, butterflies and moths are regarded as the souls of witches and various superstitions still exist regarding the way in which butterflies should be treated. In parts of both Brittany and Lithuania, for example, a butterfly is considered a witch or a goddess of death. Serbians and Westphalians also traditionally believed that butterflies embodied the souls of witches, and a Serbian proverb says that ‘if you kill a butterfly, you kill a witch’. If one can find a witch asleep and turn her around without waking her, the soul will not be able to renter her body through her mouth, and, separated from her soul, will die.”
“The Aztecs believed that warriors and sacrificed individuals “returned to earth in the form of butterflies to assure their relatives that all was well. These butterflies would fly around the house and light upon bouquets of flowers, which were carried by Aztec men of high social rank.” The Aztecs, like the Arapaho, historically of the plains of Colorado and Wyoming, “associated the morning star with the butterfly, which represents the soul of the dead. After the end of night, which is equated with the dead, a bright light appears in the sky, showing that the spirit of the departed lives and shines on.”
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From my upcoming book on nature myths 🦋
Artwork: Chance (Graphite on Stonehenge) by Miles Johnson. Instagram of the artist @miles_art

In 1274 Dante first saw Beatrice “she who confers blessing”, a crimson dressed girl and symbolic of the anima mundi “soul of the world” who awoke his heart to the aesthetic life. “At that moment,” writes Dante, “I say … the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook; and in trembling it said these words: ‘Here is a deity stronger than I, who, coming, shall rule over me’” From then on he was a devotee of this deity in the shape of his soul figure, dedicated to love, imagination, and poetic beauty, all three inseparably.’
“Beauty is not an attribute like a fine skin wrapped round a virtue, merely the aesthetic aspect of appearance. It is appearance itself. Were there no beauty, along with the good and the true and the one, we could never sense them, know them. Beauty is an epistemological necessity; it is the way in which the gods touch our senses, reach the heart, and attract us into life.”
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From ‘The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World’ by James Hillman
Artwork: May 2017, by Adrienne Stein. Instagram of the artist @adriennestein 💜

In Hawaiian mythology there is a legend of Hina, a goddess who once grew weary of her mortal life and when “she looked to the heavens, she became determined to flee up the pathway of the rainbow through the clouds.” At first Hina went to the Sun, but it was too bright, and the next day she climbed the rainbow towards the moon, but her husband saw her, leapt and caught hold of her foot. Undeterred, Hina shook her husband off, but as he fell he broke her leg, and it fell with him back to the earth. Westervelt recounts how “Hina went up through the stars, crying out the strongest incantations she could use. The powers of night aided her. The mysterious hands of darkness lifted her, until she stood at the door of the moon. She had packed her calabash with her most precious possessions and had carried it with her even when injured by her cruel husband.” When the moon is full, the Hawaiians of long ago and still today, “look into the quiet, silvery light and see the goddess in her celestial home.” On the Island of Atiu in the Cook group, the Polynesians tell a story about Ina, the goddess of the moon. It is said that she had lived with a mortal man on the moon for many years, but when he grew old and death approached, she built a rainbow bridge to convey him back to the earth.
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Work from upcoming book, quotes from Legends of Maui by W.D. Westerwelt
Artwork: Midnight Interlude 2011 by Roy Tabora

“In British folklore there are tales of serpents, or drakes, who lived in rivers and who appeared as golden cups that floated on the water. When people attempted to take the cups or rings, they were dragged down into the depths. In medieval France a similar legend is found of a young woman who went down to the river on the edge of town to wash her clothes. There she saw a golden cup with a large pearl floating on the river. She reached forward and grasped the pearl, but lost her balance, fell into the river and into the waiting claws of the dragon. It took her down to its crystal cavern at the bottom of the river, and there the young woman remained for seven years, tending to the dragon’s brood. At the end of the seven years the grateful dragon returned her to the riverside, and handed her the pearl as her reward.”
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From my upcoming book 🐍
Painting: Night Landscape (View of Curonion Lagoon.) 19th Century. Unknown Artist (please let me know if you know :)

In Gaelic mythology the Cailleach (translates as ‘veiled one’ and the prefix ‘Caill’ also means a ‘covering’.) is at her most powerful during the winter months, bringing the cold weather, icy winds and snow with her. She is said to often ride a wolf (sometimes a wild pig) across the sky bringing the snow and riding the wolf through the lands crushing any signs of plant life. But she is also seen as the midwife for the dying year, keeping the seeds of new life safe and warm beneath the earth, caring for them throughout the winter months so that they may become new life in the spring. The 25th of March was known as Latha na Caillich, Cailleach Day or Lady Day.
It was customary in Scotland at the height of winter for the head of the household to carve the face of the Cailleach Nollaigh (Christmas Old Wife) into a piece of oak. The wood represented cold and death and would be thrown into the fire on Christmas Eve to burn until it was reduced to ashes. This would ensure death would not touch the household for the coming year. It was also supposed to rid the family of any bad luck. Another Cailleach ‘timber’ tale tells of a log that was dragged through the village by the community, the log was named ‘the Cailleach log’ (obviously, what else would you call it?) but also referred to as ‘the snake log’. The log was beaten by everyone and symbolically killed to represent killing all the vegetation. Everything must die first to be reborn again in the spring.
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From Cailleach by Rachel Patterson
Painting detail: Pustka 1901. (Winter Landscape ‘Emptiness’) by Roman Bratkowski 1869-1954

“To our ancestors the cave was an entrance to the chthonic realm that receives all things, where seeds germinate and new life flickers into being. Not only a place of shelter, but also a symbol of the womb of the earth. In the mouth of the cave, the liminal line between the worlds, stones were often left, “symbolising the souls of the dead who would be reborn from the womb of the goddess, of the ancient earth mother”. The cave was also a place of initiation into the mysteries of life and death. The great 20th-century mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote of this when he said: “rites …together with the mythologies that support them, constitute the second womb…mythology being the womb of mankind’s initiation into life and death”. In the primeval wild of the cave, initiates would have crawled through cramped and suffocating passageways where, amid swarming spirits, they would have received visions in states of trance and ecstasy, before returning reborn, and bathed in the brilliant light of the sun.”
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From my book ‘The Golden Thread.’
Art: an illustration by Edmund Dulac from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published 1909

“From drifting weather patterns to the ever-changing swell of the sea, “water forms a natural frontier… and effectively marks the threshold of the kingdom of the dead. But since the kingdom of the dead is forbidden to the living and visa versa, any crossing of the water is always attached to the idea of mythical trials and tests of endurance.” Indeed, the passage from life to death has long been regarded as a voyage, as a passing from one state to another.
Legends of voyages into the great unknown are among our most beloved tales, as such themes speak directly to our unconscious. Erich Neumann wrote of how “Alchemy depicted its opus of psychological process as a circumnavigation to the four ends of the earth, and as a voyage in opposite directions at the same time, suggesting a destination of wholeness. The opus was also perceived as an odyssey, long, tedious, heroic, beset by dangers. One could easily get lost traveling those unknown waters, be swallowed by things of the deep or get becalmed.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: The Water Door by Maxine Duchamp on Artstation

In Norse tradition the staff connects the bearer to the earth and sky, and is associated with ecstatic song and magic chanting. The title of the völva comes from völr meaning: “wand, staff,” and so the völva is a “staff-woman” named for the shamanic wand that appears in Icelandic literature, while archaeologists have found in many graves dating from 800-1000, some women were buried with “ritual staffs of iron or occasionally wood in Norway, Sweden and Denmark often with regalia, herbs and unusual items.”
In the Saga of Erik the Red, there is a description of one of these priestesses, “She was wearing a blue cloak with straps which was set with stones right down to the hem; she had glass beads about her neck, and on her head a black lambskin hood lined inside with white cat skin. She had a staff in her hand, ornamented with bronze. Around her middle she wore a belt made out of touchwood, and on it was a big skin pouch in which she kept those charms of hers which she needed for her magic…” In the Thorbi’rg Lillvolva, her staff is described as being adorned with stones and metal. While in the Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns (Tale of Thorstein House-Power), “Thorstein makes his way to the Otherworld twice. One day he comes to a mound and hears a boy asking his mother for a staff because he wants to take a ride. The term that is used, gandreið, has the literal meaning of ‘staff-ride.’” Interestingly “Bearer of a Magic Wand” was also one of the names of the Norse God Odin.”
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From: included in my book The Silver Bough (more in my story.) other quote included from: Claude Lecouteux:, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages 💫
Painting: Nocturne 2015 by Mariusz Lewandowski.

“Self surrender, resignation, and a willingness to die seem to be the motivating forces that trigger all subsequent patterns of action. In the face of mortal danger – as when one’s body is in free fall – and when all means of escape within human capacity are futile, consciousness abandons itself to its fate. The fear of ego dissolution vanishes, and one’s identification with his or her own life story and existence falls apart.”
“When Dutch house painter Peter Hurkos fell from a ladder, he suffered a severe brain injury. After the fall he lay unconscious in the hospital and later had no memory for many names, dates and faces. He recognised the members of his family only by their voices. Even today he does not retain names and telephone numbers, not even his own phone number. He portrays his accident as follows: “The moment I fell down I saw my whole life go by in one second and then everything was black. When I came out of the dark I wanted to go back to where I was, when it was all beautiful. Beautiful flowers and beautiful music and everything changed. Even a tulip was different, more beautiful than a normal tulip. Yes, I saw flowers and mountains, beautiful mountains.”
“It is as if heaven and earth becomes one.
Everything becomes radiantly bright.
It is like the experience of making love for the first time.
As though you were walking lost across a wide country road.”
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Quotes from ‘Shamans, Healers and Medicine Men’ by Holger Kalweit, last quote a description of a trance from a Saora shaman from Eastern India. Holger explains that: “Today unfortunately, there is a tendency either to mythologise altered states of consciousness or to discredit them. Both tendencies are equally harmful.”
.Painting: ‘The Kingdom’ Oil on Canvas by Marek Ruzyk. Contemporary artist from Poland

There is a Breton tale known as Aotroù Nann hag ar Gorrigan or Lord Nann and the Korrigan. In the story Lord Nann’s wife gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. After the birth he asks her what her heart’s desire would be, and she replies: “the meat of the woodcock from the valley marsh, or the meat of a roe deer from the green forest.” Lord Nann set off at once, and on the fringes of the wood saw a white hind. He pursued it for many hours, until, exhausted, his horse led him to a grotto. Dismounting, Lord Nann went to drink from the fountain when he saw a Korrigan combing her long blonde hair with a golden comb.
“How dare you come to muddy my waters!” She said. “You will marry me right now, or you will wither on your feet within seven years, or you will die in three days.”
“I will not marry you,” Lord Nann replied, “because I have been married for a year, and I will not wither on my feet or die until it pleases God. Indeed, I would rather die on my feet that marry a Korrgian!” And with that he returned home, retired to bed, and passed from the world.
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This story appears in Claude Lecouteux’s book The Pagan Book of the Dead, and is included in my The Silver Bough
Art: Lancelot from an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King

There is a curious map known as the Mercator Map of 1569, which depicts the North Pole as a black rock surrounded by four islands, and with four rivers flowing from it. Mercator described it as being 33 miles wide, as well as magnetic, and surrounded by “in-drawing sea”, or a whirlpool. A magnetic mountain also appears in an adventure tale from 1190 called Herzog Ernst, where Ernst sets sail for the Holy Land and is blown off course by a storm to a land of small folk and giants where his ship is blocked by a congealed sea which encircles the Magnetic Mountain. Similarly, in a tale from Bohemia, Štilfríd and Bruncvík, a prince sailed with his men for three months “when a violent storm tossed their vessel toward the Magnetic Mountain. When they came close, it pulled them - as was its nature - to a nearby island, called Zelator, meaning the ‘Island of the Blessed.’” In the 12th century Voyage of St Brendan from Ireland, it is written that “the Mountain of the Magnet rises near the Sluggish Sea, meaning the ‘coagulated sea,’” which, as Claude Lecouteux explains, is “in fact a mythical image of an ice floe.” It is also worth mentioning here that accounts of other magnetic mountains or rocks appear in Egypt, India and China.
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Interestingly, both Mercator and the Elizabethan mage Dr John Dee wrote at length about a number of obscure texts, one of which was called Gestae Arthuri, and which reportedly told of how King Arthur and his men had “conquered the Northern Islands and made them subject to him.” After the winter of 530AD, Arthur and his men crossed the sea to Iceland, but four ships warned him of the “in-drawing seas,” and Arthur did not proceed until the following year when Arthur sent twelve ships northwards, of which “five were driven on to the rocks in a storm, but the rest made their way between the high rocks.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: Detail from The Shipwreck 1875 by Ivan Aivazovsky

“In Dutch folklore there are female spirits who were said to dwell in old burial mounds, and who are called the Witte Wieven, or White Women. In the 17th century, locals often took offerings to the Witte Wieven, to ask for “healing help in childbirth, for knowledge for the future and help with finding lost valuables. These very things were repeatedly listed as activities of the witches throughout the Middle Ages.”
White has long been associated with the goddess, nymphs and fairy queens. From depictions of their white clothing, pale skin, or the white horse which was their prize mount. As the colour of snow, white also represents the winter and deities such as Cailleach and Holda. J.C Cooper explains how in marriage white “symbolises death to the old life and birth into the new, while in death it represents birth into the new life beyond. A woman robed in white also carries the love-life-death connotations, as with the Delphic Aphrodite of the Tombs, the Scandinavian Freyja or Frigg and the Teutonic Hel/Freya, the ‘beloved’ goddess of death.” Katharine Briggs wrote of how “the Silkies of the North of England generally wore glistening white silk, and the white ladies of the Isle of Man wore white satin.” The Welsh Tylwyth Teg were also said to sometimes wear white, while in the 17th century, self-confessed witch Isobel Gowdie described the Queen of the Faerie as clothed in white linen and white and brown clothes.
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From my book The Silver Bough.
Artwork: Detail from: Witte Wieven by Marthe Jonkers - Instagram account of the artist: @arthemart - Credit to @classicnymph on whose beautiful account which is where I first saw it

“The Earth Diver myths tell the creation story from the perspective of a representative from the upper world who dives into the primordial chaos to bring forth the first seed of order. The myth tells how a divine being (usually an animal) descends into the water to bring up bits of mud, which grow to form the whole Earth, or even the entire Universe. Earth Diver myths are common among the North American indigenous peoples, whose cosmologies feature an original upper world inhabited by the immortal Elders and an unformed chaos of water below.
The symbolism in Earth Diver myths is often whimsical: the Diver is often a muskrat, a duck or a turtle. Yet the underlying meaning of the myths is nonetheless profound. Water is the unformed reality out of which matter appears, and the descent into the abyss is analogous to baptism, in that it is once a cleansing and a creative act. “In the beginning there was nothing but water.” Says a Huron myth. Similarly, the Hindu Vishnu Purana tells of an original chaos of waters: “He, the Lord, concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and being desirous to raise it up… He, the supporter of spiritual and material being, plunged into the ocean.”
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From A Dictionary of Creation Myths by David Leeming
Art: View From The Cliffs by Steven Vincent Johnson c.2003

“There are no peoples in the world who have not projected on to the starry heavens the preeminent forces and myths of their cosmos. The great goddess – Inanna, Ishtar, Aphrodite – was everywhere the radiant evening-and-morning star, arc of the mysteries of sleep, dream, death and regeneration. For thousands of years stars hare oriented the wanderer, sailor and pilgrim just as consciousness navigating its unknown darkness takes its bearings from the scintillation of psyche’s imaginal forms. Stars tell us of the infinite, the visionary, of something in ourselves that is starlike, star stuff. In loss, we look up and find in the beckoning incandescence of a single star the longed for soul of the departed.
Long before we knew the phenomenal nature of a star, it suggested a nuclear, enigmatic “point” or “monad” whose source of gravity was mysterious and abysmal. Egyptian Nut, the lovely goddess of the night sky, was depicted as giving birth to the stars and taking them up against her dark belly, the way unconscious gives birth to consciousness and darkly encompasses the ouster of its individual spark. In the Pyramid Texts, the deceased was directed to become an “imperishable star” and so live forever. Alchemy adopted the theme in its goal of bringing the conflicting “many” of the self into a luminous and unified “one”. Evocative of the magnetic “centre” and its capacity to order and synthesise, the pole star, in Egypt known as “that place” or “great city” was perceived as the node of the universe, the centre of its regulation and the high seat of the high god who presides over the cosmic circuit of stars.”
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From the Taschen Book of Symbols
Art: Sharing the Heavens by Michael Z Tyree. Contemporary American Symbolic & Spiritual artist in oil & pastel

In his essay ‘On the Beautiful’, Plotinus wrote of how “the soul leaps forth in joy to embrace that which is the likeness of itself. That is why the beauty of art gives joy to the human soul.” While In Plato’s ‘Ladder of Love’, the beauty of the body is regarded as a gateway through which one may come to understand the beauty of the soul. I feel that the main issue nowadays is that popular culture likes to, whether it is intentional or not, trap us at a lower level. Constantly distracted and at odds with ourselves, it is almost impossible to “scan beauty’s wide horizon,” and let alone acknowledging the idea of the soul. No matter how impossible the task though, such a jewel is almost the only one worth having, for when Socrates opened his eyes to the sea of beauty, from the body to the beauty of every kind of knowledge, he reaped a golden harvest. Viewed in succession, the initiate will also behold a “wondrous vision which is the very beauty of the soul.” It is an everlasting loveliness which reveals itself in all things, in an “eternal oneness” where “every lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more or less, but still the same inviolable whole.” As Diotima tells Socrates, once you have seen the very beauty of the soul, “you will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away and kindle such a longing in you.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Painting: The Angel of Power by Annael Anelia Pavlova 2010 Oil and gold leaf on Belgian linen. Bulgarian-born Australian artist. She was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1956

“Polynesian people of the Hervey Islands and others in the Cook Islands group southeast of Tahiti also see six Pleiades. At one time, they say, the Pleiades were a single star, and it was so flashy and overbearing. Take-mantua, the god of celestial light, decided out of jealousy to douse its glow. Everybody on earth loved its radiance, but it submerged the rest of the stars with its light. Because it was no match even for the moon, people paid little attention to the other stars. Sirius, which in the absence of this perfect primeval Pleiades would have been honoured as the brightest of stars volunteered to help Tane punch out the star’s lights. Aldebaran smelled blood and also joined the pack. Together they planned an ambush, but the star was ready for them and ran for cover in the light of the Milky Way, Tane’s highway. Tane could see him, however, and fired Aldebaran at him like a shooting star. Struck by this missile, the great star broke into six pieces.”
“Native Hawaiians, whose language is similar to Maori, refer to the Pleiades as Makali’i, which means a ‘cluster of little eyes.’ The Hebrew word kimah, means “cluster” or “heap.” The Andean Aymara speak of them as a “handful” or a “group” and one of the Peruvian Quechua names for them is “pile”.European peoples including the Finns and Lithuanians referred to the Pleiades as a ‘sieve’ or a net., while the old Welsh name for them means “a close pack.”
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First quote from Beyond the Blue Horizon by Edwin C. Krupp
Art: from an illustration by Ted Nasmith for ‘The Simarilion by J.R. Tolkien c.1970

There is an old Bulgarian tradition, where on a night in June, when the Spassovden flower blooms, many people gather in the meadows. Beside wild roses and beneath the mountains, it is believed that on this night, the Rusalki are benevolent to humans, as they love to make wreaths from the flowers. This tradition, known as ‘Visiting the Rosen’ was a ritual undertaken by the sick, where, dressed in white they ventured into the places where the spassovden flower grows. There they washed in water from a sacred well or spring. Preparing for the night ahead they spread a white sheet on the ground to sleep on, and “near their head they placed a bowl of water, a twig from a rosen bush, a lit candle or oil lamp, and a white handkerchief on which they placed gifts for the spirits: a cup of honey and rolls spread with honey, shirts, towels, stockings. Before they go to sleep, the people eat a meal they’ve brought: bread, cake, roasted chicken, wine, rakia (Bulgarian brandy). They must keep a strict silence during the night. At midnight, Rusalki arrive, bearing their queen on a chariot of human bones. They cause a whirlwind to blow over the sleeping humans, carrying with it the soft, whispered words, laughter, or songs of the spirit maidens. As the Rusalki gather flowers, they strew leaves, twigs, sand, insects, and petals over the sleeping people.”
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Quote from: Rusalka by Ronesa Aveela .
Painting: Detail from an illustration by Ted Nasmith for ‘The Silmarillion. Paintings of scenes from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien.’ c.1970s

Absu: in ancient Mesopotamia, the absu, or apsu, was the realm beneath the earth that contained a freshwater ocean. Like many ancient peoples, the Mesopotamians believed the salt sea encircled the earth. But the absu, they believed, contained another ocean, an ocean that created long before the creation of mankind and that provided the source of water for all the springs, wells, streams, rivers and lakes of the world.
The absu was the realm of Enki, a water god who resided there with a host of other primordial features long before the creation of mankind. In the Babylonian epic The Creation of Mankind, it is said that Absu first existed as a creature who lived in the dark abyss under the earth with Tiamat, his mate. With Tiamat, Absu, had offspring, among them Anu and Enki. But Absu was resentful of these younger gods whose activity and light opposed his inertia and darkness, and he waged war against them. Enki led the battle and won, casting a spell on Absu that put him to sleep and killed him. The spell did not kill his essence, however. Absu existed from then on as a place – the dark, abysmal realm that housed the subterranean ocean and led to the Underworld.
As primordial creatures, Absu and Tiamat were envisioned as a pair, yet they stood in opposition to one another. Absu represented the inert freshwater, and Tiamat, the salty and tumultuous sea water. In myth, these two forces mingled together to produce Mummu, a representation of mist and clouds. But because of his battle with Enki, Absu was immortalised. Cult centres were dedicated to him, constructed around ponds or basins presenting his waters. The house of Absu was one of the oldest sanctuaries in Mesopotamia, erected in the city of Eridu and dedicated to Enki.”
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From: Legends of Earth, Sea & Sky by Tamra Andrews more information in my story 💜
Art: Detail from an illustration by Ted Nasmith for ‘The Silmarillion. Paintings of scenes from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien.’ c.1970s

“Myths of devouring, decapitation and dismemberment dramatise the death of the Moon as murder. And as the Moon’s life is felt to be like human life, so the Moon’s death can represent human death, and allow the expression of the feeling that death of human beings is also a transgression. But the fact that the Moon’s light comes back out of its own darkness invited the perception that, though all death may be experienced as a tragedy, it may yet bring life with it. This perception is also afforded by the idea of the cup of the Moon containing the elixir of its own immortality which, as Soma, screams throughout the earth and compels a feeling for life as a whole... The ‘mystery’ of the Mysteries was primarily the resurrection after death of the god or goddess (or half-human, half-divine being who became through resurrection, a god or goddess). But the deeper mystery was perhaps the fact that those who participated in the passion of the divine being, by ritually re-enacting it, became themselves free of fear of death. In those mysteries where the bodies were ritually torn apart in gruesome act or mime, or symbolically broken as a vessel, it was as though the subsequent act of re-membering the bodies metaphorically enabled a remembering of the source, a dying and rebirth into the Great Memory. These traditions are essentially lunar traditions, but when not taken literally, the Moon may become a symbol and is no longer required to be as visible actor in the sky.”
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From: The Moon: Symbol of Transformation by Jules Cashford
Art: Blood Moon by Thomas Kegler b.1970

In alchemy the sacred marriage “refers to the union of our divine spirit with the soul, and finally with the body. By way of speaking we could say that in common man the spirit, soul and body are kind of separated from each other, although they are working with each other. But when the Great Work has been completed, the divine spirit has been brought ‘down’ to shine through the soul and body and unified itself with them, so they all form one and the same ‘body’.”
The marriage of opposites may be seen throughout all things, from the sun and moon, to gold and silver, volatile to fixed, and circle and square, etc. “Coniunctio is also the union of divine or spiritual energies with earthly energies.” In alchemical manuscripts the union is often depicted as the union of the Red King and the White Queen, the man of heart and the women of wisdom, and “as the white woman has been married to the red man, they will hug themselves firmly and become one, they will decompose and perfect each other: from the two bodies they were before they will become one single body that is susceptible for perfection."
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Quotes by Dirk Gillabel and from my book The Golden Thread
Art: From an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Dore for Inferno. Canto 5. 1861

Dark cloud constellations: “When the people of the Peruvian highlands look into the night sky, they see clusters of dark shadows in the southern portion of the Milky Way that scholars have labelled dark cloud constellations. The Quechua of Peru saw animals in these dark cloud formations, and they wove many myths about these animals rising into the sky and dwelling in the clouds. They envisioned the cloud animals dipping into the cosmic sea and drinking before passing into the underworld. When the Milky Way rose above the horizon, they envisioned the animals transporting the water into the atmosphere and releasing it as rain.”
“The Quechua called these star clusters Yana Phuyu or Pachatita and described them as representations of animals and birds that populated their world... celestial equivalents of the llama, the rainbow serpent, and many other animals were thought to be responsible for the survival of their equivalents on earth and were believed to play an important role in continuing the life cycle.”
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From ‘Myths of Earth, Sea and Sky’ by Tamra Andrews.
Art: Starry Night by Edward Henry Potthast. 19th century

“The Taoist Chuang Tzu wrote that life should be ‘blended harmony, with yin and the yang, in the time of the sages of old that was said to be perfect harmony which was expressed in the li chi, or book rights as follows: ‘When the great Tao prevailed the whole world was one community. Men of talent and virtue were chosen to lead the people, their words were sincere, and they cultivated harmony.’ ... In Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life, James Hollis writes: ‘all we have to offer in the face of the great regressive powers within and without is the willingness to undertake the journey. The awareness of duality, conflict, is painful, but choosing to pursue one’s individuation is the only adult choice, the only way to live one’s life to the fullest and at the same time serve the larger mystery. This is a choice made not once only; it must be renewed every day in the face of the demons of fear, doubt and lethargy.”
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Quotes included in my book The Silver Bough. Chapter 5 ‘Hidden Gold.’
Painting: Winter Night in the Mountains (Vinternatt i fjellene) 1914 by the Norwegian artist Harald Sohlberg

