Myths from around the world address the questions human beings have always posed about their origins, their environments, their ultimate destinies, and the meaning of their lives. Although myth tradition’s numerous accounts of the creation of the cosmos, the nature of the afterworld, or the deeds of culture heroes are richly various in their particular details, recurring patterns nonetheless appear in tales that emerge from distinctly different cultures. Many cultural traditions, for example, include an account of a tremendous flood, a deluge that inundates the earth and destroys most forms of life, and stories of a sacred tree, a heroic monster-slayer, or a cunning trickster are also widespread throughout myth tradition. The occurrence of repeated themes and motifs within the myths of disparate peoples is a phenomenon that scholars have examined from various perspectives in efforts to identify ways in which experiences that human beings share have been embodied in narratives that circulate within diverse communities.
According to some theorists, for example, myth’s recurring patterns reveal features of the human psyche. Thus, from a Freudian perspective, mythic events symbolize the workings of the unconscious mind, and a culture’s tradition of myths can be seen as resembling an individual’s dreams. The Freudian theory of dream condensation, for instance, might be used to explain the appearance across myth traditions of the figure of the chimera, the fantastic beast that is composed of parts from different kinds of animals. According to Sigmund Freud, condensation takes place when the dreaming mind conjoins disparate elements from the waking world, and indeed this kind of transformation is readily apparent in the characteristics of the mythical creatures that populate tales told by many different peoples. The Jungian theories advanced by Joseph Campbell and other students of myth also afford a psychological understanding of mythic patterns. According to Carl Jung, myth tradition’s recurring symbols, figures, or actions are archetypes that arise from the collective unconscious, a repository of timeless images that all humankind possesses. The Divine Child, one of the archetypes identified by Jung, thus emerges from the collective unconscious to appear in various myths as a symbol of rebirth or the promise of renewal. For Campbell, the hero who undertakes a quest is an archetypal figure whose journey represents the human desire to realize spiritual fulfillment.
Other explanations of myth tradition’s recurring patterns focus attention upon human beings’ experiences within the natural world. For example, the deification of the earth in many cultural traditions signifies ancient peoples’recognition of its importance as the source of life. The sun, sustainer of all life, is also commonly deified, and in many traditions the earth and the sky are together represented as the primal parents who give birth to the world. Frequent occurrences of stories of the Fire Bringer—sometimes an animal and often a trickster or a god—underscore the importance of the emergence of fire as a technological development among ancient cultures, and tales of the culture heroes who teach people how to hunt for fish or game or how to plant and harvest crops are also commonplace throughout myth tradition. Ancient human beings’ relationship to the animal kingdom is emphasized in the many myths that feature animals as deities, tricksters, helpers, or other significant characters; indeed, in many cultural traditions, a divine Animal Master oversees the welfare of the earth’s wild creatures.The inevitability of death is a common theme within the world’s myths, and many cultural traditions include stories of the origin of death that serve to explain why it exists. Most myth traditions also envision an afterlife in the land of the dead, and, according to many different peoples, this place lies beneath the earth, in an underworld.
That an underworld is frequently conceived as the home of the dead is an appropriate expression of ancient peoples’ observation that both crops and creatures are absorbed by the earth after death occurs. According to these myths, the dead therefore dwell in a land that lies below the surface of the world, and this conception of the location of the afterworld often plays a role in a society’s burial customs. In some cultural traditions, including those of the ancient Egyptians and certain of the indigenous Australians, the sun is described as entering the underworld each day after it completes its journey across the sky. For these peoples and others, the west, the direction of the setting sun, serves as a symbol of the netherworld. The mountain and the tree are among the many other natural features that assume symbolic significance in many myth traditions. Because the mountain and the tree both rise into the sky, the traditional home of the gods, these features of the natural landscape are often represented as sites where the separate worlds of the heaven and the earth are symbolically linked. Thus, accounts of a sacred mountain or tree appear in the myths of a remarkable number of the world’s distinct cultural traditions.
