Mythology Explained

Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the Antichrist. We're going to dive into a treatise written in the 10th century that details that Antichrist's entire life; it was a seminal work, and though short, it's packed with information, taking from scripture, of course, but also many other works written by philosophers and theologians in previous centuries.

Let's get into it.

In the 10th century, Adso of Montier-en-Der, a monk and abbot, wrote a treatise on the Antichrist in a letter he sent to Queen Gerberga of France. It became the standard mediaeval reference work on the Antichrist, and it's the perfect work to explore in this video because it covers the Antichrist's entire life, drawing on a number of other works: scripture, of course, but also other exegesis still extant from centuries past.

The Antichrist will be the antithesis of Christ, diametrically opposed in every way. Effectively, the two form an intricate and elaborate dichotomy in which each is the opposite reflection of the other. Where Christ is humble, the Antichrist will be proud. Where Christ champions the lowly and judges sinners, the Antichrist will persecute the lowly and exalt sinners. Christ is the incarnation of virtue, and the Antichrist will be the incarnation of vice, something he will blight the masses with, a sickness of the mind that spreads like the plague. His coming will destroy the law of the gospel and drive people to worship demons. And he will seek to glorify himself as only God should be. In the time of his rule, he will endeavour, wielding every wickedness at his disposal, to destroy the human race, but ultimately, though his evil will be great, he will not survive the last judgement, destroyed by Christ

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2:30 Nyx's House
5:00 Nyx's Children
6:02 Nyx in the Iliad
9:59 Nyx Vs Zeus

Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Nyx, a primordial deity and the personification of night, one of the most powerful goddesses, if not the most powerful goddess, in all of Greek mythology. First, we're going to look at what Greek mythology has to say about Nyx, which can be broken down into three parts: Nyx's role in the creation myth given in Hesiod's Theogony, Nyx's dark and shadowy house at the edge of creation, and some information about the Trojan War that dovetails into Nyx's near confrontation with Zeus in which she protects her son Hypnos and basically scares the king of the gods away. After covering Nyx's mythology, we're going to wrap the video up by comparing Nyx and Zeus to see which of the two is more powerful, to see whether one passage from the Iliad that says "Night that can overpower all gods and mortal men" holds any water.

I've included a couple of time stamps in the description, so if you're not interested in hearing about the creation myth, a topic already covered by this channel, or if you just clicked for the Nyx vs Zeus comparison, you can skip ahead.

Let's get into it.

Chaos, the great void, was the first deity to come into existence, self created and emerging from literally nothing. Chaos was all the empty space that necessarily had to exist for creation to begin. Subsequently, a series of self-created deities then materialised. These were: Gaia, the earth, Tartarus, the abyssal chasm beneath the earth, a great pit existing as a sort of mirrored reflection of the sky - though the sky was yet to be born - and Eros, the personification of sexual desire, the power that permeated the universe and permitted the phenomenon of procreation, whether from a union between two gods, as would happen later, or from independent procreation, also called parthenogenesis, derived from the Greek word for virgin birth, a mode of reproduction that applied to chaos, who independently produced two primordial deities, Nyx and Erebus, as well as to Gaia, who independently produced various physical aspects of the world, namely: Ourea, mountains, Pontus, the Sea, and Uranus, the sky.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video we're going to discuss the five races (gold, silver, bronze, heroic, and iron) of humanity as they are laid out in one of the myths of Greek mythology.

Let's get into it.

In Greek mythology, there are 3 myths about the creation of humanity: one where the Titan Prometheus is the creator, one involving a man and a woman who throw stones over their shoulders, and one in which there are five races created in succession through divine experimentation. We're going to quickly summarise the first two before spending the majority of the video covering the five races.

In the first version, Prometheus and Epimetheus were tasked with the creation of humanity by Zeus. Prometheus, the intelligent brother, was hindered in this because Epimetheus, characterised by impulsivity and simplemindedness, apportioned all of the survival traits to other animals, leaving humans without a defence mechanism when it was their time to be created. To compensate for this, Prometheus bestowed them with noble form, giving them the upright appearance of the gods, and he went up to heaven and used the sun to light a torch, bringing it back down to the mortal plane and gifting fire to humanity. In the second version, mankind had grown so wicked that Zeus and Poseidon used their powers in concert to flood the world. Brought to the brink of extermination, humanity was saved by Prometheus, who warned his son Deucalion of the impending disaster. Together with his wife, Pyrrah, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, Deucalion found salvation aboard a boat, allowing the pair to ride out the seas rising up and consuming the continents. Eventually, Zeus relented and the water receded, and Deucalion and Pyrrha became the progenitors of the human race, but in unconventional fashion. The two of them threw stones over their shoulders, and each stone thrown in this way became a person, Deucalion's becoming men and Pyrrha's becoming women.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss who Cratos really is in Greek mythology. We're going to start off with a quick overview of the video game character who shares the same name for those unfamiliar with him, and then we're going to cover virtually everything there is to say about Cratos, the Greek god of strength, which is far more feasible than it sounds, for he plays a smaller role in Greek mythology than most other gods. Our discussion about Cratos can be broken down into three segments: his role as one of the guardians of Zeus' citadel, his betrayal of the Titans, and his chaining of the Titan Prometheus.

