English Mythology

A soul lost in a world of darkness that wants nothing more than to devour me. To claim me as its own before I have a chance to escape. Before I have a chance to remember who I am...and how I came to be here. Before I remember him. But even then, the Underworld has no intention of letting me go. Not unless I can win them to my side.

Countless would-be readers and listeners of Finnegans Wake - James Joyce's 1939 masterwork, on which he labored for a third of his life - have given up after a few pages and "dismissed the book as a perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with novelist and poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first guide to understanding the fascinating world of Finnegans Wake.

Captured centaurs and satyrs, incompetent seers, people who suddenly change sex, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh—these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives. Together they created an incredibly rich body of popular oral stories that include, but range well beyond, mythology—from heroic legends, fairy tales, and fables to ghost stories, urban legends, and jokes. This unique anthology presents the largest collection of these tales ever assembled.

For many centuries the figure of the witch has haunted our imagination and our nightmares. There have been many attempts to quash our fascination with these wielders of forbidden powers, but all have failed. We invite you now on a journey through a moonlit world, where every shadow tells a tale of magic, persecution and persistence. In this fascinating volume, discover witches real and legendary, who once terrorized, devoured, helped or empowered their communities, but who are now largely forgotten.

From stories of resurrected mummies and thousand-year-old curses to powerful pharaohs and the coveted treasures of the Great Pyramids, ancient Egypt has had an unfaltering grip on the modern imagination. Now, in Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch offers a comprehensive introduction that untangles the mystery of Egyptian Myth.

If you want to learn about the oldest religion in the world, the gods and goddesses that embody divine aspects, and how to find spiritual guidance within them, then you need to listen to this audiobook.

Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today - and how we trivialize her power at our peril.

Banished, isolated, and hunted for a destiny he doesn’t understand, Ryuichi must learn to master the powers he inherited from his mother in order to protect the sacred gates that separate the mortal world from the realm of demons. If he doesn’t, kami, yôkai, and demons who are hell-bent on making humanity suffer will flood the human realm.

Ava Baldwin has always tried to keep her anger in check, just like her mom taught her. But when know-it-all classmate Owen King tries to speak over her yet again, Ava explodes . . . and Owen freezes, becoming totally unresponsive. Although Owen recovers, Ava's parents whisk her off to her mother’s alma mater, the Accademia del Forte, a mysterious international boarding school in Venice.

In a magisterial work, Jaan Puhvel unravels the prehistoric Indo-European origins of the traditions of India and Iran, Greece and Rome, of the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. Utilizing the methodologies of historical linguistics and archaeology, he reconstructs a shared religious, mythological, and cultural heritage. Separate chapters on individual traditions as well as on recurrent themes—god and warrior, king and virgin, fire and water—give life to Comparative Mythology as both a general introduction and a detailed reference.

The fiefs that exist at the heart of the city of Elantra are home to sentient Towers that guard the world against the incursion of Shadow. But between the fiefs exists the gray world of the border zone. In it, geography changes between one passage across a border and the next. The rules of magic are different there - and yet somehow familiar to Kaylin Neya.

Woven from Joseph Campbell’s previously unpublished work, this volume explores Judeo-Christian symbols and metaphors - and their misinterpretations - with the famed mythologist’s characteristic conversational warmth and accessible scholarship. Campbell’s insights highlight centuries of confusion between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Western religious symbols that are, he argues, perennially relevant keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.

Finding out Ares, the god of war, is my father was a shock. Finding out I'm destined to lead his troops out of the aether and overthrow Cronus himself? Hades, Loki, and Fenrir are the last three people I'd want to be stranded with, but the only way we're getting out of this hellscape is by working together. If they think I'm going to forget all their wicked games just because we have a common goal, they're dead wrong. The Queen is taking her throne back, and these three gorgeous jerks are going to have to grovel if they want forgiveness.

Gwen's barely gotten a taste of normal when her resident god shows up with an assignment. The bridge between the human world and the world of the gods is weakening, and the nine hosts of Heimdall must find each other if they hope to fix it. One small problem - Gwen and the Keens must travel to another world to find Heimdall's remaining hosts. Gwen has always relied on books for her education, but no amount of reading can prepare her for what waits outside the human world.

Thirteen-year-old Sik wants a simple life going to school and helping at his parents' deli in the evenings. But all that is blown to smithereens when Nergal comes looking for him, thinking that Sik holds the secret to eternal life. Turns out Sik is immortal but doesn't know it, and that's about to get him and the entire city into deep, deep trouble.

This audiobook includes tales of gods and goddesses, both major and minor, as well as kings and heroes, both historical and mythical. One such king is the hero of what many scholars believe to be the first written epic: Gilgamesh. In addition to creating connections between the human world and the divine, Sumerian myths explain how the world came to be in the first place. These myths establish the cosmic order, which places the greater gods, or Annunaki, at the top of the hierarchy, with the lesser gods, or Igigi, below them.

The Black Land is a myth: Centuries have passed since that Great Enemy was slain. Yet old fears linger, and on the longest night of the year, people in the South still light ritual bonfires to banish the dark. In her village, this duty falls to Solveig, a girl favored by the gods with powerful fire magic. But when her brother kills a Northern lord’s son during the ritual, it is Sol who faces punishment, by being weregild—part hostage, part guest—in the North for a year and a day.

The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds - who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or not sexy enough - aren’t just outside the norm. They’re unnatural. Monstrous. But maybe, the traits we’ve been told make us dangerous and undesirable are actually our greatest strengths.

Queering the Runes is a love letter to the runes, the gods, and the people who follow the Nordic path. The author presents an alternative approach to the runes, one that creates a gentle container for those who want to follow this heathen path. Based on the author's personal gnosis, as well as deep academic research on runes and Nordic culture, this book is an invitation into the root culture of the runes, both in terms of myth and in terms of lived, real folkloric experience.

Riley Oh can't wait to see her sister get initiated into the Gom clan, a powerful lineage of Korean healing witches their family has belonged to for generations. Her sister, Hattie, will earn her Gi bracelet and finally be able to cast spells without adult supervision. Although Riley is desperate to follow in her sister's footsteps when she herself turns 13, she's a saram - a person without magic. Riley was adopted, and despite having memorized every healing spell she's ever heard, she often feels like the odd one out in her family and the gifted community.