mythology

This is by far the best and most beaufiful translation of the Gilgamesh-epic that I have seen so far. The Dutch publisher Ambo/Anthos has a nice collection of ancient mythologies in luxery releases.

I don’t think I have to say much about the Gilgamesh. Most people are quite familiar with this Mesopotamian epic. It speaks about the king Gilgamesh and his adventures. Several plates have been found and the long and highly informative introduction speaks about the world of Gilgamesh, the writing in which the texts have been found, the discoveries of the tablets, etc.

The translation is well-done and has kept the strange style of the tablets, with it’s repetitions and oddly going sentences. This may not make the reading easier, but it is good to for the atmosphere of these ancients texts.

In the back notes per tablet and what completes the book, a list of names and weights. <4/2/03>

Mesopotamian myths keep appealing to the Western mind. They sure are fascinating, partly because of the fact that the Mesopotamian culture (5000 years ago) was one of the earliest ‘high civilisations’ and it had a vast influence on our own culture and literature. McCall wrote a very historical book, much more than the other three books above. A large part of the book is dedicated to the descriptions of who found what text when and in what condition. Also there is a table what tablets were found where, if the same texts were found somewhere else too, when they were written, how large they are, etc. Just like in the other books in these series, McCall retells the myths and tales thus making you familiar with heroes, semi-gods, gods, etc. Wonderfull are the stories about rebellious gods, the great flood, goddesses falling in love with humans and over and over again reminding of stories familiar to us in another way. A very nice book to read. <26/9/05>

Persian Myths is a subject I am not totally unfamiliar with, but I am certainly no expert. Exactly a year ago I reviewed another book about Persian mythology and also I have some Zoroastrian literature. Just like The Wise Lord Of The Sky this booklet is mostly about the pre-Zoroastrian Persia (nowadays Iran). Curtis re-tells tales and myths and while doing this you become familiar with the most important deities, characters, etc. It is a nice book to have on the bookshell, because there is an index and a bibliography and the book itself is definately worth a read. <26/9/05>

I bought the Dutch translation this book on a “mega-book-manifestation”. I don’t know about other countries, but in the Netherlands (and for example Germany) we have cheap bookshops that sell overstocks, books that ran out of the ‘fixed price time’, reprints and the like. We call them “white bookshops” or “book-discount”. Since a few years there are such sales in massive halls for a few days. On one of the biggest of these I ran into this book. It is a real ‘white bookshop book’, meant for a large audience that isn’t looking for highly informative books, but cheaper books with a lot of images and a large size (‘look books’ instead of ‘read books’). Over the years these mass-productions got better, so once a while I run into one that appeals to me too. When I saw this one, the first thought that popped into my head was that I not only didn’t have a book with Persian myths yet, but I didn’t know of any either. At first sight the book looked a little cheap as described above. Still, in it there are myths about the creation of the world, the origin of good and evil, the first man, etc. Mostly from the pre-Zoroastrian time too. The myths are retold; readable, but of course you don’t get the original atmosphere. Still the texts are very interesting and you can see much similarities with later “Indo-European” mythology. Further in the book the stories are mostly hero-epics from the “Shah Name”, an 11th century writing which title means “Book Of Kings” by the poet Firdawsi/Ferdosi. “Wise Lord of The Sky” has a good index, bibliographical information and a short dictionary, so all in all not a bad buy! The Amazon version is $ 10,- for 144 10.25×9.5 inch pages, so… <10/9/04>

It seems that there is no English version of this book yet. Peter Toonen is a Dutch writer/journalist, but also an aurareader. He appears to be an all-round seeker for knowledge/information and his book touches numerous different fields of it. Apparently the book seemed to me very new-age and in fact it is, but this is definately a different and better book than anything from the new-age corner that I ever laid my eyes on. Not too much of the ‘fluffy bunny talk’, but actually a pretty difficult book.

