I live in a mythic world.

Mythology has been a subject that has fascinated me since childhood, when I read it avidly – and still does as I read it now, hence my Top 10 Books of Mythology.

These are my books of myth and mystery. I’m not going to seek to define mythology for this top ten. It seems to me that people who have studied it far more than I have differ substantially in their definitions of it and I’m not sure that there’s any easy or singular definition in any event. By its nature, myth overlaps with mystery. It is what it is.

Nor am I going to seek to distinguish myth or mythology from overlapping categories such as folklore or legend. If I might use religious metaphor, mythology tends to be defined in a ‘high-church’ sense involving divine beings or sacred narratives, while folklore or legend tend to be defined in a more ‘low church’ sense involving figures or narratives closer to humans and nature. And while we’re on that point, I’m not going to seek to distinguish myth or mythology from the overlapping subjects of religion or ritual. To extend that metaphor, I’m going with a broad church approach here. I don’t have a religion – I have a mythology.

The only thing I would seek to distinguish myth or mythology from is the colloquial or popular usage of the word myth to connote some collectively or commonly held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story. I use myth or mythology without any implication as to whether any belief or narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.

So that said, here are my Top 10 Books of Mythology – all in the one post compiled from previous individual entries (and also in their own page).

 

 

(10) FRANCIS YOUNG –
TWILIGHT OF THE GODLINGS (2023)

 

Small god-shaped holes – or everything you know about fairies is wrong.

Well, perhaps not quite everything, but at least the belief that Britain’s fairies and supernatural beings are the direct preservations or survivals of pagan gods.

But they are small god-shaped holes – filling the niche through many cultures, particularly European folklore or mythology, for ‘godlings’ or what Francis Young dubs small gods (borrowing from Terry Pratchett), although I’d have been tempted to go with hemi-demi-gods.

Essentially those supernatural beings ranking beneath the top-tier gods or major cult figures, somewhere between the human and divine – such as fauns and nymphs in Roman culture, not coincidentally one of the influences Young traces for fairies.

Young argues that earlier folkloric beings (albeit probably only as far back as those Roman godlings) were reinvented within Christianity to fill the niche – or the small god-shaped holes of culture.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(9) RONALD HUTTON –
TRIUMPH OF THE MOON (1999)

 

The history of what Hutton portrays to be the only religion England has ever given the world, modern pagan witchcraft or Wicca.

Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specializes, among other specialties, in the history of the various strands of contemporary paganism – particularly in this book, which might be regarded as his magnum opus.

It may be somewhat deflating or disillusioning for those who like to imagine modern paganism or neopaganism as descending from an unbroken lineage or tradition back to historical paganism, but Hutton presents Wicca definitively as a twentieth century reconstruction, often artistic or literary in nature.

However, Hutton clearly writes from a respect for the new paganism, consistent with his paean to it as the only religion England has given the world (and I understand that he was actually raised as a pagan in his youth).

And for that matter, what does it matter that it is a reconstruction of historical traditions, rather than a genuine continuation of, as neopaganism likes to present itself, longstanding hidden pagan traditions? Scratch beneath the surface and much the same can be said of other religious traditions. After all, if a historian can characterize even Christianity, from a historical perspective, as a Greek hero cult devoted to a Jewish messiah, then what of reconstruction? And that’s setting aside how much of either side of that characterization – Greek and Jewish – might be further characterized as reconstruction, or at least synthesis of other traditions.

Among his other books prior to Triumph of the Moon, Hutton deflated much the same claims of the ritual year in English paganism or at least tradition in Stations of the Sun – demonstrating the various celebrations to be of much more recent vintage than is often claimed for them.

And after Triumph of the Moon, Hutton has gone on to look at other strands within modern paganism in a similar vein (as more reflecting modern reconstruction than genuine historical tradition) – shamanism, druids, and most recently, various ‘pagan’ goddess figures of folklore in his Queens of the Wild.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(8) WESTON LA BARRE –
THE GHOST DANCE: THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION (1970)

 

A sweeping “psychoanalytic account of the birth of religion through the lens of his treatment of the ghost dance religion of native America”.

A sadly elusive and overlooked classic, particularly as anthropologist Weston La Barre regarded it as his magnum opus.

It’s also deliciously snarky, particularly about founding religious figures and classical philosophies.