Striking similarities among myths’ motifs cannot always be attributed to polygenesis, the independent emergence of common themes within diverse traditions. Indeed, scholars have traced many instances wherein stories are apparently carried from one people to another and thus eventually assimilated by other myth traditions. For example, it is believed that the Hebrew account of Noah’s flood is a version of a Mesopotamian story that is recounted in Gilgamesh, an ancient epic, and that a later Greek tale of a great flood is possibly derived from these early sources. Although these particular stories might indeed be related, and would therefore serve as an example of monogenesis, the deluge motif is generally regarded as a universal theme, one that appears in myths from every continent on earth. Many of the tales that describe a devastating flood clearly invite a psychological interpretation, for often the deluge is represented as cleansing the world of imperfections or of evil in preparation for its rebirth. In these myths, the flood’s destruction of the world leads to a fresh beginning when the process of creation unfolds anew. In numerous myths, the occurrence of the deluge motif obviously also serves to address one of the great dangers that people must confront in the natural world. It is likely, therefore, that many traditional stories of a flood are mythologized accounts of actual catastrophes.
The Thematic Guide to World Mythology introduces thirty common motifs that appear in tales gathered from cultures spanning over four thousand years of myth tradition. While each section offers multiple examples of one of myth’s recurring themes, these collections of stories are merely representative of the patterns that emerge from traditions around the world, and readers might therefore readily identify one or more of these motifs in many other myths. Indeed, it is not unusual to find several of myth’s recurring themes within a single tale, and therefore some of the stories recounted in the Thematic Guide are discussed in various sections of the book. Furthermore, because interrelated or overlapping themes frequently emerge among the categories of myth motifs outlined by the Thematic Guide, a list of topics provided at the end of each section refers readers to additional relevant discussions within the book. The recurring figure of the trickster, for example, plays many roles in different myth traditions, and some of these roles are elaborated in the Thematic Guide’s discussions of the culture hero and the messenger. Moreover, the trickster is often represented as an animal, and thus references to this figure also appear in the section that considers animals in myth.
Because myths, which generally originate in an oral tradition, commonly undergo changes as they are passed down to succeeding generations, multiple versions of many tales have been recorded. The Thematic Guide to World Mythology occasionally makes reference to two or more versions of a traditional account, and readers might well be familiar with additional examples. Not only do readers of myth encounter variant recordings of tales, they are also inevitably confronted with the range of variations in the spelling of characters’ names that is a result of the process of translating phonemes from one language to another. The Greek sky deity Kronos, for example, frequently appears as “Cronus,” and the Pan Ku of Chinese myth tradition is also called “Pan Gu.” Yet further confusion arises when a figure from one myth tradition is related to a figure from another who is known by a different name. Thus, in Mesopotamian myth tradition, the Sumerian goddess Inanna is identified as Ishtar by the ancient Babylonians, and, among European cultures, the Greek god Zeus is known as Jupiter in Roman myths. Furthermore, various specialized terms or phrases are commonly employed in the study of myth, and these are not always familiar to all readers. Because the Thematic Guide makes use of certain of these terms, a glossary is provided at the end of the text.
The motifs described within the Thematic Guide to World Mythology offer an overview of patterns that emerge in myth traditions and trace the repeated occurrence of one of these patterns through several different categories of narratives. Indeed, a remarkable number of myths are concerned with the establishment, the maintenance, or the disruption of order in the world. In tales of the creation or in accounts of the deluge, order arises from a state of chaos, and this recurring theme appears once again in stories of the heroic monster-slayer who must confront and overcome the forces of disorder and destruction. Characteristically, the dragon or the serpent serves as the emblem of disorder within these tales, and in several myth traditions, including that of ancient Egypt, the image of a bird carrying a snake in its claws represents the triumph of order over chaos. In tales that depict the separation of the earth and sky, the order of the newly created world is given shape, and in myth tradition’s accounts of the afterlife, the idea of order is extended to incorporate the realm of the dead. In many fertility myths, a waste land is made fecund when order is restored, and in tales that envision the coming of an apocalypse, a new order arises from the chaotic destruction of the world. The world is also reordered in stories of the trickster, the agent of disorder and disruption whose subversive acts are instruments of change. Given the etiological nature of all myths, it is not surprising that an interest in explaining and defining the order of the world lies at the heart of many kinds of narratives.

