Gods, Goddesses & Mythology
Introduction
Mythology is an intrinsic part of human psychology. Every archetype is found in mythology, from the Hero to the Warrior to the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. All the Gods and Goddesses are characters in each of us, and the stories are representative of the drama within every person. Whether or not these myths have actually happened is irrelevant, although some of them may have been based on real events and real characters.
The most important thing to realize is that all cultures and societies have some version of each of the stories. The characters might be called by a different name, but the stories are all very similar. For instance, almost every culture has a story about a flood and the character named Noah in the Bible. Each has a “top god” who is father of them all. Each has a battle between the gods that humankind has been a pawn in. There are many similarities from culture to culture, and these myths came about without them knowing about each other. This means that mythology and the characters in the stories are much deeper in our psyche than any one culture. These stories and characters are a part of ourselves on the individual and mass level.
You will notice that some gods and goddesses were “borrowed” from culture to culture, or morphed into another name, but the energy of the god or goddess was the same. For instance, Mars, god of war in Roman mythology, morphed into Aries in Greek mythology. This happened time and time again with many societies, especially when one society was conquered by another, or a ruler decided that a particular god should take precedence over another and enforced it by law. This happened often during the time when Christianity was being enforced as the only accepted religion, and the gods and goddesses were somehow absorbed but still reflected by the characters in the Bible. However, this course will, for the most part, look at mythology in its pre-Christian forms.
This course in no way is able to cover every single god, goddess, or myth in every culture. This would be an endeavor that could take a lifetime and a compilation that would be a very large encyclopedia. However, we will cover enough to give you an idea of how there are similarities between all the creation stories, the heroes, the villains, and the myths in general. These are stories that every human is born with somewhere in the deep recesses of memory.
It took several writers to complete the material for this course. Their names are noted at the beginning of each section that they wrote. The mythology systems that will be covered in this course are:
Hindu Mythology
Egyptian Mythology
Norse Mythology
Celtic Mythology
Roman Mythology
Greek Mythology
Taoist Mythology
Incan Mythology
African Mythology
Arabian Mythology
Babylonian Mythology
Iranian Mythology
Hebrew Mythology
An interesting exercise, if you believe that you have had past lives, is to observe as you read these stories if there is some part of you that “remembers” believing in these systems of thought. Most likely you have had a lifetime or two in each of these cultures! Let’s begin with the mythology of India.