Mythology Explained

By Mythology ExplainedHistory

Mythology Explained episodes

November 17, 2023 Cronus: How the King of the Titans Escaped from Tartarus
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video, we’re going to discuss Cronus’s escape from Tartarus, this followed by him becoming the king of the Isles of the Blessed, Greek Mythology’s version of heaven.
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7 min
November 12, 2023 Astaroth: The Tortured Demon Who Still Thinks He's an Angel
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Astaroth, variously described as a duke, lord, and prince of hell. He purports to have played no part in the fall of the angels and to have been unjustly condemned. He appears as an angel, but even in endeavoring to appear as such, his fiendish nature can't be completely concealed. The angelic appearance he maintains gives him a look both foul and unsettling, and the stench of his breath is so repulsive as to be perilous. As well, the fact that he holds a poisonous serpent and rides around on a monstrous dragon hardly helps to legitimize his pretense.

We're going to begin with the work of Johann Weyer, which will piece together Astaroth's demonic profile: what he looked like, what his power was, and what danger he posed to the conjurer. After that, we'll explore his origins, getting into the Bible and Near East polytheism. And finally, we're going to go through many of the demonic hierarchies in which he features.

Alright, let's get into it.

Johann Weyer was a Dutch physician, occultist, and demonologist, known for his seminal work on demonology, "False Monarchy of Demons". This text was an appendix to his larger work, "On the Tricks of Demons", published in the mid-16th century. Unlike other works that elucidate the eldritch and evil mysteries of witchcraft, Weyer's own writing w as countervailing in that it condemned the rabid and virulent ideas that underpinned and encouraged witch hunting. He believed that those who claimed to, or were accused of, practicing witchcraft suffered from mental illness. He didn't believe they conspired, cavorted, and cackled in the dead of night with a coven of wicked spell-slinging women, pledging their souls to the dark power of Satan, a rather enlightened perspective given the era in which he lived. In particular, his work served to counter the "Malleus Maleficarum", the "Hammer of Witches", a guide that explained how to identify and exterminate witches.
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15 min
November 08, 2023 The 3 Judges of the Underworld in Greek Mythology
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the three judges of the underworld in Greek mythology: Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus. These three judges, all of them sons of Zeus, were the arbiters of the afterlife, giving verdicts to the villainous and virtuous alike. The souls of the wicked were sent to Tartarus, and the souls of the righteous were sent to the Isles of the Blessed.

Alright, let's get into it.

The idea of there being a judge of the underworld harkens back to the earliest works of Ancient Greek literature. In the Odyssey, Odysseus ventures down into the depths of the underworld to consult a prophetess. He describes what he sees along the way. Among the spirits he describes are some of the great sinners, rulers, and heroes of old. The great sinners include Sisyphus and Tantalus, both of them condemned to punishment without end. The rulers and heroes include Agamemnon, the high chief of the Greek forces that waged war on Troy, and Achilles, the mightiest hero to wield spear and sword in the Trojan War, his conquering spirit and battle prowess eclipsing those of any other, foe or friend. Another king described by Odysseus along his chthonic quest is Minos, who, depending on the version, either serves as the judge of the dead or as one of the judges of the dead. Here's the passage:

"I saw Minos the son of Zeus holding a golden scepter and delivering judgments among the dead. There he sat, and around him the others sat or stood in the ample-gated house of Hades, seeking from this master of justice the firm sentences of the law."
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14 min
November 04, 2023 Enyo: The Greek Goddess of Slaughter & Bloodshed
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Enyo, the Greek goddess of slaughter and bloodshed. She, along with better known gods like Ares and Athena, was a war deity, one said to revel in the destruction of armies and the devastation of cities. Because of her perverse proclivities and morbid M.O., she was much more in line with Ares than Athena: Ares was associated with bloodlust, brutality, and wanton violence, while Athena's own association with warfare is more accurately described by words like defense, strategy, restraint, and necessity. She was someone you would have invoked while devising a battleplan or organizing the defense of a settlement or city. With Ares, the point of it all was suffering and slaughter; with Athena, wisdom and warfare were interwoven; for her, war was a last resort - a tool of pragmatism, not an indulgence of pleasure.

