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World Mill
The World Mill (also "heavenly mill", "cosmic mill" and variants) is a mytheme suggested as recurring in Indo-European and other mythologies. It involves the analogy of the cosmos or firmament and a rotating millstone. The mytheme was extensively explored in Viktor Rydberg's 1886 '' Investigations into Germanic Mythology'', who provides both ancient Scandinavian and Indian examples. Donald Mackenzie described the World Mill’s relationship to the sacred spiral and the revolution of the starry heavens, providing analogs in Chinese, Egyptian, Babylonian, and AmerInd folklore, before concluding "that the idea of the World Mill originated as a result of the observation of the seasonal revolutions of the constellation of the 'Great Bear'." Clive Tolley (1995) examined the significance of the mytheme in Indo-European and Finnish mythology. Tolley found that "the image of a cosmic mill, ambivalently churning out well-being or disaster, may be recognized in certain fragmentary myths", ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mytheme
In structuralism-influenced studies of mythology, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed—a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways ("bundled") or linked in more complicated relationships. For example, the myths of Greek Adonis and Egyptian Osiris share several elements, leading some scholars to conclude that they share a source, i.e. images passed down in cultures or from one to another, being ascribed new interpretations of the action depicted, as well as new names in various readings of icons. Overview Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), who gave the term wide circulation, wrote, "If one wants to establish a parallel between structural linguistics and the structural analysis of myths, the correspondence is established, not between mytheme and word but between mytheme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rota Fortunae
In medieval and ancient philosophy the Wheel of Fortune, or ''Rota Fortunae'', is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna (Greek equivalent Tyche) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. The metaphor was already a cliché in ancient times, complained about by Tacitus, but was greatly popularized for the Middle Ages by its extended treatment in the ''Consolation of Philosophy'' by Boethius from around 520. It became a common image in manuscripts of the book, and then other media, where Fortuna, often blindfolded, turns a large wheel of the sort used in watermills, to which kings and other powerful figures are attached. Origins The origin of the word is from the "wheel of fortune"—the zodiac, referring to the Celestial spheres of which the 8th holds the stars, and the 9th is where the signs of the zodiac are placed. The concept was first invented in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomical Myths
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, Maya, and many anc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. One of its quasi-independent projects is the BiblioVault, a digital repository for scholarly books. The Press building is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. History The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum''. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900 the University of Chicago Press had published 127 books and pamphlets and 11 scholarly journals, includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mills Of God
The proverbial expression of the ''mills of God grinding slowly'' refers to the notion of slow but certain divine retribution. Ancient Greek usage Plutarch (1st century CE) alludes to the metaphor as a then-current adage in his ''Moralia'' (''De sera numinis vindicta'' "On the Delay of Divine Vengeance"): :"Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills of the gods said to grind so late as to render punishment hard to be recognized, and to make wickedness fearless." Plutarch no doubt here makes reference to a hexameter by an unknown poet, cited by sceptic philosopher Sextus Empiricus (2nd century) in his ''Adversus Grammaticos'' as a popular adage: : :"The millstones of the gods grind late, but they grind fine." The same expression was invoked by Celsus in his (lost) '' True Discourse''. Defending the concept of ancestral fault, Celsus reportedly quoted "a priest of Apollo or of Zeus": : :'The mills of the gods grind slowly', he says, even 'To children's children, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark Satanic Mills
"And did those feet in ancient time" is a poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic '' Milton: A Poem in Two Books'', one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date of 1804 on the title page is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed .Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', "1808", p 289, Oxford University Press, 2004, Today it is best known as the hymn "Jerusalem", with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. The famous orchestration was written by Sir Edward Elgar. It is not to be confused with another poem, much longer and larger in scope and also by Blake, called ''Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion''. It is often assumed that the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during his unknown years.Icons – a portrait of England. Icon: Jerusal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sampo
In Finnish mythology, the ''Sampo'' () is a magical device or object described in many different ways that was constructed by the blacksmith Ilmarinen and that brought riches and good fortune to its holder, akin to the horn of plenty (cornucopia) of Greek mythology. When the Sampo was stolen, Ilmarinen's homeland fell upon hard times. He sent an expedition to retrieve it, but in the ensuing battle it was smashed and lost at sea. In the Kalevala The Sampo is a pivotal element of the plot of the Finnish epic poem ''Kalevala'', compiled in 1835 (and expanded in 1849) by Elias Lönnrot based on Finnish oral tradition. In the expanded second version of the poem, the Sampo is forged by Ilmarinen, a legendary smith, to fulfill a task set by the witch queen of Pohjola, Louhi, in return for her daughter's hand. : ''"Ilmarinen, worthy brother,'' : ''Thou the only skilful blacksmith,'' : ''Go and see her wondrous beauty,'' : ''See her gold and silver garments,'' : ''See her robed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wyrd
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English ''weird'', whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected". The cognate term to ''wyrd'' in Old Norse is , with a similar meaning, but also personified as a deity: Urðr (anglicized as ), one of the Norns in Norse mythology. The word also appears in the name of the well where the Norns meet, Urðarbrunnr. Etymology The Old English term derives from a Proto-Germanic term . ''Wyrd'' has cognates in Old Saxon , Old High German , Old Norse , Dutch (to become), and German . The Proto-Indo-European root is meaning 'to twist', which is related to Latin ''vertere'' 'turning, rotating', and in Proto-Germanic is with a meaning 'to come to pass, to become, to be due'. The same root is also found in , with the notion of 'origin' or ' worth' both in the sense of 'connotati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axis Mundi
In astronomy, axis mundi is the Latin term for the axis of Earth between the celestial poles. In a geocentric coordinate system, this is the axis of rotation of the celestial sphere. Consequently, in ancient Greco-Roman astronomy, the ''axis mundi'' is the axis of rotation of the planetary spheres within the classical geocentric model of the cosmos. In 20th-century comparative mythology, the term axis mundi — also called the cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, center of the world, or world tree — has been greatly extended to refer to any mythological concept representing "the connection between Heaven and Earth" or the "higher and lower realms." Mircea Eliade introduced the concept in the 1950s. Axis mundi closely relates to the mythological concept of the '' omphalos'' (navel) of the world or cosmos. Items adduced as examples of the ''axis mundi'' by comparative mythologists include plants (notably a tree but also other types of plants such as a vine or stalk), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hamlet's Mill
''Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth'' (first published by Gambit, Boston, 1969) by Giorgio de Santillana (a professor of the history of science at MIT) and Hertha von Dechend (a scientist at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität) is a nonfiction work of history and comparative mythology, particularly the subfield of archaeoastronomy. It is mostly about the claim of a Megalithic era discovery of axial precession and the encoding of this knowledge in mythology. The book was severely criticized by academics upon its publication. Argument The main argument of the book may be summarized as the claim of an early (Neolithic) discovery of the precession of the equinoxes (usually attributed to Hipparchus, 2nd century BCE), and an associated very long-lived Megalithic civilization of "unsuspected sophistication" that was particularly preoccupied with astronomical observation. The knowledge of this civilization about pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-European Mythology
Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-Indo-European speakers lived in preliterate societies – scholars of comparative mythology have reconstructed details from inherited similarities found among Indo-European languages, based on the assumption that parts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans' original belief systems survived in the daughter traditions. The Proto-Indo-European Pantheon (religion), pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities, since they are both cognates – linguistic siblings from a common origin –, and associated with similar attributes and body of myths: such as Dyeus, *''Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr'', the Sky deity, daylight-sky god; his consort Dhéǵhōm, *''Dʰéǵʰōm'', the Mother goddess, earth mother; his daughter Hausos, *''H₂éws ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