The Milky Way has been described as a “stream of divine milk, a celestial river, and a highway in the sky that linked the gods, spirits, shamans and the souls of the living with the spiritual dimension of the sky... Thin, pale light makes the Milky Way look tattered and ghostly, and as a spectral road to the gods, it was sometimes seen as the ghost road to Heaven and a home for human souls. In North America, among the Skidi Pawnee spiritual leaders, the Milky Way was the trace travelled by departed souls on their way to the Southern Star, the final home of the spirits. Ancient Hungarians sometimes called it the War Path and said that soldiers who died in battle marched upon it into heaven. Both the Iroquoian and Algonquian tribes of the eastern woodlands saw the Milky Way as a path for the dead leading to the Village of Souls. The Pokemo people of East Africa say the Milky Way is smoke from the campfires of the “ancient people” while to the native peoples of South Africa’s Kalahari Desert, it is ashes thrown into the sky by a girl in ancient times. Many Siberian peoples liken the sky to a tent and refer to the Milky Way as a Seam of the Sky. The same idea is expressed in the Samoyed name for it – the Back of the Sky. Plato thought of the Milky Way as the seam that hemmed the two halves of heaven together and Theophrastus, who also lived during the fourth century bc held a similar opinion.”
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From ‘Beyond the Blue Horizon’ by E. C. Krupp
Art: it’s actually a still from the Studio Ghibli film Tales From Earthsea. 2006. I haven’t seen the film but I loved this still

“Storms in the forest were once attributed to the furious career of the Wild Huntsman, of whom many tales are told under various aspects in different lands.” In Germany the legend is very widely spread and seems to have descended from the highest antiquity. Figures such as the Welsh Gwyn Ap Nudd, and the mythic King Herla. In Germany it was Wotan (Odin) that led the “furious horde”. Odin, like Holda (who comes down to us today in the fairy tale “Mother Holle”) are both said to lead the Wild Hunt, as well as being associated with stars, the Milky Way in particular: one Old Dutch name for the Milky Way was Vroneldenstraet meaning ‘Frau Holda’s Street’, while the Germanic people’s knew it as Wuotanes Straza, or Woden’s Street.Night, like winter, was when Holda walked abroad. Associates with spinning and weaving, Holda, like the goddess Diana, had a special affinity with women and magic. “Certainly to be feared, when the Wild Hunt is heard on the winds it is time to lock up your children safely indoors, light a fire and say your prayers, for death will surely be on their heels...The arts of spinning and magic are closely interwoven in folklore and we still ‘weave’ spells. Witches were said to ride out with her in spirit form on their spinning distaffs, which closely resemble the classic witches’ broom. In 16th century Germany, a woman was exiled for participating in the Wild Hunt with Holda.”.Quotes from The Forest by A.Porteous & Faerie Queens by Sorta d’Esta Painting: Erlkönig [1887] by Julius von Klever — “Storms in the forest were once attributed to the furious career of the Wild Huntsman, of whom many tales are told under various aspects in different lands.” In Germany the legend is very widely spread and seems to have descended from the highest antiquity. Figures such as the Welsh Gwyn Ap Nudd, and the mythic King Herla. In Germany it was Wotan (Odin) that led the “furious horde”. Odin, like Holda (who comes down to us today in the fairy tale “Mother Holle”) are both said to lead the Wild Hunt, as well as being associated with stars, the Milky Way in particular: one Old Dutch name for the Milky Way was Vroneldenstraet meaning ‘Frau Holda’s Street’, while the Germanic people’s knew it as Wuotanes Straza, or Woden’s Street.
Night, like winter, was when Holda walked abroad. Associates with spinning and weaving, Holda, like the goddess Diana, had a special affinity with women and magic. “Certainly to be feared, when the Wild Hunt is heard on the winds it is time to lock up your children safely indoors, light a fire and say your prayers, for death will surely be on their heels...The arts of spinning and magic are closely interwoven in folklore and we still ‘weave’ spells. Witches were said to ride out with her in spirit form on their spinning distaffs, which closely resemble the classic witches’ broom. In 16th century Germany, a woman was exiled for participating in the Wild Hunt with Holda.”
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Quotes from The Forest by A.Porteous & Faerie Queens by Sorta d’Esta
Painting: Erlkönig [1887] by Julius von Klever

“Saulė: Lithuania goddess, known in Latvian mythology and folklore as Saule, she is believed to predate the Indo-European deities, especially the sky father. Saulė (pronounced as Sow-ley) and her daughters, the stars, Saules Meita, are the subject of many beautiful Baltic folk songs. Goddess of the sun and fertility, she is also the patroness of all unfortunate people, especially orphans. Some tales say that she lives on the high peak of a heavenly mountain, and that during the day she rides in her chariot drawn by two white horses known as Asviniai, and at night she sails on sea. Her consort is Mėnulis, Latvian: Menesis, the moon god. Some of the old tales tell us that Mėnulis lived apart from his wife, Saulė because of the love he held for the morning star, which in some tales is their daughter, known by various names: Saules Meita, as well as Austrine, etc. It is said that when she found out, she was so furious that she slashed his face, leaving the marks on the moon we see today. Saulė was seen at full strength during the summer solstice festival, known as Rasa. Throughout the rest of the year, many spells and rituals were performed to help strengthen her. Patricia Monaghan tells us that “Saulė ruled all parts of life, from birth into Her light to death when She welcomed souls into Her apple tree in the west. Even the name of the ocean on which the Balts lived was Hers, named for Balta Saulite (‘darling little white sun’). She was worshipped in songs and rituals that celebrated her nurturance of earth’s life, for She was Our Mother, called various names like Saulite Mat (‘little sun-mother’) and Saulite Sudrabota (‘little silver sun’)”. In one story, Saulė drowns in the sea when descending from her journey across the sky, and her daughters descend into the underworld to bargain for her release so that the sun could once more shine on the earth.”.From my book The Golden ThreadArt: Autumn by Vladimir Kireev. Russian b. 1984 — “Saulė: Lithuania goddess, known in Latvian mythology and folklore as Saule, she is believed to predate the Indo-European deities, especially the sky father. Saulė (pronounced as Sow-ley) and her daughters, the stars, Saules Meita, are the subject of many beautiful Baltic folk songs.
Goddess of the sun and fertility, she is also the patroness of all unfortunate people, especially orphans. Some tales say that she lives on the high peak of a heavenly mountain, and that during the day she rides in her chariot drawn by two white horses known as Asviniai, and at night she sails on sea.
Her consort is Mėnulis, Latvian: Menesis, the moon god. Some of the old tales tell us that Mėnulis lived apart from his wife, Saulė because of the love he held for the morning star, which in some tales is their daughter, known by various names: Saules Meita, as well as Austrine, etc. It is said that when she found out, she was so furious that she slashed his face, leaving the marks on the moon we see today.
Saulė was seen at full strength during the summer solstice festival, known as Rasa. Throughout the rest of the year, many spells and rituals were performed to help strengthen her. Patricia Monaghan tells us that “Saulė ruled all parts of life, from birth into Her light to death when She welcomed souls into Her apple tree in the west. Even the name of the ocean on which the Balts lived was Hers, named for Balta Saulite (‘darling little white sun’). She was worshipped in songs and rituals that celebrated her nurturance of earth’s life, for She was Our Mother, called various names like Saulite Mat (‘little sun-mother’) and Saulite Sudrabota (‘little silver sun’)”. In one story, Saulė drowns in the sea when descending from her journey across the sky, and her daughters descend into the underworld to bargain for her release so that the sun could once more shine on the earth.”
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From my book The Golden Thread
Art: Autumn by Vladimir Kireev. Russian b. 1984

“Morning Star/ Evening Star: Astute skywatchers of the ancient world noticed that certain bright objects friendly dominated the eastern sky in the morning, dissapeared for a time, then reappeared and dominated the western sky in the evening... Venus moved obviously and always stayed close to the sun. Except for the sun and the moon, Venus is the brightest object in the sky. Because of its brightness and beauty, Venus often played the mythological role of an enchanting goddess. Both the Mesopotamian Ishtar and the Slavic Auszrine were exceptionally beautiful and radiant. In Russian mythology, in fact, Auszrine was considered more radiant than the sun. The moon could not rise for two nights because he was so transfixed by her, and when she rose form the sea in the evening, the sun set because Auszrine’s beauty outshone her… this deity had a dual nature, so mythmakers sometimes identified it with twins. Some scholars identified the Aswins of Hindu myth as the Morning and Evening Star. As solar horsemen they emanated light, and when they rose before the sun they conquered the darkenss. Chasca, the page of the Inti, did the same thing in the myths of the Inca.”.From Legends of Earth, Sea and Sky by Tamra Andrews.Painting: Elegy 1886 by Ferdinand Knab — “Morning Star/ Evening Star: Astute skywatchers of the ancient world noticed that certain bright objects friendly dominated the eastern sky in the morning, dissapeared for a time, then reappeared and dominated the western sky in the evening... Venus moved obviously and always stayed close to the sun. Except for the sun and the moon, Venus is the brightest object in the sky. Because of its brightness and beauty, Venus often played the mythological role of an enchanting goddess.
Both the Mesopotamian Ishtar and the Slavic Auszrine were exceptionally beautiful and radiant. In Russian mythology, in fact, Auszrine was considered more radiant than the sun. The moon could not rise for two nights because he was so transfixed by her, and when she rose form the sea in the evening, the sun set because Auszrine’s beauty outshone her… this deity had a dual nature, so mythmakers sometimes identified it with twins. Some scholars identified the Aswins of Hindu myth as the Morning and Evening Star. As solar horsemen they emanated light, and when they rose before the sun they conquered the darkenss. Chasca, the page of the Inti, did the same thing in the myths of the Inca.”
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From Legends of Earth, Sea and Sky by Tamra Andrews.
Painting: Elegy 1886 by Ferdinand Knab

“Named after the whiteness of its bark, the birch shares its name with the ancient Irish goddess Brigid, both names deriving from the Indo-European word bher(e)g, “shining white”. Brigid was a benevolent deity, a muse to poets and the patron of crafts, particularly spinning and weaving. In Norse and Germanic tradition, the birch is associated with Freya, the Lady of the Forest, and Frigga, the wife of Odin (who was originally a wind god). In Russian folklore, the birch itself is called Lady of the Forest. The nourishing, caring birch is an image of the White Goddess, and the Germanic rune Berkana, “birch”, stands for motherhood, bosom and protection. Furthermore, the actual shape of the rune, which is echoed in our capital letter “B”, is derived from the “mother mounds” of the Neolithic. These hills were mostly burial mounds and ceremonial places where the mysteries of death and rebirth were celebrated. Twin hills symbolized the breasts of the Earth Mother.”.From: 🍂The Spirit of Trees by Fred Hageneder (more in my story.) 🍂Painting detail from ‘The Sacred Grove’ 1882 by Arnold Böcklin — “Named after the whiteness of its bark, the birch shares its name with the ancient Irish goddess Brigid, both names deriving from the Indo-European word bher(e)g, “shining white”. Brigid was a benevolent deity, a muse to poets and the patron of crafts, particularly spinning and weaving. In Norse and Germanic tradition, the birch is associated with Freya, the Lady of the Forest, and Frigga, the wife of Odin (who was originally a wind god). In Russian folklore, the birch itself is called Lady of the Forest. The nourishing, caring birch is an image of the White Goddess, and the Germanic rune Berkana, “birch”, stands for motherhood, bosom and protection. Furthermore, the actual shape of the rune, which is echoed in our capital letter “B”, is derived from the “mother mounds” of the Neolithic. These hills were mostly burial mounds and ceremonial places where the mysteries of death and rebirth were celebrated. Twin hills symbolized the breasts of the Earth Mother.”
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From: 🍂The Spirit of Trees by Fred Hageneder (more in my story.) 🍂
Painting detail from ‘The Sacred Grove’ 1882 by Arnold Böcklin

In Hawaiian mythology Pele is the goddess of volcanoes and fire. Often referred to as "Madame Pele" or "Tūtū Pele" as a sign of respect. “Her father was Moe-moea-au-lii, the chief who dreamed of trouble. Her mother was Haumea, or Papa, who personified mother earth. One version of how Pele came to Hawaii is a story of wanderlust, “stirred by thoughts of far-away lands." At last she asked her father for a sea-going canoe with mat sails, sufficiently large to carry a number of persons and food for many days. Pele also carried a little eggwhich she wrapped in her skirt to keep it warm. In a very short time the egg was changed into a beautiful little girt who bore the name Hii-aka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele (Hiiaka-in-the-bosom-of-Pele), the youngest one of the Pele family.Pele sailed to mysterious and ancestral islands before she turned northwest and found Niihau, the most northerly of the Hawaiian group. Pele was welcomed and entertained. Soon she went over to Kauai, the large, beautiful garden island of the Hawaiian group.There is a story of her appearance as a dream maiden before the king of Kauai, whose name was Lohiau, whom she married, but with whom she could not stay until she had found a place where she could build a permanent home for herself and all who belonged to her. Pele had a magic digging tool, Pa-oa. When she struck this down into the earth it made a fire-pit. It was with this Pa-oa that she was to build a home for herself and Lohiau. She dug along the lowlands of Kauai, but water drowned the fires she kindled, so she went from island to island but could only dig along the beach near the sea. All her fire-pits were so near the water that they burst out in great explosions of steam and sand, and quickly died, until at last she found Kilauea on the large island of Hawaii.”.Short excerpt from Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes translated from the Hawaiian by W.D.Westervelt Painting: Pele (1992) by Susan Boulet — In Hawaiian mythology Pele is the goddess of volcanoes and fire. Often referred to as "Madame Pele" or "Tūtū Pele" as a sign of respect. “Her father was Moe-moea-au-lii, the chief who dreamed of trouble. Her mother was Haumea, or Papa, who personified mother earth. One version of how Pele came to Hawaii is a story of wanderlust, “stirred by thoughts of far-away lands." At last she asked her father for a sea-going canoe with mat sails, sufficiently large to carry a number of persons and food for many days. Pele also carried a little egg
which she wrapped in her skirt to keep it warm. In a very short time the egg was changed into a beautiful little girt who bore the name Hii-aka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele (Hiiaka-in-the-bosom-of-Pele), the youngest one of the Pele family.
Pele sailed to mysterious and ancestral islands before she turned northwest and found Niihau, the most northerly of the Hawaiian group. Pele was welcomed and entertained. Soon she went over to Kauai, the large, beautiful garden island of the Hawaiian group.
There is a story of her appearance as a dream maiden before the king of Kauai, whose name was Lohiau, whom she married, but with whom she could not stay until she had found a place where she could build a permanent home for herself and all who belonged to her. Pele had a magic digging tool, Pa-oa. When she struck this down into the earth it made a fire-pit. It was with this Pa-oa that she was to build a home for herself and Lohiau. She dug along the lowlands of Kauai, but water drowned the fires she kindled, so she went from island to island but could only dig along the beach near the sea. All her fire-pits were so near the water that they burst out in great explosions of steam and sand, and quickly died, until at last she found Kilauea on the large island of Hawaii.”
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Short excerpt from Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes translated from the Hawaiian by W.D.Westervelt
Painting: Pele (1992) by Susan Boulet

“Up until the Iron Age, beech trees made an essential contribution to human nutrition. The leaf buds and spring leaves are a healthy addition to vegetable salads or soups. Shelled beech nuts can be roasted and used in bread and pastries, and also made into a coffee-like beverage. In the Alpine regions and north of the Alps, where no olive trees grow, beech nuts were once an important local source of cooking oil. Among Native North American tribes too, beech nuts have been widely used as food. The Tsalagi even seek out and raid the beech-nut stores of chipmunks, which saves them the labour entailed in gathering and hulling the nuts themselves, and also ensures that any bad nuts have already been discarded. However, in more recent history the sustenance provided by the beech has been mainly for livestock.During the Iron Age, Germanic tribes practised divination by means of writing runes on wooden sticks or tiny tablets and beech was one of the woods used. Parallel to the transition from magical alphabet (which the original runes were considered to be) to ordinary alphabet in the eighth century or before, the once sacred symbols became known as letters (from the Latin littera). In German the word for letters is Buchstaben, which translates as “beech sticks”. Thin tablets of beech were bound together to create an alternative to scrolls and a novel way in which to accumulate and preserve knowledge: the book. Hence many words for “book” are derived from the name of the beech – for example, the Anglo-Saxon bok (beech) and bec (book), the modern German Buche (beech) and Buch (book); and the Swedish bok (beech) and bok (book). Writing gave humankind greater access to knowledge. Hence the beech can be said to bring together the traditions of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.”.From: The Spirit of Trees by Fred HagenederPainting: Twilight (1896) By Ivan Shishkin (not beech trees though :) — “Up until the Iron Age, beech trees made an essential contribution to human nutrition. The leaf buds and spring leaves are a healthy addition to vegetable salads or soups. Shelled beech nuts can be roasted and used in bread and pastries, and also made into a coffee-like beverage. In the Alpine regions and north of the Alps, where no olive trees grow, beech nuts were once an important local source of cooking oil. Among Native North American tribes too, beech nuts have been widely used as food. The Tsalagi even seek out and raid the beech-nut stores of chipmunks, which saves them the labour entailed in gathering and hulling the nuts themselves, and also ensures that any bad nuts have already been discarded. However, in more recent history the sustenance provided by the beech has been mainly for livestock.
During the Iron Age, Germanic tribes practised divination by means of writing runes on wooden sticks or tiny tablets and beech was one of the woods used. Parallel to the transition from magical alphabet (which the original runes were considered to be) to ordinary alphabet in the eighth century or before, the once sacred symbols became known as letters (from the Latin littera). In German the word for letters is Buchstaben, which translates as “beech sticks”. Thin tablets of beech were bound together to create an alternative to scrolls and a novel way in which to accumulate and preserve knowledge: the book. Hence many words for “book” are derived from the name of the beech – for example, the Anglo-Saxon bok (beech) and bec (book), the modern German Buche (beech) and Buch (book); and the Swedish bok (beech) and bok (book). Writing gave humankind greater access to knowledge. Hence the beech can be said to bring together the traditions of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.”
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From: The Spirit of Trees by Fred Hageneder
Painting: Twilight (1896) By Ivan Shishkin (not beech trees though :)

In Slovenia, mountain fairies are known as the žalik žena, as well as the ‘White Ladies’. Associated with prophecy, fertility and fate, they were said to dwell in the alpine paradise of the mist ringed mountains high above the lakes. They were associated with a golden horned white chamois known as Zlatorog, who Monika Kropej explains “was immortal, but even if he is struck in his heart, from a drop of his blood blooms the miraculous healing flower of Triglav (Triglavska roza). As soon as the wounded Zlatorog eats the flower he is cured.” The žalik žena were said to “direct man’s fate and determine the crop of the following year.” These White Ladies also taught the shepherds the lore of the herbs, and were associated with another figure from Slovenian folklore, Šembilja, a seeress connected with a fountain of wisdom. Regarded as King Solomon’s sister, she appears to be a mingling of many ancient legends, but from her name suggests a connection to Sibyl..From my book The Silver Bough. Source: Supernatural Beings from Slovenian Myth and Folktales by Monika Kropej on academia.eduPainting: Will-O'-the-Wisp, c.1900 by Elizabeth Adela Armstrong Forbes — In Slovenia, mountain fairies are known as the žalik žena, as well as the ‘White Ladies’. Associated with prophecy, fertility and fate, they were said to dwell in the alpine paradise of the mist ringed mountains high above the lakes. They were associated with a golden horned white chamois known as Zlatorog, who Monika Kropej explains “was immortal, but even if he is struck in his heart, from a drop of his blood blooms the miraculous healing flower of Triglav (Triglavska roza). As soon as the wounded Zlatorog eats the flower he is cured.”
The žalik žena were said to “direct man’s fate and determine the crop of the following year.” These White Ladies also taught the shepherds the lore of the herbs, and were associated with another figure from Slovenian folklore, Šembilja, a seeress connected with a fountain of wisdom. Regarded as King Solomon’s sister, she appears to be a mingling of many ancient legends, but from her name suggests a connection to Sibyl.
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From my book The Silver Bough. Source: Supernatural Beings from Slovenian Myth and Folktales by Monika Kropej on academia.edu
Painting: Will-O'-the-Wisp, c.1900 by Elizabeth Adela Armstrong Forbes

One of the Irish Celtic chieftain trees, Hazel is the first deciduous tree to awake from Winter sleep. The nine of hazels of knowledge hung over Connla’s well and dropped their nuts into it to feed the salmon of wisdom. The hazel tree and its branches especially in Celtic and German mythology, have to do with the wisdom of truthfulness – the wise salmon who has eaten the hazel nuts found growing round the water can advise the heroes.”The Celtic god of love Aengus carried a hazel wand, Irish druids and early bishops also carried hazel wands.  Hazel and hawthorn stood outside the castle of The Green Knight. In Welsh myth, King Arthur and his companions search for the divine child, Mabon ap Modron, the “Son of the Great Mother”. After a long journey, a magic salmon eventually takes them to the mythical well where they find the boy under a hazel tree. The Celts considered the hazel to be a “tree of knowledge”. This myth demonstrates that the wisdom of the hazel is not the wisdom of great age and experience, but that of simplicity and innocence.”Last quote from ‘The Spirit of Trees: Science, Symbiosis and Inspiration’ by Fred HagenederPainting: Gust of Wind (La Bourrasque) aka "Storm" 1897 by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer — One of the Irish Celtic chieftain trees, Hazel is the first deciduous tree to awake from Winter sleep. The nine of hazels of knowledge hung over Connla’s well and dropped their nuts into it to feed the salmon of wisdom. The hazel tree and its branches especially in Celtic and German mythology, have to do with the wisdom of truthfulness – the wise salmon who has eaten the hazel nuts found growing round the water can advise the heroes.”
The Celtic god of love Aengus carried a hazel wand, Irish druids and early bishops also carried hazel wands. Hazel and hawthorn stood outside the castle of The Green Knight. In Welsh myth, King Arthur and his companions search for the divine child, Mabon ap Modron, the “Son of the Great Mother”. After a long journey, a magic salmon eventually takes them to the mythical well where they find the boy under a hazel tree. The Celts considered the hazel to be a “tree of knowledge”. This myth demonstrates that the wisdom of the hazel is not the wisdom of great age and experience, but that of simplicity and innocence.”
Last quote from ‘The Spirit of Trees: Science, Symbiosis and Inspiration’ by Fred Hageneder
Painting: Gust of Wind (La Bourrasque) aka "Storm" 1897 by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

“The descent and thundering of a waterfall has long been imagined as “a stream feeding the dark realms of the underworld and circling up to issue again from craggy heights.” Voracious and wild, luminous and ethereal the waterfall symbolises the eternal flow of life and death. In Japan many sought to stand beneath such purifying falls, while in India the descent of the waterfall symbolises the descent of the sacred river Ganga who falls down from the heavens, and from the head of Shiva (Himalayas). Enchanted tales tell of elemental beings and hidden gold which lie behind the gauzy veil, while their origins lie with ill-fated lovers who plunged to their deaths, long hair of dead maidens, and rocks issuing a torrent of water in the place where a mystical boar, or wolf, is slain.”.From The Taschen Book of SymbolsPainting: Yellowstone Falls 1881 by Albert Bierstadt — “The descent and thundering of a waterfall has long been imagined as “a stream feeding the dark realms of the underworld and circling up to issue again from craggy heights.” Voracious and wild, luminous and ethereal the waterfall symbolises the eternal flow of life and death. In Japan many sought to stand beneath such purifying falls, while in India the descent of the waterfall symbolises the descent of the sacred river Ganga who falls down from the heavens, and from the head of Shiva (Himalayas). Enchanted tales tell of elemental beings and hidden gold which lie behind the gauzy veil, while their origins lie with ill-fated lovers who plunged to their deaths, long hair of dead maidens, and rocks issuing a torrent of water in the place where a mystical boar, or wolf, is slain.”
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From The Taschen Book of Symbols
Painting: Yellowstone Falls 1881 by Albert Bierstadt

A Breastplate Against Death.’ Irish Celtic .“I invoke the seven Daughters of the Sea,Who fashion the threads of long life. May three deaths be taken from me!May three lives be given to me!May seven waves of plenty be poured for me!Phantoms… — *A Breastplate Against Death.’ Irish Celtic*
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“I invoke the seven Daughters of the Sea,
Who fashion the threads of long life.
May three deaths be taken from me!
May three lives be given to me!
May seven waves of plenty be poured for me!
Phantoms shall not harm me on my journey
In my radiant breastplate without stain.
My fame shall not perish.
May old age came to me! Death shall not find me till I am old.

