Mythology Explained

By Mythology ExplainedHistory

Mythology Explained episodes

October 23, 2022 The Egyptian Wizards Who Invaded Heaven & Battled the Angels
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss an interesting story that features in the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a work produced in the 14th century that compiles a multitude of apocryphal works, culminating in an extensive biblical history that spans from the creation of the universe by God to the death of Judas Maccabee. One of the stories tells of heaven being assailed by two Egyptian sorcerers, two of the sorcerers who opposed Moses when he returned to Egypt to demand of the Pharaoh that he release the Israelites from bondage.

We're going to start off with a quick summary of Moses' return to Egypt, his contest against the sorcerers of the Pharaoh, and the affliction of the 10 plagues upon Egypt. Following that, we're going to go through the story that tells of the two sorcerers who take to the air - their witchcraft granting them the power of flight - and fly to heaven, there doing battle against the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

Let's get into it

After fleeing Egypt, travelling to Midian, and marrying Zipporah, Moses became a shepherd. One day while watching over his father-in-law's flock, he came across a burning bush, a most peculiar sight because, while the bush was on fire, it wasn't being consumed by the fire. A voice projecting from the bush spoke to Moses, saying that he had been chosen to deliver the Israelites from bondage. Initially, Moses was resistant to this, producing an array of reasons that explain why he was either certain to fail in this task or was ill-suited to this task. These reasons were overcome, and God assured Moses that He, his divine presence and power, would be with Moses in this great task appointed to him.

Moses returned to Egypt, convinced the Israelites that God was with them, and, with Aaron at his side, went before the Pharaoh. What followed was a sort of wizard's duel between Moses, backed by the power of God, and the wise men, sorcerers, and magicians of the Pharaoh, their number armed with all manner of trick and enchantment. Aaron placed his staff before the Pharaoh and it transfigured into a serpent, but this was not to impress the pharaoh; for likewise, his servants also turned their staves into serpents.
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9 min
October 03, 2022 Who Were the 10 Most Powerful Goddesses in Greek Mythology?
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video we're going to discuss the 10 most Powerful goddesses in Greek mythology. Let us know in the comments if you agree with the selection, and if you don't, tell us who you would have included instead.

Let's get into it.

Starting us off is Nyx.

Nyx was the Personification of night and one of the first-generation primordial deities. Like Gaia, she was a prolific producer of children. Coupled with Erebus, the personification of Darkness, she produced Aether, Light, and Hemera, Day. She then went on to independently
Produce a great number of children, all of whom we won't name, but here's a few: The Moirai, The Fates, Thanatos, Death, Eris, Strife, and Hypnos, Sleep. In and of itself, the fact that she was a first-generation primordial deity would likely earn her a place on this list. Her powers as a creator outsrip every god in Greek mythology except for Gaia. But the instance that truly showcased her power was a confrontation - or rather lack thereof - she had with Zeus. In the Iliad, there's a conversation between Hypnos and Hera in which they discuss what happened the last time Hypnos was persuaded to use his sleep-inducing powers against Zeus, who woke up in a rage when his mind ceased to be ensnared. He searched for Hypnos, but relented when the pursuit took him to Nyx, whom Hypnos was hiding behind. Such was Nyx' power that Zeus was struck with awe and was unwilling to arouse her anger

Up next we have Hestia

The first born child of Cronus and Rhea, and the sister of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Demeter, Hestia was the goddess of the hearth. She makes the list for being deemed the most important of all goddesses. Both Poseidon and Apollo pursued her, but their efforts were in vain; for she rejected their advances, deciding instead to remain a virgin goddess. This decision was conducive to maintaining a peaceful dynamic amongst the gods on Olympus, so Zeus rewarded her with a position of unparalleled primacy. The hearth, what she personified, was made central to each home, and through it, she received the choicest portions of sacrifices made to the gods; and this honour went even further, for she was also a recipient of the sacrifices dedicated at the various temples of all the other gods worshipped throughout Greece.
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21 min
August 27, 2022 Rasputin: Illiterate Peasant - Unkillable Monk - Evil Sorcerer
Welcome to Mythology Explained. Today, we're going to discuss Rasputin: certainly a historical personage, not a figment of mythology, but his life was so strange and sordid that he has become something of a modern mythological figure, especially as a perennial feature of popular culture through a tide of books written and movies made after his death.

