Common themes in Mythology

Corva · **Joined:** Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:05 pm **Posts:** 1657

Alright, I've already got Dragons (everywhere), Trees of Life (everywhere), and women causing the fall for humanity because of their husbands faults (Greek and Hebrew, at least), but I want to track down others. I've got Demigods/Nephilim down as well. Any more?

Drakel · **Posted:** Fri Oct 23, 2009 4:28 pm

did you get Death Spirits(grim reapor is my fave) and afterlifes down yet??
very religius and very fun to read about

Falconer · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:37 am

Some type of global deluge and consequent flood as a punishment of mankind. That's pretty common.

Corva · **Joined:** Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:05 pm **Posts:** 1657

Deluge
Tree of Immortality
Women letting evil into the world (to be fair, this may just be an excuse used by patriachal societies for their treatment of women)
Dragons
Demigods

The reason 'm trying to nail down these things is because I'm looking for corrabation. If one society has a myth that something happened, then it probably is just a myth, but if other societies around the world who had no contact with them have the same myth...

Drakel · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:56 pm

I bin trying to expliane that to my friends and family for a long time. atleast some1 in this world understands that if all religions think somthing like dragons or trees of life happened then somthing realy did happened.

alondor · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:11 pm

Not sure how many people have elves and dwarves but you might want to check them out

Falconer · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:13 pm

If you lump elves, dwarves, fairies, etc. into one category of "wee folk" then there is a rather widespread belief in tiny humanoids, but as far as I know it's mostly in Europe and Russia.

alondor · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:19 pm

obviously it is in europe anr russia the native americans just accepted things like them where as the wack job old story spinners just went and discreditted everyone that was not "normal"

Drakel · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:49 pm

I know mainy religions belive in giants! just don't know witch religions lol. oh well I think it would be kinda fun.

Pandora · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:10 pm

Note: some of these words in here should have accent marks and so such but I'm not sure how to do that so sorry in advanced)

Well if you are looking to track down a Demi in folk lore you haven't very far to look. There is actually a Demi in the Christian bible you more than likely overlooked.

Since a Demi God is the child of a god and human or angel and demon.

Nephilim I want to say is the love child of a Angel and a human, or an angel and an angel. I'm told the reason that a match between a angel and a demon do not produce a Nephilim is because apparently an angel evolves into a completely new creature when it becomes a fallen angel to assure that it cannot change it's mind to return to it's former glory latter on in life. As some kind of curse or punishment from god. However I have not completely researched the subject.

Jesus probably wouldn't make your list at the first though, but he really is one. He's part god and the child of man. Making him one of the first real Demi ever recorded in history. (for those of you whom consider the bible a history book of sorts.)

One of the other more famous Demi which comes right out and says he's one I think(please don't quote me on that I'm not sure haven't looked it up in quite a while), is Hercules. He's the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. (which at the moment I can't remember the name of.)

Gilgamesh is also a Demi God, as the great king of Babylon he was two parts god and one part man making him a Demi as well. It's also rumored that he was the master swordsman of six swords, then again he did have six arms, but that's another story.

Since Mirravin is a Demi God I've done a bit of research on it for rping and book writing reasons, so I hope this is helpful in some way.

I think there are more but I can't think of any more at the moment. Does that count as the two or more you were looking for?

just for giggles, someone mentioned giants, Jotunn are the norse giants or giant gods. Loki being one of the better known ones. Giants are also mentioned quite a few times in the bible. I'm gathering we all know the story of David and Goliath, and one of the other battles which I want to say Jacob (Might be him but it's one of them at any rate.) lead an army guided by god to slay giants in another land or something of the sort.

The flood theme is also in the bible, we all know about Noah and the ark.

I can also give you a list of races and how they would effect any folklore they may be associated with. I might also be able to help with basic plots and natural disasters such as Pandora's box.

Corva · **Joined:** Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:05 pm **Posts:** 1657

I'm actually thinking more along the lines of relations between Gaea = duaghter of men = humans and Ouranous = sons of God = Angels. Leading to Nephilim = Titans = Giants, who later have children = Olympians = gods, who later have children with humans, i.e. demigods.

BTW, Angels aren't supposed to have children, at least in Judeo-Christianity.

Drakel · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 1:03 pm

I always thought that god first created angels.after he created humans he would choose those who are worth to be called angels after we die? but that is the way I see it.
3 groups
angels
servents= those who don't deserve hell or should be turned into angels
demons= those who deserve hell and angels who are cast into hell

Pandora · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 1:12 pm

yeah it's considered tabu, but I don't think they ever said it wasn't do able. We don't really know how much free will angels really have, but I'm gathering since there are fallen angels that they have enough that they might perform an act that would be completely against their nature.

I guess the biggest question on that whole thing would be whether or not an angel would become a fallen angel during, before, or after such an act to know whether such a thing were possible.

I'm not really leaning toward any paticular culture at any rate, either way it's it would be intresting i think to try and piece them all together somehow despite the conflicts between them all. Also I think I've edited my latter post if you care to reread it,as I keep remembering new things every time I hit enter, I think I've already edited it like five times, lol.

Falconer · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 2:52 pm

Pandora wrote:

Jesus probably wouldn't make your list at the first though, but he really is one. He's part god and the child of man. Making him one of the first real Demi ever recorded in history. (for those of you whom consider the bible a history book of sorts.)