Essentially, he presents all religion – not just native American – as shamanic in nature. All religions are ghost dances at heart. Indeed, this book led me to see the Bible as the Hebrew dreaming and the great messianic ghost dance.

Don’t get me wrong – I have a soft spot for the ghost dance, both the historical native American ghost dance and its metaphors. Hell – I usually feel my life has been one long ghost dance…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(6) JOSEPH CAMPBELL –
THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES (1949)

 

Behold the monomyth!

Joseph Campbell, arguably the leading scholar of mythology, developed the monomyth or Hero’s Journey as the archetypal heroic narrative in which the protagonist hero sets out, has transformative adventures and returns home. And it has been a favorite of comparative mythology and literary or writing studies ever since, particularly after George Lucas identified it as a major influence on his original Star Wars trilogy.

Campbell identified it as the monomyth because he saw it to be at least a recurring mythic structure to heroes, if not universal. Of course, it helps to be a monomyth if you pitch it in broad terms that apply to almost any story – the hero (ad)ventures into the mythic world – the supernatural or mysterious realm – and brings something back, not least himself in transformed form.

As per Campbell – “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Or even more broadly, a hero goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis and comes home changed or transformed – which is almost any story.

It also helps to structure it in the basic modern dramatic format of three acts – which Campbell styled as departure, initiation (often featuring death and rebirth or resurrection) and return.

And it helps even more to combine this broad structure at the same time with a number of specific variations from virtually every story – which Campbell styled as stages – which themselves have an almost infinite number of permutations.

Even so, you can’t deny the poetic resonance of Campbell’s stages as he styled or titled them – from the Call to Adventure (often accompanied by a Refusal of the Call) that starts it all, through the Belly of the Whale and the Road of Trials as well as my personal favorite The Meeting with the Goddess, to the triumphant return as the Master of Two Worlds and the Freedom to Live.

Of course, the monomyth has its critics – from those who criticize that its very generality (or vagueness) detracts from its validity or usefulness, to those who criticize its male frame of reference (with some offering up the heroine’s journey as an alternative) or its inherently aristocratic (or autocratic) elitism.

Yet, who can deny the emotional resonance of the hero’s journey – and who hasn’t yearned for their own call to adventure?

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(6) PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS

 

The Penguin dictionaries are usually of high quality whatever the subject, but the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols is the standout for me.

That might be attributed to the collaboration of its original authors – French writer, philosopher and theologian Jean Chevalier, with French poet and explorer Alain Gheerbant. Their literary background shines forth in the lyrical quality or poetic resonance of the entries – although at times the entries can be somewhat overwhelming in the density of their style.

As for the book itself, well, it’s a dictionary…of symbols. Obviously. Although that understates just how comprehensive the entries are, both in quantity and quality – devoted to the symbolism of myths, dreams, habits, gestures, shapes, figures, colors, numbers, plants, animals and more found in mythology and folklore.

I’ll let Penguin’s own publishing entry speak for it – “This is a remarkable dictionary, exploring the vast and various symbols which abound in literature, religion, national identity and are found at the very heart of our dreams and sub-conscious…each entry is given its complete range of interpretations – sexual and spiritual, official and subversive, cultural and religious – to bring meaning and insight to the symbol”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(5) PETER DICKINSON –
THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS (1979)

 

Here be dragons!

And how! It’s like Jurassic Park, only even more awesome – with dragons! This is a work of “speculative natural history”, which addresses that most awesome question – how dragons might have really existed?

Or more precisely, is there an evolutionary hypothesis that could explain the existence of dragons of mythology and lore?

In doing so, it addresses the question posed by the title – the flight of dragons. Clearly, something extra is needed for the mass of dragons to be lifted by their limited wing area – and if not magic, what?

The answer is the central hypothesis of the work – that dragons were essentially fantasy dirigibles, held aloft by sacs of hydrogen, produced from their own digestive hydrochloric acid. From that, we have their evolution from dinosaurs to most of the tropes of dragons in fantasy, not least their fiery breath, evolved to burn off excess hydrogen but finding use as a weapon – although it also offers explanations for their toxic (or more precisely acidic) blood, their hoards and most other dragon tropes, with an element of legendary embellishment thrown in (intelligence and speech for example).

It also offers explanation for the saddest dragon trope – their absence from reality. Obviously, they were hunted to extinction by humanity and their acidic blood dissolved any bodily remnants that remained behind (so no dragon fossils – alas!)