THE AFTERLIFE
Most of the world’s myth traditions include a vision of existence beyond death, existence that continues in an afterlife. While peoples’ creation myths explain how earthly life first begins, their stories of an afterlife address enduring questions about what might follow mortal life. Accounts from many cultural traditions depict the land of the dead as a realm that closely resembles the world of the living, but in others it is conceived as a grim, forbidding place where spirits dwell in darkness, often in an underworld. According to some myth traditions, the netherworld consists of two or more different regions, and the assignment of the dead to one place or another depends upon circumstances that are defined within these cultures. For example, within certain accounts of the afterlife, the destinies of the dead are determined either by their stations in life or by the manner of their deaths. Within other traditions, particularly those that envision a judgment of the dead, a separation of souls also occurs, and, according to the tales that circulate in these cultures, the souls of the wicked are punished in an afterlife of torment while those of the virtuous are rewarded in paradise or reborn to earthly life. Within the myths of many different cultural traditions, the passage from earthly life to the afterworld is represented as a journey undertaken by souls who must travel to a place of judgment or to their ultimate destination in the land of the dead.
The location of the kingdom of the dead is variously described within myth traditions. Quite frequently the dead are said to reside beneath the earth in an underworld, but some peoples envision the land of the dead as a realm that lies above the earth, a heavenly domain. For those peoples whose conception of the afterlife includes a vision of the judgment of souls, the dead are generally punished for their sins in an underworld and rewarded for their virtues in a celestial paradise. According to a few myth traditions, the world of the dead lies beneath the ocean, and in the tales of many cultures, the realm of the dead is separated from the world of the living by a body of water—a river, lake, or sea. Some myths describe the land of the dead as an island, and, in certain stories from the Irish tradition, the island home of the dead is located in the Otherworld, a magical domain that can be found on the earth. Indeed, according to the accounts of various traditions, the dead inhabit an invisible earthly realm, one that is often represented as lying to the west, the direction of the setting sun. Tales from some cultures describe the dead as spirits that move among the living, sometimes assisting mortals and sometimes preying upon them, and accounts from several traditions represent the journey of the dead as a return to earthly life, a reincarnation of the soul.
The earliest writings that make reference to an afterlife come from ancient Mesopotamia and describe the land of the dead as an underworld. Known as the Land of No Return or the Great Below, the chthonic kingdom of the dead, ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal, is depicted as a dark and desolate realm where thirsty shades seek nourishment from the dust or clay. Although a bleak and miserable existence is the lot of the ghostly dead, the Great Below is not a place of judgment and punishment, and all who dwell there, both deities and mortals, share a common fate. (Some descriptions of the Mesopotamian underworld make reference to the seven judges who attend upon Ereshkigal; however, these figures do not serve to judge the dead, but rather to enforce the law of the netherworld that prohibits those who have entered the realm of the dead from ever leaving it again.) To reach their destination in the Great Below, the dead must undertake a journey along the Road of No Return, a path that leads them through seven portals that are all guarded by sentries or demons. As they pass through the gates, the dead are shorn of all vestiges of their earthly lives, for, in accordance with the laws of the underworld, all who arrive there are received as equals in the afterlife.
The Mespotamian underworld is vividly described in tales that tell of living beings’ journeys to the realm of the dead. One myth, for example, relates the story of the goddess Inanna’s descent to the Great Below, and another recounts the journey of the god Nergal, who becomes the husband of Ereshkigal when he ventures to the underworld. Like others who take the Road of No Return, Inanna, the sister of Ereshkigal, is stripped of her jewelry and clothing as she passes through the seven gates, and once she enters her sister’s dark kingdom, she is subjected to all its miseries. In this tale, Inanna, the fertility goddess and the majestic queen of the heavens, is in fact restored to life and then rescued from the Great Below. Her release, however, comes with a price, for even the great goddess must abide by the laws of the underworld, and therefore Inanna, who is forced to name a substitute to take her place in the land of the dead, decides to choose her lover, the vegetation god Dumuzi.