I invoke my Silver Champion who has not died, who will not die!
May a period be granted to me in equal worth to white bronze.
May my double be destroyed!
May my right be maintained!
May my strength be increased!
Let my gravestone not be raised,
May death not meet me on my way,
May my journey be secured!
The headless adder shall not seize me,
Nor the hard grey worm,
Nor the headless black chafer.
May no thief attack me,
Nor a band of women nor a faerie band.
Let me have increase of time from the King of the Universe!
I invoke Senach of the seven lives,
Whom faerie women have suckled on the breasts of plenty.
May my seven candles not be extinguished!
I am an indestructible fortress,
I am an unshakable cliff,
I am a precious stone,
I am the symbol of seven riches.
May I live a hundred times a hundred years, each hundred of them apart!
I summon to me their good gifts.”
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from Technicians of the Sacred Edited by Jerome Rothenberg

“How can one exist both in ordinary time and in aeonic time together can best be illustrated by the story of death of the great Zen Master Ma. When he reached the end of his life and was lying very sick in his room, the warden of the monastery visited him and asked reverently: “How has the Venerable One’s state of health been recently?” Ma replied: “Buddha with the sun visage. Buddha with the moon visage.” As Wilhelm Gundert explains, these words hint at a passage in the Third Sutra of the Name of Buddha, where it is explained that the life-span of Buddha with the moon visage is only one day and one night. The life-span of Buddha with the sun visage is one thousand eight hundred years. Both Buddhas, however, are only facets of the Great One. After one day and one night Ma died. His mortal point (his moon visage) lasted only that long, but another, more archetypal, part of himself was to last much longer; and beyond it here would even be an eternal kernel; but of this Ma did not spears, because it is ineffable.”.From Time by Marie Louise Von Franz (Thames & Hudson.) Art: Detail from Darial Gorge by Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi — “How can one exist both in ordinary time and in aeonic time together can best be illustrated by the story of death of the great Zen Master Ma. When he reached the end of his life and was lying very sick in his room, the warden of the monastery visited him and asked reverently: “How has the Venerable One’s state of health been recently?” Ma replied: “Buddha with the sun visage. Buddha with the moon visage.” As Wilhelm Gundert explains, these words hint at a passage in the Third Sutra of the Name of Buddha, where it is explained that the life-span of Buddha with the moon visage is only one day and one night. The life-span of Buddha with the sun visage is one thousand eight hundred years. Both Buddhas, however, are only facets of the Great One. After one day and one night Ma died. His mortal point (his moon visage) lasted only that long, but another, more archetypal, part of himself was to last much longer; and beyond it here would even be an eternal kernel; but of this Ma did not spears, because it is ineffable.”
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From Time by Marie Louise Von Franz (Thames & Hudson.)
Art: Detail from Darial Gorge by Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi

“The Cintamani, or Chintamani Stone, is a legendary artefact of Buddhist and Hindu Mythology, a “wish fulfilling gem of extraordinary power.” According to Buddhist legend, it fell from the stars and landed in Tibet, where ancient Buddhists revered it as a spiritual jewel. However, its power was considered so great, and so potentially disastrous, they ultimately sent it to the mystical, hidden city of Shambhala.”The mystic painter Nicholas Roerich was told by a Tibetan Lama that “Great Shambhala is far beyond the ocean. It is the mighty heavenly domain. It has nothing to do with our Earth... Only in some places, in the Far North, can you discern the resplendent rays of Shambhala.” However, other Lamas firmly believe that “Shambhala exists in this world and that the Kalachakra may be seen as a symbolic representation of it that can be used to spark the soul’s memory rather than as a description of what the place actually looks like…Like a lotus opening, the mandala of Shamballa symbolizes the macrocosmic and microcosmic, the awareness of power and the power itself.”Another belief is that Shambhala is hidden beneath the earth, and Roerich “claimed that he was aware of caves in the Himalayan foothills with subterranean passages leading to these subterranean cities. Found in one of these passages is a stone door shall remain sealed until a future time. What lies behind that door only a 'selected few' know and they are not about to give away its secret.” Occult belief states that the Great Adepts of the past retreated into the interior of the earth after a great catastrophe that destroyed a once great civilisation in the Gobi Desert, etc. .Painting: Château de la petite déesse solitaire by Bolesław Biegas 1877-1954. (The artwork isn’t the greatest match for the post but I really wanted to share about it :)Quote: The Eternal Doctrine by H.Valborg & Buddhist Enyclopedia — “The Cintamani, or Chintamani Stone, is a legendary artefact of Buddhist and Hindu Mythology, a “wish fulfilling gem of extraordinary power.” According to Buddhist legend, it fell from the stars and landed in Tibet, where ancient Buddhists revered it as a spiritual jewel. However, its power was considered so great, and so potentially disastrous, they ultimately sent it to the mystical, hidden city of Shambhala.”
The mystic painter Nicholas Roerich was told by a Tibetan Lama that “Great Shambhala is far beyond the ocean. It is the mighty heavenly domain. It has nothing to do with our Earth... Only in some places, in the Far North, can you discern the resplendent rays of Shambhala.” However, other Lamas firmly believe that “Shambhala exists in this world and that the Kalachakra may be seen as a symbolic representation of it that can be used to spark the soul’s memory rather than as a description of what the place actually looks like…Like a lotus opening, the mandala of Shamballa symbolizes the macrocosmic and microcosmic, the awareness of power and the power itself.”
Another belief is that Shambhala is hidden beneath the earth, and Roerich “claimed that he was aware of caves in the Himalayan foothills with subterranean passages leading to these subterranean cities. Found in one of these passages is a stone door shall remain sealed until a future time. What lies behind that door only a 'selected few' know and they are not about to give away its secret.” Occult belief states that the Great Adepts of the past retreated into the interior of the earth after a great catastrophe that destroyed a once great civilisation in the Gobi Desert, etc.
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Painting: Château de la petite déesse solitaire by Bolesław Biegas 1877-1954. (The artwork isn’t the greatest match for the post but I really wanted to share about it :)
Quote: The Eternal Doctrine by H.Valborg & Buddhist Enyclopedia

“Emeralds appear in Hermetic tradition, in the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus, where is written one of the most well-known axioms: “That which is above is from that which is below, & that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.” The Emerald Tablets have been connected to Thoth, & in the Egyptian Book of the Dead it says that the dead received a gift of an emerald from him. In Islamic tradition, the mountain of the world, Mount Qaf, is made of emerald The prophet Al-Khidr, the “green one” recounted an Arabic version of Alexander of Macedonia’s “entry into darkness near the north pole in search of the spring of life,” & where Alexander and his men entered the Vale of Emeralds, which was “home to reptiles who wore emeralds at their throats, which reflected the gleam in their eyes.”In Indian mythology, the female Nagas were accredited with shapeshifting abilities which were said to emanate from an emerald that was embedded in their skulls. Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote of how the emerald is the Lapis Exilis, or the stone of heaven that fell to earth when it was struck from Lucifer’s crown by the Archangel Michael. Esoteric tradition has it that “it was cut into a bowl by a faithful angel, and thus the Grail was born.” The stone in the forehead may be seen as symbolic of the parietal eye, also known as the pineal gland, the third eye, or the eye of Shiva. Sometimes referred to as ‘the eye of the heart,’ it symbolises spiritual perception, indeed, it is this “‘eye’ that is endowed with both a transcendent or ‘cyclical’ vision known in Buddhism as Bodhi, or spiritual enlightenment.” A centre of illumination & insight, Douglas Baker compared it to the esoteric understanding of the toad with the jewel in its head. While in Korean and Japanese belief, the chief yellow dragon carries a pear-shaped pearl in its forehead, which was said to have supernatural properties & healing power. Elsewhere, the jewel in the head of the serpent is most often an emerald.’.Condensed from my book The Silver Bough. Art by Gustave Doré for Paradise Lost — “Emeralds appear in Hermetic tradition, in the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus, where is written one of the most well-known axioms: “That which is above is from that which is below, & that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.” The Emerald Tablets have been connected to Thoth, & in the Egyptian Book of the Dead it says that the dead received a gift of an emerald from him. In Islamic tradition, the mountain of the world, Mount Qaf, is made of emerald The prophet Al-Khidr, the “green one” recounted an Arabic version of Alexander of Macedonia’s “entry into darkness near the north pole in search of the spring of life,” & where Alexander and his men entered the Vale of Emeralds, which was “home to reptiles who wore emeralds at their throats, which reflected the gleam in their eyes.”
In Indian mythology, the female Nagas were accredited with shapeshifting abilities which were said to emanate from an emerald that was embedded in their skulls. Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote of how the emerald is the Lapis Exilis, or the stone of heaven that fell to earth when it was struck from Lucifer’s crown by the Archangel Michael. Esoteric tradition has it that “it was cut into a bowl by a faithful angel, and thus the Grail was born.” The stone in the forehead may be seen as symbolic of the parietal eye, also known as the pineal gland, the third eye, or the eye of Shiva. Sometimes referred to as ‘the eye of the heart,’ it symbolises spiritual perception, indeed, it is this “‘eye’ that is endowed with both a transcendent or ‘cyclical’ vision known in Buddhism as Bodhi, or spiritual enlightenment.” A centre of illumination & insight, Douglas Baker compared it to the esoteric understanding of the toad with the jewel in its head. While in Korean and Japanese belief, the chief yellow dragon carries a pear-shaped pearl in its forehead, which was said to have supernatural properties & healing power. Elsewhere, the jewel in the head of the serpent is most often an emerald.’
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Condensed from my book The Silver Bough.
Art by Gustave Doré for Paradise Lost

“Long associated with love the swan was sacred to Aphrodite, and was regarded as prophetic to the sun-god Apollo who travelled in a barge, or chariot, drawn by swans when he returned to Hyperborea, along a route that could not be followed by ship or on foot. It is thought that this was the Milky Way, which according to Lithuanian folklore is known as the Road of Birds that leads to the heavenly realm. Regarded as guides for the dead, this also links it nicely with its celestial counterpart, the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. The Slavic sun-goddess Solntse and the Baltic sun-goddess Saulė were also said to travel in barges and chariots drawn by swans. This appears to be a more ancient myth than that of the wheeled chariot pulled by horses, which suggests Iron Age. The swans or other water birds, who flew in the sky and could dive under the waves, were appropriate for the sun goddess. Archaeologists have found models of chariots drawn by birds in eastern and Central Europe, so the idea was probably widespread. In the Celtic tradition the swan also symbolised the solar, as well as the soul, the eternal and, of course, love. Druids wore a ceremonial cloak known as a tugen, which was made from the skin and feathers of a swan. While, in Ireland, the mythical race of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who, after the invasion of the Milesians, were driven into the hollow hills and became known as the Sidhe, or faery folk. They were said to visit the visible world in the form of swans with chains of silver and gold around their necks. Whether cursed, or shapeshifters, European mythology and folklore is rich in tales of swans. From the Irish Children of Lir, to the Valkyries, Germanic swan maidens, and the Vile, or Vila, of Serbian tradition, who were nymphs of the wild wood and who could shift their shape into serpents or swans.”.From my book The Golden Thread Art: Temple des noces d’amour ou Nocturne by Bolesław Biegas. Polish, 1877-1955 — “Long associated with love the swan was sacred to Aphrodite, and was regarded as prophetic to the sun-god Apollo who travelled in a barge, or chariot, drawn by swans when he returned to Hyperborea, along a route that could not be followed by ship or on foot. It is thought that this was the Milky Way, which according to Lithuanian folklore is known as the Road of Birds that leads to the heavenly realm. Regarded as guides for the dead, this also links it nicely with its celestial counterpart, the constellation of Cygnus, the swan.
The Slavic sun-goddess Solntse and the Baltic sun-goddess Saulė were also said to travel in barges and chariots drawn by swans. This appears to be a more ancient myth than that of the wheeled chariot pulled by horses, which suggests Iron Age. The swans or other water birds, who flew in the sky and could dive under the waves, were appropriate for the sun goddess. Archaeologists have found models of chariots drawn by birds in eastern and Central Europe, so the idea was probably widespread.
In the Celtic tradition the swan also symbolised the solar, as well as the soul, the eternal and, of course, love. Druids wore a ceremonial cloak known as a tugen, which was made from the skin and feathers of a swan. While, in Ireland, the mythical race of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who, after the invasion of the Milesians, were driven into the hollow hills and became known as the Sidhe, or faery folk. They were said to visit the visible world in the form of swans with chains of silver and gold around their necks. Whether cursed, or shapeshifters, European mythology and folklore is rich in tales of swans. From the Irish Children of Lir, to the Valkyries, Germanic swan maidens, and the Vile, or Vila, of Serbian tradition, who were nymphs of the wild wood and who could shift their shape into serpents or swans.”
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From my book The Golden Thread
Art: Temple des noces d’amour ou Nocturne by Bolesław Biegas. Polish, 1877-1955

“According to Ovid, the god Apollo once prepared a feast for Jupiter (Zeus). He gave his white raven a golden cup and told it to fetch some water. The raven flew away, but it saw some unripe figs. It waited until they were ripe and ate a few before … — “According to Ovid, the god Apollo once prepared a feast for Jupiter (Zeus). He gave his white raven a golden cup and told it to fetch some water. The raven flew away, but it saw some unripe figs. It waited until they were ripe and ate a few before returning to its master. The raven claimed the serpent had been denying it access to the spring. Apollo knew the bird had been lying, so he turned it from white to black. The story, according to Ovid, illustrates the fact that the constellations Corvus, Hydra, and Crater (Raven, Water, Serpent and Cup) appear together in the sky.”
In Australia, “there is a story from the area of Victoria which survives in several versions, but its general form is somewhat as follows. The seven sisters of the Pleiades are the only ones to have the knowledge of fire, which they keep in the end of their digging sticks. The crow pretends to be their friend so he can discover their secret. He shows them a termite nest. They dig into it to get the termites, but out come some snakes that crow has hidden there. They hit the snakes with their sticks. The fire falls out, and the crow steals it. The crow later refuses to share the fire with anybody. He chases people off and throws coals at them. The coals start a bush fire, and he is caught and burned to death. The corpse turns into a bird we know today as crow.”
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From Myths, Symbols and Legends of Solar System Bodies by Rachel Alexander
Art: Conjunction by Warren Criswell (Oil on Canvas) www.warrencriswell.com

“The Sanskrit Prana, “breathing forth” refers to the source and force of life as the vibratory energy of all manifestation. The sacred texts of India describe the vital breath of the living being, rhythmic, pulsating, as the microcosmic form of the alternating day and night, activity and rest, of cosmic time. in the interval between successive creations, the god Vishnu, having withdrawn the universe back into himself, sleeps floating on the cosmic ocean in the coils of the serpent Ananta, “Endless”. His breathing is deep, sonorous, rhythmical, “the magic melody of the creation and dissolution of the world.” It is the song of the immortal gander (swan), the soft ham-sa of divine life-breath within the body of the universe and the nucleus of the individual. “Just as spokes are held together in a wheel-hub, everything is held together in the breath.” The yogi, in controlled inhalation-ham, exhalation sa, hears the same melody as the inner presence of the Atman, or supreme self, being revealed.”“The Kalachakra Tantra belongs to the highest class of tantric teachings. Its method rests on a practical knowledge of Kundalini yoga and the secrets of kundalini shakti. The tenth book of the Blue Annals, composed by Gos Otsaba Gzonnu-dpal around the fifteenth century, gives hints as to the nature of the practice. It refers to the correspondence that exists between the sun, moon and stars and the chakras of the human body, and says that “wisdom comes to one who is able to control the breath”; alluding further to the “House of Kundala aflame with inner heat” and to kundalini at the base of the spine. “Then my illusory [physical] body,” it says, “consumed by shining flames, I threw away as a snake its skin.”From the Taschen Book of Symbols and Shambhala by Victoria LePageArt: Blue Nocturnal by Wen Hsu all credit to @classicnymph on Instagram — “The Sanskrit Prana, “breathing forth” refers to the source and force of life as the vibratory energy of all manifestation. The sacred texts of India describe the vital breath of the living being, rhythmic, pulsating, as the microcosmic form of the alternating day and night, activity and rest, of cosmic time. in the interval between successive creations, the god Vishnu, having withdrawn the universe back into himself, sleeps floating on the cosmic ocean in the coils of the serpent Ananta, “Endless”. His breathing is deep, sonorous, rhythmical, “the magic melody of the creation and dissolution of the world.” It is the song of the immortal gander (swan), the soft ham-sa of divine life-breath within the body of the universe and the nucleus of the individual. “Just as spokes are held together in a wheel-hub, everything is held together in the breath.” The yogi, in controlled inhalation-ham, exhalation sa, hears the same melody as the inner presence of the Atman, or supreme self, being revealed.”
“The Kalachakra Tantra belongs to the highest class of tantric teachings. Its method rests on a practical knowledge of Kundalini yoga and the secrets of kundalini shakti. The tenth book of the Blue Annals, composed by Gos Otsaba Gzonnu-dpal around the fifteenth century, gives hints as to the nature of the practice. It refers to the correspondence that exists between the sun, moon and stars and the chakras of the human body, and says that “wisdom comes to one who is able to control the breath”; alluding further to the “House of Kundala aflame with inner heat” and to kundalini at the base of the spine. “Then my illusory [physical] body,” it says, “consumed by shining flames, I threw away as a snake its skin.”
From the Taschen Book of Symbols and Shambhala by Victoria LePage
Art: Blue Nocturnal by Wen Hsu all credit to @classicnymph on Instagram

n antiquity the north was sacred because “it was believed that this was the direction one entered a sacred beguiling, echoing the tradition that humans were believed to come to earth via the North Pole – but then Satan came, who was really the serpent Draco who coils around the Pole Star... Traditionally the north door of many churches was left open so that the spirit could depart during the funeral, but later the north door was blocked up.”“When the priest or shaman took his stand at the naval of the earth, his upright body coincided with the axis of the universe. The North Star – the only still point in all the turning heavens and hence the doorway to timelessness – it was the “north nail” the point where the upper end of this axis mundi turned in its socket or passed through the dome of the sky to the unconditioned realm beyond. In the daytime, the sun at the zenith became the doorway in and out of time (the sundoor) On the scale of the body, this role was played by the opening in the top of the skull through which the spirit was supposed to entered the body at birth and depart at death.” .Quotes from ‘Tintagel’ by Paul Broadhurst and Myth, The Breathing Cathedral by Martha Heyneman. Artwork: Detail from Night Lights by Rob Gonsalves. Canadian artist 1959-2017 — n antiquity the north was sacred because “it was believed that this was the direction one entered a sacred beguiling, echoing the tradition that humans were believed to come to earth via the North Pole – but then Satan came, who was really the serpent Draco who coils around the Pole Star... Traditionally the north door of many churches was left open so that the spirit could depart during the funeral, but later the north door was blocked up.”
“When the priest or shaman took his stand at the naval of the earth, his upright body coincided with the axis of the universe. The North Star – the only still point in all the turning heavens and hence the doorway to timelessness – it was the “north nail” the point where the upper end of this axis mundi turned in its socket or passed through the dome of the sky to the unconditioned realm beyond. In the daytime, the sun at the zenith became the doorway in and out of time (the sundoor) On the scale of the body, this role was played by the opening in the top of the skull through which the spirit was supposed to entered the body at birth and depart at death.”
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Quotes from ‘Tintagel’ by Paul Broadhurst and Myth, The Breathing Cathedral by Martha Heyneman.
Artwork: Detail from Night Lights by Rob Gonsalves. Canadian artist 1959-2017

Divination by crystal ball is an enigmatic image most often connected with fortune tellers, but according to Pliny the Elder, soothsayers in the 1st century used crystal balls, while scrying by crystal or still pools of water was practised by the Druids. In ancient Mesoamerica, polished volcanic glass known as ‘smoking mirrors’ were used for a similar purpose, and one such mirror was found in the possession of Dr Dee, the Elizabethan Mage, astrologer and alchemist. Bronze mirrors are often attached to shaman’s costumes, and in these magic all-seeing eyes, the shaman can see the spirits, and the spirits can see the shaman. Regarded as a “receptacle for the soul-shade, ancient bronze mirrors are the most powerful spirit protectors of a Tuvan shaman; in this mirror, he sees ‘everything’ including the ‘other world.’” Returning to crystals, we discover that quartz has long been sacred to people all over the world, from little quartz pebbles used as talismans, to the Indigenous Australians also spoke of their sky god Baiame who was encountered on shamanic journeys to the upper world. Sat on a giant crystal, he “initiated his visitors by sprinkling liquefied quartz or ‘solidified light’ to connect them to the sky or Upper World.” He was also said to set a piece of quartz into the initiate’s forehead to enable them to see inside physical objects.”.From my book The Silver Bough (Quotes from ‘Shamanism’ by Mircea Eliade.)Art: The Star (2017) by Vladimir Kireev. Russian artist b.1984 (more of his work is available here: www.deviantart.com/vladimir-kireev — Divination by crystal ball is an enigmatic image most often connected with fortune tellers, but according to Pliny the Elder, soothsayers in the 1st century used crystal balls, while scrying by crystal or still pools of water was practised by the Druids. In ancient Mesoamerica, polished volcanic glass known as ‘smoking mirrors’ were used for a similar purpose, and one such mirror was found in the possession of Dr Dee, the Elizabethan Mage, astrologer and alchemist.
Bronze mirrors are often attached to shaman’s costumes, and in these magic all-seeing eyes, the shaman can see the spirits, and the spirits can see the shaman. Regarded as a “receptacle for the soul-shade, ancient bronze mirrors are the most powerful spirit protectors of a Tuvan shaman; in this mirror, he sees ‘everything’ including the ‘other world.’” Returning to crystals, we discover that quartz has long been sacred to people all over the world, from little quartz pebbles used as talismans, to the Indigenous Australians also spoke of their sky god Baiame who was encountered on shamanic journeys to the upper world. Sat on a giant crystal, he “initiated his visitors by sprinkling liquefied quartz or ‘solidified light’ to connect them to the sky or Upper World.” He was also said to set a piece of quartz into the initiate’s forehead to enable them to see inside physical objects.”
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From my book The Silver Bough (Quotes from ‘Shamanism’ by Mircea Eliade.)
Art: The Star (2017) by Vladimir Kireev. Russian artist b.1984 (more of his work is available here: www.deviantart.com/vladimir-kireev

Neith Creates Light From Her Eyes.“In ancient Egypt: Neith (Net) was the mother goddess, the National goddess of Lower Egypt, a great hunter whose symbol was a crossed bow and arrows. She always had a separate existence, and never paired with any male god. She was a creator goddess who formed all things. In the beginning she found herself in the watery waste of Nun, and she formed herself when the world was still in shadow and when there was no earth on which to rest, when no plants grew. She first appeared as a divine cow, then as a Nile perch, more suitable to the watery environment, and went on her way. She created light from her eyes, then said this place where she was would become for her a platform of earth supported upon the primeval waters upon which she might rest. And it was so.”.From African mythology by Jan Knappert Art: Neith by Georges Jules Victor Clairin. French, 1843–1919 — Neith Creates Light From Her Eyes.
“In ancient Egypt: Neith (Net) was the mother goddess, the National goddess of Lower Egypt, a great hunter whose symbol was a crossed bow and arrows. She always had a separate existence, and never paired with any male god. She was a creator goddess who formed all things. In the beginning she found herself in the watery waste of Nun, and she formed herself when the world was still in shadow and when there was no earth on which to rest, when no plants grew. She first appeared as a divine cow, then as a Nile perch, more suitable to the watery environment, and went on her way. She created light from her eyes, then said this place where she was would become for her a platform of earth supported upon the primeval waters upon which she might rest. And it was so.”
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From African mythology by Jan Knappert
Art: Neith by Georges Jules Victor Clairin. French, 1843–1919

“From antlers, to cloaks of swan feathers, and necklaces of bear claws, the power and qualities of the animal or bird was thought to be assimilated by the wearer. This is seen in depictions of Dionysus and Heracles who wear the skins of wild animals, and of Lord Shiva who, astride the white bull Nandi, shows us that the wild nature of the bull has been tamed and has become a power which conveys the god through the world. Indeed, in shamanic cultures, ‘the shaman physically ‘becomes’ the animal displayed through his costuming. (and through it the shaman enters the psyche of the animal he or she dons.)’ J.C. Cooper explains how ‘the ritual assumption of animal forms, wearing animal masks, head-dresses of birds or fish-skins, was an outstanding feature of early and shamanic religions.’”“In Celtic tradition deer are frequently the means of taking souls to the otherworld. There are Celtic, Irish, and Gaelic goddess associated with them, such as Flidass, Goddess of Venery, who has a chariot drawn by deer. They are supernatural animals of the fairy world and are fairy cattle and messengers. Stag hunts often end in some supernatural situation. Deer skin and antlers were used as ritual ornaments and vestments.As a totem animal the deer plays an important part of the rich cultures of North America. There are deer tribes and clans, and the deer is head of the four-footed animals of the Indians of the southeast Woodlands. The Deer Dance of the Southwestern tribes secures food and fertility for both people and animals; the deer, being a rain-bringer, also brings thunder and lightning an has powers of either causing or curing illness.”.Detail from an artwork by Natalia Smirnova c.2012. More of her beautiful art can be found on her Flickr pageQuotes from The Silver Bough & J.C.Cooper’s Symbolic Animals — “From antlers, to cloaks of swan feathers, and necklaces of bear claws, the power and qualities of the animal or bird was thought to be assimilated by the wearer. This is seen in depictions of Dionysus and Heracles who wear the skins of wild animals, and of Lord Shiva who, astride the white bull Nandi, shows us that the wild nature of the bull has been tamed and has become a power which conveys the god through the world. Indeed, in shamanic cultures, ‘the shaman physically ‘becomes’ the animal displayed through his costuming. (and through it the shaman enters the psyche of the animal he or she dons.)’ J.C. Cooper explains how ‘the ritual assumption of animal forms, wearing animal masks, head-dresses of birds or fish-skins, was an outstanding feature of early and shamanic religions.’”
“In Celtic tradition deer are frequently the means of taking souls to the otherworld. There are Celtic, Irish, and Gaelic goddess associated with them, such as Flidass, Goddess of Venery, who has a chariot drawn by deer. They are supernatural animals of the fairy world and are fairy cattle and messengers. Stag hunts often end in some supernatural situation. Deer skin and antlers were used as ritual ornaments and vestments.
As a totem animal the deer plays an important part of the rich cultures of North America. There are deer tribes and clans, and the deer is head of the four-footed animals of the Indians of the southeast Woodlands. The Deer Dance of the Southwestern tribes secures food and fertility for both people and animals; the deer, being a rain-bringer, also brings thunder and lightning an has powers of either causing or curing illness.”
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Detail from an artwork by Natalia Smirnova c.2012. More of her beautiful art can be found on her Flickr page
Quotes from The Silver Bough & J.C.Cooper’s Symbolic Animals

In the Rig-Veda, as well as in Buddhist culture, the Apsaras, are heavenly nymphs, or a type of female spirit of the clouds and waters. “Often married to the gandharvas, by the time the Puranas and the two epics were composed, the asparas and ganharvas had become performing artists to the gods.” The oldest conception of the apsaras though is as river nymphs, as well as “living on trees such as the banyan and the sacred fig. They are exceedingly beautiful and although feared because of this, they are entreated to bless wedding processions.”Female river/ water spirits are also found in an African tale from the Congo, where a mother once had ten children. The eldest was very pretty and had many suitors. Her mother was jealous of her and one day she sent the girl to fetch clean water from the river. The obedient daughter went to the river and waded into it, since all the water near the bank was muddy. Suddenly the Water Girls grabbed her feet and dragged her down into the cold mainstream. These river nymphs cannot be seen for they are made of water; only at nightfall and early before dawn can they been seen rising from the water as feint mists…”.From Worldhistory.org and African Mythology by Jan Knappert Art: Four Celestial Angels by Frederick Stuart Church c.1880 — In the Rig-Veda, as well as in Buddhist culture, the Apsaras, are heavenly nymphs, or a type of female spirit of the clouds and waters. “Often married to the gandharvas, by the time the Puranas and the two epics were composed, the asparas and ganharvas had become performing artists to the gods.” The oldest conception of the apsaras though is as river nymphs, as well as “living on trees such as the banyan and the sacred fig. They are exceedingly beautiful and although feared because of this, they are entreated to bless wedding processions.”
Female river/ water spirits are also found in an African tale from the Congo, where a mother once had ten children. The eldest was very pretty and had many suitors. Her mother was jealous of her and one day she sent the girl to fetch clean water from the river. The obedient daughter went to the river and waded into it, since all the water near the bank was muddy. Suddenly the Water Girls grabbed her feet and dragged her down into the cold mainstream. These river nymphs cannot be seen for they are made of water; only at nightfall and early before dawn can they been seen rising from the water as feint mists…”
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From Worldhistory.org and African Mythology by Jan Knappert
Art: Four Celestial Angels by Frederick Stuart Church c.1880

“Meditation dispels the clouds which obscure the purpose of life, even as the clear rays of the sun dissipate the mist. Through it is achieved the restatement of purpose, the reconsecration of action, and the rededication of the soul to the will of … — “Meditation dispels the clouds which obscure the purpose of life, even as the clear rays of the sun dissipate the mist. Through it is achieved the restatement of purpose, the reconsecration of action, and the rededication of the soul to the will of the Cosmic Self. At the climax of meditation there is the supreme moment when the unthinkable is thought, when the unknowable is known, when eternity is circumscribed with an all sufficient mood… Upward and onward, lifted high upon the wings of our mediation, we ascend beyond the stars, farther and farther, until even the flickering lights of the heavens utterly vanish in the immensity of being. Nothing remedies but eternity itself.”
“Meditation should never be regarded as an escape from the responsibilities of physical life. Such a viewpoint outrages the integrity of the Divine Plan, for evasion can never be interpreted as accomplishment. Nor should meditation or other occult exercises be permitted to interfere in any way with those duties and relationships which constitute one’s karmic inheritances and accumulations…Occultism teaches that the only permanent escape from any undesirable state is to life oneself there from by the strength of positive achievement. The true purpose of meditation, is to supply, through broadened realisation, the impetus to fuller and greater effort. Brought into contact with higher and more perfect aspects of Universal Truth, we are moved, like Plotinus, to seek a permanent union with this newly discovered sublimity.”
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From, ‘The Phoenix’ by Manly P Hall
Art: Voyage Through the Night by Ellen Lorien 1924-2016.

