/lit/ - Literature

>>18815427
Matthew Mark Luke and Thomas

>>18815427
gayreek /thread

>>18815427
Greek mythology has the best aesthetics and it’s most influential on western culture, but there’s too much cooming. Like 75% of the stories are about horny gods chasing teen pussy or boy ass, or about nymphs tricking twinks, or jealous wives punishing unfaithful men.

>>18815487
I'm pretty sure by mythology he meant the false pagan religions anon :^)

>>18815487
>>18815606

Greek heroes are some of the best, but Norse gods undermine the Greek gods.

>>18815427
The medieval romance/epic meta, because that’s where various mythologies come together in one canon

>>18815971
I find Norse to be more atmospheric and melancholy, considering it revolves around the depressing notion of a world doomed to end horribly, but maybe that’s just Wagner colouring my readings

>>18815606
I just like to enjoy mythology even though I am not pagan, can’t a non-pagan man enjoy various myths anymore?

Hindu stuff is honestly just shonen anime-tier with insane powerlevels and sick stuff.
It's a shame that it's made for Hindus though, they fucking suck at any kind of creative endeavour.

>>18816019

>>18815971
>but Norse gods undermine the Greek gods.
>>18815983
What are the Norse aesthetics and core points?
>>18815972
>The medieval romance/epic meta, because that’s where various mythologies come together in one canon
How does that work? What does that mean? Literally or figuratively?

>>18815427
egyptian pantheon is cool as fuck and really underrated.

>>18815427
Greeks hands down. I also like the Egyptian gods because they are so distinct and the take on the Nile being Ra's coom-blast will never cease to amuze me. Norse mythology is gay and retarded and most certainly written by schizoids high on shrooms and contaminated wine.

>>18816169
>Norse mythology is gay and retarded and most certainly written by schizoids high on shrooms and contaminated wine.
Why do you say that?

>>18815427
Celtic mythology

>>18816061
>How does that work? What does that mean? Literally or figuratively?
you read enough medieval romances, you realise they are all interwoven

>>18816061
>What are the Norse aesthetics and core points?
basically LOTR

>>18816132
t. furfag
I totally agree

>>18817164
>>18816132
Any good books on Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern religion and mythology that are not insanely long?

>>18816169
>Norse mythology is gay and retarded and most certainly written by schizoids high on shrooms and contaminated wine.
a lot of Norse mythology is actually much more down to earth than especially Egyptian mythology
I often find people who think Norse mythology is really wacky just haven't actually read much of it

>Egypt
>Hellenistic
>Celtic
>Shinto
>Tolkien
power gap
>pre-Islamic Arabia
>Hindu
>Nord
>Aztec
>North American indigenous

>>18818008
Is this a best-to-worst or a worst-to-best

>>18816061
>What are the Norse aesthetics and core points?
Loki’s betrayal is excellent. Starts out as a mistreated outsider, yet is still “part of the family.” Is utilized by the gods for his craftiness, but despised for that very reason as well.

In particular I like how Loki’s tricks and deceit can be read in escalating order. With it starting out as random dumb shit usually to get out of trouble, to more directly interfering in the lives of the other gods, all the way to murdering Balder and causing Ragnarok

If read as a progressive downfall, Loki’s story is really bleak and luciferian in nature. And yet you can see that he has a somewhat reasonable justification, given that he was an outsider to his own family

I think almost every mythology is cool, but they do different things.

Like, if Greek Mythology is a Tragedy, Hindu is a Shonen Action anime, and Aztec is Cosmic Horror.

Mesoamerica is one of my biggest interests, so I have a bias for Mesoamerican religion and mythology, but to be honest even as somebody who does multi page writeups on Aztec politics and Maya water mangement systems for shits and giggles. I find the mythology sort of hard to get into. Not because the mythology isn't cool, but even though Mesoamerica is itself a niche topic, actually getting a good understanding of their mythology is especially hard: There's the scarcity of sources, there's the obtuse nature of dealing with decades old english translations of centuries old Spanish translations that lose a lot of the connotations of the original languages, not all of which we even understand entirely... and that's assuming the text even HAS translation, there are dozens of texts on Aztec history and mythology that don't have english translations to this day.

I usually fight against the idea that we "don't know" anything about Mesoamerica or there's "no sources left": Yes, the Spanish book burnings erased thousands if not tens of thousands of texts and is honest of the greatest historical losses in human history, but there's still a lot more left then people realize, at least/especially when it comes to the Aztec: Duran's history is hundreds of pages of detailed info on Aztec history down to specific campaigns and political incidents; Sahagun's is a 13 volume work touching on every aspect of the society and culture, and those are just 2 sources...