The ending of the story of Nergal’s visit to the underworld is quite different from that reported in the accounts of Inanna’s descent. One of the lesser gods, Nergal is summoned to the Great Below after he insults Namtar, Ereshkigal’s emissary. Before he sets forth along the Road of No Return, Nergal is warned that he must refuse the food and drink that Ereshkigal will serve him, for those who accept what is offered in the underworld are thereafter subject to its laws. Unlike Inanna, Nergal is allowed to retain his worldly possessions as he passes through the gates, and when he reaches his destination, he is indeed welcomed with both food and drink. Although Nergal does not partake of the repast set before him, he does accept Ereshkigal’s offer to become his lover, and, by embracing her, he seals his own fate. Nergal’s attempt to escape his lot turns out to be a futile endeavor. He persuades Ereshkigal to allow him to travel to the realm of the gods to announce his betrothal and then fails to keep his promise to return to the netherworld. Ereshkigal, however, sends her emissary to bring him back, and as Nergal makes his final journey through the seven gates, the new husband of the queen of the dead is stripped of all the trappings of his former life.
According to the ancient Greek, Norse, and Aztec traditions, the dead are not all subject to the same destiny. Myths from all these cultures describe an afterlife in an underworld, but in both the Greek and Norse accounts, dead warriors or heroes are granted existence in a separate domain. And, in the tradition of the Aztecs, all those who die by violent means are afforded an afterlife in a celestial realm. According to narratives from all three traditions, the spirits of those who die of old age or other natural causes must undertake a journey to the underworld. These journeys are represented as arduous ordeals, and the dead are therefore customarily supplied with the objects they will need to reach their destination. To enter the kingdom of Hades, the Greek underworld, the dead must cross a river barrier by securing passage on the boat that is steered by Charon, the ferryman of the netherworld. In preparation for their trip, the dead are generally given a coin to pay the ferryman and cakes to feed Cerberus, the fierce, three-headed hound of Hades. Likewise, the dead who travel to Hel’s kingdom in Niflheim, the Norse underworld, are customarily provided with sturdy shoes. The journey to Mictlan, the Aztec underworld and the kingdom ruled by Mictlantecuhtli, is also fraught with obstacles and dangers, and the dead who travel there are usually supplied with a jade bead that can serve as currency. Like the Greek underworld, those of the Norse and Aztec traditions are bordered by water. According to Norse myths, the dead must cross the river Gjall, whose bridge is guarded by a sentry who must be paid with blood, and, according to the stories of the Aztecs, the dead must seek the help of a yellow dog as they cross the raging waters that surround Mictlantecuhtli’s kingdom.
Like the shades that dwell in the Mesopotamian underworld, those that reside in Hades, Hel, or Mictlan lead a dreary existence. With one exception, however, the dead who inhabit these underworlds are not subject to judgment or punishment. The exception appears in the Greek tradition, where Tartarus, the deepest and the darkest region of Hades, serves as the prison where the enemies of the gods endure eternal torture. Three judges preside in the Greek underworld, and their duty is to direct the souls of the dead to their proper destinations: while most shades travel the road that leads to a dismal afterlife in the Fields of Asphodel, the souls of great heroes, leaders, poets, and warriors take the road to Elysium, the realm of the blessed. In Greek tradition, the fate of the dead depends upon their earthly status, and this is also the case in the tradition of the Norse, another ancient warrior society. According to Norse myths, warriors who are slain on the field of battle are led by the Valkyries to Valhalla, the great hall of heroes that lies within Asgard, the heavenly home of the gods. Whereas the mighty and the valorous gather in Elysium and Valhalla, those who are spared an afterlife in the Aztec underworld include not only warriors, but also many others who suffer violent deaths. According to Aztec tradition, the celestial realm is composed of multiple layers, and suicides, victims of human sacrifice, and women who die in childbirth all ascend to these pleasant, sunny regions. Tlalocan, located on the fourth level of this heavenly world, is under the dominion of the rain god Tlaloc, and all who are killed by his bolts of lightning, drowned in his floods, or stricken with leprosy are granted an afterlife in his paradisiacal domain.
