World Folklore

The winter solstice, the day the "sun stands still," marks the longest night and the shortest day of the year, and it comes either on December 20th or 21st. Celebrations honoring the winter solstice as a moment of transition and renewal date back thousands of years and occur among many peoples on every continent. The Return of the Light makes an ideal companion for everyone who carries on this tradition, no matter what their faith.

Explore the enchanting world of Polynesian folklore in this beautiful collection of traditional stories. A woman falls in love with the king of the sharks. Two powerful sorcerers compete in a battle of magical wits. The king of Maui's fastest messenger races to bring a young woman back from the dead. In these traditional tales, the borders blur between life and death, reality and magic, and land and sea.

All over the world, people have reported encounters with a race of tiny people who are neither human nor deity. This book reclaims that lost, rich heritage of working with faery folk that our Pagan ancestors took for granted. Edain McCoy teaches how to work with faeries in a mutually beneficial way. Practice rituals and spells in which faeries can participate, and discover tips to help facilitate faery contact.

A tall ship is trapped on a sandbar in 1885, broadsided by heavy seas and doomed to destruction on a lonely Brazilian Beach. Thus begins an incredible sea odyssey by a North American sea captain, his wife, and two sons. To return his family to safety, Captain Joshua Slocum builds a new boat out of the wreckage of the old. With his family, he sails along the perilous South American coast, crosses the Caribbean Sea, and navigates up the United States coast to Washington, D.C.

Step into ancient China and immerse yourself in a realm where gods, celestial beings, and legendary beasts shape the destiny of mortals. Whether you're new to these timeless tales or a mythology enthusiast, Chinese Mythology Unleashed offers a fascinating journey into a culture rich with wisdom, adventure, and wonder.

Uncover the fascinating and complex women from mythology and folklore with this collection of stories profiling powerful goddesses, mighty queens, and legendary creatures. Get inspired with 50 fascinating stories of powerful female figures from mythologies around the world. From heroines and deities to leaders and mythical creatures, this collection explores figures of myth who can inspire modern listeners with their ability to shape our culture with the stories of their power, wisdom, compassion, and cunning.

Japanese folklore is abundant with tales of ghostly creatures and the supernatural. In Haunted Japan, author Catrien Ross reveals the legends that have been passed down for generations and continue to terrify us today.

During his journeys around Japan, Smith recorded ancient Japanese myths and legends in his personal diaries. The result is a fascinating collection of historical legends from all over Japan, with themes including ghosts, unrequited love, Shinto landscape, tree and ocean spirits, samurai culture and tales driven by Bushido and Buddhist ethics. Gordon Smith's writing combines a realist style with supernatural elements, resulting in an anthology of 'magic realist' tales which will bewitch and captivate listeners.

We have been connected to cats for more than 30 million years. To our prehistoricancestors cats were deadly predators of the night, and because of this ancient memory etched onto our DNA, cats epitomize our fear of the dark. Yet in addition to their connection to the dark and the shadows, their intelligence, sophisticated physical abilities, and finely tuned senses also led many cultures to view cats as connected to the spirit world.

বহুকাল ধরে মানুষের সভ্যতা গড়ে উঠেছে নদীকে কেন্দ্র করে. নদীর প্রবাহের সাথে গড়ে উঠা জনমানবের জীবনের গল্প — মহানদী। এই অনবদ্য বইটির জন্যে অনিতা অগ্নিহোত্রী চিরকাল স্মরণীয় হয়ে থাকবে পাঠকের কাছে. নদীর প্রবাহের সাথে সাথে সেই সকল অঞ্চলের লোক-কথা, সংস্কৃতি, অর্থনীতি, ঐতিহ্য, এই সকল জীবনের প্রতিফলন এই গল্পগুলিতে। একদিকে এটি যেমন একটি গবেষণা গ্রন্থ, আরেকভাবে এক অসাধারণ ঐতিহাসিক প্রবন্ধ যা বাংলা সাহিত্যের এক অবিচ্ছেদ্য অঙ্গ হয়ে উঠেছে।

Every Tongue Got to Confess is an extensive volume of African American folklore that Zora Neale Hurston collected on her travels through the Gulf States in the late 1920s. The bittersweet and often hilarious tale, which range from longer narratives about God, the Devil, white folk, and mistaken identity to witty one-liners, reveal attitudes about faith, love, family, slavery, race, and community.

Step into a world where history and magic intertwine with The Mystical World of Legendary Artifacts: A Guide to History’s Most Powerful Relics. This comprehensive guide takes you on an extraordinary journey through time, revealing the secrets behind the world’s most legendary magical artifacts. From the mythic sword Excalibur to the elusive Philosopher’s Stone, these powerful relics have shaped the course of history, inspiring awe and wonder. Each artifact carries its own unique powers, mystery, and legend, influencing the fates of those who seek them.

It goes unappreciated by modern Egyptologists, but it is embraced by those who savor the concept of a “hidden history” of humanity, and those who approach all human knowledge from the perspective of the esoteric. Gerard Massey’s massive Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World–first published in 1907 and the crowning achievement of the self-taught scholar–redefines the roots of Christianity via Egypt, proposing that Egyptian mythology was the basis for Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Do you know what lies behind every door? There are certain buildings which can be unsettling, disturbing, and downright terrifying. Even in seemingly normal homes, the strange and mysterious can help to create a sense of unease and ill-feeling. But there are certain buildings which scream strangeness from every surface. A coldness, an eerie atmosphere, or even the half caught sight of something moving in the corner of your vision. Some homes breathe paranormal activity and can leave you scared before you've even stepped over the threshold.

Our world is a strange place. This haunting book peers into the dark spaces that lie somewhere between belief and imagination, and into the weird stories we tell to make sense of where and who we are.

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux. He became one of the best known Indians of his time, receiving a bachelor of science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later.

In A Vulgar Art, Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize - "literature" or "theatre"; "editorial" or "morality" - and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: Someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh.

The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting classical Greece itself. In Egypt, the Olympian gods claimed to have given birth to pharaohs; in Rome, they led respectable citizens into orgiastic rituals of drink and sex.

This book contains the other sections of World Mythology Lite that didn't make it into the first book. There are descriptions of ancient deities and heroes in this book.

Overlooking the Border continues the dialogue surrounding the social history of Jerusalem. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book juxtaposes Israeli and Palestinian personal narratives about the past with contemporary museum exhibits, street plaques, tourism, and real estate projects that are reshaping the city since the decline of the peace process and the second intifada. As sites of memory, Jerusalem's homes, streets, and natural areas form the setting for emotionally charged narratives about belonging and rights to place.