Completely and totally false. If you think that, you don't fully understand the story. According to the earliest (and therefor most likely to be accurate) Christian belief, he was [b]fully[/] God, not half-God. Yes, there were some schools of thought that he was half-God, half-man, but those were about as widely accepted as the ones that claimed he was a ghost.

As to the Nephilim, though, you're dead on.

Pandora wrote:

I guess the biggest question on that whole thing would be whether or not an angel would become a fallen angel during, before, or after such an act to know whether such a thing were possible.

I think the way it works is that to even consider such an act, they would have to be fallen.

Corva · **Joined:** Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:05 pm **Posts:** 1657

No. I'm quite sure an Angel could consider doing such an act, but if they resist doing it, they have xcercised their free will and aren't fallen.

Huamns have quite good folk memories, in the sense that after many millennia there is still some truth to be salvaged. It would be good to select the parts which don't conflict, to try an piece together what actually happened.

Pandora · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:11 pm

Hmm, I don't know one of us would have to look it up sometime, but from what I remember He was always described as part deity part man.

It does say he was both truly god and truly man, but in order for him to be that He'd still have to be some form of Demi only his god like qualities wouldn't mix with that of his human. I often pondered that maybe this meant he had a split persona of some kind.

The only other explination I could really think of besides having a split personality would be that the spirit of the man and the god were kept in the same body but weren't the same person. Meaning Jesus was a spirit that possessed the poor body of some guy while he was still in it? If so, do you think the human mind and the deity ever conflicted with one another? Or did the human spirit simply stay supressed and out of sight? I've never found anything that ever question his sanity so apparently the two spirits must have at lest gotten along if anything.

It would more than likely take years to gather all the stories and concepts of ever creature that ever was said to exist. Then there is actually weeding though what is real and what was entertainment. That's the biggest prob I'm finding. They wrote for entertainment back then as well as they do now. How do we tell what's just for fun and what was on a serious lvl?
I'd be willing to work on such a project if there was some way to tell the difference between the two.

Drakel · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:07 pm

you guys do know I am jewish! so you all are kinda kicking me out of the conversation without knowing it lol :cry:

also douse anyone knows were the grim reapor/ spirits of death came frome?? it is a realy hard topic to study and it is 5x more complex then dragons. SOUNDS LIKE FUN :twisted:

honestly! who thought about sutch a thing?
can you trick/bribe the deth spirit/grim reapor?
why must you pay it to go to the seconed world(greeks)
when did it all start?
is it good or evil?
why did they put a skeleton carrying a scythe wearing a black shroude as the grim reapor?
and more questions.

the only way we could truely we could fined out is thru more studdy. :read:

Pandora · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 10:42 pm

you don't have to be of the same religon to relate, i think someone on here is athist and we talk about this kind of stuff freely all the time. Quite a few of us feel that it's good to have a vast knowlage of others belief systems in order to understand how they think. You don't need to feel left out just comment on what you understand and every things good.

Also, if I remember right I think the grim reaper branched off from the ark angel of death. or better known as the messenger of death. I think you can best find information on the name Azrel or something similar as he has a very vast amount of names.

here's a link it's not exactly the best source give it's been known to have bad info on it, but I've read over it and it's got the basics of what you are looking for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_(personification)#Death_.28angels.29_in_religion

Falconer · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 8:31 am

I always thought it started with the Angel of Death in Exodus who killed the firstborn of Egypt. And it's spelled "Azraeal".

Pandora · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:17 am

Ah, thanks for the correction, I knew it wasn't spelled right I just couldn't think of how to spell it at the time. I'm thinking the name was somewhere in that link but I wasn't in the mood to hunt it down, lazy me.

I'm thinking that yeah that's the first apperance the angel of death made in the bible, I'm not sure however if that's the first he was talked of anywhere in any culture. I'd have to find a more reliable source than just wiki though.

oh yes forgot to mention since wiki won't let me just paste a direct link click search for personification and then click on the first one in line that pops up, that should be the right one.

Drakel · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:23 am

no. I always thought that he was first thought of inside the greek religion?(wich should be the reson why they put coins on the dead's eyes)
so they could bribe this grim reapor to go to the second life.

Pandora · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:30 am

I think the link has the greek story behind the reaper as well as I only skimmed though it.

I edited my pervious post with the info to help with navigation as I realized that the link I place didn't go directly to the page I was trying to show you.

Drakel · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 12:25 pm

I already seen the link befor. lol
when I seen wiki I knew what page you are talking about

Pandora · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 12:43 pm

also as you've seen religious books are also good sources of information for finding these things, however not all of them are as easy to obtain as the bible, and then there is the prob of finding them in a language you can read. I'm told amazon has a good selection but i really haven't looked into it being lazy and too bussy as usual. If any of you find a good one I'd be more than happy to hear about it.

Dragon444 · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:08 pm

I know this may be blasphemous for a few of you, but have you thought of looking through the Necrodominac (the Holy Text of Satanism)? Note that I may have the name wrong, it's been a while since I've bothered with the darker side of things in the world. Not only that, but that particular text is nigh on impossible to find in intirety.

Aside from this, you'll have to spend years on end trying to piece together the kind of web you speak of. Even with that book, it's going to take forever, though it may help with finding the origins of "Death"/"Grim Reaper."

My question may be a little easier to find... In the Tarot deck, card number 13 is Death. This brings up a question... Did the fear of the number thirteen come before or after the Major Arcana of the Tarot came into existence.

Common themes in Mythology

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