A_4_01 — The Mahabharata: India's Epic of Cosmic War

The Mahabharata is the longest epic poem ever composed — at ~100,000 verses (1.8 million words), it is roughly 10 times the combined length of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Attributed to the sage Vyasa ("the compiler"), it

A_4_09 — Avestan Texts — Gathas, Vendidad, and Yasna

The Avesta is the primary scripture of Zoroastrianism, the religion founded by the prophet Zarathushtra (Greek: Zoroaster) in ancient Iran. The surviving Avesta — a fraction of a much larger corpus reportedly destroyed d

A_4_14 — Shan Hai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas)

The Shan Hai Jing (山海經, "Classic of Mountains and Seas") is one of the most extraordinary texts of the ancient Chinese literary corpus — an encyclopedic compendium of mythological geography, zoology, mineralogy, and cosm

A_4_29 — Mongolian & Turkic Epic Traditions

The Mongolian and Turkic epic traditions constitute one of the world's great oral literary heritages, spanning from the Altai Mountains to Anatolia across more than two millennia. Central texts include the Secret History

A_3_08 — Celtic Mythology and Druidic Tradition

Celtic mythology encompasses the religious narratives, cosmological concepts, and heroic legends of the Celtic-speaking peoples who dominated much of western and central Europe from the Hallstatt period (c. 800 BCE) thro

A_3_03 — Egyptian Book of the Dead and Funerary Literature

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Pert em Hru — "Coming Forth by Day") is a collection of ~200 magical spells, hymns, and instructions designed to guide the deceased through the Duat (underworld) and into eternal life in th

A_3_02 — The Egyptian Pyramid Texts: Oldest Religious Literature on Earth

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest substantial body of Egyptian funerary literature ever discovered and among the oldest substantial religious corpora of any civilization — inscribed on the interior walls of Old Kingdom py

A_3_14 — West African Oral Traditions

West African oral traditions constitute one of the world's richest and most extensively documented systems of non-written knowledge transmission. The griot (or djeli in Mande languages) tradition of the Manding, Wolof, F

A_3_07 — Kalevala and Finnish-Baltic Mythology

The Kalevala is the Finnish national epic, compiled from oral folk poetry (runo songs) by physician-scholar Elias Lönnrot and first published in 1835 (32 poems) with an expanded edition of 50 poems in 1849. Lönnrot trave

A_3_01 — Kebra Nagast: The Glory of Kings (Ethiopian)

The Kebra Nagast ("Glory of Kings") is a 14th-century CE Ethiopian text — written in Ge'ez, the classical Ethiopian liturgical language — that serves as the foundation myth of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia and the sp

A_3_09 — Ethiopian Sacred Texts Beyond the Kebra Nagast

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church preserves the most expansive biblical canon in Christendom — 81 books, compared to 66 in the Protestant canon and 73 in the Roman Catholic canon — including texts considered apocryp

A_3_15 — Middle Kingdom Egyptian Literature: Wisdom Texts, Prophecies, and Poetry

The Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2055–1650 BCE, Dynasties XI–XIII) is recognized as the classical age of Egyptian literature, producing texts that served as literary models for over a millennium. Major genres include wisd

A_3_00 — Egyptian African Mediterranean: Subfolder Summary

A_3_06 — Orphic Hymns, Tablets, and the Orphic Tradition

The Orphic tradition represents one of the most influential yet enigmatic religious movements of the ancient Greek world, centered on the mythical poet-musician Orpheus, who was believed to have descended to the underwor

W_4_01 — Maya Epigraphy, Astronomy, and Calendar Science

The Maya civilization developed one of the most sophisticated writing systems in the pre-Columbian Americas — a mixed logographic-syllabic script that recorded history, astronomy, mythology, and ritual on stone monuments

W_1_01 — Olmec Civilization and Serpent-Jaguar Symbolism

The Olmec civilization (~1500–400 BCE), centered in the tropical lowlands of Mexico's Gulf Coast (modern Veracruz and Tabasco), is widely considered the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica — the civilization from which later

W_1_00 — Ancient Near East Mediterranean: Subfolder Summary

W_2_10 — Hmong Cosmology, Shamanism, and the Shaman's Journey

The Hmong — a Hmong-Mien-speaking people originating in highland southern China with diaspora communities across Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States — maintain one of the most elaborate shamanic traditions sur

C_1_05 — Dying-and-Rising Deity Pattern

This document examines Dying-and-Rising Deity Pattern, a topic within the Global Traditions research area. Key areas of investigation include Frazer's Original Formulation, The Critical Counter-Argument: Jonathan Z. Smit

C_1_03 — Mother Goddess / Earth Goddess Pattern

The Mother Goddess or Earth Goddess archetype represents one of the most ancient, geographically widespread, and archaeologically attested religious patterns in human history, with material evidence stretching from Upper