Alright let's get into it.

Virtually the only times Enyo features in the stories that culminate into the mythical mosaic of ancient Greece is during battle. As the goddess of slaughter and bloodshed, writers almost exclusively included her in their works when people were killed and blood was spilt. In this way, she numbered among other gods and daimons who frequented the battlefield. ( Daimon is the Ancient Greek word for spirits that were halfway between gods and humans, often functioning as minor deities, and is the antecedent for the English word 'demon'.) The gods and daimons who frequented the battlefield include: Ares, the god of war, Phobos and Deimos, respectively "Fear" and "Dread", Eris, the goddess of strife, and the Keres, the trio of goddess or daimons of violent death, described as horrid, nightmarish creatures who feasted on the fallen, devouring flesh and drinking blood. When battles are described by the poets of Ancient Greece, and by later poets who wrote stories situated within the framework of the Greek mythos, usually some combination of these carnage-fueled characters is described on the battlefield. They foment conflict, fill forces with frenzy and fury, take part in the killing, and glory in the thick of the clash, champions pressing forward and corpses littering the ground.
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10 min
October 27, 2023 Sisyphus - Master of Death: He Betrayed Zeus, Chained Death Itself & Escaped the Underworld
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Sisyphus, a man whose story embodies the adage 'too clever for his own good', a man synonymous with the consequences of inciting the wrath of the gods, and a man whose fate has become an enduring symbol of futility, eternal struggle, and meaningless tasks.

Alright, let's get into it.

In Greek mythology, leaving gods aside for the moment, there is a small group of people who became immortalized as superlatives. Orpheus was the greatest musician, able to charm animals, even able to coax rocks and trees into movement. Hercules was the strongest man, bearing the crushing weight of the heavens on his shoulders for a time. Daedalus was the greatest inventor, creating the labyrinth in which the minotaur dwelt, and fashioning wings for himself and his son Icarus so that they could escape from the labyrinth after they were imprisoned inside. Sisyphus was the cleverest man - too clever for his own good, as events would bear out in the fullness of time. He cheated death twice, first ambushing and chaining Thanatos, death incarnate, who was sent to end his life, then once in the underworld, convincing Hades to let him leave. In the end, what awaited most people in the underworld was deemed too-low security for Sisyphus, so he was sent down to Tartarus and given an unending task, making any future wily antics an impossibility. Though he would win himself more days in the sun, his ultimate fate was perpetual punishment, not a great trade off.

First, we're going to quickly go over a pastoral feud involving multiple instances of cattle theft, the outcome of this showcasing Sisyphus's cleverness. Second, we're going to go over the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of Sisyphus's mythology, which entails the betraying, tricking, ambushing, and chaining of gods, evading and escaping death, and perpetual punishment in the form of forever rolling a boulder uphill.
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17 min
October 21, 2023 Salmoneus: The Man Killed & Sent to Tartarus for Trying to Become Zeus
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Salmoneus, a man cursed and condemned by the gods and a man of impressive lineage.

His sin was hubris and his crime was scorning the gods. He honored himself in their stead and tried to deify himself by impersonating Zeus, going so far as to toss torches and drag around pots to simulate lightning and thunder. His fate was that of the buzzing pest that annoys someone to the point of being swatted, Zeus striking him down with a thunderbolt and sending him down to Tartarus.

He was only a few generations removed from the first man and the first woman, and the grandson of Hellen - not Helen of Troy but the son of Deucalion - from whom the tribes of ancient Greece claimed ancestry. Exploring this later on will take us from the first Titan-born humans and the time of the great flood to the tragic death of the hero Jason.

Alright, let's get into it.