“The sun, moon and stars were the calendar of the Arabic nomadic peoples who regulated their daily lives by the rising and setting of the stars and the changing aspects of the moon. They believed that rain, wind, heat and cold were governed by the m… — “The sun, moon and stars were the calendar of the Arabic nomadic peoples who regulated their daily lives by the rising and setting of the stars and the changing aspects of the moon. They believed that rain, wind, heat and cold were governed by the movements of certain stars and they observed and described them with great accuracy. Al-Zuhara, the morning and evening star, in the form of a beautiful woman, was in turn a winter goddess, a goddess of fertility and the daughter of God. She also acted as the goddess of women and of marriage. The animals sacred to her were the dove and the gazelle. She symbolised beauty, happiness, singing, dancing and frivolity and she presided over all matters related to love. As Queen of heaven the sight of her would bring consolation to her lovers and joy to all.
In addition to the sun, moon and the star Al-Zuhara, they worshipped the planets Saturn, Mercury and Jupiter, the Stars Sirius and Canopus and the constellations of Orion, Ursa Major and Minor, and the seven Pleiades. Some stars and planets were given human characters. According to legend, Al-Dabarān, one of the stars in the Hyades group, fell deeply in love with Al-Thurayya objected, saying coquettishly, “what would I do with a fellow like that, with no money.” Al-Dabarān decoded to find a dowry worthy of her and he collected some beautiful young camels to present to he. He returned, driving the camels before him, determined to pursued her to marry him. It was not meant to be. The red star ‘Ayūq stepped between them to obstruct his path and there, fixed in the heavens, he has remained ever since. Still today on a clear night you can see the three stars: Al-Thuryya leading the way with ‘Ayūq and Al-Dabarān followed by his herd of stars forever pursing her across the sky.”
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From: Fabled Cities, Princes and Jinn from Arab Myths and Legends by K. Al-Saleh
Art: An engraving after an illustration by Gustave Dore for Orlando Furioso

“Kirke (Circe) was a goddess of sorcery (pharmakeia) who was skilled in the magic of transmutation, illusion, and necromancy. She lived on the mythical island of Aiaia (Aeaea) with her nymph companions. When Odysseus came to her island she transformed his men into beasts (swine) but, with the help of the god Hermes, he overcame her and forced her to end the spell. Kirke's name is derived from the Greek verb kirkoô meaning "to secure with rings" or "hoop around"--a reference to the binding power of magic. Kirke's island of Aiaia (Aeaea) was located in the far west, near the earth-encircling River Okeanos (Oceanus). Her brother Aeetes' realm in the far east was similarly named Aia (Aea).”Jason, during the Argonautic Expedition, passing her island, saw corpses hanging from the tops of the trees, as “Circe had a riverside cemetery planted with willows dedicated to Hekate and her moon magic. In this cemetery male corpses were wrapped in untanned oxides and left exposed in the tops of trees for the elements to claim and the birds to eat.”.From Theoi.com and Tree Wisdom by Jaqueline Patterson Painting: “Circe”, 1888 by Louis Chalon — “Kirke (Circe) was a goddess of sorcery (pharmakeia) who was skilled in the magic of transmutation, illusion, and necromancy. She lived on the mythical island of Aiaia (Aeaea) with her nymph companions. When Odysseus came to her island she transformed his men into beasts (swine) but, with the help of the god Hermes, he overcame her and forced her to end the spell. Kirke's name is derived from the Greek verb kirkoô meaning "to secure with rings" or "hoop around"--a reference to the binding power of magic. Kirke's island of Aiaia (Aeaea) was located in the far west, near the earth-encircling River Okeanos (Oceanus). Her brother Aeetes' realm in the far east was similarly named Aia (Aea).”
Jason, during the Argonautic Expedition, passing her island, saw corpses hanging from the tops of the trees, as “Circe had a riverside cemetery planted with willows dedicated to Hekate and her moon magic. In this cemetery male corpses were wrapped in untanned oxides and left exposed in the tops of trees for the elements to claim and the birds to eat.”
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From Theoi.com and Tree Wisdom by Jaqueline Patterson
Painting: “Circe”, 1888 by Louis Chalon

“Enkidu is a legendary hero originally appearing in Sumerian literary compositions, which were incorporated, with alterations, in the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh. After Gilgamesh defeats him, the two become friends. He aids Gilgamesh in killing the divine bull sent by the goddess Ishtar to destroy them. The gods then kill Enkidu in revenge, prompting Gilgamesh to search for immortality.”“Aligned with the powers of nature, able to converse with animals and to see into the hearts of men, the archetype of the wild man is a primitive yet powerful creature of the wilderness.” Just as with the Wild Woman archetype they are vital in that they are deeply rooted in nature while the life force pours through them. Writing of the wild man in the German folk tale of ‘Iron John’, Robert Bly commented that the wild man is not a savage man. “The savage mode does great damage to soul, earth, and humankind; we can say that though the savage man is wounded he prefers not to examine it. The Wild Man, who has examined his wound, resembles a Zen priest, a shaman, or a woodsman more than a savage.”.Quotes: Brittanica. Wild Men & Women of the Forest by Terri Windling & Iron John by Robert BlyArt: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso c.1888 — “Enkidu is a legendary hero originally appearing in Sumerian literary compositions, which were incorporated, with alterations, in the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh. After Gilgamesh defeats him, the two become friends. He aids Gilgamesh in killing the divine bull sent by the goddess Ishtar to destroy them. The gods then kill Enkidu in revenge, prompting Gilgamesh to search for immortality.”
“Aligned with the powers of nature, able to converse with animals and to see into the hearts of men, the archetype of the wild man is a primitive yet powerful creature of the wilderness.” Just as with the Wild Woman archetype they are vital in that they are deeply rooted in nature while the life force pours through them. Writing of the wild man in the German folk tale of ‘Iron John’, Robert Bly commented that the wild man is not a savage man. “The savage mode does great damage to soul, earth, and humankind; we can say that though the savage man is wounded he prefers not to examine it. The Wild Man, who has examined his wound, resembles a Zen priest, a shaman, or a woodsman more than a savage.”
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Quotes: Brittanica. Wild Men & Women of the Forest by Terri Windling & Iron John by Robert Bly
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso c.1888

“They call me Troll; Gnawer of the Moon, Giant of the Gale-blasts, Curse of the rain-hall, Companion of the Sibyl, Night-roaming hag, Swallower of the loaf of heaven. What is a Troll but that?”Trolls appear throughout Scandinavian folklore and mytho… — “They call me Troll; Gnawer of the Moon, Giant of the Gale-blasts, Curse of the rain-hall, Companion of the Sibyl, Night-roaming hag, Swallower of the loaf of heaven. What is a Troll but that?”
Trolls appear throughout Scandinavian folklore and mythology. They are often described as dwelling in the mountains, in primordial forests, and in caves of mist ringed hills. “They seem to be linked to the jötnar, the race of giants who were refused access to Asgard by the Norse gods. This puts the creation of trolls as earlier than mankind. There is no clear definition of a troll in the old tales however...The word troll with its modern sense of a slow-witted and ugly beast comes from Old Norse, but can be traced back to Proto-Germanic words meaning giant, monster, or fiend. The Proto-Indo-European roots are even simpler – run, flee, escape.”
“Trolls may form their own communities, but it is never our community, and they sometimes abduct people and take them to their home in the mountains, only for them to return later in an altered state.” “Being taken into the moutnain” is a common theme in the folklore of Norway and Iceland, with the latter being most often liked with the Huldufólk, the “Hidden Folk,” supernatural elves of Icelandic and Faroese folklore.
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1st quote from Snorri Sturluson’s 13th century Skáldskaparmál and the others by Dr Ben Gazur on folklorethursday.com
Art: from East of the Sun, West of the Moon, by Kay Neilsen 1914

“Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, sends pulsating waves of awakening sound through matter, thereby seducing it to life from lethargy. And matter dances, appearing round and round about him as an aureole of fiery emanations. Dancing, he creates and… — “Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, sends pulsating waves of awakening sound through matter, thereby seducing it to life from lethargy. And matter dances, appearing round and round about him as an aureole of fiery emanations. Dancing, he creates and sustains the manifold phenomena of the universe; dancing he destroys by fire all forms and names and gives new rest:
His form is everywhere, all pervading…
Everywhere is Shiva’s gracious dance made manifest…
He dances with Water, Fire, Wind and Ether.
Thus our Lord dances ever in the court.”
The creator is seen as the ‘unmoved mover’ behind events in the cosmos, the still point round which everything must turn, simply because it holds its peace, encompassing both movement and perfect immobility. Rhythmic sound, in comsogonic myths, is at the root of all creation; and the gods are – or God is – the formulated power through which the life-force manifests itself. Truth, being beyond sound and rhythm, is the invisible divine centre round which all creation dances.
The Roman second-century poet Lucian sees the dance as the beginning of creation: ‘With the creation of the universe the dance too came into being, which signifies the union of the elements. The round dance of the stars, the constellations of the planets in relation to the fixed stars, the beautiful order and harmony in all its movements, is a mirror of the original dance at the time of creation. The dance is the richest gift of the muses to man. Because of its divine origin it has a place in the mysteries and is beloved by the gods and carried out by men in their honour.’ (On the Dance)
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From Sacred Dance by M.G. Wosien
Art: painting AE78 by Zdzislaw Beksinski’s.

“I am all that has been and is and shall be, and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle.” The Roman historian Plutarch recorded this inscription on the statue of a veiled goddess, depicting either Neith or Isis, in Sais, Egypt...Isis is the mystery at the heart of existence. The other side of her sister, dark Nephthys. We are told that Isis taught the people the names of the stars and the hidden souls of the gods and goddesses. Hers was the veil which would never be lifted. Apuleius, in his book ‘The Golden Ass’, describes Isis as saying: “my one person manifests the aspects of all the gods and goddesses” and that she is “worshipped by all the world under different forms, with various rites, and by manifold names.” The image of a veiled goddess is an enigmatic one. Tacitus in his Germania wrote of how “on an island of the sea stands an inviolate grove, in which, veiled with a cloth, is a chariot that none but the priest may touch. The priest can feel the presence of the Goddess [Nerthus] in this holy of holies, and attends her with the deepest reverence as her chariot is drawn along by cows.” Cleansed in a secluded lake, the slaves who performed this task were “immediately drowned in the lake. Thus the mystery begets terror and a pious reluctance to ask what that sight can be which is seen only by men doomed to die.” .Taken from my book The Silver BoughArt: The Veil of Night 2019. 8×10″. Watercolour & gouache. “She dances across the landscape unravelling a curtain of stars.” By Serena Malyon on instagram: @smalyon — “I am all that has been and is and shall be, and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle.” The Roman historian Plutarch recorded this inscription on the statue of a veiled goddess, depicting either Neith or Isis, in Sais, Egypt...Isis is the mystery at the heart of existence. The other side of her sister, dark Nephthys. We are told that Isis taught the people the names of the stars and the hidden souls of the gods and goddesses. Hers was the veil which would never be lifted. Apuleius, in his book ‘The Golden Ass’, describes Isis as saying: “my one person manifests the aspects of all the gods and goddesses” and that she is “worshipped by all the world under different forms, with various rites, and by manifold names.”
The image of a veiled goddess is an enigmatic one. Tacitus in his Germania wrote of how “on an island of the sea stands an inviolate grove, in which, veiled with a cloth, is a chariot that none but the priest may touch. The priest can feel the presence of the Goddess [Nerthus] in this holy of holies, and attends her with the deepest reverence as her chariot is drawn along by cows.” Cleansed in a secluded lake, the slaves who performed this task were “immediately drowned in the lake. Thus the mystery begets terror and a pious reluctance to ask what that sight can be which is seen only by men doomed to die.”
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Taken from my book The Silver Bough
Art: The Veil of Night 2019. 8×10″. Watercolour & gouache. “She dances across the landscape unravelling a curtain of stars.” By Serena Malyon on instagram: @smalyon

In Greek mythology the constellation of the Corona Borealis symbolises the diadem of nine glittering gems that Dionysus gave to Ariadne as a symbol of his enduring love. When they ascended to the heights of Mount Olympus, Dionysus threw it heavenward where it was caught by the favourable wind. There it was “set to shine among the eternal stars… its jewels changed to bright fires.”In North America the semi-circle of stars was to the Pawnee, who were “great star specialists,” the Council of Chiefs, and reminded them of the original council of stars set up by Tirawahat. When the last Pawnee earth lodge was built in the early part of the twentieth century, “women laced willow branches together and they were placed upon the slanting poles, and so formed a covering for the lodge, leaving only a round hole at the top. This circle represents the circle of stars in the heavens.” The Micmacs of Nova Scotia and the Iroquois people of the St Lawrence River Valley in Canada, both regard the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) as a bear and the Corona Borealis (Northern Crown) signifies his den. In Welsh mythology this Northern Crown is the castle of Arianrhod. Also known as the Silver Wheel, it is thought that this name refers to the circling of the stars around the pole star. Regarded as the fixed point in the turning world, or axis mundi, the pole star is a symbol of order in chaos. .Quotes: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Living the Sky by Ray A. WilliamsonArt by Victor Nizovtsev. American-Moldovan-Soviet painter b.1965 — In Greek mythology the constellation of the Corona Borealis symbolises the diadem of nine glittering gems that Dionysus gave to Ariadne as a symbol of his enduring love. When they ascended to the heights of Mount Olympus, Dionysus threw it heavenward where it was caught by the favourable wind. There it was “set to shine among the eternal stars… its jewels changed to bright fires.”
In North America the semi-circle of stars was to the Pawnee, who were “great star specialists,” the Council of Chiefs, and reminded them of the original council of stars set up by Tirawahat. When the last Pawnee earth lodge was built in the early part of the twentieth century, “women laced willow branches together and they were placed upon the slanting poles, and so formed a covering for the lodge, leaving only a round hole at the top. This circle represents the circle of stars in the heavens.”
The Micmacs of Nova Scotia and the Iroquois people of the St Lawrence River Valley in Canada, both regard the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) as a bear and the Corona Borealis (Northern Crown) signifies his den.
In Welsh mythology this Northern Crown is the castle of Arianrhod. Also known as the Silver Wheel, it is thought that this name refers to the circling of the stars around the pole star. Regarded as the fixed point in the turning world, or axis mundi, the pole star is a symbol of order in chaos.
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Quotes: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Living the Sky by Ray A. Williamson
Art by Victor Nizovtsev. American-Moldovan-Soviet painter b.1965

“The world begins: it begins as a dream of Nai-mu-ena in South America, and as a dream of Brahma in the mythology of India. For native Australians, the Dreaming, or the Dreamtime, is the entire mythical past, the present, and the future of Being: nothing that does not exist in the Dreaming, is. One can align oneself with reality only by performing the actions and ceremonies of this mythic, and consequently more real, time outside time.”."Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, the arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep all boil up from the basic magic ring of myth." .“Just as the myths written by our sages in our most sacred texts encourage us to look inward for the meaning of our lives, dreams, too, are a means for turning inward for the teachings of the spirit, the unconscious part of you. They have their own symbolism, their own mythology. Learning to read them can help one to transcend the world of their being so that they can learn the lessons of the spirit.”.Art: Aa78 by Zdzisław Beksińsk Quotes from ‘Dreams: Visions of the Night’ by David Coxhead & Susan Hiller. & ‘The Hero With A Thousand Faces’ by Joseph Campbell. — “The world begins: it begins as a dream of Nai-mu-ena in South America, and as a dream of Brahma in the mythology of India. For native Australians, the Dreaming, or the Dreamtime, is the entire mythical past, the present, and the future of Being: nothing that does not exist in the Dreaming, is. One can align oneself with reality only by performing the actions and ceremonies of this mythic, and consequently more real, time outside time.”
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"Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, the arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep all boil up from the basic magic ring of myth."
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“Just as the myths written by our sages in our most sacred texts encourage us to look inward for the meaning of our lives, dreams, too, are a means for turning inward for the teachings of the spirit, the unconscious part of you. They have their own symbolism, their own mythology. Learning to read them can help one to transcend the world of their being so that they can learn the lessons of the spirit.”
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Art: Aa78 by Zdzisław Beksińsk
Quotes from ‘Dreams: Visions of the Night’ by David Coxhead & Susan Hiller. & ‘The Hero With A Thousand Faces’ by Joseph Campbell.

In Greek mythology, Pandora, is also known as Anesidora: “The Sender Forth of Gifts”. “In the oldest version, Pandora emerged out of Earth as an avatar or emanation of Gaia, not from the workshop of the Olympian spirits. She brought gifts, not curses. Her gifts to humanity are botanical, including fruit, herbs for magical, healing, and culinary use and flax for clothing.” However, Hesiod called Pandora the founder of the “deadly race and tribe of women,” while in his the Theogony she is anonymous, only described as “beautiful evil.”

In one version of her myth it is not Pandora who opens the box, but her husband, Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus, whom Zeus had given the key. Regardless of the version, the box/container, is opened and “all of the ills and evils of mankind come out of that box, and before he could get the lid down everything was gone except hope, which was clinging desperately to the inside of the box.”

“We have now come to realise that Pandora’s box cannot be closed again, and that the only thing that remains in that box which may be useful, is hope. Hope is the ability to dream of things to be done... Hope is not only in the bottom of the box, it is in the bottom of the human heart. We all hope. We all also have reason to believe that hope is a form of enlightenment… to recognise the inevitable salvation of that which is right. We know these things inside ourselves, but now we are going to have to live them…”

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From Occult World & Manly P Hall’s lecture The Mystery of Pandora’s Box (cont in story.)

Art: Pandora by Kinuko Y Craft

“The apple has long been associated with completion, love and fertility. Symbolic of the sun, the apple is sacred to Apollo and the Celtic god Belenos. An apple cut in half reveals a five-pointed star, often connected to Venus, the goddess of love, while her Greek counterpart Aphrodite, was given an apple by Paris to indicate that she was the fairest goddess. A further connection was made by Frank Browning in his book ‘Apples: The Story of the Fruit of Temptation’, where ‘in the beginning there were roses. Small flowers of five white petals opened on low, thorny stems, scattered across the earth in the pastures of the dinosaurs, about eighty million years ago. …These bitter-fruited bushes, among the first flowering plants on earth, emerged as the vast Rosaceae family and from them came most of the fruits human beings eat today: apples, pears, plums, quinces, even peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.’In ‘Ancient Silesia, (now part of Poland), the apple tree was known as the ‘dream tree.’ Sleeping under the tree could induce dreams, or merely placing an apple under her pillow on New Year’s Eve, would induce a midnight dream in a young woman, of her future husband.’ In England, apple boughs were carried during funerals, while apples were sometimes buried with the dead, perhaps as both food for the dead and a hope for rebirth. However, in Medieval times, the apple became associated with curses as well as death, and the church believed that “enchanted apples could be given to a victim to cause demonic possession.” Despite this, apples remain connected with the idea of a lost golden age, with primordial innocence and eternal longing. They symbolise a state of unity and a time before the descent into fragmentation and duality.”.From my book The Silver BoughPainting: Eve by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer 1865-1953. — “The apple has long been associated with completion, love and fertility. Symbolic of the sun, the apple is sacred to Apollo and the Celtic god Belenos. An apple cut in half reveals a five-pointed star, often connected to Venus, the goddess of love, while her Greek counterpart Aphrodite, was given an apple by Paris to indicate that she was the fairest goddess. A further connection was made by Frank Browning in his book ‘Apples: The Story of the Fruit of Temptation’, where ‘in the beginning there were roses. Small flowers of five white petals opened on low, thorny stems, scattered across the earth in the pastures of the dinosaurs, about eighty million years ago. …These bitter-fruited bushes, among the first flowering plants on earth, emerged as the vast Rosaceae family and from them came most of the fruits human beings eat today: apples, pears, plums, quinces, even peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.’
In ‘Ancient Silesia, (now part of Poland), the apple tree was known as the ‘dream tree.’ Sleeping under the tree could induce dreams, or merely placing an apple under her pillow on New Year’s Eve, would induce a midnight dream in a young woman, of her future husband.’ In England, apple boughs were carried during funerals, while apples were sometimes buried with the dead, perhaps as both food for the dead and a hope for rebirth. However, in Medieval times, the apple became associated with curses as well as death, and the church believed that “enchanted apples could be given to a victim to cause demonic possession.” Despite this, apples remain connected with the idea of a lost golden age, with primordial innocence and eternal longing. They symbolise a state of unity and a time before the descent into fragmentation and duality.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Painting: Eve by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer 1865-1953.

In the frozen north, where the stars sparkle in the vast, dark sky. “A soft white white shimmer glows over the fields of ice & snow covering tundra, valley, & hill. Deep ice binds the lakes & streams. Then see! Upward across the sky sweep wondrous lights. Amber-colored veils shimmer to & fro, rosy draperies, garlands, & streamers red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & violet, dart, dance, sway, shift, wave, & leap across the sky; flare up & die down, then spring up again woven all of rainbow colours. The children listen for the Call of the Magic Drum, & they watch the Aurora Lights, & say: "See! the warriors are fighting!" It was thought that shamans from this land were able to “travel through a firmament of fire and ... when two of these shamans have a quarrel, they will sit opposite each other and chant until they turn into light. Then they meet in the sky as blazing lights and noisily battle each other. The Aurora Borealis (The Northern Lights) is often interpreted in this way. A shaman whose light begins to fade soon becomes ill, and shamans whose light is completely extinguished during such a battle must die soon after.” These stories may be remnants of the Sámi shamans, the Noaidi: “The One Who Sees.” They have been “placed as spiritually significant religious specialists in Sámi religion and employed their craft to communicate with the “spiritual realm” with the help of their drum, joik (chanting or singing), and helper “spirits” all in the effort to effect change in the “natural” world. The noaidi were known for their skills in healing, cursing and fortune telling among other things.” However, during the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, Lutheran missionaries began to proselytize the Sámi, demonizing and outlawing most of their religion and ritual practices, while the noaidi drums were burned and anyone claiming to practice the noaidi art were punished severely and even put to death on one occasion.”.Art: Light Dancing by Richard Rowan. 2017.Quotes: Wonder Tales of Baltic Wizards by Frances OlcottNoaidi, the One Who Sees by Eric Daniel Goettl — In the frozen north, where the stars sparkle in the vast, dark sky. “A soft white white shimmer glows over the fields of ice & snow covering tundra, valley, & hill. Deep ice binds the lakes & streams. Then see! Upward across the sky sweep wondrous lights. Amber-colored veils shimmer to & fro, rosy draperies, garlands, & streamers red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & violet, dart, dance, sway, shift, wave, & leap across the sky; flare up & die down, then spring up again woven all of rainbow colours. The children listen for the Call of the Magic Drum, & they watch the Aurora Lights, & say: "See! the warriors are fighting!"
It was thought that shamans from this land were able to “travel through a firmament of fire and ... when two of these shamans have a quarrel, they will sit opposite each other and chant until they turn into light. Then they meet in the sky as blazing lights and noisily battle each other. The Aurora Borealis (The Northern Lights) is often interpreted in this way. A shaman whose light begins to fade soon becomes ill, and shamans whose light is completely extinguished during such a battle must die soon after.”
These stories may be remnants of the Sámi shamans, the Noaidi: “The One Who Sees.” They have been “placed as spiritually significant religious specialists in Sámi religion and employed their craft to communicate with the “spiritual realm” with the help of their drum, joik (chanting or singing), and helper “spirits” all in the effort to effect change in the “natural” world. The noaidi were known for their skills in healing, cursing and fortune telling among other things.” However, during the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, Lutheran missionaries began to proselytize the Sámi, demonizing and outlawing most of their religion and ritual practices, while the noaidi drums were burned and anyone claiming to practice the noaidi art were punished severely and even put to death on one occasion.”
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Art: Light Dancing by Richard Rowan. 2017.
Quotes: Wonder Tales of Baltic Wizards by Frances Olcott
Noaidi, the One Who Sees by Eric Daniel Goettl

“Wine is symbolic of the liquid of life; revelation; truth; vitality, but it is also the blood of death in sacrifice. Wine and blood are interchangeable symbols, except in Zoroastrianism. Wine can also be translated into fire. Wine and water are solar and lunar, fire and water, the two great powers of the universe; they also represent the blending of the divine with human natures, or divinity invisibly mingled with humanity.” Jesus turned water into wine, and in classical mythology, where wine is chiefly associated with Dionysus/Bacchus, Dionysus struck the earth with his thrysus and caused wine to flow. “To the Orphics, Dionysus symbolised the divine spark within, and as his myth tells us, we are descended from the Titans who killed, dismembered and ate the infant Dionysus. This death and rebirth was symbolised in the crushing of grapes to make wine. A drink that was sacred to Dionysus and which symbolised the lifeblood. Turning grapes into wine is also a Sufi metaphor, as Rumi wrote:“In the end I shall be at an end.Nothing but grief and love mixedIn a dark transparent wineYou down in one gulp.” .First quote from encyclopaedia of Symbols by J.C Cooper, second from my book The Golden Thread Art: from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edmund Dulac — “Wine is symbolic of the liquid of life; revelation; truth; vitality, but it is also the blood of death in sacrifice. Wine and blood are interchangeable symbols, except in Zoroastrianism. Wine can also be translated into fire. Wine and water are solar and lunar, fire and water, the two great powers of the universe; they also represent the blending of the divine with human natures, or divinity invisibly mingled with humanity.”
Jesus turned water into wine, and in classical mythology, where wine is chiefly associated with Dionysus/Bacchus, Dionysus struck the earth with his thrysus and caused wine to flow. “To the Orphics, Dionysus symbolised the divine spark within, and as his myth tells us, we are descended from the Titans who killed, dismembered and ate the infant Dionysus. This death and rebirth was symbolised in the crushing of grapes to make wine. A drink that was sacred to Dionysus and which symbolised the lifeblood. Turning grapes into wine is also a Sufi metaphor, as Rumi wrote:
“In the end I shall be at an end.
Nothing but grief and love mixed
In a dark transparent wine
You down in one gulp.”
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First quote from encyclopaedia of Symbols by J.C Cooper, second from my book The Golden Thread
Art: from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edmund Dulac