So, you may wonder, what is it about then? Well, the title means “the natural time” and the subtitle says “messages from the Mayas for the New Age”. I first thought that this was a book about the Maya-calenders, but this isn’t really true. As a matter of fact, the purpose of this book seems to be twofold. The writer would like to see our unnatural, artificial and actually useless Gregorian calender replaced by the much more natural “Synchrone Order”, the “Dreamspell calender” of José Argüelles (the famous Maya expert) based on the 13 Moons calender of the Mayas. The second idea behind the book is informing it’s readers about the end of many ancient calender that we have to face in our lifetimes. All of the many (post-)Mayan calenders, Egyptian, Chinese and other calenders all end on 21 december 2012. Toonen explains why, what may be the results of these ‘whys’ and has advices for what to do until that time. Many experts think the earth will be destroyed like at the demise of Atlantis and indeed there are several (cosmological) facts that make this theory frightingly credible. Toonen foresees big changes too, but he is more optimistic about the outcome for the human race. Anyway, I suggest you should read for yourself if you are interested.

A bit too much Toonen takes it for granted that you are familiar with the discussed material and his previous book “What Did The Mayas Know?” (1997). Especially in the beginning you get a lot of terms and sayings that you (or at least myself) are not familiar with. “Dreamspell”, “wavespell”, “bhaktum”, “kin”, etc., etc. During the book these things get clearer, but a short overview may have been handy.
Then there is the point that the book can get extremely technical in the fields of mathematics, science, pseudo- science, astronomy and astrology and the information comes in dizzying amounts. These subjects aren’t even the only ones dealt with, because there is also a lot of mythology, folklore, history, archealogy, zoology and quite a lot of new-age in the book. However sometimes Toonen gets pretty ‘fluffy’, his overall approach and writing is realistic enough for me.

Also his manner of writing is agreeable, but unfortunately he misses his goal to get ‘his’ Dreamspell calender to his readers! A lot of detailed information is scattered throughout the book and often I don’t even know what information goes with what calender or where it fits into the rest. I have read the whole book, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you how this Dreamspell calender works. There are wavespells, kins, sunseals, tones, colours, small and large cycles and even more. Nowhere all info is to be found in one place or explained as a whole so in the end I still don’t know who to tell what day it is…

Further in the book are personal parts in the font Times New Roman and informative parts in Arial. I don’t know the exact idea behind the personal parts and I quickly stopped reading them.

My conclusion about the book is that it is for people who seriously want to undertake the study and work to change their lives according to the “Synchrone Order”. This is no book to read, but to study and I am positive that if you feel upto that, it will be able to fill a lot of your time. I definately have to read it again (some time before 21/12/12) to hopefully have it make some sense to me. <25/7/02>

This book is old and out of print for decades, but quite well accessible second hand. “The Garden Of The Gods” is a book about the world mythology with Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Indian, Scandinavian and Celtic mythology. The tex is alright, a mix of the myths (without much sources) and scholarly explanation (history, etc.). There are obvious flaws, blanks and misunderstandings and here and there the writer goes a bit too much in a certain (naturalistic) direction, but in general, Hamel has been quite objective. The biggest reason to buy this book are the magnificent drawings by Anton Pieck, a famous Dutch artist of old. His style may not be too fitting for the Egyptian part, but the Scandinavian and Celtic drawing are superb. A nice read and a great watch! <28/1/06><3>

This is a very nice book about “Turkish mythology”. Actually the title is not totally correct, because the book speaks about the mythology of the “Oghuz” people. A people from central Asia that spread to Mongol, Siberia and for example nowadays Turkey. Klerk is a Dutch woman who happened to run into a collection of this mythology and she was captured by it. She kept looking for more while living in Turkey. When she moved back to the Netherlands she has thaught Turkish for many years and still she acts as interpreter. After many years she decided to write a book about the subject, because it is largely unknown in the Netherlands.

The first half is a wonderfull and very interesting introduction into “Turkish mythology”. Klerk writes about history of the peoples, important persons in this history, how the texts came to us, the Asian singer-poet tradtion, shamans, etc. All this is written very clearly with large quotes from old texts. It is striking to see the similarities with Northern-European mythology at times. There is a tree of life reaching for the polar star, there are giants and gods, trips are being made to upper- and underworlds and souls of the deceased are got back after leaving alongside the watcher dog of the underworld. Some happenings are quite like Western myths. And the most eye-catching thing is that the “Gök-Türk” look a lot like runes! Klerk proves that she has understand the mythology well and writes well about it. She does miss possible references to initiation practises.