He rose from humble beginnings, a lowly illiterate peasant in a remote backwater of Siberia, to become one of the most powerful people in all of Russia, wielding incredible influence over the royal family. He became a man of God, allowing him to garner prominence through ecclesiastical channels, and in this capacity, appeared to have magical healing abilities, using prayer to heal the tsar's son, a hemophiliac, on numerous occasions, many of these proving miraculous recoveries that baffled royal physicians. One of these times was in 1908, after being summoned to the royal palace to help with one of Alexei's episodes. Rasputin managed to lessen the boy's pain (perhaps through hypnosis); however, the most remarkable detail of this visit occurred while he was leaving the palace: he prophesied that the fate of of the Romanov dynasty was inextricably linked to him, and in large part, his words that night truly did come true; for only a short time after his death, a mere few months, the autocracy of Russia was undone, overwhelmed and overthrown by revolution, a paradigm shift punctuated by Nicholas II's abdication on March 15, 1917. And the circumstances of his death, his seeming imperviousness to poison, as well as his reported resiliency to gunshot wounds, more than anything else, made him a person of interest, his durability linking him with dark powers and the supernatural.

Let's get into it.
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24 min
August 20, 2022 Primordial Deities: The Ancient Gods Who Created the Universe - Greek Mythology
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the Primordial Deities of Greek mythology: ancient gods, the first gods, gods older than Zeus and the Olympians, older than the Titans, gods who do not rule the world, though they once did in the primeval past, but who are the world, the universe, creation itself. Yes, the Olympians rule the world, but they aren't the world; yes, Zeus has supremacy over the sky, but he isn't the sky; and yes, Poseidon has sovereignty over the sea, but he isn't the sea. Conversely, Gaia is the earth, Uranus is the sky, and Pontus is the sea, and it is these sorts of gods we're going to focus on, not the later gods who came to rule these domains

First, we're going to look at the first two generations of Gods in Greek mythology, beginning with Chaos. Following that, we're going to look at many third generation gods, the children of either Gaia and Nyx. Here, because we're now in the third generation, the term Primordial Deity loses some of its relevance. Regardless, though, we'll continue, first focusing on third-generation deities who also represent fundamental constructs of the material world and, second, focusing on third-generation deities who represent the forces and phenomena that define the human condition: our virtues and vices, our strengths and weaknesses, and in general, what our time on earth looks like.

Let's get into it.

In the beginning, the very beginning, before anything or anyone existed, before time, even, there wasn't even empty space, the unfathomable expanse of dark nothingness that envelops the specks of rock and fire we call planets and stars.

The first being to emerge was Chaos. Self-engendered, he personified the great void, the empty space that necessarily had to exist to allow subsequent entities to emerge. Thought of another way, if you want to furnish a room, you first need a room to exist so that there's space for the furniture to be placed in.
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15 min
August 13, 2022 Twin Serpents of Chaos: One Creates the World, the Other Destroys it -- Egyptian Mythology.
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to dive into some Egyptian mythology, specifically, the twin serpents of creation and destruction, Atum and Apophis - one to create the world, raising it out of the waters of chaos, the other to destroy it, returning it to the waters of chaos.

To begin with, we're going to discuss the state of existence before creation; then, we're going to look at the creation of the world; and finally, we're going to look at the end of the universe and at the cyclical view of eternity held by ancient Egyptians.

Let's get into it.

Looked at linearly, the timeline of ancient Egyptian mythology can be segmented into seven stages: the oneness of pure chaos, the self-engenderment of the creator, the creation of the world and its denizens (gods, humans, animals), the rule of Ra, the sun god, the rule of other deities, the time of mortal Egyptian kings, and lastly, the inevitable return to chaos.