Let's get into it.

The protagonist of the beloved God of War Franchise, Kratos is one of the most popular video game characters of all time. Before he moved North to begin a new life of anonymity in a stark land ruled over by Norse gods, Kratos destroyed Olympus and exterminated the Greek pantheon. So complete was the destruction he unleashed that even the realm over which the Greek gods ruled was literally unmade, reduced to a place of chaos and cataclysm once devoid of the godly power needed to keep the elements in order. For example: when Helios was killed, the sun was extinguished, darkened by the black shroud of an opaque ceiling of cloud cover; when Poseidon was killed, the seas rose and flooded the land, and when Zeus was killed, the sky became a great tempest - all wind, lightning, and tornadoes. The Greek saga is punctuated by kratos running himself through with the blade of Olympus, a grievous, self-inflicted wound that, while not a mortal blow, does succeed in destroying, intentionally so, a great power that existed with him, the power of hope, which he became imbued with when he opened Pandora's Box near the end of the original God of war game.

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Welcome to Mythology Explained. Today, we're going to be discussing the Goddess that served as the inspiration behind the name for the popular sporting brand- NIKE.

When we hear the name 'Nike' the first image that pops in to the minds of most is the symbolic 'swoosh' that so effectively represents Nike's brand.

But what if I told you that some people picture something completely different- they picture a woman- a goddess.

In Greek Mythology, Nike was the winged goddess of victory- representative of victory both in war and in peaceful competition.

Nike's parentage in Greek Mythology is a little unclear. Hesiod's theogony claims that Nike is the daughter of the eldest Oceanid Styx- Goddess of the river that flowed on the boundary between Gaia (earth) and the underworld- and the Titan Pallas- god of battle and warcraft.

However, the Homeric Hymns suggest that Nike was the daughter of Ares. For consistencies sake, we're going to run with Hesiod's version of events.

Now, It seems only fitting that the goddess of victory should come from the same lineage as the god of battle. But as it turns out, Nike's siblings were similarly representative of subjects that pertained to battle and war.

Nike's sister BIA was the goddess of force, power, might, bodily strength and compulsion.

One of her brother's, Kratos, was the god of strength, might, power and sovereign rule.

And her other brother, Zelos, was the god of rivalry, emulation, jealousy, envy and zeal.

What a family.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the nine Kings of Hell. We're going to examine each king one at a time, but before we dive into these nine malignant, maleficent, and malevolent masters, we're going to start off with a quick preface that speaks to the source on which this video is based, and to the many conceptualizations that define the demonic hierarchy given by various sources over the centuries.

Let's get into it.

The video is based on 'The Lesser Key of Solomon', which is a grimoire on demonology that was put together in the 17th century. Though the author is unknown and the book seems to be based on information already compiled and circulated in previous centuries, it has remained a seminal work of demonology. In 'The Lesser Key of Solomon, about half the pages are dedicated to codifying 72 demonic entities of Hell's hierarchy. There is an individual entry for each of the 72 entities in which their rank, appearance, and power is outlined, as well as how to invoke them through summoning and binding. The hierarchy comprises seven tiers: nine kings, 23 Dukes, seven princes, 15 marquises, 14 presidents, 10 earls, and one knight. Some demonic entities occupy more than one rank, which is why the hierarchy in the aggregate features more than 72 entries, the number of demonic entities discussed in the book.

Concerning the number of demonic kings, you may be familiar with a different number, likely seven, and with different demons. This is because there are many, many sources that define the upper echelons of Hell's hierarchy. For example, in the 'Treatise on confessions by Evildoers and Witches', a classification prepared by Peter Binsfels, a German theologian, near the end of the 16th century, there are seven princes, or kings, of hell, each of them associated with one of the seven deadly sins. They are: Lucifer, pride, Mammon, greed, Asmodeus, lust, Leviathan, envy, Beelzebub, gluttony, Satan, wrath, and Belphegor, sloth.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Yggdrasil, the World Tree: all the animals and monsters who live in it, how it's kept alive, how it fits into the grand structure of the universe, what it is, and what it represents.

Let's get into it.

Yggdrasil, the name of the World Tree, is a compound word. 'Ygg', means something like 'terrible one', one of Odin's epithets, and 'drasill' is an ancient word for horse; so putting them together, you get 'Odin's Horse' or 'Odin's Steed'. This etymology connects to the myth in which Odin impaled himself with a spear and, thus transfixed, hanged himself from the World Tree for nine days, the result of this torturous experience being his attainment of runic magic. As described in the appendix of the Prose Edda, the interpretation of the name Yggdrasil as 'Odin's Horse' in conjunction with the myth in which Odin hanged himself from the World Tree possibly implies that ancient scandinavians perceived a similarity between how a hanged person writhed and how a person bobbed while riding a horse.