One of Japan’s most beloved Buddhist deities, Kannon-sama, or Kanzeon Bosatsu, is the goddess, or Bodhisattva, of mercy & compassion. A Bodhisattva is a being who is able to achieve Nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings, but many in Japan do not make that distinction. Admired for her subtle & mysterious smile she is worshipped in thousands of temples all over Japan, assisting people in distress in this Earthly Realm & in all Six Realms of Karmic Rebirth. The origin of Kannon is, like Buddhism itself, in India, with the deity Avalokiteshvara, and in India, Tibet, and South East Asia, Avalokiteshvara is represented as male. When Buddhism spread into China, it was probably mixed with local Taoist goddesses and took the name Guanyin, from which the Japanese word kannon is derived, and from the middle ages on, is often, though not always, represented as female in China, Korea, and Japan.Compassion is a very important element of Buddhism. In the Western Paradise there is the throne of Amitabha, & before the throne is a pool full of lotus flowers. “The lotus is the sacred flower of Buddha, & in the mystery of the Western Paradise, it has a very special meaning. When a true believer, living in the mortal world, first addresses a sincere prayer to Amitabha, a lotus seed falls into the sacred pool of paradise. By the daily practice of the Buddhist virtues of patience, humility, compassion & unselfishness, this seed is made to sprout and grow. Even one prayer, spoken or unspoken, or one act of mercy performed without thought of self, is enough to ensure this merit seed which will grow in the light of Amitabha’s love. At death, when the soul is conducted by Amitabha to the Blessed Land, it is placed in the calyx of the lotus which its merits have created. In due time, depending upon the devotion & integrity of the believer, the lotus bud opens, revealing the heart of the redeemed soul. Those who are born again into the land of Amitabha are therefore called the lotus-born.”.From Manly P Hall’s The Western Paradise of Amitabha Art: Spring Night in Inokashira by Kawase Hausi — One of Japan’s most beloved Buddhist deities, Kannon-sama, or Kanzeon Bosatsu, is the goddess, or Bodhisattva, of mercy & compassion. A Bodhisattva is a being who is able to achieve Nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings, but many in Japan do not make that distinction. Admired for her subtle & mysterious smile she is worshipped in thousands of temples all over Japan, assisting people in distress in this Earthly Realm & in all Six Realms of Karmic Rebirth.
The origin of Kannon is, like Buddhism itself, in India, with the deity Avalokiteshvara, and in India, Tibet, and South East Asia, Avalokiteshvara is represented as male. When Buddhism spread into China, it was probably mixed with local Taoist goddesses and took the name Guanyin, from which the Japanese word kannon is derived, and from the middle ages on, is often, though not always, represented as female in China, Korea, and Japan.
Compassion is a very important element of Buddhism. In the Western Paradise there is the throne of Amitabha, & before the throne is a pool full of lotus flowers. “The lotus is the sacred flower of Buddha, & in the mystery of the Western Paradise, it has a very special meaning. When a true believer, living in the mortal world, first addresses a sincere prayer to Amitabha, a lotus seed falls into the sacred pool of paradise. By the daily practice of the Buddhist virtues of patience, humility, compassion & unselfishness, this seed is made to sprout and grow. Even one prayer, spoken or unspoken, or one act of mercy performed without thought of self, is enough to ensure this merit seed which will grow in the light of Amitabha’s love. At death, when the soul is conducted by Amitabha to the Blessed Land, it is placed in the calyx of the lotus which its merits have created. In due time, depending upon the devotion & integrity of the believer, the lotus bud opens, revealing the heart of the redeemed soul. Those who are born again into the land of Amitabha are therefore called the lotus-born.”
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From Manly P Hall’s The Western Paradise of Amitabha
Art: Spring Night in Inokashira by Kawase Hausi

“The mountain was made of onyx, cleared of earth on top, which was then polished ‘until it shone like the moon’. The temple was high, round, & domed and had a roof of gold. Inside, the ceiling was encrusted with sapphires to represent the blue sky & studded with carbuncles for stars. A gold sun & a silver moon moved across the hemispheres…the whole of the temple was rich in gold & encrusted with gold.” This is Albrecht Von Sharffenberg’s description of the Grail Temple.“All over the world the temple has long been understood as the place where the three worlds, the upper, middle & lower, intersect, while in esoteric understanding the human body is also divided into three major parts. To the Hopi “the living body of man & the living body of the earth were constructed in the same way. Through each ran an axis, man’s axis being the backbone, the vertebral column, which controlled the equilibrium of his movements & his functions. Along this axis were several vibratory centres which echoed the primordial sound of life throughout the universe or sounded a warning if anything went wrong.” This belief is also echoed in occult tradition where the spine is regarded as symbolic of the ascent in consciousness, while the skull and all of its “divine contents” are symbolic of the domed temple. In Hindu tradition the spine represents the stem of the sacred lotus, while the skull is the flower.”.From my book The Silver BoughArt: The Palace that to Heav'n his pillars threw. c.1909 by Edmund Dulac — “The mountain was made of onyx, cleared of earth on top, which was then polished ‘until it shone like the moon’. The temple was high, round, & domed and had a roof of gold. Inside, the ceiling was encrusted with sapphires to represent the blue sky & studded with carbuncles for stars. A gold sun & a silver moon moved across the hemispheres…the whole of the temple was rich in gold & encrusted with gold.” This is Albrecht Von Sharffenberg’s description of the Grail Temple.
“All over the world the temple has long been understood as the place where the three worlds, the upper, middle & lower, intersect, while in esoteric understanding the human body is also divided into three major parts. To the Hopi “the living body of man & the living body of the earth were constructed in the same way. Through each ran an axis, man’s axis being the backbone, the vertebral column, which controlled the equilibrium of his movements & his functions. Along this axis were several vibratory centres which echoed the primordial sound of life throughout the universe or sounded a warning if anything went wrong.” This belief is also echoed in occult tradition where the spine is regarded as symbolic of the ascent in consciousness, while the skull and all of its “divine contents” are symbolic of the domed temple. In Hindu tradition the spine represents the stem of the sacred lotus, while the skull is the flower.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: The Palace that to Heav'n his pillars threw. c.1909 by Edmund Dulac

In the ‘Book of Enoch’ it is written: “And there were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that.” Many myths and oral traditions of the the world preserve tales of giants. Archetypal and primordial, to the Norse giants were elemental, associated with fire, ice and mountains, while other Jotun are described as being of roughly human size. All over the world, myths and tales speak of giants who walked the earth in antediluvian times. The primordial theme is found in Tantric scriptures where it is written, “the ancient races grew to enormous size and lived to enormous ages because their lives were “centered in the blood” of the Goddess whose blood first formed and birthed the universe.” In Aztec mythology the Quinametzin populated the world during the previous era of the Sun of Rain (Nahui-Quiahuitl). “A Quinametzin stands more than 12 feet tall. They were punished by the gods because they did not venerate them, and their peak-civilization came to an end as a result of great calamities and as a punishment from the heavens for grave sins they had committed.” There are also the Greek Titans, the biblical Nephillim, and the Bulgarian Ispolini who were said to have inhabited the earth before modern humans. In Irish mythology there is Balor, in Wales: Bran, and in Gaelic there is the giantess Cailleach: “Kailleach-mor-nam-Fiadh, great hag goddess of the deer is a giantess living among the mountains of Jura in Scotland.” Several mountains and hills were said to have been created when the Cailleach, in giantess form, dropped huge rocks from her apron. This is a similar motif found in many folklore traditions including the Basque who credited megaliths to a race of forgotten giants. A curious and complex subject, giants are symbolic of chaos, the bones of the world and the elements, such as Waziya, a northern giant who to the Lakota people is associated with the winter wind. Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso — In the ‘Book of Enoch’ it is written: “And there were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that.” Many myths and oral traditions of the the world preserve tales of giants. Archetypal and primordial, to the Norse giants were elemental, associated with fire, ice and mountains, while other Jotun are described as being of roughly human size. All over the world, myths and tales speak of giants who walked the earth in antediluvian times. The primordial theme is found in Tantric scriptures where it is written, “the ancient races grew to enormous size and lived to enormous ages because their lives were “centered in the blood” of the Goddess whose blood first formed and birthed the universe.”
In Aztec mythology the Quinametzin populated the world during the previous era of the Sun of Rain (Nahui-Quiahuitl). “A Quinametzin stands more than 12 feet tall. They were punished by the gods because they did not venerate them, and their peak-civilization came to an end as a result of great calamities and as a punishment from the heavens for grave sins they had committed.” There are also the Greek Titans, the biblical Nephillim, and the Bulgarian Ispolini who were said to have inhabited the earth before modern humans. In Irish mythology there is Balor, in Wales: Bran, and in Gaelic there is the giantess Cailleach: “Kailleach-mor-nam-Fiadh, great hag goddess of the deer is a giantess living among the mountains of Jura in Scotland.” Several mountains and hills were said to have been created when the Cailleach, in giantess form, dropped huge rocks from her apron. This is a similar motif found in many folklore traditions including the Basque who credited megaliths to a race of forgotten giants. A curious and complex subject, giants are symbolic of chaos, the bones of the world and the elements, such as Waziya, a northern giant who to the Lakota people is associated with the winter wind.
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso

“David Mowaldjali, a visionary leader from the Kimberley region in Australia, explains that in the making of a karadji (a type of shaman) the importance of quartz crystals as sacred objects is explicit. He says that the bodies of the magicians overf… — “David Mowaldjali, a visionary leader from the Kimberley region in Australia, explains that in the making of a karadji (a type of shaman) the importance of quartz crystals as sacred objects is explicit. He says that the bodies of the magicians overflow with magic stones called gedji. Accompanying their transformation, postulants were often seen to grow feathers on their arms, which, after a few days, developed into wings. Taoists also believe that when a man obtains the tao feathers begin to grow on his body. The use of feathers, then, as an expression of spiritual transformation is widely documented, while the connection between feathers & the aerial flight, or ascent, of shamans the world over is a common one. An old Babylonian tradition that tells us the first men had wings & in the Pancavimca Brahmana the symbolic explanation is even more explicit when it states that ‘he who understands has wings’.
Plato made the same suggestion in Phaedrus when he wrote, ‘A man beholds the beauty of the world, it is reminded of truth and beauty, & his wings begin to grow’. Plato further describes the state in which man once was, & what he will become again: before, & after the “loss of his wings”; when “he lived among the gods, a god himself in the airy world.” He continues, “[long ago, you see, the soul had wings] …like a child whose teeth are just starting to grow in, & its gums are all aching and itching – this is exactly how the soul feels when it begins to grow wings. It swells up & aches and tingles as it grows them…but when it is watered & warmed by beauty, then all its pain subsides & is replaced by joy. When, however, it is separated…then the openings of the passages in which the feathers grow are dried shut & keep the wings from sprouting. Then the stump of each feather is blocked by desire & it throbs like a pulsating artery while the feather pricks at its passageway, with the result that the whole soul is stung all round, & the pain simply drives it wild.”
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Art info etc in the comments
Art: the Angel Israfel by Edmund Dulac 1900
Wild Stones by James Cowan

“Andromeda, the Woman Chained, represents in the sky the daughter of Cepheus & Cassiopeia, king & queen of Aethiopia, chained in exposure to the sea monster as punishment of her mother’s boast of beauty superior to that of the Nereids...She seems to go far back to classical times, & we probably must look to the Euphrates for her origin, with that of her family and Cetus. Sayce claims that she appeared in the great Babylonian Epic of Creation, in connection with the story of Bel Mardūk & the dragon Tiāmat, that doubtless is the foundation of the story of Perseus & Andromeda. She was noted, too, in Phoenicia, where Chaldaean influence was early felt.” The Andromeda Galaxy, also called Andromeda Nebula, is a great spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is one of the few visible to the unaided eye, appearing as a milky blur. It is located about 2,480,000 light-years from Earth; its diameter is approximately 200,000 light-years; and it shares various characteristics with the Milky Way system. It was mentioned as early as 965 CE, in the Book of the Fixed Stars by the Islamic astronomer al-Ṣūfī, and rediscovered in 1612, shortly after the invention of the telescope, by the German astronomer Simon Marius, who said it resembled the light of a candle seen through a horn. For centuries astronomers regarded the Andromeda Galaxy as a component of the Milky Way Galaxy—i.e., as a so-called spiral nebula much like other glowing masses of gas within the local galactic system (hence the misnomer Andromeda Nebula). Only in the 1920s did the American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble determine conclusively that the Andromeda was in fact a separate galaxy beyond the Milky Way.”.From Stars Names by Richard Hinkley & Brittanica Art: by Gustave Dore from Orlando Furioso — “Andromeda, the Woman Chained, represents in the sky the daughter of Cepheus & Cassiopeia, king & queen of Aethiopia, chained in exposure to the sea monster as punishment of her mother’s boast of beauty superior to that of the Nereids...She seems to go far back to classical times, & we probably must look to the Euphrates for her origin, with that of her family and Cetus. Sayce claims that she appeared in the great Babylonian Epic of Creation, in connection with the story of Bel Mardūk & the dragon Tiāmat, that doubtless is the foundation of the story of Perseus & Andromeda. She was noted, too, in Phoenicia, where Chaldaean influence was early felt.”
The Andromeda Galaxy, also called Andromeda Nebula, is a great spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is one of the few visible to the unaided eye, appearing as a milky blur. It is located about 2,480,000 light-years from Earth; its diameter is approximately 200,000 light-years; and it shares various characteristics with the Milky Way system. It was mentioned as early as 965 CE, in the Book of the Fixed Stars by the Islamic astronomer al-Ṣūfī, and rediscovered in 1612, shortly after the invention of the telescope, by the German astronomer Simon Marius, who said it resembled the light of a candle seen through a horn. For centuries astronomers regarded the Andromeda Galaxy as a component of the Milky Way Galaxy—i.e., as a so-called spiral nebula much like other glowing masses of gas within the local galactic system (hence the misnomer Andromeda Nebula). Only in the 1920s did the American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble determine conclusively that the Andromeda was in fact a separate galaxy beyond the Milky Way.”
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From Stars Names by Richard Hinkley & Brittanica
Art: by Gustave Dore from Orlando Furioso

“When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient Chinese may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl, more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea.”“Pearls were sacred to Aphrodite Marina as Pearl of the Sea, who was vaguely Christianized as the mythical Saint Margaret (“Pearl”) via several different legends. Pearls often had connotations of male-female combination, and it was often said that pearls are formed of male fire and female waters. Another, more poetic, tradition said pearls are formed by the merging of water and moonlight.”“The pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" par excellence, an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word margan (from mar, "giver" and gan, "life"). .Quotes: The Women’s Encyclopaedia of Symbols by Barbara Walker & Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith.Art:  Field of Toyama' or 'Moon over Toyama Plain' (1931) woodblock print by Hasui Kawase — “When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient Chinese may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl, more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea.”
“Pearls were sacred to Aphrodite Marina as Pearl of the Sea, who was vaguely Christianized as the mythical Saint Margaret (“Pearl”) via several different legends. Pearls often had connotations of male-female combination, and it was often said that pearls are formed of male fire and female waters. Another, more poetic, tradition said pearls are formed by the merging of water and moonlight.”
“The pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" par excellence, an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word margan (from mar, "giver" and gan, "life").
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Quotes: The Women’s Encyclopaedia of Symbols by Barbara Walker & Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith.
Art: Field of Toyama' or 'Moon over Toyama Plain' (1931) woodblock print by Hasui Kawase

Zorya is a collective Slavonic term “applied to the two daughters of Dazhbog, their names being Zorya Utrennyaya, and Zorya Vechernyaya. Sometimes there are three daughters included under this title, but the third, the goddess of midnight, remains nameless. Although each of the named Zorya has specific task to carry out at her father’s palace, all three are appointed guardians of the unnamed deity who has been chained to the constellation Ursa Minor (the little bear), sometimes said to be a dog (hound), who, if he breaks loose will cause the world to come to an end. The Zorya are sisters to the Zvezda: Zvezda Dennitsa: the morning star and Zvezda Vechernyaya: the evening star. Both are described as having married Myesyats, the moon, and became the mother of stars by him. The specific task of Zvezda Dennitsa and her sister was to groom the white horses that daily pulled their father’s chariot across the sky. The afterworld of the Slavs corresponds with a solar orientation. It has many names, among them Rai, Iry, or Vuirei. This place was always summery and the trees grew golden fruit. It is very similar to other Indo-European conceptions of a pleasant abode for the dead. One version of this paradise is called Bouyan (connected to the words meaning burning, ardent, vernal, fruitful.) and was ruled by Zaryá, a sun maiden who is perhaps the same as the goddess Zorya Utrenyaya and Zorya Vechernyaya, who personified dawn and twilight. She sits under a dripping oak on the ‘fiery stone’ Alatuir, which was made of amber. There she sews with red-gold thread, an idea that turns up in many spells. She was asked to sew up wounds, since a healing river flowed from under her seat. This sitting is reminiscent of the German sun goddess, while the healing water empowered by the sun is another common motif in female solar mythology.”.From Encyclopaedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend by Mike Dixon KennedyFrom: At Close of Day, 1941 by Maxfield Parrish — Zorya is a collective Slavonic term “applied to the two daughters of Dazhbog, their names being Zorya Utrennyaya, and Zorya Vechernyaya. Sometimes there are three daughters included under this title, but the third, the goddess of midnight, remains nameless. Although each of the named Zorya has specific task to carry out at her father’s palace, all three are appointed guardians of the unnamed deity who has been chained to the constellation Ursa Minor (the little bear), sometimes said to be a dog (hound), who, if he breaks loose will cause the world to come to an end. The Zorya are sisters to the Zvezda: Zvezda Dennitsa: the morning star and Zvezda Vechernyaya: the evening star. Both are described as having married Myesyats, the moon, and became the mother of stars by him. The specific task of Zvezda Dennitsa and her sister was to groom the white horses that daily pulled their father’s chariot across the sky.
The afterworld of the Slavs corresponds with a solar orientation. It has many names, among them Rai, Iry, or Vuirei. This place was always summery and the trees grew golden fruit. It is very similar to other Indo-European conceptions of a pleasant abode for the dead. One version of this paradise is called Bouyan (connected to the words meaning burning, ardent, vernal, fruitful.) and was ruled by Zaryá, a sun maiden who is perhaps the same as the goddess Zorya Utrenyaya and Zorya Vechernyaya, who personified dawn and twilight. She sits under a dripping oak on the ‘fiery stone’ Alatuir, which was made of amber. There she sews with red-gold thread, an idea that turns up in many spells. She was asked to sew up wounds, since a healing river flowed from under her seat. This sitting is reminiscent of the German sun goddess, while the healing water empowered by the sun is another common motif in female solar mythology.”
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From Encyclopaedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend by Mike Dixon Kennedy
From: At Close of Day, 1941 by Maxfield Parrish

“The Egyptian Crux Ansata, or Ankh was viewed as a key of the Nile, both the earthly river and its heavenly reflection in the star-fields of the blessed (the Milky Way), because it represented the mystic union of Isis and Osiris that was supposed to initiate the annual Nile flood, upon which the life of Egypt depended.It was also known as the symbol of life, the loop at the top of the cross consisting of the hieroglyphic Ru (O) set in an upright form, meaning the gateway, or mouth, the creative power being signified by the loop which represents a fish's mouth giving birth to water as the life of the country, bringing the inundations and renewal of the fruitfulness of the earth to those who depended upon its increase to maintain life. It was regarded as the key of the Nile which overflowed periodically and so fertilized the land. It was shown in the hands of the Egyptian kings, at whose coronations it played an important part, and the gods are invariably depicted holding this symbol of creative power; it was also worn to bring knowledge, power, and abundance. Again, it had reference to the spiritual life for it was from the Crux Ansata, or Ankh, that the symbol of Venus originated, the circle over the cross being the triumph of spirit, represented by the circle, over matter, shown by the cross..From Barbara Walker’s Encyclopaedia of Women’s Symbols and The Wisdom of the Egyptians By Brian BrownArt: an illustration from The Fall of Atlantis by Andrew Avinoff 1938 — “The Egyptian Crux Ansata, or Ankh was viewed as a key of the Nile, both the earthly river and its heavenly reflection in the star-fields of the blessed (the Milky Way), because it represented the mystic union of Isis and Osiris that was supposed to initiate the annual Nile flood, upon which the life of Egypt depended.
It was also known as the symbol of life, the loop at the top of the cross consisting of the hieroglyphic Ru (O) set in an upright form, meaning the gateway, or mouth, the creative power being signified by the loop which represents a fish's mouth giving birth to water as the life of the country, bringing the inundations and renewal of the fruitfulness of the earth to those who depended upon its increase to maintain life. It was regarded as the key of the Nile which overflowed periodically and so fertilized the land.
It was shown in the hands of the Egyptian kings, at whose coronations it played an important part, and the gods are invariably depicted holding this symbol of creative power; it was also worn to bring knowledge, power, and abundance. Again, it had reference to the spiritual life for it was from the Crux Ansata, or Ankh, that the symbol of Venus originated, the circle over the cross being the triumph of spirit, represented by the circle, over matter, shown by the cross.
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From Barbara Walker’s Encyclopaedia of Women’s Symbols and The Wisdom of the Egyptians By Brian Brown
Art: an illustration from The Fall of Atlantis by Andrew Avinoff 1938

Snow is ambiguously magical and dangerous, gentle and overpowering. It may bury everything beneath it, yet it retains an affinity with the heights, clinging to rooftops and tree branches, lingering atop mountains and in every season, an image of detached purity and majestic wisdom. The almost motionless motion of snow reveals each flake as an ephemeral but unique creation. For such reasons snow’s brilliance is felt to be cold. More like moonlight than sunlight, snow’s cool-white reflected light often symbolises purity and “chaste” retreated from warm human touch. Paradoxically, snow can also reflect so much light that it ceases to illuminate, but instead blinds, creating blizzard “whiteouts” or burning eyes unprotected by snow goggles. Containing like all symbols powerful opposites, snow seems to bind fire and ice. In many world cultures, snow becomes the “snow maiden”, a regal but remote form of the archetypal feminine who inspires passion only to drain from her lover the lifeblood of emotional warmth. Her beauty, like that of snow, is fascinating but inhuman and potentially deadly. On the other hand, snow can image psychic “frozen-ground” as protectively repressed or dissociated feelings. Only in due time, perhaps, can such feelings thaw, when there is a consciousness able to withstand the melting.”.From the Taschen Book of SymbolsArt: Winter Landscape (Two Tall Pines) by Maxfield Parrish 1870 – 1966. American painter and illustrator — Snow is ambiguously magical and dangerous, gentle and overpowering. It may bury everything beneath it, yet it retains an affinity with the heights, clinging to rooftops and tree branches, lingering atop mountains and in every season, an image of detached purity and majestic wisdom. The almost motionless motion of snow reveals each flake as an ephemeral but unique creation.
For such reasons snow’s brilliance is felt to be cold. More like moonlight than sunlight, snow’s cool-white reflected light often symbolises purity and “chaste” retreated from warm human touch. Paradoxically, snow can also reflect so much light that it ceases to illuminate, but instead blinds, creating blizzard “whiteouts” or burning eyes unprotected by snow goggles. Containing like all symbols powerful opposites, snow seems to bind fire and ice.
In many world cultures, snow becomes the “snow maiden”, a regal but remote form of the archetypal feminine who inspires passion only to drain from her lover the lifeblood of emotional warmth. Her beauty, like that of snow, is fascinating but inhuman and potentially deadly. On the other hand, snow can image psychic “frozen-ground” as protectively repressed or dissociated feelings. Only in due time, perhaps, can such feelings thaw, when there is a consciousness able to withstand the melting.”
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From the Taschen Book of Symbols
Art: Winter Landscape (Two Tall Pines) by Maxfield Parrish 1870 – 1966. American painter and illustrator

Michael Meade writes of how “fear is an old word that derives from the same roots as ‘fare’ as in ‘thoroughfare.’ Although it often causes people to run away, fear means to ‘go through it’. Fear used to be called the ‘awakener.’ For healthy fear intends to awaken the soul and guide it to greater connections to the living Soul of the World. The hidden purpose of fear involves bringing us closer to inner resources and a greater knowledge of what carries us throughout life. In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to live more fully." Similarly Chögyam Trungpa wrote: “acknowledging fear is not a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess such fear, we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness. True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear, but going beyond fear.” The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti commented on how “fear is one of the greatest problems in life. A mind that is caught in fear lives in confusion [and] conflict… we are all burdened with fears of some kind, and fear is a dreadful thing which warps, twists and dulls our days.” While to Manly P Hall: “worry never prevents tomorrow from being what it will be, but it is very likely to make tomorrow even more difficult. Every negative or destructive attitude or emotion helps make fears come true because bad attitudes negate a person’s internal resource: judgment is poorer, and courage is diminished.” This is true of how in “moments of stress, we become panicky. We lose the power to think things through, to reason them along their proper courses, and to improve and protect ourselves through this type of understanding.” He concludes how “every instant in life is a challenge; every moment something new happens, and we must meet all this change from within ourselves.” .Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso — Michael Meade writes of how “fear is an old word that derives from the same roots as ‘fare’ as in ‘thoroughfare.’ Although it often causes people to run away, fear means to ‘go through it’. Fear used to be called the ‘awakener.’ For healthy fear intends to awaken the soul and guide it to greater connections to the living Soul of the World. The hidden purpose of fear involves bringing us closer to inner resources and a greater knowledge of what carries us throughout life. In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to live more fully." Similarly Chögyam Trungpa wrote: “acknowledging fear is not a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess such fear, we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness. True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear, but going beyond fear.”
The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti commented on how “fear is one of the greatest problems in life. A mind that is caught in fear lives in confusion [and] conflict… we are all burdened with fears of some kind, and fear is a dreadful thing which warps, twists and dulls our days.” While to Manly P Hall: “worry never prevents tomorrow from being what it will be, but it is very likely to make tomorrow even more difficult. Every negative or destructive attitude or emotion helps make fears come true because bad attitudes negate a person’s internal resource: judgment is poorer, and courage is diminished.” This is true of how in “moments of stress, we become panicky. We lose the power to think things through, to reason them along their proper courses, and to improve and protect ourselves through this type of understanding.” He concludes how “every instant in life is a challenge; every moment something new happens, and we must meet all this change from within ourselves.”
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Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso

In Norse legend the Northern Lights are believed to be “a reflection of the beauty of Gerdr, as well as being a display put on by Ullr to emphasise his prowess to gods and mortals alike.” In Finnish mythology the fox is often depicted as a cunning trickster, but seldom evil. “In Northern Finland, the fox is said to conjure the aurora borealis while it runs through the snowy hills. When the fox’s fur touches the snow it creates magical sparks and sets the sky ablaze. Still today, the Finnish word for the aurora is “revontulet” which literally translates to ‘fox-fires’.”“All over North America, and in other places, the star band was the path of the dead, or Ghost Road. The Innu of Labrador called it the “Ghost Trail”, tchï’pa’ti meckenu, which souls had to cross to become stars. The Penobscot of Maine told a story of how a chief called Morning Star followed the Ghost Road to where the Northern Lights were playing a ball game, to fetch his son who kept wandering off to play ball with them. Another explanation for the lights was that the spirits lit torches to show the way for new ones coming to join them. It seems that only people who died violently or killed themselves went to the aurora people. The East Greenland Inuit said that it was still born or exposed children who went to the spirits where they played in the sky.” .From: Sun, Moon and Stars by Sheena McGrath.Art: detail from Aurora 2015 by Richard Rowan. “Accompanied by a photographer and filmmaker, Rowan travelled to remote, secret locations in Iceland to capture his subject, enduring long nights, walking in the darkness and waiting in the cold to witness the magic of the aurora. The artist’s precise technique sees him employ a painstaking ‘back to front’ method for painting with oils on glass. The foreground of each picture is painted first, and is left to dry for up to two weeks before the next layer is applied — In Norse legend the Northern Lights are believed to be “a reflection of the beauty of Gerdr, as well as being a display put on by Ullr to emphasise his prowess to gods and mortals alike.” In Finnish mythology the fox is often depicted as a cunning trickster, but seldom evil. “In Northern Finland, the fox is said to conjure the aurora borealis while it runs through the snowy hills. When the fox’s fur touches the snow it creates magical sparks and sets the sky ablaze. Still today, the Finnish word for the aurora is “revontulet” which literally translates to ‘fox-fires’.”
“All over North America, and in other places, the star band was the path of the dead, or Ghost Road. The Innu of Labrador called it the “Ghost Trail”, tchï’pa’ti meckenu, which souls had to cross to become stars. The Penobscot of Maine told a story of how a chief called Morning Star followed the Ghost Road to where the Northern Lights were playing a ball game, to fetch his son who kept wandering off to play ball with them. Another explanation for the lights was that the spirits lit torches to show the way for new ones coming to join them. It seems that only people who died violently or killed themselves went to the aurora people. The East Greenland Inuit said that it was still born or exposed children who went to the spirits where they played in the sky.”
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From: Sun, Moon and Stars by Sheena McGrath
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Art: detail from Aurora 2015 by Richard Rowan. “Accompanied by a photographer and filmmaker, Rowan travelled to remote, secret locations in Iceland to capture his subject, enduring long nights, walking in the darkness and waiting in the cold to witness the magic of the aurora. The artist’s precise technique sees him employ a painstaking ‘back to front’ method for painting with oils on glass. The foreground of each picture is painted first, and is left to dry for up to two weeks before the next layer is applied

In Indian mythology, Manu is the first man & a great Rishi who practised rigid austerities in a forest for ten thousand years. “One day while he brooded, a fish rose from a stream and asked for his protection against the greater fish which desired to swallow it, at the same time promising to reward him. Manu placed the fish in an earthen jar & tended it carefully till it increased in size; then he put it in a tank, then in the Ganges & finally he took it to the sea. The fish said to Manu: “Know thou, O worshipful one, my protector, that the dissolution of the Universe is at hand. The time is ripe for purging the world. I will therefore advise thee what thou shouldst do, so that it may be well with thee. Build a strong & massive ark, & furnish it with a long rope; thou wilt ascend in it with the seven Rishis, & take with thee all the different seeds enumerated by Brahmans in days of yore, & preserve them carefully. Wait for me & I will appear as a horned animal. Act according to my instructions, for without mine aid thou canst not save thyself from the terrible deluge.” Manu did as instructed & “set sail in an excellent vessel on the surging sea”. He thought of the fish, & it arose out of the waters like an island; he cast a noose which he fastened to the horns on its head, & the fish towed the ark over the roaring sea. “There was water everywhere, & the waters covered the heaven & the firmament also.... When the world was thus flooded none but Manu, the seven Rishis, & the fish could be seen.” After many long years the vessel was towed to the highest peak of the Himavat. The fish then spoke & said: “I am Brahma, the Lord of all Creatures; there is none greater than me. I have saved thee from this cataclysm. Manu will create again all beings—gods, Asuras, & men, & all those divisions of creation which have the power of locomotion & which have it not. By practising severe austerities he will acquire this power....” Then Manu set about creating all beings in proper & exact order.”.From Indian myth & legend by D.Mackenzie .Art: The Deluge by Gustave Doré — In Indian mythology, Manu is the first man & a great Rishi who practised rigid austerities in a forest for ten thousand years. “One day while he brooded, a fish rose from a stream and asked for his protection against the greater fish which desired to swallow it, at the same time promising to reward him. Manu placed the fish in an earthen jar & tended it carefully till it increased in size; then he put it in a tank, then in the Ganges & finally he took it to the sea. The fish said to Manu: “Know thou, O worshipful one, my protector, that the dissolution of the Universe is at hand. The time is ripe for purging the world. I will therefore advise thee what thou shouldst do, so that it may be well with thee. Build a strong & massive ark, & furnish it with a long rope; thou wilt ascend in it with the seven Rishis, & take with thee all the different seeds enumerated by Brahmans in days of yore, & preserve them carefully. Wait for me & I will appear as a horned animal. Act according to my instructions, for without mine aid thou canst not save thyself from the terrible deluge.”
Manu did as instructed & “set sail in an excellent vessel on the surging sea”. He thought of the fish, & it arose out of the waters like an island; he cast a noose which he fastened to the horns on its head, & the fish towed the ark over the roaring sea. “There was water everywhere, & the waters covered the heaven & the firmament also.... When the world was thus flooded none but Manu, the seven Rishis, & the fish could be seen.”
After many long years the vessel was towed to the highest peak of the Himavat. The fish then spoke & said: “I am Brahma, the Lord of all Creatures; there is none greater than me. I have saved thee from this cataclysm. Manu will create again all beings—gods, Asuras, & men, & all those divisions of creation which have the power of locomotion & which have it not. By practising severe austerities he will acquire this power....” Then Manu set about creating all beings in proper & exact order.”
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From Indian myth & legend by D.Mackenzie
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Art: The Deluge by Gustave Doré

“The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.They are those whom the dream is dreaming. Eyes open, ready and willing to fight, the youths address themselves to this world of light in which we stand regarding them, where objects appear to be distinct from each other, and an Aristotelian logic prevails, and A is not not-A. Behind them a dream-door has opened, however, to an inward, backward dimension where a vision emerges against darkness…”.From ‘The Mythic Image’ by Joseph CampbellPainting: Detail from: Painting WN by Zdzislaw Beksinski. 1929-2005. Polish Painter — “The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.
The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.
They are those whom the dream is dreaming. Eyes open, ready and willing to fight, the youths address themselves to this world of light in which we stand regarding them, where objects appear to be distinct from each other, and an Aristotelian logic prevails, and A is not not-A. Behind them a dream-door has opened, however, to an inward, backward dimension where a vision emerges against darkness…”
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From ‘The Mythic Image’ by Joseph Campbell
Painting: Detail from: Painting WN by Zdzislaw Beksinski. 1929-2005. Polish Painter

“In the K’iche Mayan tradition, the underworld is known as Xibalba meaning ‘Place of Fright.’ Ruled over by the Lords of the Dead, it is the land where the sun descends, and to the Mayans, those Children of the Sun, from where there was no way of escaping, no matter the life led on earth. Only those who died a violent death and women who died in childbirth could avoid it. Xibalba appears most famously in the Popol Vuh and the trials of the Hero Twins Huanahpu and Xbalanque who sought to avenge the death of their father, the Maize god Hun Hunahpu. For Manly P Hall “no sacred book sets forth so completely as the Popol Vuh the initiatory rituals of a great school of mystical philosophy.” The Twins enter Xibalba over rivers of mud and blood, until they “came to a point where four roads converged – a black road, a white road, a red road and a green road.” From here the twins endured many trials, they journeyed through houses of shadow and great fire, as well as addressing the twelve princes of Xibalba by name. However, during the seventh ordeal in the subterranean labyrinth of the House of Bats, one of the twins, Huanahpu was caught off guard and beheaded by Camazotz, God of Bats. Later he was restored to life by magic, just as both of them allowed themselves to be burned on a funeral pyre, and from where their powdered bones were cast into a river and they turned into fish and then aged wanderers who return to Xibalba. The Hero Twins “wrought strange miracles,” they could cut each other to pieces and resurrect them with magical words, and they could also burn houses to the ground. The twelve princes of Xibalba who had killed their father asked them to perform their strange feats, to kill them and restore them to life, and so the twins slew the princes, but they did not return them to life. not long after this the twins “ascended to the heavens where they became celestial lights.” .From the book The Silver BoughArt: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso — “In the K’iche Mayan tradition, the underworld is known as Xibalba meaning ‘Place of Fright.’ Ruled over by the Lords of the Dead, it is the land where the sun descends, and to the Mayans, those Children of the Sun, from where there was no way of escaping, no matter the life led on earth. Only those who died a violent death and women who died in childbirth could avoid it. Xibalba appears most famously in the Popol Vuh and the trials of the Hero Twins Huanahpu and Xbalanque who sought to avenge the death of their father, the Maize god Hun Hunahpu. For Manly P Hall “no sacred book sets forth so completely as the Popol Vuh the initiatory rituals of a great school of mystical philosophy.”
The Twins enter Xibalba over rivers of mud and blood, until they “came to a point where four roads converged – a black road, a white road, a red road and a green road.” From here the twins endured many trials, they journeyed through houses of shadow and great fire, as well as addressing the twelve princes of Xibalba by name. However, during the seventh ordeal in the subterranean labyrinth of the House of Bats, one of the twins, Huanahpu was caught off guard and beheaded by Camazotz, God of Bats. Later he was restored to life by magic, just as both of them allowed themselves to be burned on a funeral pyre, and from where their powdered bones were cast into a river and they turned into fish and then aged wanderers who return to Xibalba. The Hero Twins “wrought strange miracles,” they could cut each other to pieces and resurrect them with magical words, and they could also burn houses to the ground. The twelve princes of Xibalba who had killed their father asked them to perform their strange feats, to kill them and restore them to life, and so the twins slew the princes, but they did not return them to life. not long after this the twins “ascended to the heavens where they became celestial lights.”
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From the book The Silver Bough
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso

The Zulu, who refer to themselves as 'the people of the heavens', are a nation of Nguni-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. According to Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa and the Encyclopaedia of Shamanism: “Zulu mythology describes the origins of the continuous battle between dark and light within the human soul. This is the battle that must always be fought, but never won. Restoring balance to this dynamic is the basis of the sangoma’s (shamans) efforts to heal. In the beginning nothing existed but the Fertile Darkness, floating on the invisible River of Time. At some moment desire arose in the River of Time for the Fertile Darkness to give birth to something out of nothing. From the fertile nothingness came the spark of consciousness, the Living Fire. Living Fire was aware that it was alone. From this awareness came the Great Loneliness. All creatures since then share a little of that loneliness that emerges when consciousness sees itself alone in the vastness of everything. In its fury and loneliness, Living Fire began to grow into balancing light in the darkness of Nothingness. And so began the eternal battle of light and dark throughout the universe. The Wise Ones observe the eternal battle. They know that if Fire and Light were to prevail all living things would die in a roaring universal flame. Conversely, if Darkness and Ice were to prevail all things would grow cold and stiff until the fire of consciousness ceased to be. Therefore the battle must continue. The Zulu believe that all life depends on this Great Struggle. Only Unkulunkulu, the Great Spirit of Life, can watch over the Great Struggle and remain calm. The Zulu pray to Unkulunkulu asking that this one Great Battle go on while all the lesser ones are given up. Though the Zulu believe in the Great Struggle, they also believe that the earth is meant to be in peace.”.“Zulu mythology and history, like other African peoples, are full of descriptions of stars and planets, of intelligent beings that belong to the stars... they possess amazing knowledge that has been handed down generation to generation about the Cosmos and our solar system. For example, the Zulu have always known that the Earth orbits the sun.”As is found in Australia and other parts of Africa, “the Zulu associated the rainbow with snakes, and through that when its ends touched the earth it was drinking from pools. The rainbow snake killed anyone drinking from or bathing in those pools. .Art: AG76 by Zdzisław Beksiński 1929-2005. Polish Painter — The Zulu, who refer to themselves as 'the people of the heavens', are a nation of Nguni-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. According to Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa and the Encyclopaedia of Shamanism: “Zulu mythology describes the origins of the continuous battle between dark and light within the human soul. This is the battle that must always be fought, but never won. Restoring balance to this dynamic is the basis of the sangoma’s (shamans) efforts to heal.
In the beginning nothing existed but the Fertile Darkness, floating on the invisible River of Time. At some moment desire arose in the River of Time for the Fertile Darkness to give birth to something out of nothing. From the fertile nothingness came the spark of consciousness, the Living Fire. Living Fire was aware that it was alone. From this awareness came the Great Loneliness. All creatures since then share a little of that loneliness that emerges when consciousness sees itself alone in the vastness of everything. In its fury and loneliness, Living Fire began to grow into balancing light in the darkness of Nothingness. And so began the eternal battle of light and dark throughout the universe. The Wise Ones observe the eternal battle. They know that if Fire and Light were to prevail all living things would die in a roaring universal flame. Conversely, if Darkness and Ice were to prevail all things would grow cold and stiff until the fire of consciousness ceased to be. Therefore the battle must continue.
The Zulu believe that all life depends on this Great Struggle. Only Unkulunkulu, the Great Spirit of Life, can watch over the Great Struggle and remain calm. The Zulu pray to Unkulunkulu asking that this one Great Battle go on while all the lesser ones are given up. Though the Zulu believe in the Great Struggle, they also believe that the earth is meant to be in peace.”
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“Zulu mythology and history, like other African peoples, are full of descriptions of stars and planets, of intelligent beings that belong to the stars... they possess amazing knowledge that has been handed down generation to generation about the Cosmos and our solar system. For example, the Zulu have always known that the Earth orbits the sun.”
As is found in Australia and other parts of Africa, “the Zulu associated the rainbow with snakes, and through that when its ends touched the earth it was drinking from pools. The rainbow snake killed anyone drinking from or bathing in those pools.
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Art: AG76 by Zdzisław Beksiński 1929-2005. Polish Painter

“In effect a two-way mirror symbol, the still water of a lake suggested both contemplation from above and observation from below by spirits thought to inhabit jewelled palaces.” Lake Nemi in Italy was referred to by Virgil as the ‘Mirror of Diana’, while elsewhere in the world, most notably in Northern Europe, Paul Broadhurst explains how: “pools of water had also been used by ancient astronomers to measure the declination of the stars on their nightly journey across the sky. These shallow depressions (on rocks) would have made perfect ‘magic mirrors’ for observing the Moon and stars.” Early mirrors in Mesoamerican culture were made from iron pyrite or mica, while gourd or stone bowls of water and clear pools were also used for divination. Such celestial reflections perhaps brings to mind the myth of Narcissus gazing into a clear pool. Indeed, “heavy taboos were laid on the act of disturbing water into which a person was gazing, because the shattered image meant danger to the soul.” Barbara Walker further explains how “damage of the reflection of the soul was the real basis of the myth Narcissus, usually misinterpreted as a fable of excessive self-love – Echo was the Goddess of death-by-water, who lay in wait to seize one’s reflection-soul according to beliefs still current among African’s and Melanesians.” .From my book The Silver Bough Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Dante’s Divine Comedy Purgatorio c.1887 — “In effect a two-way mirror symbol, the still water of a lake suggested both contemplation from above and observation from below by spirits thought to inhabit jewelled palaces.” Lake Nemi in Italy was referred to by Virgil as the ‘Mirror of Diana’, while elsewhere in the world, most notably in Northern Europe, Paul Broadhurst explains how: “pools of water had also been used by ancient astronomers to measure the declination of the stars on their nightly journey across the sky. These shallow depressions (on rocks) would have made perfect ‘magic mirrors’ for observing the Moon and stars.”
Early mirrors in Mesoamerican culture were made from iron pyrite or mica, while gourd or stone bowls of water and clear pools were also used for divination.
Such celestial reflections perhaps brings to mind the myth of Narcissus gazing into a clear pool. Indeed, “heavy taboos were laid on the act of disturbing water into which a person was gazing, because the shattered image meant danger to the soul.”
Barbara Walker further explains how “damage of the reflection of the soul was the real basis of the myth Narcissus, usually misinterpreted as a fable of excessive self-love – Echo was the Goddess of death-by-water, who lay in wait to seize one’s reflection-soul according to beliefs still current among African’s and Melanesians.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Dante’s Divine Comedy Purgatorio c.1887

“Legend has it that humanity is descended from the tears of god. The eye retains this magic aura, shining, sparkling, withering, radiating. The eye receives and emits light, looks out and looks in, is a window on the soul and on the world, revealing and perceiving, seeing through and true.” Symbolic of omniscience; the all-seeing divinity; the faculty of intuitive vision. The eye is a symbol of all sun deities and of their life-giving power of fertilisation. In ancient Egypt the right eye is the sun and Ra and Osiris, and the left eye the moon and the goddess Isis, although sometimes it is associated with Thoth (Djehuti.)“The Eye of Horus/Ra, also known as the Wadjet/ All Seeing Eye, is a powerful symbol of protection in ancient Egypt. The symbol was frequently used in jewellery made of gold, silver, lapis, wood, porcelain, and carnelian, to ensure the safety and health of the bearer and provide wisdom and prosperity. However, it was also known as the “Eye of Ra”, a powerful destructive force linked with the fierce heat of the sun which was described as the “Daughter of Ra.” This searching eye is the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, and can “represent a limited destructive, envious, and paranoid consciousness. In turn, the threatening disastrous “evil eye” needs to be defended against and “looked back at” with apotropaic talismans. But the intense gaze of “one eye” can also represent a unity of vision in which the dualism of “inner and outer” sight feels resolved.”In Hermetic symbolism, “one dimensional vision opens out into the play of opposites: the two eyes of inner/outer, blind/sighted, solar/lunar, illuminating/deadening, open/closed, all of which in turn resolve into another, more developed form of unified vision. Consciousness, which begins as a one-eyed “looking” makes a journey through psychic processes imaged as death and dismemberment to arrive transformed into a one-eyed “seeing,” and enlightened. Such is one of humanity’s projections and dreams of the totality of consciousness.”.Art: Mermaid by Malene Reynolds Laugesen b.1969 in Denmark Sources: Taschen Book of Symbols and ancientegyptonline.com — “Legend has it that humanity is descended from the tears of god. The eye retains this magic aura, shining, sparkling, withering, radiating. The eye receives and emits light, looks out and looks in, is a window on the soul and on the world, revealing and perceiving, seeing through and true.” Symbolic of omniscience; the all-seeing divinity; the faculty of intuitive vision. The eye is a symbol of all sun deities and of their life-giving power of fertilisation. In ancient Egypt the right eye is the sun and Ra and Osiris, and the left eye the moon and the goddess Isis, although sometimes it is associated with Thoth (Djehuti.)
“The Eye of Horus/Ra, also known as the Wadjet/ All Seeing Eye, is a powerful symbol of protection in ancient Egypt. The symbol was frequently used in jewellery made of gold, silver, lapis, wood, porcelain, and carnelian, to ensure the safety and health of the bearer and provide wisdom and prosperity. However, it was also known as the “Eye of Ra”, a powerful destructive force linked with the fierce heat of the sun which was described as the “Daughter of Ra.” This searching eye is the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, and can “represent a limited destructive, envious, and paranoid consciousness. In turn, the threatening disastrous “evil eye” needs to be defended against and “looked back at” with apotropaic talismans. But the intense gaze of “one eye” can also represent a unity of vision in which the dualism of “inner and outer” sight feels resolved.”
In Hermetic symbolism, “one dimensional vision opens out into the play of opposites: the two eyes of inner/outer, blind/sighted, solar/lunar, illuminating/deadening, open/closed, all of which in turn resolve into another, more developed form of unified vision. Consciousness, which begins as a one-eyed “looking” makes a journey through psychic processes imaged as death and dismemberment to arrive transformed into a one-eyed “seeing,” and enlightened. Such is one of humanity’s projections and dreams of the totality of consciousness.”
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Art: Mermaid by Malene Reynolds Laugesen b.1969 in Denmark
Sources: Taschen Book of Symbols and ancientegyptonline.com

In Siberia, an account of a Buriat shaman tells of how he came to a “hole that is the entrance to the Otherworld – the smoke hole of the earth, or the jaws of the earth, first the shaman reaches a plain and then finds a sea crossed by a bridge the breadth of a hair.” The concept of a bridge as thin as a hair, or a bridge which is as sharp as a blade is found throughout world folklore, Arthurian Legend, and in the Katha Upanishad, where it is written “arise, awake, and learn by approaching the excellent ones. The wise ones describe that path to be as impassable as a razor’s edge, which, when sharpened, is difficult to tread on.” St Paul also described a bridge as “narrow as a hair” connecting our world with paradise, while in the Vision of Ezra the hero visits hell and has to cross a bridge spanning a river of fire. In Medieval legends a ‘bridge under water,’ appears, as well as a ‘sword bridge’ which “the hero Lancelot must cross barefoot and barehanded; it is ‘sharper than a scythe’ and it is crossed ‘with great pain and agony.’” Similarly, in the Finnish epic of the Kalevala, Väinämöinen had to cross a bridge made of knives and swords into Tuonela. In an old story preserved by Saxo Grammaticus, Danish heroes visit “Guthmund, a giant who rules a delightful land beyond a certain river crossed by a golden bridge.” When the travellers reach this bridge Guthmund calls to them, saying “the bed of this stream formed a natural boundary between the human and the supernatural worlds. No mortal was permitted to step beyond it.” “Shamans, like the dead, must cross a bridge in the course of their journey to the underworld…the symbolism of the funerary bridge is universally disseminated and extends far beyond the bounds of shamanic ideology and mythology. This symbolism is linked, on the one hand, with the myth of a bridge, tree, or vine, etc, that once connected earth and heaven.” .From my book The Silver BoughArt: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso — In Siberia, an account of a Buriat shaman tells of how he came to a “hole that is the entrance to the Otherworld – the smoke hole of the earth, or the jaws of the earth, first the shaman reaches a plain and then finds a sea crossed by a bridge the breadth of a hair.” The concept of a bridge as thin as a hair, or a bridge which is as sharp as a blade is found throughout world folklore, Arthurian Legend, and in the Katha Upanishad, where it is written “arise, awake, and learn by approaching the excellent ones. The wise ones describe that path to be as impassable as a razor’s edge, which, when sharpened, is difficult to tread on.” St Paul also described a bridge as “narrow as a hair” connecting our world with paradise, while in the Vision of Ezra the hero visits hell and has to cross a bridge spanning a river of fire.
In Medieval legends a ‘bridge under water,’ appears, as well as a ‘sword bridge’ which “the hero Lancelot must cross barefoot and barehanded; it is ‘sharper than a scythe’ and it is crossed ‘with great pain and agony.’” Similarly, in the Finnish epic of the Kalevala, Väinämöinen had to cross a bridge made of knives and swords into Tuonela. In an old story preserved by Saxo Grammaticus, Danish heroes visit “Guthmund, a giant who rules a delightful land beyond a certain river crossed by a golden bridge.” When the travellers reach this bridge Guthmund calls to them, saying “the bed of this stream formed a natural boundary between the human and the supernatural worlds. No mortal was permitted to step beyond it.”
“Shamans, like the dead, must cross a bridge in the course of their journey to the underworld…the symbolism of the funerary bridge is universally disseminated and extends far beyond the bounds of shamanic ideology and mythology. This symbolism is linked, on the one hand, with the myth of a bridge, tree, or vine, etc, that once connected earth and heaven.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso

“Sire’nes or Seire’nes (Sirens) are mythical beings who were believed to have the power of enchanting and charming, by their song, any one who heard them. Sirens were believed to look like a combination of women and birds in various different forms. In early Greek art, they were represented as birds with large women's heads, bird feathers and scaly feet. Later, they were represented as female figures with the legs of birds, with or without wings, playing a variety of musical instruments, especially harps and lyres. When Odysseus, in his wanderings through the Mediterranean, came near the island on the lovely beach of which the Sirens were sitting, and endeavouring to allure him and his companions, he, on the advice of Circe, stuffed the ears of his companions with wax, and tied himself to the mast of his vessel, until he was so far off that he could no longer hear their song. “It was predicted that the (Sirens) would live only until someone who heard their singing would pass by. Odysseus proved fatal to them, for when by his cleverness he passed by the rocks where they dwelt, they threw themselves into the sea. This place is called Sirenides from them, and is between Sicily and Italy."For some, the famous rock formations of Faraglioni, Capri are the mythical habitat of the Sirens. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Servius tells of half-woman creatures and half a bird who first lived in Pelorias (Messina) and then in Capreae (Capri) that with their song bewitched the sailors sending their ships against the rocks.Capri later became known as the land of mermaids, while the blue grotto was thought to be inhabited by monsters or evil spirits, and was often avoided by the locals. Three statues of the Roman sea gods Neptune and Triton were recovered from the floor of the grotto in 1964, and it is these statues which Pliny the Elder was thought to have seen and written about in the 1st century AD..Quotes from Theoi.com Painting: The Blue Grotto by Carl Friedrich Seiffert (1809-1891) — “Sire’nes or Seire’nes (Sirens) are mythical beings who were believed to have the power of enchanting and charming, by their song, any one who heard them. Sirens were believed to look like a combination of women and birds in various different forms. In early Greek art, they were represented as birds with large women's heads, bird feathers and scaly feet. Later, they were represented as female figures with the legs of birds, with or without wings, playing a variety of musical instruments, especially harps and lyres. When Odysseus, in his wanderings through the Mediterranean, came near the island on the lovely beach of which the Sirens were sitting, and endeavouring to allure him and his companions, he, on the advice of Circe, stuffed the ears of his companions with wax, and tied himself to the mast of his vessel, until he was so far off that he could no longer hear their song. “It was predicted that the (Sirens) would live only until someone who heard their singing would pass by. Odysseus proved fatal to them, for when by his cleverness he passed by the rocks where they dwelt, they threw themselves into the sea. This place is called Sirenides from them, and is between Sicily and Italy."
For some, the famous rock formations of Faraglioni, Capri are the mythical habitat of the Sirens. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Servius tells of half-woman creatures and half a bird who first lived in Pelorias (Messina) and then in Capreae (Capri) that with their song bewitched the sailors sending their ships against the rocks.
Capri later became known as the land of mermaids, while the blue grotto was thought to be inhabited by monsters or evil spirits, and was often avoided by the locals. Three statues of the Roman sea gods Neptune and Triton were recovered from the floor of the grotto in 1964, and it is these statues which Pliny the Elder was thought to have seen and written about in the 1st century AD.
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Quotes from Theoi.com
Painting: The Blue Grotto by Carl Friedrich Seiffert (1809-1891)