Myths from the Greek, Norse, and Aztec traditions also offer accounts of the “harrowing of hell,” the descent of living beings to the underworld. In tales told by the Greeks, for instance, Orpheus ventures to the realm of the dead in search of Eurydice, his beloved wife, and the great hero Herakles travels to Hades to capture Cerberus, the vicious guardian of the underworld. Although the living are usually prohibited from entering the land of the dead, Orpheus is able to charm both Charon and Cerberus with the haunting beauty of his singing, and Herakles succeeds in performing his last labor by using his great strength to overcome the netherworld’s ferocious hound in a wrestling match. In a tale from the Norse tradition, the god Hermod undertakes a journey to the underworld after Balder is slain and then sent to Hel’s kingdom. Hermod, too, is successful in his endeavor to enter the realm of the dead, for after he explains that he seeks to secure the release of Balder, the most beloved of the gods, the guardian of the bridge allows him to cross the river Gjall without paying with his blood. Quetzalcoatl is the harrower of hell in the Aztec tradition, and he travels to Mictlan to gather bones from which the gods can fashion a new race of human beings. Although Quetzalcoatl encounters no obstacles when he enters the underworld, Mictlantecuhtli is loath to let him leave, and he must therefore outwit the lord of the dead to make good his escape.
Death, according to some cultural traditions, is followed by a reckoning that determines the fate of every soul. Required to account for their earthly lives, the dead are brought to judgment, and the wicked among them are punished for their crimes. In ancient Egyptian tradition, where the land of the dead is conceived as an underworld, there is no afterlife for those who are punished, for, after judgment is passed, the souls of evildoers are consumed by Ammit, the monster whose epithet is “devourer of the dead.” The Egyptian underworld is ruled by Osiris, the resurrected god, and the dead must journey by ferryboat to reach the place of judgment at the foot of his throne. There, their hearts are weighed on the Scale of Justice, and those whose hearts are not heavy with their sins travel on to an afterlife in a world that resembles the earthly home of the living. The Egyptian kingdom of the dead shares several features with the underworlds described by other cultures: for example, souls must cross a river on a boat guided by ferrymen, and they must pass through seven guarded gates to reach the house of Osiris. In Greek tradition, the messenger god Hermes serves as the psychopompos, the guide who leads souls to the realm of the dead, and, in Egyptian accounts, a similar function is performed by Anubis, the jackal-headed god.
The underworld of ancient Persia’s Zoroastrian tradition is also a place of judgment and punishment. Whereas Egypt’s tales depict the weighing of hearts, in the Persian myths the deeds of the dead are entered as credits and debits in a ledger book. The judgment of souls takes place in the underworld, at the Bridge of Chinvat (the “Accountant’s Bridge”), and is overseen by three judges, Rashnu, Sraosha, and Mithra. According to the Zoroastrians, three immediate destinies await the souls of the dead. When their good deeds outnumber their wicked acts, souls pass into a heavenly realm that is called the House of Song. When their good and evil deeds are equal in number, souls cross into Hammistagan, a region of the underworld that is a kind of limbo. Finally, when lists of their evil deeds are longer than accounts of their acts of goodness, souls fall from the Bridge of Chinvat into a great abyss, and there they are punished. The punishment of the dead, however, is not a permanent condition, but rather a means of cleansing souls of their wrongdoing in preparation for an afterlife in a perfect world. According to the Zoroastrians, the forces of evil are destined to be defeated in an apocalyptic battle at the end of time, and therefore, on that last Judgment Day, all the dead will be resurrected in an earthly paradise.
Although paradise is frequently conceived as a heavenly domain, according to some of the Arctic region’s Inuit peoples, it is located underneath the earth. Paradise, in these accounts of the afterlife, is the destiny of the fortunate, and in an underground world where game and other foods are in plentiful supply, the souls of the dead dwell in comfort and warmth. The souls of others, however, journey to a cold land high up in the frosty sky, and there they are subjected to hardship and starvation. While the traditions of the widespread Inuit peoples characteristically envision a land of the dead, its location varies among the different groups. The Inuits of Greenland, for example, tell stories of the underworld kingdom that is ruled by Sedna, the great spirit of the sea and the queen of the dead. Sedna’s domain, at the bottom of the sea, is the destination of many of the dead, but the spirits of those who suffer greatly during their lives on earth enjoy an afterlife in a celestial paradise. Like the underworlds of many other cultural traditions, Sedna’s kingdom is separated from the world of the living by a barrier: to enter the realm of the dead, spirits must cross a bridge that is no wider than the edge of a knife. This underworld, too, is guarded by a sentry, a gigantic dog that keeps watch at its entrance.