In Greek mythology there are three crimes considered especially egregious, swift and severe justice meted out to those who perpetrate them. These three crimes are: (1) violating the sanctity of hospitality, pertaining to which the murder of a guest, or guests, is the most flagrant and least forgivable, (2) the murder of one's own kin - the closer the relation, the harsher the condemnation - and (3) hubris against the gods. This last was Salmoneus' offense. He thought himself a god. He dedicated the sacrifices and libations that should have gone to the gods to himself, and he even went so far as to impersonate Zeus, tossing torches and dragging around clanging metal to emulate the fire and flash of lightning and the booming rumble of thunder. As you no doubt have already guessed, this didn't sit well with Zeus and didn't end well for Salmoneus, who was struck down with a thunderbolt and cast down to the abyss of Tartarus, a place beneath the earth not unlike a mirrored reflection of the sky, the great chasm below instead of the great vault above, a place reserved for those who defied the gods, be they immortal, such as the titans, or the worst of the mortal sinners, to whose infamous ranks Salmoneus' was imminently destined.
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12 min
October 07, 2023 Ragnarok: The Death of the Gods & The Destruction of the World
Norse mythology can be broken down into three parts: the mythic past, mythic present, and mythic future. In the past are events like the beginning of the universe and the advent of the first gods and giants; the present is the time in which Ragnarok, the cataclysmic clash that ends the current age of the world, looms near, the world on the precipice and about to plunge into the maw of death and destruction; and in the future is Ragnarok, the end of the world as it currently exists. Though it hadn't yet come to pass, much of what it entailed was known, and to no god were these events better known than Odin. The inexorability of prophecy hung over the Norse gods like the headsman's ax. Odin's mind was burdened by grave knowledge and dire threats: that of his own death, the death of his kin and comrades, and the unraveling, or near to it, of everything he built, the labors of all his life.

One of Odin's defining characteristics was the pursuit of knowledge, magic, and wisdom, and in this pursuit he was largely impelled by his own fate. If someone knew how they were going to die, this hypothetical death of the untimely sort, their life would probably revolve around how to avoid their own death. The same was true for Odin, who endeavored to forestall the events of Ragnarok, his death destined therein, by becoming the most formidable version of himself possible: accreting every esoteric detail, learning every spell, no matter how arcane, and becoming the superlative of wile and wisdom.

To this end, Odin embarked on many adventures, undertook many trials, and subjected himself to suffering, the sacrifice of grievous bodily harm sometimes needed as payment for what was endowed. He gouged out one of his own eyes as payment to drink from the Well of Mimir; he impaled himself with his spear and, thus transfixed, hanged himself from the World Tree for nine days and nine nights to learn the secrets of the runes; he stole the mead of poetry; he resurrected the dead and communed with spirits; he preserved and reanimated the severed head of Mimir; and he learned Seidr, a feminine type of magic, from the goddess Freyja.
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25 min
October 02, 2023 Atum-Ra: Possibly the Most Powerful God in All of Mythology
In mythology, creating the world, ruling the world, and destroying the world are almost always attributed to different gods, monsters, or phenomena. Using Norse mythology as the point of comparison, the quickening of the first life comes from the intermingling of fire and frost in the void - fire coming from Muspelheim, a realm of fire, and frost coming from Niflheim, a realm of ice. The world is ruled over by Odin, the king of the Norse pantheon. And the destruction of the world is brought about by an amassing horde of monsters: Fenrir, the World Serpent, a great host of undead, frost giants, fire giants, etc. Using Greek mythology as the point of comparison, creation begins with the emergence of the first primordial deities, the likes of Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros. The kingship, though first held by Uranus and then seized by Cronus, is maintained by Zeus. And as for the end times, the Greeks didn't even have apocalyptic myths that prophesied the eventual destruction of the world.

Atum-Ra, in the context of the bygone pantheons of the ancient world, is a singular entity, for he did create the world, rule the world, and it was prophesied that he would also destroy the world, returning it to the waters of chaos, the next cycle of creation beginning at a later time.

