Curated playlist
Legendary progenitors
- NoahNoah is a figure whose name appears in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, and the writings of the Bahai Faith, making him one of the few characters shared across every major Abrahamic tradition. He is described in Genesis as the tenth and final…
- Adam and EveAdam and Eve are the first man and first woman in the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions. From them flows a startling claim. All of humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from one original pair. Their story…
- Venus (mythology)Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory, was so deeply woven into Roman life that the luckiest roll you could throw in a dice game was simply called "Venus." She was the divine ancestress…
- FreyrFreyr, whose name in Old Norse simply means "the Lord", once stood at the center of a golden temple in Uppsala, his statue carved with an enormous phallus, flanked by Odin and Thor. Worshippers came to him for peace, good harvests, and…
- Líf and LífþrasirLíf and Lífþrasir hide in a wood while everything around them burns. These two are the only humans the Norse cosmos spares from Ragnarök. They shelter in a place called Hoddmímis holt, eating morning dew as their only food. When the flames…
- AeneasAeneas was twice pulled back from death by gods who would not let him die. In Homer's Iliad, Aphrodite and Apollo snatch him from a duel with Diomedes of Argos, who nearly kills him, and carry him to Pergamos for healing. Later Poseidon, a…
- RaRa was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun, and the Egyptians called themselves the "Cattle of Ra." The name fit a strange origin story. In some accounts, humans were created from Ra's tears and sweat. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th…
- CybeleCybele was already ancient when Rome came for her in 204 BC. A Sibylline oracle had declared that a foreign enemy threatening Italy could be repelled if Rome brought the goddess of Pessinos to the city. The Roman Senate sent ambassadors to…
- YmirYmir is the primeval ancestor of all giants in Norse mythology, a being so enormous that when the gods finally killed him, his body became the world itself. His flesh became the earth. His blood filled the oceans. His skull arched upward…
- Ask and EmblaAsk and Embla were the first man and woman ever to exist, according to Norse mythology. Three gods, one of them Odin, came across these two figures and gave them everything a human being needs: breath, movement, intelligence, shape,…
- RígsþulaA single sheet of parchment from the fourteenth century holds the only surviving copy of Rígsþula. This fragment rests within Codex Wormianus, cataloged as AM 242 fol. The poem appears incomplete on this final page, following Snorri…