It’s a nice fantasy theory, even if it seems somewhat contrived or forced at times by standards of biology – but damned if I don’t half believe it, and even more damned if I don’t totally wish that somewhere here or there be dragons…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(4) KATHARINE BRIGGS – A DICTIONARY OF FAIRIES (1972)

 

What it says on the tin, the definitive guide to that classic subject of British folklore – fairies.

A classic book, alternatively titled An Encyclopedia of Fairies, which now seems sadly out of print (but still available online), by a classic British folklorist – indeed THE classic British folklorist.

Of course, the term fairies now conjures up images of cute little gossamer-winged pixies like Tinkerbell.

In British folklore, fairies were much different, most aptly styled as the Fair Folk, itself a euphemism for things that would flay you and walk around in your skin – because you sure as hell didn’t want to draw their attention or conjure them up by using names more true to their nature, or worse yet, their true names. In fairness (heh), they weren’t always as extreme as to literally flay you and walk around in your skin, only on occasion and only some of them. Some of them were more neutral or even nice, although even the nice ones were usually weird or had weird alien morality. Indeed, alien is an apt description, as in many ways, the fairies of British folklore have been replaced with the aliens of modern folklore. And this book is a fascinating exploration, arranged as a dictionary in alphabetical entries (cross-referenced to other entries) of the various beings, creatures, attributes, themes and tropes of fairy folklore.

Also there’s an annual Katharine Briggs Folklore Award from 1982, named and awarded by the Folklore Society in honour of Briggs (who served as their president).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(3) BARBARA WALKER – WOMEN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS (1983)

 

She is the goddess and this is her body!

Also behold the monomyth! Not of Joseph Campbell’s universal hero, but of the universal goddess (although all heroes are her heroes). Or rather – the Goddess, since she is ultimately all goddesses. Virgin, mother, crone – god the mother and mother of god.

Now we get into my top trinity of my top ten books of mythology – the three B’s as I like to call them, although admittedly I have to force that a little for this entry from the first letter of the author’s first name. Interestingly, Barbara Walker has also written a number of classic references to knitting. Obviously our interest here consists of her books in neo-pagan feminism, of which this entry was first and foremost – as an encyclopedia reference to mythology and religion through the lens, or rather the dance, of the Goddess. Essentially, throughout all entries there is Walker’s monomyth of the archetypal Goddess throughout mythology and history – or rather prehistory (or perhaps herstory), as the Goddess was displaced, firstly into many goddesses, and secondly by male gods or God.

However, like neo-paganism or the goddess movement in general, Walker’s monomyth is not so much a matter of historical accuracy (as many of her historical sources and interpretations don’t hold up under scrutiny) as it is historical reconstruction – the goddess as sacred poetry rather than sacred history. Or as sacred dance – the ghost dance of the Goddess as it were.

Walker herself is an atheist, so she doesn’t believe in the Goddess as a supernatural entity but as a symbol – and one she proposes as healthier for our society.

As she quotes Eugene O’Neill in one of her entries:

“We should have imagined life as created in the birth-pain of God the Mother. Then we would understand why we, Her children, have inherited pain, for we would know that life’s rhythm beats from Her great heart, torn with the agony of love and birth, and we would feel that death meant reunion with Her, a passing back into Her substance, blood of Her blood again, peace of Her peace.” – Eugene O’Neill, “Strange Interlude”

Of course, Walker’s not just talking your New Age Goddess here, all sweetness and light or maiden and mother – baptized between her breasts. She’s also talking your Old Testament bitch-goddess, apocalyptic wh*re or classic White Goddess of Graves – crucified between her thighs.

But meh – that’s no different from my life anyway:

“Sometimes I am the sister who befriends you, sometimes I am the mother who holds you, and sometimes I am the lover who sticks one in your back.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

 

 

(2) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY (1867)

 

I believe in all the gods –
especially the goddesses.

Now we get into the second of my three B’s, the top trinity of my top ten books of mythology. And we’re going old school for this one, as in nineteenth century old school – named for its American author Thomas Bulfinch and published as a collection of three volumes after his death in 1867. Yet Bulfinch’s Mythology still remains a classic reference (and handily in the public domain) – as indeed it was for me as my introduction as a child to the world of classical mythology. Well, technically that was the first volume – the Age of Fable – which also featured a briefer recitation of Nordic mythology, admittedly a close second to my love for classical mythology. (The second volume – The Age of Chivalry – featured Arthurian legend, while the third volume The Legends of Charlemagne is pretty much what it says on the tin).

