What is Diwali?
Can you imagine a festival that combines the best features of the most popular festivals in the United States? New year’s day is the day to make new resolutions and…
Category: Mythology
Here We Shall Drag Them
The Harpies’ first appearance in Greek literature is incongruously charming. For Hesiod, they are goddesses of the scudding storm clouds, “lovely-haired,” keeping pace “on their swift wings with the blasts…
The Messiahs: Mithras, Osiris, and Apollonius
A long time ago, in a land far away, a child was born. He was the son of a god and a mortal woman, and he used his miraculous powers…
Jesus in the Underworld?
The Christian affirmation of belief in Jesus descent to Hades is in the Apostles Creed and in the so-called Athanasian Creed as well as being article III in the Anglican…
Happy 100k JCF
The Joseph Campbell Foundation is offering a bundle of free downloads from The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell. Foreword to Myth, Religion, and Mother Right An essay in PDF format…
Indra’s Lesson
There is a wonderful story in one of the Upanishads about the god Indra. Now, it happened at this time that a great monster had enclosed all the waters of…
The Ancient City of Dvārakā
In the Mahabharata, the city of Dvārakā was created by Vishwa Karma (the architect of the gods) with instructions from Lord Krishna. In the Mahabharata, Dvārakā (also known as Dvāravatī,…
Sita Sings the Blues
Sita Sings the Blues is a musical, animated personal interpretation of the Indian epic the Ramayana. The aspect of the story that I focus on is the relationship between Sita…
One Have Been Made Two
From Book One of The Mahābhārata and for fathers everywhere. “A son, the wise say, is the man himself born from himself; therefore a man will look upon the mother…
Codex Sinaiticus Goes Online
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete…
Religious Misunderstandings
Religions are predicated on some profound or miraculous event that requires blind faith to believe in. From an objective point of view, these events are usually quite incredible and sometimes…
Joseph Campbell Foundation
The Joseph Campbell Foundation website has been redesigned. The new site is really nice. They’ve done a great job tying together the many sections into a single design. It’s an…
By What Myth Am I Living?
I haven’t really written much in the past few months – other than posting stuff on politics from other sites. I’ve been reflecting on the past. I remember someone once…
Hindu Holiday Calendar (2012 – 2017)
I missed Diwali this year so I hunted around the internet looking for an .ics or .vcs file that I could import into my Outlook calendar. I couldn’t find any…
Carl Sagan on Hinduism
I’ve written before about how influential Carl Sagan was in my childhood. Not only his views of science and philosophy but also his views on religion. My interest in Hinduism…
The Mahabharata
Here is an episode from the popular Dutch series, Myths of Mankind. When the British ruled India, experienced colonial administrators would advise newcomers to read one book if they wanted…
The Canonization of the New Testament
I few weeks ago I discussed my views on the Gospel of Judas and how the final cannon was decided. I found an excellent audio clip from a lecture on…
A Metaphysical Realization
There is a magnificent essay by Schopenhauer in which he asks, how is it that a human being can so participate in the peril or pain of another that without…
Joseph Campbell: Psychological or Metaphysical
This is a very interesting topic and I find myself wondering exactly where Campbell’s ultimate passions were. The first image that is called to mind is Campbell’s rather amazing recounting…