....but mythology, due to the authors being Spanish often and not fully understanding it themselves; due to the Spanish not wanting to detail pagan religion too much, and due to just the abstract nature of it rather then being hard factual info we can try to asses is particularly hard to parse and interpret, and there's a lot more guesswork involved.

I think a good example of this is the 3 part dump I did here about Huitzilopotchli, and how there are common misconceptions about him online, and that some assumptions made by academic sources regularly may even be incorrect. https://desuarchive.org/co/thread/123147562/#123163525..

None of this is to discourage people from learning about it: There's tons of cool shit you can learn about even if you don't wanna get too into the weeds about it, and if anybody has questions I will answer to the best of my ability time permitting, but yeah, once you really start to dig into it, I think you "interpet" Aztec mythology more then you "learn" Aztec mythology, if that makes sense? Especially once you get into Maya or especially especially Zapotec and Mixtec which have way less sources, let alone Totonac, Purepecha, Otomi, Huastec, etc.
>>18818008
I dare you to explain what you think you know about Aztec mythology. I'd be willing to bet you don't actually know much about it.

>>18818328
>Maya water mangement systems
this is highly relevant to my interests.

>>18818328
Based.
Honestly, you need to learn spanish if you want to get more into it. Even as a mexican it is hard to get resources. Also, you will love the musems in mexico city.
You may want to try to learn a bit of nahuatl too. The basics, at least, as it is pretty much impossible to learn it fully without visiting an indigenous community, and even then you will end up just learning a 'variant' and not the classical language which is dead.
Also, strangely enough, there are a lot of french studying nahuatl and prehispanic cultures. They seem to be quite interested in it.
Check out the INAH youtube channel (National Institute of History and Archeology in mexico). It's all in spanish, but there are absolutely kino lectures there. Research about mesoamerica is still ongoing and getting more and more popular each day.

>>18818366
I never did a full dump on it, but you can see a shorter one here: desuarchive.org/his/thread/5506706/#5528682 and a longer version I never finished here: desuarchive.org/k/thread/39546199/#39557233

There's been additional major findings on Tikal's water mangement system (see pic) since I typed those up btw, such as a filtration system

Also, it's Aztec, not Maya, and I don't think I touch on it too much in those links, but IMO Texcotzinco/Texcozingo is the single coolest example of Mesoamerican waterworks. It was a retreat for royalty from Texcoco, it's watering systems allegedly built by the city's most famous king, Nezahualcoyotl, who built a number of other aqueduct and dike systems and wrote a great deal of poetry, some examples allegedly written by him survive today

It sourced water from a spring in the Sierra Nevada mountain range around 5 miles away, with the aquaduct that transported the water at times reaching 150 feet above ground. This brought it a hill where it flowed into a series of branching channels and pools to regulate the flow speed, with the water then travelling over another aquaduct over a large gorge between the peaks of that hill and Texcotzinco itself, wherin the aquaduct formed a circuit around it's peak, the water flowing into various shrines and displays, and being directed into artificial waterfalls to water the plants in the gardens at the hill's base, with different sections of the gardens mimicing different biomes with their specific plant life

A cut down description of the gardens and the shrines:

>These parks and gardens were adorned with rich...ornamented alcazars (summerhouses) with their fountains...canals... lakes and their bathing-places and wonderful mazes, where he had had a great variety of flowers...and trees of all kinds, foreign and brought from distant parts... and the water intended for the fountains, pools and channels for watering the flowers and trees...came from its spring: to bring it, it had been necessary to build strong, high, cemented walls of unbelievable size, going from one mountain to the other with an aqueduct on top which came out at the highest part of the park...The water gathered first in a reservoir... with historical bas-reliefs, and ...flowed via two main canals...running through the gardens and filling basins, where sculptured stelae were reflected in the surface. Coming out of one of these basins, the water ‘leapt...on the rocks, falling into a garden planted with all the scented flowers of the Hot Lands...it seemed to rain, so... violently was the water shattered upon these rocks. Beyond this...there were the bathing-places, cut in the living rock... The whole of the rest of this park was planted... with all kinds of trees and scented flowers, and there were all kinds of birds apart from those that the king had brought...all these birds sang harmoniously and to such degree that one could not hear oneself speak

>>18818441
painfully based, i'll be reading all of this tomorrow.
i went to a Maya exhibit at a local museum last week. it was pretty cool.