Eternal fires burned in many arcane temples, from Rome, to Bath and Kildare, while eternal lamps, thought to be alchemical in nature, were said to illuminate subterranean tombs & sepulchres. There are over 170 accounts of these mysterious flames, or “mystic lamps”, but perhaps the most curious example is of the tomb of Christian Rosenkreuz. When he died in 1484, his followers “wrapped his imperishable body in noble raiment & laid it under the house of their order, in a tomb containing the symbols of all things in heaven & earth, and in the waters under the earth, & set about him inextinguishable magical lamps, which burnt on generation after generation, until other students of the Rosicrucian order came upon the tomb by chance.” Another example is given by the archaeologist Dr. Robert Plot, who found an underground chamber that was lighted up by a lamp, which was placed in front of a statue of a man in armour sitting at a table, leaning on his left arm; in his right hand was a sceptre or weapon. When the intruder advanced, a portion of the floor moved with his weight, & the figure became raised up, as his arm came crashing down & shattered the lamp. Terrified the man ran from the vault. Romans under the Empire possessed the secret of preserving lights in tombs by means of the oiliness of gold, resolved by their art into a fluid. While the idea of a golden lamp, or flame burning echoes the solar mystery, of the flame held in the right hand of Shiva, the “solar flame of illumination that burns away the veil of time.” .Notes made from: Everburing Lamps of the Ancients by W.W Westcott Art: engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso — Eternal fires burned in many arcane temples, from Rome, to Bath and Kildare, while eternal lamps, thought to be alchemical in nature, were said to illuminate subterranean tombs & sepulchres. There are over 170 accounts of these mysterious flames, or “mystic lamps”, but perhaps the most curious example is of the tomb of Christian Rosenkreuz. When he died in 1484, his followers “wrapped his imperishable body in noble raiment & laid it under the house of their order, in a tomb containing the symbols of all things in heaven & earth, and in the waters under the earth, & set about him inextinguishable magical lamps, which burnt on generation after generation, until other students of the Rosicrucian order came upon the tomb by chance.”
Another example is given by the archaeologist Dr. Robert Plot, who found an underground chamber that was lighted up by a lamp, which was placed in front of a statue of a man in armour sitting at a table, leaning on his left arm; in his right hand was a sceptre or weapon. When the intruder advanced, a portion of the floor moved with his weight, & the figure became raised up, as his arm came crashing down & shattered the lamp. Terrified the man ran from the vault.
Romans under the Empire possessed the secret of preserving lights in tombs by means of the oiliness of gold, resolved by their art into a fluid. While the idea of a golden lamp, or flame burning echoes the solar mystery, of the flame held in the right hand of Shiva, the “solar flame of illumination that burns away the veil of time.”
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Notes made from: Everburing Lamps of the Ancients by W.W Westcott
Art: engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for Orlando Furioso

On dreams Nietzsche wrote: “the whole thought of earlier humanity. I mean, in the same way that man reasons in his dreams, he reasoned when in the waking state many thousands of years ago… The dream carries us back into earlier states of human culture and affords us a means of understanding it better.”Dreams are a beautiful mix of symbols and mythic images, and according to Scientific American, we try to work out our subconscious, or complex emotions in our dreams. This helps us to deal with trauma, and helps us to understand ourselves, because, even if the dream is not understood, it still offers a healing function. I have had many dreams which have been both cathartic and insightful, but sometimes they are symbolic, of an emerald green tree with bright gold leaves and apples which grew in a cave, or of the moon falling from the sky and shattering into a thousand pieces when my mum was ill. Perhaps the importance of dreams was known four thousand years ago in the sleep and dream temples of ancient Egypt, which may also be compared to Asclepeions, or dream temples of Ancient Greece. Where, inside, the sick person was put into a trance-like state, after which their dreams would be interpreted by priests and priestesses in order to gain understanding about their illness, and hopefully to find a cure.”.From my book The Golden Thread Painting: Bez tytułu (Untitled) 2019 by Maksymilian Novak-Zempliński (b.1974) Polish painter. Representative of magic realism. He graduated from the European Academy of Arts — On dreams Nietzsche wrote: “the whole thought of earlier humanity. I mean, in the same way that man reasons in his dreams, he reasoned when in the waking state many thousands of years ago… The dream carries us back into earlier states of human culture and affords us a means of understanding it better.”
Dreams are a beautiful mix of symbols and mythic images, and according to Scientific American, we try to work out our subconscious, or complex emotions in our dreams. This helps us to deal with trauma, and helps us to understand ourselves, because, even if the dream is not understood, it still offers a healing function. I have had many dreams which have been both cathartic and insightful, but sometimes they are symbolic, of an emerald green tree with bright gold leaves and apples which grew in a cave, or of the moon falling from the sky and shattering into a thousand pieces when my mum was ill. Perhaps the importance of dreams was known four thousand years ago in the sleep and dream temples of ancient Egypt, which may also be compared to Asclepeions, or dream temples of Ancient Greece. Where, inside, the sick person was put into a trance-like state, after which their dreams would be interpreted by priests and priestesses in order to gain understanding about their illness, and hopefully to find a cure.”
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From my book The Golden Thread
Painting: Bez tytułu (Untitled) 2019 by Maksymilian Novak-Zempliński (b.1974) Polish painter. Representative of magic realism. He graduated from the European Academy of Arts

From images of butterflies found in Paleolithic caves to the glimmering, golden butterflies of Mycenaean culture and Minoan Crete, the butterfly has long been a symbol the soul as seen in Ancient Greece in the tale of “Cupid and Psyche”, and in Ancient Egyptian and Maori cultures, as well as among others.The butterfly, in “changing from the mundane caterpillar and going through the stages of dissolution before emerging as the celestial winged creature the butterfly symbolises rebirth, resurrection and the powers of regeneration. As emerging from the chrysalis it represents the soul leaving the body at death.”“Chinese symbolism uses the butterfly as immortality, leisure and joy, while depicted with the chrysanthemum in art it portrays beauty in old age, and with the plum, longevity. In Japan the butterfly can represent the false lover, a vain woman, though a pair of butterflies are conjugal happiness.”“In Pima myth the butterfly is a form of the Creator. It is also a totem of the tribe and Butterfly Dances are performed by the peoples of the Southwest, such as the Hopi. In many parts butterflies and moths are the souls of the dead.”“In Australian myth it is told that when death first occurred in the world it was assumed that the dead had been taken into the spirit world to come back in another form. The caterpillars volunteered to go up into the sky in winter to find out what had happened. On the first warm day the dragonflies reported that the caterpillars were coming back in new bodies – these were multicoloured butterflies.”.Quotes from: Symbolic and Mythological Animals by J.C. Cooper Art: Butterflies, a photomechanical wood engraving on paper by William Baxter Closson. C.1885 — From images of butterflies found in Paleolithic caves to the glimmering, golden butterflies of Mycenaean culture and Minoan Crete, the butterfly has long been a symbol the soul as seen in Ancient Greece in the tale of “Cupid and Psyche”, and in Ancient Egyptian and Maori cultures, as well as among others.
The butterfly, in “changing from the mundane caterpillar and going through the stages of dissolution before emerging as the celestial winged creature the butterfly symbolises rebirth, resurrection and the powers of regeneration. As emerging from the chrysalis it represents the soul leaving the body at death.”
“Chinese symbolism uses the butterfly as immortality, leisure and joy, while depicted with the chrysanthemum in art it portrays beauty in old age, and with the plum, longevity. In Japan the butterfly can represent the false lover, a vain woman, though a pair of butterflies are conjugal happiness.”
“In Pima myth the butterfly is a form of the Creator. It is also a totem of the tribe and Butterfly Dances are performed by the peoples of the Southwest, such as the Hopi. In many parts butterflies and moths are the souls of the dead.”
“In Australian myth it is told that when death first occurred in the world it was assumed that the dead had been taken into the spirit world to come back in another form. The caterpillars volunteered to go up into the sky in winter to find out what had happened. On the first warm day the dragonflies reported that the caterpillars were coming back in new bodies – these were multicoloured butterflies.”
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Quotes from: Symbolic and Mythological Animals by J.C. Cooper
Art: Butterflies, a photomechanical wood engraving on paper by William Baxter Closson. C.1885

“The Germanic Goddess Holda was said to sail through the heavens in a boat of silver, accompanied by maidens and scattered stars.” To Eastern sages “the ark or vessel of boat-like shape, [is a] symbol of fertility or the Container of the Germ of all life.” and this is also seen with the Dogon Tribe of Mali who believe that “life on Earth was seeded from elsewhere.” The idea that the soul journeyed after to death to a celestial realm is also found in star lore surrounding the constellation of the Corona Borealis, and with the Milky Way, that shimmering river of stars that was thought to bear the dead on into the afterlife. Another heavenly connection is found in Ancient Rome where the goddess Isis was worshipped as a ship-goddess. Along with the Phoenician Astarte and the Virgin Mary, Isis was known as the Queen of Heaven, and Stella Maris, or Star of the Sea. A symbol of the pole star that has guided sailors over the endless seas of the world. Further connections to the goddess and the sea are found in Wales, where in the past they “sent their dead back to the marine womb and called their funeral dirges marwysgafen “giving back to the Sea Mother.” In Ancient China, “an offering of sacrifice to an aquatic goddess was often dropped into the water as part of a Wu (shaman) ritual. A special boat painted with floral designs or decorated with fresh or dried flowers and embellished with figures of phoenixes and dragons, symbolic of the sacred feminine and masculine energies, was sailed out to the middle of a body of water, a shoreline shrine, or island and showered the water with offerings.”.From my book The Silver Bough & last quote by Christina Pratt’s Encyclopaedia of Shamanism.Painting Scarborough by Moonlight by W.L.  Meegan 1898 — “The Germanic Goddess Holda was said to sail through the heavens in a boat of silver, accompanied by maidens and scattered stars.” To Eastern sages “the ark or vessel of boat-like shape, [is a] symbol of fertility or the Container of the Germ of all life.” and this is also seen with the Dogon Tribe of Mali who believe that “life on Earth was seeded from elsewhere.”
The idea that the soul journeyed after to death to a celestial realm is also found in star lore surrounding the constellation of the Corona Borealis, and with the Milky Way, that shimmering river of stars that was thought to bear the dead on into the afterlife. Another heavenly connection is found in Ancient Rome where the goddess Isis was worshipped as a ship-goddess. Along with the Phoenician Astarte and the Virgin Mary, Isis was known as the Queen of Heaven, and Stella Maris, or Star of the Sea. A symbol of the pole star that has guided sailors over the endless seas of the world. Further connections to the goddess and the sea are found in Wales, where in the past they “sent their dead back to the marine womb and called their funeral dirges marwysgafen “giving back to the Sea Mother.”
In Ancient China, “an offering of sacrifice to an aquatic goddess was often dropped into the water as part of a Wu (shaman) ritual. A special boat painted with floral designs or decorated with fresh or dried flowers and embellished with figures of phoenixes and dragons, symbolic of the sacred feminine and masculine energies, was sailed out to the middle of a body of water, a shoreline shrine, or island and showered the water with offerings.”
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From my book The Silver Bough & last quote by Christina Pratt’s Encyclopaedia of Shamanism.
Painting Scarborough by Moonlight by W.L. Meegan 1898

In Zoroastrian belief: “At death the soul hovers over the body for three nights. On the first night the soul contemplates the words of its past life. On the second it contemplates its thoughts, and on the third it contemplates its deeds.”A Tibetan death myth tells us that “at the exact moment of death the soul first experiences the colourless light of emptiness, which bathes it. If one merges with this light at this opportunity, one is saved. Most people, however, first fall unconscious and then are shocked back into consciousness by the terror of recognition that they are dead. Often the recognition that one is dying is frightening and the soul tries to flee, this is futile. If one tries to maintain a separate identity by clinging to the illusion of the ego, it is also pointless very few people attain salvation or have the insight necessary to understand what is happening.” .From Parallel Myths by J.F. Bierlein .Art: detail of ‘The Ultimate God’, from Lord Dunsany's "Time And The Gods" (1906) by Sidney Sime — In Zoroastrian belief: “At death the soul hovers over the body for three nights. On the first night the soul contemplates the words of its past life. On the second it contemplates its thoughts, and on the third it contemplates its deeds.”
A Tibetan death myth tells us that “at the exact moment of death the soul first experiences the colourless light of emptiness, which bathes it. If one merges with this light at this opportunity, one is saved. Most people, however, first fall unconscious and then are shocked back into consciousness by the terror of recognition that they are dead. Often the recognition that one is dying is frightening and the soul tries to flee, this is futile. If one tries to maintain a separate identity by clinging to the illusion of the ego, it is also pointless very few people attain salvation or have the insight necessary to understand what is happening.”
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From Parallel Myths by J.F. Bierlein .
Art: detail of ‘The Ultimate God’, from Lord Dunsany's "Time And The Gods" (1906) by Sidney Sime

In classical antiquity the cypress tree was a symbol of mourning, associated with death and the underworld because of its inability to regenerate when cut back too severely. Statues of the cthonic Greek god Hades (Roman: Pluto) were adorned with wreathes of cypress, while cypress was burned to clear the air during cremations. In the realm of Hades two springs were said to rise beneath white cypress trees, and these trees were also connected to the goddesses Artemis (Roman: Diana) and Aphrodite (Roman: Venus), as well as the spirits of the dead.The fires in the Zoroastrian fire-temples were symbolic of divine light and were maintained and fuelled only by the wood of cypress trees. In Japan, in the folk Shinto tradition, the existence of sacred cypress-trees is explained in a story where the goddess sticks her chopsticks in the ground after enjoying her lunch. Similar such origin tales of certain trees are found in Australia and among the Cherokee where the Sun-Goddess stops at noon for a meal. In Aztec myth, during the fourth sun, all but two people were destroyed. The man Tata and his wife Nene were given advanced warning by the gods. They were commanded to hollow out a large cypress tree and to climb inside once the waters began to rise: And so they got inside.Art: Nocturnal Landscape with Dunes, oil on board, by Joseph Tomanek. American c.1889 — In classical antiquity the cypress tree was a symbol of mourning, associated with death and the underworld because of its inability to regenerate when cut back too severely. Statues of the cthonic Greek god Hades (Roman: Pluto) were adorned with wreathes of cypress, while cypress was burned to clear the air during cremations. In the realm of Hades two springs were said to rise beneath white cypress trees, and these trees were also connected to the goddesses Artemis (Roman: Diana) and Aphrodite (Roman: Venus), as well as the spirits of the dead.
The fires in the Zoroastrian fire-temples were symbolic of divine light and were maintained and fuelled only by the wood of cypress trees. In Japan, in the folk Shinto tradition, the existence of sacred cypress-trees is explained in a story where the goddess sticks her chopsticks in the ground after enjoying her lunch. Similar such origin tales of certain trees are found in Australia and among the Cherokee where the Sun-Goddess stops at noon for a meal. In Aztec myth, during the fourth sun, all but two people were destroyed. The man Tata and his wife Nene were given advanced warning by the gods. They were commanded to hollow out a large cypress tree and to climb inside once the waters began to rise: And so they got inside.
Art: Nocturnal Landscape with Dunes, oil on board, by Joseph Tomanek. American c.1889

The Gaelic Cailleach, or Cailleach Bheur, was often described as the “blue faced hag of winter who ages in reverse,” and it is thought that her skin is blue because of winter, frost and death, however, in Hindu tradition, the goddess Kali, like other Hindu deities is sometimes depicted as having blue skin. Kali, in a similar way to the Slavic Baba Yaga and the Siberian Yagashina are “terrifying because of their relationship to death. They mediate the boundary of death.” This is archetypal of the crone who is a signifier of change as well as being a tester and a doner to all who venture into her realm. Such an archetype also represents “the hungry earth which devours its own children… and is the material cause of all change, manifestation and destruction.” Elizabeth Petroff wrote of how the crone, and her later incarnation as the witch, is “nature in its occult aspect, the crafty uncanniness behind the semblance of things, is embodied in the witch. She creates illusions, is a caster of spells, a mistress of disguise. She baffles, confounds, veils – and unveils – her beautiful, enchanting, hideous, poisonous, magical, sexual and deathly secrets.”From my book The Silver BoughArt: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) for "Les Aventures du chevalier Jaufre et de la belle Brunissende — The Gaelic Cailleach, or Cailleach Bheur, was often described as the “blue faced hag of winter who ages in reverse,” and it is thought that her skin is blue because of winter, frost and death, however, in Hindu tradition, the goddess Kali, like other Hindu deities is sometimes depicted as having blue skin. Kali, in a similar way to the Slavic Baba Yaga and the Siberian Yagashina are “terrifying because of their relationship to death. They mediate the boundary of death.”
This is archetypal of the crone who is a signifier of change as well as being a tester and a doner to all who venture into her realm. Such an archetype also represents “the hungry earth which devours its own children… and is the material cause of all change, manifestation and destruction.” Elizabeth Petroff wrote of how the crone, and her later incarnation as the witch, is “nature in its occult aspect, the crafty uncanniness behind the semblance of things, is embodied in the witch. She creates illusions, is a caster of spells, a mistress of disguise. She baffles, confounds, veils – and unveils – her beautiful, enchanting, hideous, poisonous, magical, sexual and deathly secrets.”
From my book The Silver Bough
Art: an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) for "Les Aventures du chevalier Jaufre et de la belle Brunissende

A folk tale from Denmark tells of how a bride once left the festivities of her own wedding and came upon a hillock where many elves were making merry. At that time, the hillock was standing on red pillars “and as she drew near, one of the company offered her a cup of wine.” The bride drank and danced with them, before she left for home, but when she returned everything had changed. No one knew her, and at length an old woman asked her: “Was it you, then, who disappeared at my grandfather's brother’s wedding, a hundred years ago?” At these words the aged bride fell down and died. The vague “elsewhere” and otherworld’s are often connected with death and the unseen aspect of life. It is perhaps this connection which gave rise to the negative aspects of the hidden folk, for example in England in the 16th century the fairies were called “white devils,” and they were even sometimes blamed for mysterious deaths. In Devon, although similar tales are echoed throughout Europe, a phenomenon known as “pixy-leading” was spoken about, where the pixies would “disorient men or women and then take them on a merry dance through moors and woods until their human victims were ready to collapse from exhaustion. A more sinister variant is found in Wales, where two youths once went out at dusk to fetch the cattle when they came upon a group of fairies dancing. “One was drawn into the circle; and the other was suspected of murdering him, until, at a wizard’s suggestion, he went again to the same spot at the end of a year and a day. There he found his friend dancing, and managed to get him out, reduced to a mere skeleton.” A similar Welsh tale tells of a man who touched his friend with a piece of iron and was able to drag him away, while another effective way to break this pixy-spell is to turn your pockets inside out and then the pixies will vanish..From my book The Silver BoughPainting: detail from The Fairy Dance by K. W. Diefenbach — A folk tale from Denmark tells of how a bride once left the festivities of her own wedding and came upon a hillock where many elves were making merry. At that time, the hillock was standing on red pillars “and as she drew near, one of the company offered her a cup of wine.” The bride drank and danced with them, before she left for home, but when she returned everything had changed. No one knew her, and at length an old woman asked her: “Was it you, then, who disappeared at my grandfather's brother’s wedding, a hundred years ago?” At these words the aged bride fell down and died.
The vague “elsewhere” and otherworld’s are often connected with death and the unseen aspect of life. It is perhaps this connection which gave rise to the negative aspects of the hidden folk, for example in England in the 16th century the fairies were called “white devils,” and they were even sometimes blamed for mysterious deaths. In Devon, although similar tales are echoed throughout Europe, a phenomenon known as “pixy-leading” was spoken about, where the pixies would “disorient men or women and then take them on a merry dance through moors and woods until their human victims were ready to collapse from exhaustion.
A more sinister variant is found in Wales, where two youths once went out at dusk to fetch the cattle when they came upon a group of fairies dancing. “One was drawn into the circle; and the other was suspected of murdering him, until, at a wizard’s suggestion, he went again to the same spot at the end of a year and a day. There he found his friend dancing, and managed to get him out, reduced to a mere skeleton.” A similar Welsh tale tells of a man who touched his friend with a piece of iron and was able to drag him away, while another effective way to break this pixy-spell is to turn your pockets inside out and then the pixies will vanish.
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From my book The Silver Bough
Painting: detail from The Fairy Dance by K. W. Diefenbach

“In the Italian fairy tale “The Three Fairies”, a young woman is rewarded with a sack of gold and a star on her forehead. The star on the forehead is reminiscent of the star-crowned Dioscuri from Ancient Greece, the gem on the forehead of Ashwatthama from the Mahabharata, and the seven score steeds of the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann “each with a jewel on its forehead like a star.” The indigenous Australian sky god Baiame, who was encountered on shamanic journeys to the upper world, was said to sit on a giant crystal, from where he “initiated his visitors by sprinkling liquefied quartz or ‘solidified light’ to connect them to the sky or upper world.” Baiame was also said to set a piece of quartz into the initiate’s forehead to enable them to see inside physical objects. The stone in the forehead may be seen as symbolic of the parietal eye, also known as the pineal gland, the third eye, or the eye of Shiva. Sometimes referred to as ‘the eye of the heart,’ it symbolises spiritual perception. Indeed, it is this “‘eye’ that is endowed with both a transcendent or ‘cyclical’ vision known in Buddhism as Bodhi, or spiritual enlightenment.” A centre of illumination and insight, Douglas Baker compared it to the esoteric understanding of the toad with the jewel in its head. While in Korean and Japanese belief, the chief yellow dragon carries a pear-shaped pearl in its forehead, which was said to have supernatural properties and healing power. Elsewhere, the jewel in the head of the serpent is most often an emerald..From my book The Silver Bough Painting detail from: Król Olch by Jan Kazimierza Olpiński Polish painter (1875 -1936) — “In the Italian fairy tale “The Three Fairies”, a young woman is rewarded with a sack of gold and a star on her forehead. The star on the forehead is reminiscent of the star-crowned Dioscuri from Ancient Greece, the gem on the forehead of Ashwatthama from the Mahabharata, and the seven score steeds of the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann “each with a jewel on its forehead like a star.”
The indigenous Australian sky god Baiame, who was encountered on shamanic journeys to the upper world, was said to sit on a giant crystal, from where he “initiated his visitors by sprinkling liquefied quartz or ‘solidified light’ to connect them to the sky or upper world.” Baiame was also said to set a piece of quartz into the initiate’s forehead to enable them to see inside physical objects.
The stone in the forehead may be seen as symbolic of the parietal eye, also known as the pineal gland, the third eye, or the eye of Shiva. Sometimes referred to as ‘the eye of the heart,’ it symbolises spiritual perception. Indeed, it is this “‘eye’ that is endowed with both a transcendent or ‘cyclical’ vision known in Buddhism as Bodhi, or spiritual enlightenment.” A centre of illumination and insight, Douglas Baker compared it to the esoteric understanding of the toad with the jewel in its head. While in Korean and Japanese belief, the chief yellow dragon carries a pear-shaped pearl in its forehead, which was said to have supernatural properties and healing power. Elsewhere, the jewel in the head of the serpent is most often an emerald.
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From my book The Silver Bough
Painting detail from: Król Olch by Jan Kazimierza Olpiński Polish painter (1875 -1936)

“The Holly King and Oak King are personifications of the winter and summer in various folklore and mythological traditions.” The Holly King fights the Oak King in an eternal struggle. At the Summer Solstice, the Holly King gains the upper hand, until the wheel of the year turns, and the Oak King overcomes him at the Winter Solstice. When the Oak King takes the crown it is not long before he tries to win the hand of the Spring Maiden, together, and from their union the earth blossoms in fruit and bud. The Holly King, in the depths of winter, is paired with the Ivy Queen, reminiscent of an Ancient Greek myth about Dionysus and a young woman who danced herself to death before him.This union and ritual drama symbolises balance during a time of chaos and death. Seen as both vegetation and fertility gods, the cycle of the Holly King and the Oak King is one of birth, life, death, and resurrection, for they both rule six months of the year.“The battle of light with dark is commonly played out in traditional folk dance and mummers plays across Britain such as Calan Mai in Wales, Mazey Day in Cornwall, and Jack in the Green traditions in England that typically include a ritual battle in some form.”.An engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré (1832–1883) for Orlando Furioso — “The Holly King and Oak King are personifications of the winter and summer in various folklore and mythological traditions.” The Holly King fights the Oak King in an eternal struggle. At the Summer Solstice, the Holly King gains the upper hand, until the wheel of the year turns, and the Oak King overcomes him at the Winter Solstice. When the Oak King takes the crown it is not long before he tries to win the hand of the Spring Maiden, together, and from their union the earth blossoms in fruit and bud.
The Holly King, in the depths of winter, is paired with the Ivy Queen, reminiscent of an Ancient Greek myth about Dionysus and a young woman who danced herself to death before him.
This union and ritual drama symbolises balance during a time of chaos and death. Seen as both vegetation and fertility gods, the cycle of the Holly King and the Oak King is one of birth, life, death, and resurrection, for they both rule six months of the year.
“The battle of light with dark is commonly played out in traditional folk dance and mummers plays across Britain such as Calan Mai in Wales, Mazey Day in Cornwall, and Jack in the Green traditions in England that typically include a ritual battle in some form.”
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An engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré (1832–1883) for Orlando Furioso

“In Egypt it was told that each person has come from a star into the world to fulfil its specific task upon the earth. When a person is born into the world, however, they forget their star and also their task. In the course of their life they might then perhaps encounter a person or a situation which will awaken the memory of their star. Suddenly they know why they is on earth, and may feel a strong sense of their own identity.”
Something similar is found in the Gnostic “Hymn of the Pearl/The Robe of Glory”. A divine child is sent to recover a pearl, which may be compared to the pearl of great price, “which is in the midst of the sea around the loud breathing serpent.” However, when the child takes off his glittering robes and goes down, he forgets the compact written upon his heart, he forgets that he is a son of kings, and falls into a deep sleep, his soul longing for its natural state. Among strangers, he is treated poorly until he receives word in a letter reminding him of his true nature and of the task to recover the pearl. Awakened, he takes the pearl from the serpent, strips off his filthy rags, and turns towards the light of his home in the East. There his glorious robe is returned to him, and as soon as he looks at it, he sees how:
“The Glory looked like my own self….
…I saw it in all of me,
And saw me all in [all of] it…”
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From “The Journey of the Hero” by F. Wieland and my book “The Golden Thread.”
An engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré for The Bible

