COLLECTION
Stories connected by a shared idea.
A giant's son and Odin's blood-brother, Loki insults every god at a feast, fathers the wolf, the world serpent and Hel, and lies bound beneath a dripping serpent until the end of the world. There is no sign that anyone ever worshipped him.
Read story 11 min readGods and demons used a mountain as a churning stick and a serpent as the rope, and churned the ocean for amṛta, the drink of immortality. Who held the mountain up, and who drank the poison? It depends on which text you open.
Read story 6 min readThe world began as an egg, and Pangu grew inside it until heaven and earth stood ninety thousand li apart. When he died, his body became the world. Yet no book names him before the third century CE, and scholars still argue over where he came from.
Read story 8 min readEvery night the sun sailed through the twelve hours of the underworld, and every night the serpent Apophis lay across its path. The spells told him he would never rise again, then ordered the same rite again for the next day.
Read story 8 min readPārvatī made a son to guard her door, and Shiva, who did not know him, cut off his head. That is the best-known answer to why Ganesha has an elephant's head. The Purāṇas give at least three others.
Read story 9 min readAn archer shot down the suns that were burning the world, and a woman stole the elixir of immortality and fled to the moon. Today they are the married couple of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The oldest texts tell two separate stories.
Read story 8 min readThe sun goddess shut herself in a cave and the world went dark, until the gods hung a mirror on a tree and a goddess danced on an upturned tub so wildly that heaven shook with laughter. Japan's two oldest books do not agree on why she hid, or on what brought her out.
Read story 9 min readTwo spirits asked a Hùng king for the same daughter. The Mountain Spirit brought his gifts first, and the Water Spirit has attacked his mountain every year since. The famous nine-tusked elephant is not in the old texts.
Read story 9 min readSeth shut his brother in a chest, Isis searched for him across the world, and Osiris became the king and judge of the dead. Yet no Egyptian text tells the whole story. The fullest telling we have is Greek.
Read story 6 min readEverything in the world swore never to harm Baldr except a sprig of mistletoe, and everything wept for him except one giantess: that is Snorri's telling. A Danish historian of the same age tells another story entirely, of two rivals, one woman and a magic sword.
Read story 11 min readThe buffalo demon Mahiṣa drove the gods out of heaven. Their anger became a mountain of light, and the light became a goddess. Images of her victory are older than the text that tells it, and every autumn Kolkata shapes her again from river clay.
Read story 9 min readShe shaped people from yellow earth and patched the broken sky with five-coloured stones. But was Nüwa really half serpent? The oldest texts, the tomb art and the later novels give three different answers.
Read story 7 min read