Atum was a creator god who brought himself into existence in the Waters of Nun, basically the Egyptian equivalent of Chaos. Ra was the sun itself and generally the most important god in Egyptian mythology. He was the first king of the universe and the sustainer of life. Atum and Ra were combined into the syncretic fusion Atum-Ra, a compound deity that combined the power and purview of its two constituents: Atum the creator aspect and Ra the solar aspect. It was commonplace in Egyptian mythology to combine gods in this way, and Ra especially became incorporated into these sorts of divine amalgamations. Other examples include: Amun-Ra (Amun another creator deity), Sobek-Ra (Sobek the most powerful of the crocodile gods), and Ra-Horakhty (Horakhty, another name for Horus, the last god to rule the earth directly before the time of the pharaohs).
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19 min
September 27, 2023 Vidar: the Norse God of Vengeance
Sometimes called the "Silent God," Vidar was the Norse god of vengeance and the second strongest god in all of Norse mythology, second only to Thor, as is stated in his entry in the Prose Edda: "One is called Vidar; he is the silent god. He has a thick shoe and is nearly as strong as Thor. The gods rely on him in all difficulties."

To be clear, strength here is only physical strength, strength not used as a byword for power, for the most powerful god, when you factor in everything, not just battle prowess, is undoubtedly Odin, who, incidentally, was Vidar's father, siring him on the giantess Gridr. She at one time lent Thor a number of armaments, including her belt, staff, and iron gloves, which helped him ford a river and defeat the giant Geirrod.

It isn't known for certain why Vidar was silent, but it has been posited that it is connected to ritual silence and other abstinent behavior in relation to vengeance, those committed to the path of vengeance refraining from speech and other indulgences until their quarry was killed. Another example comes from the god Vali, who stopped washing his hands and combing his hair until the body of the one he vowed to kill blackened on the funeral pyre.

Unsurprisingly, Vidar's most important contribution to Norse mythology is a heroic act of vengeance, which is exactly what you would expect from the god of vengeance himself. Said most simply, he avenges his father by ripping a giant wolf's head apart. However, to understand how important this avenging was - that is, how death-defying and world-saving it was, Odin's honor being the least important aspect of this - a lot of information has to be layered on top, answering questions like: Who was this wolf? How was this wolf possibly powerful enough to kill the king of the Norse pantheon? Why Were Odin and this wolf even fighting? And how did Vidar, though a very powerful god, manage to kill the monster that killed Odin, the most powerful of the Norse gods?
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11 min
September 23, 2023 Chaos: The Great Void, Father of the Gods & Very First God to Exist
In this video we're going to discuss Chaos, who usually features in Greek mythology as the great void, the first entity to exist, but as we'll see, there were other versions, too, including: being the offspring of Chronos (Chronos the primordial personification of time, not Cronus the Titan king), being the undifferentiated agglomeration of matter and energy that was harnessed to shape the universe, and being the lower layer of air that encases the earth.

The best known account of the Greek creation myth comes from Theogony, written by the poet Hesiod in the 8th century BC. Parts of Theogony are tinged with ambiguity, and the nuance in some of what it says is still debated today. What's unequivocal is that Chaos was the first entity to exist, but less clear is what came afterwards. Chaos is the great void that independently manifested itself and existed before anything else, but as for what happened next, different interpretations are spawned from vagueness and obscurity. The next three gods to emerge are Gaia, the earth, Tartarus, the abyss beneath the earth, and Eros, sexual love or attraction. As for how these three gods came to be, there are two views: one is that they also independently manifested themselves, able to do so in the endless expanse constituted by chaos; the other is that they are the children of chaos, begotten rather than bringing themselves forth. Therefore, some believe Chaos to be the ultimate source of everything, while others believe Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros to be of equal standing, the four primordial pillars most fundamental and foundational to the universe

From Chaos alone came Erebus, darkness, and Nyx, night, and from Gaia alone came Uranus, the sky, Ourea, mountains, and Pontus, the sea. Following the advent of these gods, there followed a time of divine coupling. Erebus and Nyx came together to produce Aether, the bright upper-atmosphere, and Hemera, day, and Gaia and Uranus came together to produce the 12 first-generation titans, the trio of Uranian Cyclopes, and the trio of Hecatonchires. There were yet more children to come, but here is where we're going to cut off the genealogy.
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11 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…