On the shores of the Baltic Sea, Lithuania has many beautiful tales and traditions. The moon was called Dausos, through not a deification of it, that honour was reserved for Mėnulis, sometimes Mėnuo. Particularly honoured by farmers, his strength was said to renew each month, and was often depicted as riding in a chariot drawn by grey horses, a starry cloak pinned at his shoulders, and a wreath of stars upon his head. As he illuminates the night so he protects travellers and soldiers, as well as being linked with fertility and weather.
Although displaying the traits of a war god, he is the main suitor of Saulė the sun-goddess. Some versions of his myth tell us that he married Saulė but was unfaithful with Aušrinė, the planet Venus, the morning star who prepares the way for Saulė. In punishment some versions say she marked his face, while others that he was struck by Perkūnas, the thunder god. To keep moral order, he disfigured Mėnulis’s face with a thunderbolt, explaining the phases of the moon.
Sometimes he is depicted as the rival of the star god Auseklis, or Perkūnas, while another story tells us that he did not marry Saulė, but instead was one of the main suitors for her daughter, Aušrinė’s hand. To the Lithuanians, the planets and the stars were seen as the children of Saulė and Mėnulis, a vast celestial family.
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From my book The Golden Thread.
Painting: Nocturne street scene by Walter Meegan (1859 - 1944)

A great light blazes through the sky, cosmic ice and dust from the distant reaches of space. The root of the word comet comes from the Greek word ‘kometes’ “meaning ‘long haired’ referring to the comet’s hair like tail.” Similarly, “when Electra saw Troy going up in flames she was said to have torn her hair out with grief, and was then placed by the gods among the stars as a comet.” While in the Iliad, Achillies connects this feature with the comet’s supposed malevolence: “Like the red star from his flaming hair/ shakes down disease, pestilence and war.” In Ancient Egypt Apophis or Apep represented the wrath of nature in the form of hurricanes, typhoons and fiery comets. One of many cataclysmic tales from around the world tells of how the thought to be mythical island of Hy-Brasil off the west coast of Ireland was dragged to the bottom of the sea by a red-hot arrow fired from the heavens. There is also a Ojibwa tale which recounts a “star with a long wide tail... the comet called long-tailed, heavenly climbing star. It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail. The comet burnt everything to the ground. There wasn’t a thing left…it flew so low the tail scorched the earth…the comet made a different world. After that survival was hard work.”.Art: Donati's Comet above Notre Dame, October 4, 1858. Colour lithograph - 1877 — A great light blazes through the sky, cosmic ice and dust from the distant reaches of space. The root of the word comet comes from the Greek word ‘kometes’ “meaning ‘long haired’ referring to the comet’s hair like tail.” Similarly, “when Electra saw Troy going up in flames she was said to have torn her hair out with grief, and was then placed by the gods among the stars as a comet.” While in the Iliad, Achillies connects this feature with the comet’s supposed malevolence: “Like the red star from his flaming hair/ shakes down disease, pestilence and war.”
In Ancient Egypt Apophis or Apep represented the wrath of nature in the form of hurricanes, typhoons and fiery comets. One of many cataclysmic tales from around the world tells of how the thought to be mythical island of Hy-Brasil off the west coast of Ireland was dragged to the bottom of the sea by a red-hot arrow fired from the heavens. There is also a Ojibwa tale which recounts a “star with a long wide tail... the comet called long-tailed, heavenly climbing star. It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail. The comet burnt everything to the ground. There wasn’t a thing left…it flew so low the tail scorched the earth…the comet made a different world. After that survival was hard work.”
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Art: Donati's Comet above Notre Dame, October 4, 1858. Colour lithograph - 1877

In Germany, among wild and remote mountains, there lies a glacial lake. Unfathomable, its water is brackish, and it is said that no fish can live in it. Many tales are told of a mighty king of the water-sprites who once lived in this lake with his three beautiful daughters, the famed nixies. The King was a majestic old man with long white beard and hair; his eyes were black and sinister, and when he drew his eyebrows together in a straight line over his eyes, his frown was terrible to behold. The thunderstorms which devastated the country round, were attributed to him. In his fits of rage, the village folk declared, he would hurl stones and thunderbolts down from the mountain, heedless of what or whom he might destroy.Evading his ever watchful eyes, the sisters would withdraw from the lake, there to dance with the wood nymphs in the moonlight, while in June, a favourite time for nearly all European nature spirits, when the white and yellow water lilies are in flower, and the yellow irises shine among the water-reeds) the three sisters often swam, before diving like seals beneath the surface of the lake.In German folklore Nixie’s (male: Nix) became water sprites who try to lure people into the water. “In the 19th century Jacob Grimm mentions the Nixie to be among the “water”-spirits who love music, song and dancing, and says "Like the sirens, the Nixie by her song draws listening youth to herself, and then into the deep." According to Grimm, they can appear human but have the barest hint of animal features: the nix had "a slit ear", and the Nixie "a wet skirt". Grimm thinks these could symbolise they are "higher beings" who could shapeshift to animal form.”.I can’t say for sure but I believe the lake in this tale is Mummelsee Lake high up in the Black Forest, for it too is brackish, and has a tale of a king and his water nymph daughters attached to it. You can read the whole story here: https://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/German_folktale_37.html#gsc.tab=0.Painting: by Stanislav Brusilov (b.1976-) — In Germany, among wild and remote mountains, there lies a glacial lake. Unfathomable, its water is brackish, and it is said that no fish can live in it. Many tales are told of a mighty king of the water-sprites who once lived in this lake with his three beautiful daughters, the famed nixies.
The King was a majestic old man with long white beard and hair; his eyes were black and sinister, and when he drew his eyebrows together in a straight line over his eyes, his frown was terrible to behold. The thunderstorms which devastated the country round, were attributed to him. In his fits of rage, the village folk declared, he would hurl stones and thunderbolts down from the mountain, heedless of what or whom he might destroy.
Evading his ever watchful eyes, the sisters would withdraw from the lake, there to dance with the wood nymphs in the moonlight, while in June, a favourite time for nearly all European nature spirits, when the white and yellow water lilies are in flower, and the yellow irises shine among the water-reeds) the three sisters often swam, before diving like seals beneath the surface of the lake.
In German folklore Nixie’s (male: Nix) became water sprites who try to lure people into the water. “In the 19th century Jacob Grimm mentions the Nixie to be among the “water”-spirits who love music, song and dancing, and says "Like the sirens, the Nixie by her song draws listening youth to herself, and then into the deep." According to Grimm, they can appear human but have the barest hint of animal features: the nix had "a slit ear", and the Nixie "a wet skirt". Grimm thinks these could symbolise they are "higher beings" who could shapeshift to animal form.”
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I can’t say for sure but I believe the lake in this tale is Mummelsee Lake high up in the Black Forest, for it too is brackish, and has a tale of a king and his water nymph daughters attached to it. You can read the whole story here: https://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/German_folktale_37.html#gsc.tab=0
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Painting: by Stanislav Brusilov (b.1976-)

“The marriage of the sun and moon is the marriage of heart and mind, or two halves of every nature. It was the union of strength and beauty; inspiration and courage... To the Hermetists, marriage is therefore symbolic of the ultimate reunion of the two halves of each individual’s androgynous nature when, after repeated appearances and associations, each establishes equilibrium within his own constitution. The wedding ring was accepted by the ancients as being symbolic of the golden ring of the spirit fire, which connected the spiritual and material natures of every individual.” “To the Hermetisits, man has always been considered androgynous and they created the god Hermaphroditus to represent the duality of all living things. This word is coined from Hermes, meaning fire or vitality, and Aphrodite, the goddess of water. The great Hermetic and alchemical axiom was “Make the fire to burn in the water, and the water to feed the fire. In this lies great wisdom.” From The Hermetic Marriage by Manly P Hall .Art: An illustration by Andrei Avinoff for The Fall of Atlantis 1938 — “The marriage of the sun and moon is the marriage of heart and mind, or two halves of every nature. It was the union of strength and beauty; inspiration and courage... To the Hermetists, marriage is therefore symbolic of the ultimate reunion of the two halves of each individual’s androgynous nature when, after repeated appearances and associations, each establishes equilibrium within his own constitution. The wedding ring was accepted by the ancients as being symbolic of the golden ring of the spirit fire, which connected the spiritual and material natures of every individual.”
“To the Hermetisits, man has always been considered androgynous and they created the god Hermaphroditus to represent the duality of all living things. This word is coined from Hermes, meaning fire or vitality, and Aphrodite, the goddess of water. The great Hermetic and alchemical axiom was “Make the fire to burn in the water, and the water to feed the fire. In this lies great wisdom.”
From The Hermetic Marriage by Manly P Hall
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Art: An illustration by Andrei Avinoff for The Fall of Atlantis 1938

“The Greek Artemis is a goddess of death and birth. Her immortality is the eternal rhythm of the waxing and waning moon. As the moon waxes once it has waned, she renews life in a continuous dance of death and birth. In difficult changes and in life … — “The Greek Artemis is a goddess of death and birth. Her immortality is the eternal rhythm of the waxing and waning moon. As the moon waxes once it has waned, she renews life in a continuous dance of death and birth. In difficult changes and in life transitions Artemis (Roman: Diana) was a protecting goddess who led people back into harmony with the natural rhythms of life. These are the inner rhythms of a person as well as the rhythm of nature. It is the rhythms of the heart, the endless inhaling and exhaling of the breath or the menstrual cycle. It is the inner rhythms that all life follows.
In nature, it is the cycle of the seasons, the change of day and night, and the growth cycles of plants. Each planet and each living cell is rooted in these rhythms.
Corresponding to the phases of the moon, this goddess was depicted in three different ways: as Artemis/Diana she corresponded to the waxing moon; all earth was sacred to her. As Selene, she embodied the power of the full moon. As Hecate, she was goddess of the underworld, corresponding to the waning, dark phase of the moon.”
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From the Journey of the Hero by F.Wieland
Painting by George Emil Libert 1820-1908 (Danish)

“The Pole Star has long been a symbol of constancy and order to many. In Hindu mythology it was the symbol of the sage Dhruva, whose steadfast meditation continued for years. His place of meditation was Mount Meru, which was a sacred centre for the … — “The Pole Star has long been a symbol of constancy and order to many. In Hindu mythology it was the symbol of the sage Dhruva, whose steadfast meditation continued for years. His place of meditation was Mount Meru, which was a sacred centre for the Hindus, so he became not just the pole star but also the centre of the world and pivot of the planets as they turned in the sky. The Norse saw the North star as the nail or spike through the heavens that formed the pivot of the universe. Like the Hindus they personified it as their god Tyr or Tiw. He was their god of honesty and oath-taking , whose constancy was like the star’s. As the Anglo-Saxon rune poem says:
“Tir is a guiding star; well does it keep faith with
Princes;
It is ever on its courses over the mists of night and never
Fails.”
Tyr as the pole star was probably connected to Irminsul, a Germanic axis mundi around which the heavens revolved. It supported the sky, and we can visualise Polaris at the top, where the column touched the sky. One of Tyr/Tiw’s Germanic names was Irminsul… The Mongols also believed that the sky turned around the pole star, although in their belief the star was a golden peg in the heavens. The Turks thought it was a stake in the heavens to which the celestial horses were tied.”
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From: Sun, Moon and Stars by Sheena McGrath
Painting: by Sydney Mortimer Laurence was an American Romantic landscape painter 1865-1949

“The Fates cast a long reflection across a millennia of European folk culture. The Norse called the three fates Norns (Old Norse: Nornir,) the Romans called them Parcae, and the Greeks knew them as the ancient, mighty Moirae. In borrowed Latin, they… — “The Fates cast a long reflection across a millennia of European folk culture. The Norse called the three fates Norns (Old Norse: Nornir,) the Romans called them Parcae, and the Greeks knew them as the ancient, mighty Moirae. In borrowed Latin, they were called the Matres in Gaul and Britain, Matronae in Germanic. These fates are nearly always triune.
The fates are also threefold in Slavic culture. Serbs and Croats spoke of the sudnice or sudjenice, “judges” Slovenians of the sojanice, and the Czechs of the sudice. The sudiče were also seen as spinners; the sudička (eldest fate) determined the length of a life by cutting the thread. In the 19th century, it was still customary for the Czechs to “set out spinning wheels and scissors so that the fates would decide a more pleasant fate for the child.” Ukrainians pictured the sudci “playing with a ball of yarn, unwinding the thread of life.” Slovenian women would leave a loaf of bread as an offering to the three fates whenever a child was born.
“The Lithuanian fate goddess, Laima, also persisted in Christianised folk culture. Her name is closely related to laimé, “good fortune, happiness.” Lithuania would say, “so Laima fated” (taip Laima lemė) using a verb that means “to declare, to pronounce (on questions that concern the furture),” but also “to divine, wish.” (This fascinating ambiguity recurs in other cultures.)” Another Lithuanian tradition says Verpėja (“Spinner”) fastens the thread of each newborn to a star. Sometimes the fate is called Laima-Dalia, literally “fortune part.”
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From Witches and Pagans by Max Dashu
Art: ‘Charity, Hope & Faith’ From Purgatorio by Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

“The North star was often called the navigators star, because its lack of movement made it a point to take one’s bearings from. The Greeks began using it after the early mathematician and astronomer Thales of Miletus noticed its usefulness. The Arab… — “The North star was often called the navigators star, because its lack of movement made it a point to take one’s bearings from. The Greeks began using it after the early mathematician and astronomer Thales of Miletus noticed its usefulness. The Arabs used it to guide them as they travelled the desert.
In North America the Penobscot of Maine and the Witchita of Kansas also guided themselves by it. The Innu of Labrador not only used the North Star to find their way, but also developed a legend as to how it came to be so useful. According to this legend, some of their people were moving to a new village, but they began to quarrel. A group of them ganged up on one man and to escape he fled to the sky. When they saw he had got away, they realised that in his new position he could guide them as the North Star.
The Russian Chukchee also oriented themselves by the star. The Chinese invoked the pole star goddess Tou Mou to help them find their way. She also gave protection to travellers, a logical extension of the powers of the pole star. In Asia the North Star, which stands still in the sky, was a deity of order and protection. The Chinese identified their Tou Mou with the Buddhist Marici, making them into one goddess who protected them.”
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From: Sun, Moon and Stars by Sheena McGrath
Painting: by Sydney Mortimer Laurence was an American Romantic landscape painter 1865-1949

“The boar has an ambivalent symbolism; the Golden Boar is one of the great solar animals while the White Boar, dweller in the swamps and representing the watery element, is lunar. In some traditions it depicts all that is evil and unclean. In others… — “The boar has an ambivalent symbolism; the Golden Boar is one of the great solar animals while the White Boar, dweller in the swamps and representing the watery element, is lunar. In some traditions it depicts all that is evil and unclean. In others it can be divine, appearing on altars and images of gods, also on coins and standards; but it is always symbolises strength, fearlessness, savagery and wildness.”
Once native to Britain, “this wild ancestor of the pig symbolises war, warriors and courage. The Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, tells us that he went into battle with a boar-head standard which was symbolic of his power as a leader.” In Scotland, in the Caledonian Forest, a battle weary Myrddin, later associated or merged into the legendary figure of Merlin, sought refuge. There he wandered with madness and madmen. A wild man of the woods, accompanied by a wolf and a boar, and, as in a Scottish tale of a man named Lailoken, in his solitude he received the gift of prophecy.”
“In one version of the Sumerian-Semitic myth, Tammuz, like Adonis, was slain by a boar while out hunting; in both cases the boar represents the ‘wild boar of winter’ with the coming of spring. The boar is prominent in Scandinavian and Teutonic lore. It is a storm animal and funerary but also represents fertility and the harvest; it was sacrificed to Freyr at Yule. Freyr, had a wild boar called Gullinbursti meaning 'Golden mane'. Its bristles glowed in the dark, and illuminated his path. Freya rode her boar Hildesvini ('Battle Swine') into battle. Boars’ masks and helmets put warriors under the protection of Frey and Freyja and the golden bristles of the boar Gulliburstin made the sun’s rays with their glare.”
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Notes from Mythological & Symbolic animals by J.C. Cooper and treesforlife.org
Art: Le Loup et le chasseur - Gustave Dore c.1880

Wands of divination were used by the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece and Rome. In the Discourses of Epictetus it is written “This is the magic wand of Hermes. ‘Touch what you will, and it will turn to gold.’” ... While kings carry sceptres, and pop… — Wands of divination were used by the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece and Rome. In the Discourses of Epictetus it is written “This is the magic wand of Hermes. ‘Touch what you will, and it will turn to gold.’” ... While kings carry sceptres, and popes and bishops have their croziers, in high and ceremonial magic wands are used, and also appear in the Tarot as the deck of wands.
In Norse tradition, the staff connects the bearer to the earth and sky, and is associated with ecstatic song and magic chanting. The title of the völva comes from völr meaning: “wand, staff,” and so the völva is a “staff-woman” named for the shamanic wand that appears in Icelandic literature, while archaeologists have found in many graves dating from 800-1000, some women were buried with “ritual staffs of iron or occasionally wood in Norway, Sweden and Denmark often with regalia, herbs and unusual items.”
In Ireland, the Dagda, or the “good god” of the Túatha Dé Danann, had a double ended staff which could both kill and restore life. Cailleach was also said to possess a slachdan, a staff, or a white rod, which could both heal and curse. “Made of birch, bramble, willow or broom, [it] is akin to a Druidic rod which gave masters of the old religion power over the weather and the elements.” In the Book of Talliesin “Math and Eunyd, skilful with the magic wand, freed the elements.” Similar to the shaman’s staff, Cailleach and Math’s wands are reminiscent of the magical wands, rods and staffs of yew, hawthorn, rowan and oak as held by the Druids of Ancient Ireland and Gaul, although only oak was used by the latter.
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From my book The Silver Bough (this section is a quite a long one in my book and so it’s a bit tricky to link through from staffs to wands in such a small post, but I hope you enjoy it :)
Painting: The Spirit of the Night by John Atkinson Grimshaw

“Atlantis is often associated with a past golden age. Roy Stemman explains in his book ‘Atlantis and the Lost Lands’, how “the earth was at peace. A mild climate enveloped the planet and man had responded well to the beneficence of nature…then a ter… — “Atlantis is often associated with a past golden age. Roy Stemman explains in his book ‘Atlantis and the Lost Lands’, how “the earth was at peace. A mild climate enveloped the planet and man had responded well to the beneficence of nature…then a terrible and all-encompassing catastrophe shook the earth.” Although the downfall and ultimate destruction of Atlantis was blamed on the people who had invoked the anger of the gods because they had “lost their way and turned to immoral pursuits.”
In Plato’s Timaeus it is written “there have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.” While in the Statesman, a stranger asks Socrates about “the change in the rising and setting of the sun and the other heavenly bodies, how in those times they used to set in the quarter where they now rise, and used to rise where they now set.” Later, the Latin author Pomponius Mela wrote that in the annals kept by the Egyptians, “one may read that since they have been in existence, the course of the stars has changed direction four times, and that the sun has set twice in that part of the sky where it rises today.” Similarly, in the Magical Papyrus Harris, a cosmic upheaval of fire and water when “the south becomes north, and the Earth turns over” was recorded.
Elsewhere in the world, we find accounts of the sky being lit up with a strange display, and “those who saw in this a portent of disaster fled for shelter. Those who watched and waited perished as the sky grew dark and a fearful rain fell upon the earth. In places rain was like blood.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: The Fall of Babylon by Gustave Dore

“The Trobriand Islanders said that female sorcerers associated with the moon were eaters of the dead. “The Bhagavad-Gita describes two paths along which souls travel after death. One is the path of the sun, also known as the bright path or the … — “The Trobriand Islanders said that female sorcerers associated with the moon were eaters of the dead. “*The Bhagavad-Gita* describes two paths along which souls travel after death. One is the path of the sun, also known as the bright path or the path of gods and the other is the path of the moon, also known as the dark path and the path of ancestors. When a soul travels along the path of the sun, it never return again, while those which travel along the path of the moon return again.” The crescent moon is often seen as a boat which ferries the souls of the newly dead to their resting place on the moon.
One of the names of the Old Mexican Moon Goddess was Lady of the Place of the Dead. The Egyptians thought that heaven was on the moon. Plutarch commented that “the moon absorbs the souls of the dead as the earth absorbs the bodies.”
The Romany Gypsies, too, believe that the dead reside on the moon. The kings of Burundi trace their ancestry to the moon deity and believe that they will return to the moon when they die. Polynesians see the moon as the final resting place of dead kings and chiefs, the Guacurus of South America say dead medicine men stay there. For the South American Salivas, the Moon is paradise because there are no mosquitoes.”
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From: The Moon Watcher’s Companion by Donna Henes
Painting: by John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes.

The eagle is symbolic of solar and spiritual power. Associated with ascension, an elevation in consciousness, and the sky gods. “In China the eagle is yang, and represents carnage, fearlessness, tenacity, the warrior, and keen vision. As a symbol of… — The eagle is symbolic of solar and spiritual power. Associated with ascension, an elevation in consciousness, and the sky gods. “In China the eagle is yang, and represents carnage, fearlessness, tenacity, the warrior, and keen vision. As a symbol of sovereignty and victory the eagle is a natural emblem of War Gods such as the Assyrian, Babylonian and Canaanite Sun god Ninurta, while the sun god Marduk is often depicted as an eagle.” In Mayan culture two of their warrior castes were the Eagle and the Jaguar.
In Norse mythology the “eagle is seen in the boughs of the Yggdrasil as light in conflict with the serpent of darkness. it is an attribute of Odin/Woden who, in the form of an eagle, carried off the mead.”
In Siberia, the Buryats told of how “in the beginning there were only the gods (tengri) in the west and the evil spirits in the east. The gods created man, and he lived happily until the time when the evil spirits spread sickness and death over the earth. The gods decided to give mankind a shaman to combat disease and death, and they sent the eagle.”
“According to many peoples of the Asiatic islands, the world tree is the domain of the shamans: in the crown are the nests in which the shamans are hatched. It is no wonder that in those populations the shamans usually travels those worlds as eagles, vultures or ravens. The world tree is like a runway for the shaman as well as the invisible forces, beings, and spirits that use this world axis for their travels and modulations in the various worlds.”
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Symbolic & Mythological Animals by J.C. Cooper & Shamanism by M. Eliade
Art: ‘Dante & The Eagle’ an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré. 1832-1883

“The dog was the sacred companion of the old moon goddess of the prehistoric Balkan civilisations of old Europe. The early egyptian moon god, Thoth, was pictured as a dog-faced ape who was slowly eaten away by monsters as he made nightly voyages on … — “The dog was the sacred companion of the old moon goddess of the prehistoric Balkan civilisations of old Europe. The early egyptian moon god, Thoth, was pictured as a dog-faced ape who was slowly eaten away by monsters as he made nightly voyages on his celestial barque. Hecate, the death goddess, was associated with the dark moon. She always travelled with dogs. Dogs also accompanied the moon goddess Artemis/Diana on her nocturnal hunts.
Because they eat carrion, wolves symbolise death and regeneration, the very qualities visible in the cycles of the changeable moon. The Norwegian Edda tells of the Goddess Hel, who ruled the underworld. Myth has it that she gave birth to lunar wolf-dogs who ate the flesh of the dead before they carried their souls off to paradise.
The Native American Creek believe the moon to be inhabited by an old man and his canine companion. The people of the Seneca nation say that the Wolf Spirit sang the moon into the sky, and that is why all wolves howl at the moon to this day.”
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From: The Moon Watcher’s Companion by Donna Henes
Painting: by John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes

“Pulling the sword from the stone is an enigmatic image, said to be only attainable by those who were both pure of heart and of motive. Interestingly both the “Scythians and Celts shared a peculiar ritual in which the blood-soaked blade of a sword w… — “Pulling the sword from the stone is an enigmatic image, said to be only attainable by those who were both pure of heart and of motive. Interestingly both the “Scythians and Celts shared a peculiar ritual in which the blood-soaked blade of a sword was thrust into the ground and then drawn slowly out.” The earth and stone have also been thought to symbolise the underworld, as well as the unconscious, or lower mind. Moyra Caldecott in her insightful book ‘Crystal Legends’, wrote that “the stone is the earth, material reality. In the Legend of Galahad, he has to free his will, his power, his spirit from the prison of earthly concerns. That a stone that should sink in water floats, is an indication that we are dealing with the supernatural and not the natural.” In myth the sword is believed to “possess supernatural powers when found under the earth or submerged in water,” a great example here being Excalibur.
From a Theosophical understanding the sword represents the higher mind, or the higher self, and so pulling the sword from the stone which may represent the lower mind. In the Volsung Saga the god Odin thrusts the sword Gram, meaning “wrath” into the Barnstokkr tree pillar in the hall of King Volsung, and declares: “the man to pull out this sword from the trunk shall receive it from me as a gift and he will find out for himself that he never bore in hand a better sword than this.” Odin then departed and every man present attempted to retrieve the sword, but none succeeded, except Siegfried who pulled the sword out without difficulty.”
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From my book The Silver Bough
Art: ‘Fairy Land’ an engraving after an illustration by Gustave Doré

A portent of death, the doppelgänger, meaning “double goer,” is a ghostly twin, wraith or apparition that is the double or replica of a living person. Not long before his death in 1822, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley told his wife Mary that … — A portent of death, the doppelgänger, meaning “double goer,” is a ghostly twin, wraith or apparition that is the double or replica of a living person. Not long before his death in 1822, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley told his wife Mary that he had encountered his double who said to him: “how long do you mean to be content?” Looking further back to ancient Egypt, some have compared this spirit double to the Egyptian Ka, the spiritual essence which made the difference between a living and a dead person. It was said to “enter eternity before its human host, having served its function by walking at the human’s side to urge kindness, quietude, honour and compassion. Throughout the life of the human, the Ka was the conscience, the guardian, the guide. After death, however, the Ka became supreme…”
In Norwegian folklore ghostly entities known as vardøger precede their living counterparts, “taking this places at various activities and performing their actions in advance.” Other traditions tell us that when we are born, our spirit double is born at the same time, while to psychologists this idea may be interpreted as the shadow, which Rolf Jacobson describes as “the white one, whom you cannot accept, and who will never forget you.”
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From April Holloway’s Article “Doppelgängers and the Mythology of Spirit Doubles.” And M. Bunson’s Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt.)
Art: Lovers on a moonlit lane by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)

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