>>18818441
Haha what the hell, that's cool as shit. I bookmarked both of your threads. Its crazy that the native americans basically experienced their own apocalypse and what the pilgrims were up against were some pre-industrial mad max nomads

>>18815638
>croatia flag
pffft hahahahahahah

>>18818328
>>18818441
>t. overman. I bow.

The Children of Lir

>As the rule of Tuatha Dannan, the 5th invader of Ireland, came to an end, there was a competition to find the new king. The finalists of this competition were Lir of Derravaragh and Bobh Dearg of Munster. Both were worthy kings but Tuatha Dannan chose Bobh for he had a wife and children; and was therefore a more compassionate man.

>This result angered Lir, so to appease Lir, Dearg invited him to the castle to feast for three days and nights. At the end of this feast, Dearg offered his daughter Aobh to wed Lir.

>Aobh and Lir were wed and she bore him four children; Fionnuala, Aodh, Fiachra and Conn. To the devastation of Lir, Aobh died in the birth of their twins. He had loved his wife very much and was crushed by her passing. He filled his life with his children to avoid the pain.

>In an attempt to console Lir, Dearg sent Aoife, one of his other daughters, to wed Lir. Lir, however, was so enamoured with his children that he did not give Aoife the attention she desired. This made her bitter and angry. To get her revenge on Lir, she cursed his four children to become swans for 900 years; 300 years in Lough Derravaragh near their father, 300 years in the sea of Moyle and 300 years in the waters of Irrus Domnann. The curse would be undone when a king’s son from the north married a king’s daughter from the south.

>Lir, realising his children were missing, went hunting for them. Eventually, he heard their voices from a river, but to his surprise these voices were coming from 4 swans.

>Lir spent the next 300 years with his children, entertaining them to help them forget the fact that they were swans. The time came for the children to move. They bade their father good bye and promised they would return in 600 years.

>After a difficult 300 years in the turbulent sea of Moyle, the children were happy to move onto their next and final location. They took a detour to fly over their father’s land only to find that he and his people were no longer there. With heavy hearts they began their final 300 years as swans.

>Finally 900 years were up and the swans became human. But they were old and without the magic to sustain them; and therefore sadly died, but not before they could be baptised into the new religion of the land; Christianity.

>>18819581
The Birth of Cu Chulainn

>Connor the brave and powerful was the king of Ulster. He had a sister, Deichtre, who rivalled the king in her bravery and thirst for adventure. Being the sister of a king, Deichtre was expected to marry a nobleman – and so she was betrothed to Sulatim Mac Roigh.

>On the morning of their wedding, Deichtre and her 50 handmaidens were getting ready in the castle. But, when it was time for the wedding to begin, they were nowhere to be found. Deichtre had run away for one last adventure in the Otherlands.

>Soon after she arrived in the Otherlands, she accidentally swallowed a mayfly in her wine. Suddenly Lugh of Long Arm appeared before her and told her that as she swallowed the mayfly, she was to bear his child.

>Back in the mainland, Connor and his men searched and searched for Deichtre. To mark a year of searching, they had a feast. During the feast a flock of 50 birds came and destroyed the castle’s crops. The men chased these birds into strange lands until nightfall. They decided to pause their search and find shelter for the night. They came across a hut which was, unbeknownst to them, inhabited by the heavily pregnant Deichtre and Lugh. One of Connor’s men asked for shelter in the hut overnight, Lugh and Deichtre agreed.

>Connor requested the company of the lady of the house for the night, without realising this was Deichtre. He was told she could not join him as she had been taken by the pains of childbirth. Connor and his men went to sleep, but when they woke the hut no longer surrounded them. Instead they were on a bare hillside. Next to Connor was a cloaked woman holding a child. She turned to reveal herself as Deichtre. She confessed she had sent the birds so that her brother would find her and bring her and her baby back to the castle as she did not want to raise her child in the Otherlands.

>This child was named Setanta under the instruction of Lugh, but was later renamed Cu Culainn after he slew the hound of Culainn the Smith.

>>18818441
Ok but how do I lean even more about mesoamerican water management? Any books to recommend?

Sumero-Babylonian.

>>18819581
>>18819654
What's the moral here?

>>18818441
>Finally, good order and an efficient police system are maintained among them
anon, tell me more about the police/justice system of the Aztecs and the Mayas.