The World tree is an ash tree of cosmic size located in the centre of the universe, and its branches, trunk, and roots connect all the realms of creation. Three roots support the World tree: one in Asgard, where the gods dwell, one in Jotunheim, the rugged wilderness of the giants, and one in Niflheim, the realm of ice where Hel has dominion. Each root has a well next to it: the well of Urd, where the three principal Norns are, is located in Asgard; the well of Mimir, where Odin sacrificed his eye in exchange for its mystic knowledge, is located in Jotunheim, and the well Hvergelmir, which is the source of a multitude of rivers, is located in Niflheim. The wellbeing of the World tree is under constant threat, the cause of which is a veritable menagerie of animals and monsters that gnaw at its roots and eat its leaves, as well as the decay of time.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the Eye of Ra: the most powerful force in Egyptian Mythology in terms of destructive power and the goddess from whose tears humanity was created.

Let's get into it.

In the time of the Ancient Egyptians, the word for eye was 'irt', and it was a homophone for the word meaning 'doing' or 'acting', quite appropriate as the eye served as the divine enforcer on many occasions, intervening in drastic fashion on behalf of the gods. As the word 'irt' was feminine, so too were the goddesses who personified the Eye of Ra, a complex entity. She was an aspect of Atum-Ra, the syncretic fusion of the creator god Atum and the sun god Ra, but she was also a goddess. As a goddess separate from Ra, she could operate independently, as was in the case when Atum sent her to find his children in the waters of Nun before the world was created. More often, though, when removed from Ra, she would manifest herself through another goddess, becoming a compound deity, which is what happened when she merged with Sekhmet to unleash destruction upon humanity. In this way, she was almost like an awesome weapon who possessed and worked through other goddesses, including: Tefnut, Bastet, Mut, Hathor, and Sekhmet. The Eye was depicted as a red sun disk. Portrayals of Ra usually have the sun disk positioned just above his head, and when goddesses fused with the Eye of Ra, they were often portrayed with a red sun disk just above their heads. Depending on the circumstances, the Eye was associated with a number of celestial objects, such as the morning star, the full moon, and of course, the sun. The eye of Ra, as well as the eyes of other deities, could be portrayed by the Wedjat eye, in appearance an amalgamation of a hawk eye and a human eye. The eye of Ra was both an aspect of Ra and a goddess who was Ra's daughter and protector. Both fire and water were associated with the Eye: fire representing divine wrath and water representing the power of creation, an example of the latter being when her tears created humanity. Sometimes the destructive and creative aspects of the Eye were each thought of as a distinct eye: the eye of Ra representing the destructive power of the sun, and the eye of Atum representing creative power, the pupil symbolizing the womb from which gods and humans emerged.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the Norns, the Norse Fates, a group of entities quite similar to the Moirai, the three Greek goddesses of fate. The Norns determined the fate of each person at the moment of their birth, and they dutifully nourished one of the three roots of the world tree with well water, keeping its trunk, branches, and leaves healthy, thereby combating the damage inflicted by the many animals who gnawed at its roots and ate its leaves.

Let's get into it.

Yggdrasil, the World Tree, is supported by three roots: the lowest of the three reaches down to Niflheim and is incessantly gnawed at by the Nidhogg, a malevolent monster, in appearance either a serpent or dragon; the second root is found in Jotunheim, the land of the giants, and underneath it is the well of Mimir, where Odin sacrificed his eye for a drink of its waters, endowing him with its mystic knowledge; and the third root is located in Asgard among the Aesir gods, and underneath it is the well of Urd. Beside this well was a handsome hall, and within it dwelt the three principal Norns. With a mixture of the well's water and of mud from the ground that surrounded the root, they nourished the root, this care making them stewards of a sort, their effort helping to keep the branches strong and the canopy thick and verdant with leaves.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Ymir: the first person to draw breath in all of Norse mythology, no other god, giant, monster, or creature of any sort existing before him; a giant so colossal in size that the blood that gushed from his wounds nearly drowned the entire frost giant race, so colossal in size that his body, ripped apart after he was killed, provided all the material used to create the world.

Let's get into it.

In the beginning there was Ginnungagap, the great void, and within it were two primordial worlds: Niflheim, a realm of ice, and Museplheim, a realm of fire. Ice flowed from the North and sparks emanated from the south, fire and frost meeting in the middle of the void, causing some of the ice to melt; and there was a quickening within the droplets, and from them was born Ymir, the first giant, a being of staggering size. He was called Aurgelmir by the giants, and he was the ultimate progenitor of the frost giants. While he slept, he began to sweat profusely, two giants, one male and one female, propagating in his left armpit, and at the same time, his legs came together in a sort of union, their coupling producing a third giant. Formed in similar fashion as Ymir, another quickening within droplets of melted ice, Audhumbla, the cosmic cow, came into being. Four rivulets of milk streamed from her udders, and it was on these rivulets Ymir subsisted; Audhumbla, in turn, nourished herself by licking the salty ice that was all around; and interestingly, this was both life giving and life taking for Ymir: life giving because it allowed Audhumbla to produce the milk from which Ymir fed, and life taking because her licking would unearth the harbinger of Ymir's doom. Audhumbla fed incessantly, and at some point, a man's hair became visible.

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