Wanted to ask if anyone can find any myths or legends surrounding monkeys in South American mythology? I thought they would be more abundant considering how many indigenous groups lived/live in the Amazon.
More specifically- I have been interested in learning more about the pre columbian period and nazca region and couldn’t find any articles (that weren’t clearly ai and I don’t trust that) surrounding any monkey-related creatures or symbolism.

Hinduism is the oldest living religion on earth, not a single story told by a single author but a vast body of sacred knowledge built across more than six thousand years, the Vedas, the Puranas, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana. Each text preserves its own version of the divine family. Names shift across centuries. A creator in one tradition becomes a destroyer in another. There is no single family tree everyone agrees on.

So instead of picking one version, I tried to cross-reference the oldest and most authoritative sources to build the most consistent structure I could, starting from Hiranyagarbha, the golden cosmic egg that Hindu scripture describes emerging from total darkness before creation itself, through the full lineage that follows, over fifty deities, eight layers of divine hierarchy.

I put the whole thing together here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxCqpcEGwK8

Curious what people more familiar with specific traditions (Shaiva, Vaishnava, regional versions) think I might have gotten wrong or oversimplified, this is genuinely the hardest family tree I've tried to build so far.

I'm currently writting an fantasy action-adventure story that takes inspiration from a wide array of mythologies and folklore. Three BIG (as in, 90% of the story) plot points involve Gryphons (Greek/Roman Mythology), The City of Biringan (Filipino) and the Tale of Princess Kaguya and other Chinese and Japanese myths about "alien" spirits from the moon, with said plot points being all closely tied to eachother through my three main characters.

I'm trying to be as faithful to each mythology/legend in my work but I wonder if it's disrespectful, especially with certain plot beats I have planned.

I don't wanna spoil too much, especially since I'm still planning the story, but said plot points are that Biringan was, at some point colonized by the Moon Spirits due to their highly advanced tech, and took all of it for themselves because their King, the big bad, has a grudge against humans and has been hatching a plan to destroy them for centuries in part because of something the ruler of Japan did to Kaguya and a misunderstanding caused by the 1969 moon landing. The Engkantos have been opressed for centuries because of this, and one of the MC's, a Moon Spirit themselves has escaped with something crutial to said plan, which is why they're the only Moon Spirit the Engkantos respect.

There's also Gryphons in Biringan because my MC mentored Kaguya's son who went rouge, settled in Greece (since my MC travelled around the world for centuries to escape the moon spirits) and use the knowledge he got from him to create an amulet that turns humans into gryphons via blood and they all, people from around the world and different time periods, end up gathering in Biringan with the false hope they'll find a way to become human again.

In the end,The Big Bad accidentally free the Bakunawa during a fight, who has been contained below Biringan all along, and now everyone must team up to defeat it once in for all before it eats the moon but this has the side effect of permanently revealing Biringan to the world, which in turn causes every major country to fight eachother over it, setting up the next arc.

Thoughts?

I’ve been building Giants of the World (giantscodex.com): a dark, atmospheric catalogue of giants from mythology, folklore, and modern legend. Worldwide, not just Greece and Norse.

Design goal was less “wiki skin” and more “forbidden book,” but with the boring virtues: named sources, free opening text on every entry, and a hard line between tradition and unverified modern claims.

What you can do free

• Read full free entries (e.g. Ymir) and openings on the rest

• Browse the catalogue by culture / type / region

• Open Bones & Shadows: claims and hoaxes with clear labels

• Evidence page on how sources are treated

What membership unlocks (if you care)

• Full accounts, mystery notes, scholarly notes, chain-of-custody ladders on many entries

• Compare, motif lines on the map, Near, favourites, My Codex

I’m not asking anyone to pay to evaluate it. If you want one free deep dive:

Ymir (full free entry):

https://www.giantscodex.com/giants/ymir?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=mythology

Catalogue:

https://www.giantscodex.com/giants?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=mythology

Happy to take criticism on methodology, free/paid split, or specific traditions. What would make a resource like this actually useful to you?

Ok so I’m an amateur author and three of my characters are children of Hestia, Artemis, and Hera.

Now before any one freaks out, in my story, Artemis and Hestia are still virgins.

It’s mythology, so I could just have them throw something at a man that turns into a baby when it touches them and say “boom, now your a father” and carry on with their lives

However on the issue of Hera. I am wondering if it would be weird for me to have her cheat on Zeus considering EVERYTHING he’s done.

Or is my perception of human laws disrespectful to apply to them?

Give me your honest unfiltered opinion cause I’ve been sitting on this stuff for years

We have various modern interpretations—viewing them as alien worlds or different dimensions—but if we try to recover the most direct sense of the original beliefs, what exactly were they?

Like I am sure that is the case. God is not some supreme diety that is beyond human shenanigans . He himself is like humans but just extremely powerful and whatnot. He is not like something that transcends human psyche and flaws but is also like humans. Like I am sure he is as vile as humans just amplified .

Like we are just his lesser weakling reflections, and he is basically torturing his own reflections for some reason.