In the beginning there was only chaos, and for the ancient Egyptians chaos wasn't conceptualized as a great void but by the primordial waters of Nun, which were dark, boundless, and infinite. In them was contained limitless potential, for the latent power of creation existed in them; yet alone nothing could come of them, for they were perfectly homogenous; in this uniform state, the elements of creation were unseparated, making them inert. It wasn't until opposites came to be, existing as a series of binaries - life and death, light and dark, male and female, and so on - that creation became possible, as is said in this passage from Egyptian Mythology: A guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt:

"The origin of the universe was an intellectual problem that came to fascinate the Egyptians. Texts that allude to the unknowable era before creation define it as the time "before two things had developed". The cosmos was not yet divided into pairs of opposites."
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15 min
August 05, 2022 Typhon: The Monster Who Defeated Zeus & Made the Gods Flee to Egypt
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Typhon, the most powerful monster in Greek mythology. This is a topic we made a short video on last year, and now we're going to examine it in greater detail. First we're going to look at what's told in The Library of Greek Mythology, a concise yet comprehensive compendium of Greek mythology written by Apollodorus. It describes a version of Typhon's battle with Zeus in which Typhon chases the gods out of Olympus, cuts the tendons from Zeus' hands and feet, and then imprisons the king of the gods in a cave. Following that, we're going to look at an alternative version of this battle, the one told in Hesiod's Theogony, which details a brief affair in which Typhon is thoroughly trounced and walloped by Zeus. And finally, we're going to look at the many monstrous children Typhon sired by Echidna, including: Orthos, Cerberus, the Hydra of Lerna, and the Chimera.

Let's get into it.

The Giants were a brutal and belligerent race of prodigious size and strength. They were born to Uranus, the personification of the sky, and Gaia, the personification of the earth, when droplets of blood from Uranus' severed genitals fell to the earth and impregnated Gaia. Led by Zeus and reinforced by the hero Hercules, the gods fought and killed the Giants, the war between them known as the Gigantomachy. Gaia was enraged by the destruction of her children, so she joined in a sexual union with Tartarus, the personification of the cavernous abyss that existed beneath the earth; and from their union was born Typhon, unequivocally the most powerful monster in Greek mythology. He was a nightmarish amalgamation of both man and beast, and in size and strength, he was unsurpassed; even the other monstrous children born to Gaia and Uranus, the trio of giant one-eyed cyclops, as well as the indomitable and behemoth trio of Hecatonchires, each of them with 50 heads surmounting their bodies and a tangle of 50 arms protruding from each shoulder, were eclipsed by Typhon.
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14 min
July 30, 2022 Satan / Lucifer: How God's Greatest Angel Became Ruler of Hell
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Satan, also known as the Devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Prince of Darkness, the Great Adversary, and Lord of Hell. We're going to go through the Old and New Testament, examining Satan's role, character, and story throughout - his precipitous plummet from exalted hierarch of heaven, one of the foremost angels of the celestial realm, to the wicked and wily arch-nemesis of God, heaven, and goodness, to his eventual eternal banishment in the lake of fire.

Let's get into it.

In the Abrahamic religions, meaning Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Satan is either an agent of God, a malevolent entity, or an abstract force that tempts people towards evil and sin - though this video will focus on the conceptualization that portrays Satan as a malevolent entity, the chief evil of creation. In the Old Testament, Satan functions as an angel whose sin eliciting activities are sanctioned by God, testing humanity's resolve to stay on the righteous path, making him, thus, subservient to God in this capacity. Breaking away from this notion, Satan, in the New Testament, is viewed as a rogue entity, a fallen angel who operates in defiance of God, ceaselessly endeavoring to unravel the Lord's design by contriving the ruination of his great works, namely humanity, ever tempting people to stray from what is right and good, using evil and sin as his instruments of corruption. What's interesting here, though, is some of the discourse surrounding Satan's existence in defiance of God. When conceptualized as an entity of evil that works in opposition to God, on some level, it can be argued, Satan's existence as the arch-nemesis of heaven continues because of the sufferance of God, as God is all powerful - omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent - meaning, if he so desired, he could obliterate Satan with but a thought, expunging him from the fabric of reality, as is more or less what happens at the very end of the bible when God summons forth a storm of fire that rains down from the sky.
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23 min
July 28, 2022 666: The Real Secret Meaning & Why It's Really an Evil Number
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the number 666: it's inclusion in the New Testament, why it's considered an evil number, and the various explanations of its meaning; this last through two of the four lenses of eschatology, the branch of theology that's focused on death, final judgment, and the afterlife: specifically, at Preterism and Idealism.