The second half consists of eight stories in translation. After the first story of creation which is much like the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, these are mostly heroic stories of fights against monsters and wars between peoples. Rather bloody all by the way.

I can suggest this book to everyone interested in mythology, also when your interest lays mostly in the Indo-European ‘section’. Apparently there are also similarities between Indo-European and non-Indo-European mythologies.

The book is in Dutch though. <7/5/05>

Celtic Myths * Miranda Jane Aldhouse-Green * isbn 0292727542 * 1994
Norse Myths * Raymond Ian Page * isbn 0292755465 * 1991
Persian Myths * Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis * isbn 0292711581 * 1993
Mesopotamian Myths * Henrietta McCall * isbn 0292751303 * 1991

Speaking of inflation. The first owner of these booklets bought Dutch translations in september 1996 for Æ’ 5,- each (a ticket is still in one of the books). 9 Years later, I pay € 5,- (euro) for every book second hand! That is 2,20371 times as much and that for second hand copies…

But the books have hardly been opened, they didn’t turn yellow, there are no stains in it and on first sight they seemed interesting enough to me to buy, even while every book is only about 80 pages. Because I thought this was a complete series, I bought them all. Now I see that there are at least two more about Egyptian and Greek myths. Oh well.

I was mostly interested in the book of Miranda Green. Green has written quite a few books about the Celts. I was certain that I had at least one book of hers, but apparently I don’t. I probably had one in my hand some time and for some reason decided to not buy it (yet). I started these series with her wonderfull book Celtic Myths. The book first says where our information comes from, then explains the difference between Irish and Welsh mythology and texts and in the rest of the book, keeps these two apart. I loved reading her rewritten tales and myths with explanations throughout. Green makes you familiar with the main characters, gods, styles of writing, texts, etc. in a very easy-to-read fashion. The book speaks about both mythological as historical subjects which makes this book a marvelous insight in the world of the Celts, especially for ‘beginners’ but also for those who have already read some more. There is an index and a short bibliography to makes this book complete.

As those of you who follow Monas.nl closely know, I am currently reading mostly about Norse Myths. The booklet of Page is a bit disappointing. Maybe I already dug too deep in the subject, but this book is very superficial and not too good. Maybe it can serve as a first introduction, but nothing more.

Persian Myths is a subject I am not totally unfamiliar with, but I am certainly no expert. Exactly a year ago I reviewed another book about Persian mythology and also I have some Zoroastrian literature. Just like The Wise Lord Of The Sky (reviewed elsewhere) this booklet is mostly about the pre-Zoroastrian Persia (nowadays Iran). Curtis re-tells tales and myths and while doing this you become familiar with the most important deities, characters, etc. It is a nice book to have on the bookshell, also because there is an index and a bibliography and the book itself is definately worth a read.

Mesopotamian Myths keep appealing to the Western mind. They sure are fascinating, partly because of the fact that the Mesopotamian culture (5000 years ago) was one of the earliest ‘high civilisations’ and it had a vast influence on our own culture and literature. McCall wrote a very historical book, much more than the other three books above. A large part of the book is dedicated to the descriptions of who found what text when and in what condition. Also there is a table what tablets were found where, if the same texts were found somewhere else too, when they were written, how large they are, etc. Just like in the other books in these series, McCall retells the myths and tales thus making you familiar with heroes, semi-gods, gods, etc. Wonderfull are the stories about rebellious gods, the great flood, goddesses falling in love with humans and over and over again reminding of stories familiar to us in another way. A very nice book to read.

All four booklets come with black and white photos, maps and images. A nice set to have on the bookshelf and to use to look something up quickly. I am happy about the quality of the Celtic, Persian and Mesopotamian books, but I don’t know if it is just the Norse book that is of less quality or that the same will be said about the others by people who are well informed about those mythologies. I also have more literature about the Celts, but I still love the book of Green, so the disappointment about the Norse Myths may probably just be due to the writer. <26/9/05>