-
Vṛkāsura — Flesh for Power
An asura named Wolf cuts the flesh from his own body to win a boon from Shiva, asks for a hand that kills whatever head it touches, and tries it first on the god. Vishnu saves Shiva with a lie. Read beside Simon’s offer to buy the laying on of hands, Ovid’s Midas, the devil’s…
-
Noah — Prophet and Builder
Lamech named his son for rest. Noah built a chest sealed with the letters of atonement, fed every creature in it for a year, sent out the dove, and woke from his wine to curse a grandson. Read beside the giants of 1 Enoch, the birds of Gilgamesh, Peter’s eight souls, the dove at the…
-
Isis — The Price of a Secret Name
Isis makes a serpent from the sun god’s own fallen spittle, then offers to cure the poison on one condition: that Ra give her the name he keeps hidden inside his body. What does knowing a name give you, and what does giving it up cost?
-
Cadmus — The Dragon’s Teeth
Cadmus kills the guardian of the spring, sows its teeth, and founds Thebes with the survivors. Read once as courage and reparation, once as a foreign settlement told from the side that won.
-
Bhṛgu — Which God Deserves Worship?
Bhṛgu tests Brahmā, Shiva, and Vishnu with three escalating insults. What makes a god worthy of worship: power, restraint, or mercy?
Every ancient culture tells stories about a god who fathered a son on a mortal woman. This site reads those stories beside one another, and beside the Bible.
One way of reading them is very old and entirely Christian. The Church Fathers held that the seed of the Word had been scattered among the nations, so that people who had never heard of Israel still managed to say true things. Lewis and Tolkien called the myths good dreams, and called one of them fact. Taking that seriously means going to look for the same shape in Greece, India and Egypt, and it is there.
The second way of reading asks what a story was for. A miracle can cover a crime, and an account of slaying giants can be the tidied version of killing people. Whoever wrote these things down had usually won.
Both readings run here at once. New readers should start with Why do different cultures have similar myths?