Let's get into it.

There isn't any explanation given in the Old or New Testament that delineates why the number 666 is an evil number or why it is associated with the Beast of the Book of Revelation. Naturally, the conspicuous absence of any canonical explanation makes for fertile ground for competing theories to emerge. The theories we'll be considering in this video are that of the preterist, which holds the number 666 to be a numerical code that alludes to Emperor Nero, and that of the idealist, which believes the number 6 to be an affront to the number seven, the number of completeness and perfection, as based on God creating the universe in six days, then taking the seventh to rest.

We're going to start things off with a passage from chapter 13, the chapter in which the number 666 is written, from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. Here it is:

"And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast ... And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name[, 666]."
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14 min
July 25, 2022 The Day Zeus & the Gods Went to War Against Each Other Over Greece
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video we're going to discuss a couple chapters from the Iliad that culminate in the gods attacking each other and play out with all the excitement of a tavern brawl and all the drama of a soap opera.

The gods are summoned to Olympus, where Zeus bades them to descend to the mortal plane, to join the Trojan war directly, supporting each side, so that Achilles' frenzied killing spree doesn't result in the burning of Troy before the city's destruction is officially sanctioned by the fates. This ends in an all-out brawl in which the gods clash in a series of duels. Hephaestus uses his unquenchable fire to combat the raging rapids of Scamander, a river god. Ares and Athena meet in a viscous melee. Apollo is unmanned by Poseidon and slinks away with his tail between his legs. Hera humiliates Artemis, and Hermes yields to Leto, explaining that, even if he wins, Zeus won't look too kindly on him beating one of his lovers black and blue.

Let's get into it.

Beyond the various instances in which various gods support either the Trojans or the Greeks, we know for certain which gods fought for which side from a passage near the beginning of chapter 20 of the Iliad. Zeus instructs Themis to call the gods to council. Virtually every god answers the call, even the thousands of river gods and countless nymphs. You see, Achilles was a juggernaut of rage and wrath, and Zeus feared that the hero's impending onslaught would decimate the Trojans and raze the walls of Troy before the decree of the fates had officially been proclaimed. To ensure everything proceeded in accordance with fate, Zeus bade the gods to join the war and make certain that what unfolded stayed on script. Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, and Hephaestus went to reinforce the Greeks, and Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite. Leto, and Scamander went to reinforce the Trojans.
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13 min
July 20, 2022 The Secret Space War History of Scientology Leaked to the Internet
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Scientology - specifically, a portion of the scriptural narrative that was previously only known to higher-ranking Scientologists, but has since become public knowledge on account of former-adherents leaving the church and uploading secret information online. This information, which most people find outlandish and outrageous, has been the impetus for a great many Scientologists abandoning their faith, as what is learned is judged too far-fetched and ridiculous for the continuation of conviction in Scientology. The church of Scientology tried to have this information scrubbed from the internet, claiming it to be proprietary, but ultimately, none of the lawsuits were successful, as no suitable reason was identified to warrant the imposition of an injunction that would have removed the scriptural narrative of Scientology from the public sphere. As a secondary attempt at suppression, the church of Scientology claims that any leaked information is inauthentic, both fabricated and false.

Let's get into it.

Unlike other religions, religions that have been around for either hundreds or thousands of years, like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism, the religion of Scientology doesn't make what is said in its own scripture freely available for anyone to read and consider; and by anyone, I don't just mean the uninitiated, as in people who don't subscribe to scientology, I mean most of the followers within the religion itself. You see, information and training are dolled out within the church of scientology depending on where you rank within the church's hierarchy. The purported reason behind this system is to protect people from information that would be harmful to them until they've gone through sufficient training and conditioning to fortify the mind, which is to say until they've ascended through the ranks, investing substantial amounts of money and countless hours of their time.
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13 min

About Mythology Explained

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On Mythology Explained we will be diving deep in to all kinds of Mythology: Greek, Roman, Norse, Chinese, Egyptian - you name it. If you've always been curious about the beginnings of Hercules or how…