1st edition, Pierrot Publishing, 1979

(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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(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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New World Library, Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, 3rd edition

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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The Ghost Dance of 1889-1891 by Frederic Remington, 1890

(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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Oxford University Press

(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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Cambridge University Press, 1st edition

(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****
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Free ‘divine gallery’ sample art from OldWorldGods

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.