Looking back to it now, it’s somewhat dated and has its flaws as a reference – particularly as his obituary noted, it was “expurgated of all that would be offensive”. Or in other words, half the fun of classical mythology or all the sex and violence. (Indeed, his Wikipedia entry includes an uncited reference that Bulfinch was an anti-homosexuality activist in his final years. If true, that would have made for some awkwardness when compiling classical mythology – those gods tended to swing all ways). Which is somewhat disappointing, because having learnt that Bulfinch was a merchant banker, I fondly imagined him as staid banker by day and Bacchanalian by night, similar to the hedonistic heathen imagined by Chesterton in The Song of the Strange Ascetic.

However, it remains one of the most accessible single-volume references to classical mythology for the general reader – as Bulfinch wrote in his preface:

“Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”

Anyway, its impact as an introduction to classical mythology remains profound – if, deep within my psyche, there is any mythology that tempts me to actual religion, it’s classical mythology.

Yes – it’s the nymphs.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS-TIER?)

 

 

(1) BIBLE

 

The Hebrew dreaming and the great messianic ghost dance.

The holy book of smiting and begetting.

Chosen people and only son.

 

This is the big one – genesis and apocalypse, alpha and omega, allelujah and amen!

Readers of my top tens will be familiar with me playfully classifying the highest tier (or god-tier) entries as my Old Testament or New Testament – a tribute to the influence of the Bible. I do that in a few ways with my Top 10 Mythology Books (or Top 10 Mythologies), but of course at a fundamental level the Bible is itself my Old Testament and New Testament.

Of course, the Bible is helped into top spot in that for many people it is not just mythology but religion, in contrast to classical mythology or other ‘pagan’ mythologies it largely replaced . The Bible is also the heart, still beating in many ways, of ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture that is one of the two predominant cultural influences in what is often termed as Western civilization, along with the ‘Greco-Roman’ culture that vies with it as the other predominant cultural influence – sometimes in alignment and sometimes as rivals. Athens versus Jerusalem and all that – filtered through Rome. It is as the source for religion rather than mythology that most people come to it, as I did, even if I have lapsed from any religious belief in it.

However, it is the book that doesn’t stop giving, even after you stop believing. That is because of its enduring mythic resonance or narratives and language that in its best passages has an enduring lyrical or poetic quality.

In other words, I read the Bible as mythology rather than religion or in short, as poetry rather than history. Don’t get me wrong – my own hot take, to antagonize both believers and skeptics, is that the Bible is of course a lot less historical than fundamentalist believers usually maintain, but has more history than skeptics usually credit. This is a view influenced by Manfred Barthel’s What The Bible Really Says, which among other things proposes more naturalistic explanations of apparently supernatural miracles – even such things as the burning bush, and not in terms of what Moses was smoking. And also don’t get me wrong as to its literary quality – the Bible is an anthology after all, and one of uneven quality. It may be described by believers as the word of God but he could have used an editor. Or for that matter, better writers of a more modern novelistic style even for its better narrative parts, which tend to resonate more when adapted into more modern style – or screenplays.

I mean seriously, the Bible is the original Game of Thrones – people are often surprised just how much sex and violence is in it (or just how much sheer pagan enjoyment it can provide). It is the book of smiting and begetting after all. And as opposed to Game of Thrones, it finishes with a bang rather than a whimper with a much more sensational, if much trippier, finale, at least in the New Testament and the Book of Apocalypse, my personal favorite book in the Bible.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

 

 

TOP TENS – MYTHOLOGY: TOP 10 BOOKS (TIER LIST)

 

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

(1) BIBLE

(2) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY

(3) BARBARA WALKER – ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS

If the Bible is my Old Testament of my books of mythology, then Bulfinch’s Mythology and Barbara Walker’s Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets are my New Testament. And yes I know that in a literal sense the Bible is both my Old Testament and New Testament.

 

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(4) KATHERINE BRIGGS – DICTIONARY OF FAIRIES

(5) PETER DICKINSON – THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS

(6) PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS

(7) JOSEPH CAMPBELL – THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

(8) WESTON LA BARRE – THE GHOST DANCE

(9) RONALD HUTTON – THE TRIUMPH OF THE MOON

 

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(10) FRANCIS YOUNG – TWILIGHT OF THE GODLINGS