Hiyoyoa, another underworld that lies beneath the sea, is the land of the dead in the tradition of the Wagawaga people of Papua New Guinea. A realm of beautiful gardens, Hiyoyoa is ruled by the god Tumudurere, who resides in the underworld with his wife and children. According to the tales told by the Wagawaga, the souls of the dead journey to Hiyoyoa to work in the gardens of the lord of the netherworld. Divers who swim in the depths of the ocean can sometimes catch a glimpse of Tumudurere’s exquisite horticulture, and occasionally marvelous plants from the land of the dead are even carried back to the world of the living. Unlike the denizens of Sedna’s dark and desolate underwater realm, the dead who dwell in Tumudurere’s lush kingdom are surrounded by beauty in the afterlife.
The myths of several cultures describe the land of the dead as an earthly realm, a region that is sometimes conceived as invisible to the living or one that is frequently represented as lying far to the west. In Irish tradition, the home of the dead can be found in the Otherworld, a mysterious kingdom that is also inhabited by various supernatural beings. Although the Otherworld is occasionally depicted as a subterranean realm, one that can be entered through lakes, caves, fairy mounds, or burial sites, it is most commonly portrayed as a collection of magical islands that are located within the western sea. According to some accounts, the dead journey to the Otherworld from the House of Donn, a small island that is the home of the ruler of the dead. Often called the “Islands of the Blessed,” the land of the dead is generally characterized as a place of plenty, a bountiful world where apple trees are always in fruit and food is supplied by magical cauldrons. In Polynesian tradition, the land of the dead also lies to the west, beyond the edge of the great sea. The legendary ancestral home of the peoples who migrated across the Pacific Ocean, Havaiki is the realm to which their spirits return in the afterlife. Although the dead journey westward in these accounts (as they do in the traditions of several Native American peoples as well), according to the Slavic people, the blissful abode of the dead lies in the east, beyond the rising sun.
According to Africa’s Ashanti people, Asamando, the realm of the dead, lies within the world of the living but remains hidden from view. In a tale told by the Ashanti, a grieving husband searches for the wives he has lost to death, and when he arrives in Asamando, he can hear the familiar voices of the wives who nonetheless remain invisible to him. Reassured by them that he will be reunited with his family in the afterlife, he returns to his village and marries once again. Indeed, stories of direct communication between the living and the dead also appear in other myth traditions, and in some of these the spirits of the dead move among the living. In Slavic tradition, for example, souls are not able to journey to the land of the dead if all the rites of burial have not been properly observed. These spirits, and those of suicides, murderers, and sorcerers, belong neither to the world of the living nor to that of the dead—and thus they are regarded as the “undead.” According to tradition, undead spirits, or vampires, sustain themselves by preying on the living, drinking their lifeblood or devouring their flesh.
Death, for some cultural traditions, signifies the end of one bodily existence and the beginning of another as souls undergo reincarnation. According to the accounts of the ancient Baltic peoples of Latvia and Lithuania, the spirits of the dead return to the earth in the form of animals or plants. Among the Ma’ Betisék people of southern Malaysia, the souls of virtuous people are reborn as human beings while the spirits of others inhabit animals or trees. The dead can be transmigrated into other forms as well, and in the tradition of the Bushmen of Africa’s Kalahari Desert, the dead are reembodied as heaven’s stars. The souls of the dead can also be reborn to human life, and in other African traditions, people are reincarnated within the clans to which they belong. The concept of the transmigration of souls also appears in the traditions of India and Buddhist China, cultures where the dead are rewarded or punished for their earthly deeds. According to these traditions, souls are judged after death and the forms of life to which they are eventually reborn are determined by this reckoning. Yama, the ruler of the underworld, judges the dead in Indian tradition, and in that of China, the ten Lords of Death decide the fate of every soul.