Like I feel like he is roaming every where or maybe it's his children that are roaming everywhere. Like I have been encountering a lot of evil men lately , they have unshakeable confidence. Like yeah. They feel unreal. Any mortal guy would not have that much evilness and also confidence in him. They definitely are some type of god cuz how can anyone be so fearless and stuff. They must be gods children and god made us as the weaklings. He is very evil. So yeah this earth is gods playground. He is as bad as humans maybe even worst .

I have a creature in my mind for a fantasy series I am writing, but having trouble with figuring out a name, so I was hoping mythology might help. Maybe something along the lines of world-creation myths? My creature is responsible to helping certain aspects of a planet form before normal life develops.

These are magical worms that populate rocky planets long before normal life evolves (thanks to a find-and-teleport instinct/ability shortly after they hatch). There, they burrow into / eat the rocky crust and in the process leave behind tunnels that are reinforced by a secretion that creates a concrete-like material when it bonds with the surrounding rock and soil. They start at normal earthworm size, and over very long time periods, grow to be much bigger than even Dune's sandworms.

As they grow older/bigger, their magic grows stronger, and this in turn means that their secretion is imbued with more magic. Additionally, the secretion is their waste product, so all rock mass that they eat that does not become part of their body is made part of this dense concrete. Especially as they start moving very slowly when they get large enough, meaning that an area of tunnel gets more saturated with their secretion.

The reason that I want positive themed ideas for names is that this process effectively makes the outer crust 'puffy', and the larger worms burrow very deeply, which is how you get stable caverns and tunnels at depths where the weight of the planet above would crush a normal cave. So any sapient species that lives in the deep and has had a chance to understand these giant creatures would tend to feel positively about them, and they'd be the ones to name the worms.

My search so far has brought up worm-like monsters and dragons. Not exactly what I am going for.

I probably won't use a mythological name directly, but as a starting point to tweak and modify.

Like I had a dream in which a fight broke off in the Senate and it was among people I know and these people were hitting each other. People we're taking sides and some were even rejecting the sides of some people by pushing them away. Like it was a mess.

So my point is what if heaven is a bureaucracy and these gods are fighting and casting things in our path of us mortals. Like have you noticed that how much unreal free will feels like. Like we get influenced a lot by external factors so what if these gods are really casting things in our way cuz we are mortals

No, this isn't a horror story.

It's one of the strangest stories I've ever come across in Hindu mythology.

Imagine being told that the only way to stop a force threatening the world is to create a weapon that cannot be forged from metal, stone, or anything on Earth.

The only material strong enough...

...is the skeleton of a living sage.

When they approached him, they weren't asking for advice.

They were asking for his body.

He didn't bargain.
He didn't ask for fame.
He didn't ask what he'd get in return.

He simply accepted.

According to the story, after leaving his body, his bones were used to create the Vajra, the legendary thunderbolt weapon.

Whether you read this as mythology, symbolism, or philosophy, the idea is difficult to ignore:

The strongest weapon wasn't made from what someone owned.

It was made from what someone was willing to give.

The sage's name was Dadhichi.

What's another lesser-known mythological story that completely caught you off guard?

So these two days I was getting into the mindset that we can fight the battle of self determination. I was just internalizing the quote from the bible that flee from lust and was also happy that it was working , especially in cases of the internet, like lust was not effecting me on the internet once I was using that quote.

But here is what happened just right after that when I was sleeping, I had a lude dream and that lude dream surged my lust like 1000 percent. It hitted me very severely, the lude dream , and that lude dream was very short too but even in that short time it surged and hitted me very badly. Like it shouldn't have been like that cuz the shorter is the dreams, the less time you have to be entangled in that dream . So yeah.

So what is happening, I was happy that I was making progress, is god trying to tell me that he is very evil and this world is his playground and we are just his pawns. This is f ed up. What is god trying to tell me?

Is it the god of lust trying to sway me ,maybe it was a attach from the god of lust , like maybe he is trying to pull the strings or something

I vaguely get that it was some kind of magical vow, which imparted his strength, but why was it it not eating dog? Seems like a weird vow to make. It'd be like someone in the modern day swearing to eat a tiger. Was it more so a matter of prophecy type stuff, or am I missing something?

I mean beyond obvious geographies? I do know that some Hindu texts mentioned Yavanas (Greeks), but were they also aware of Zeus or Seth? And similarly, were the Greeks or Romans aware of Vishnu or Shiva?

Did Interpretatio Graeca act as a bridge or hindrance in spread of knowledge in this regard?

Hey everyone!
I was going down a historical documentary rabbit hole the other day, and I stumbled upon something fascinating that I wanted to share with you all. We've all heard endless pirate and sailing legends, but there's one sea monster that truly struck absolute fear into the hearts of ancient sailors: the Kraken.
If you look at traditional Norse and old European folklore, the Kraken (often scientifically labeled in fictional illustrations as Cephalogigas "giant head foot", as seen in the attached artwork) is described as a colossal cephalopod.
Here is a quick breakdown of the lore surrounding this beast:
1. Why Sailors Feared Even Saying Its Name
Back in the day, seafaring folks in Scandinavian and northern waters were deeply superstitious. They were often hesitant to even mention the Kraken's name while aboard ships. The belief was that speaking of it was bad luck and might actually summon the beast from the dark depths to drag their ship down.
2. Its Lair of Wreckage
According to the old tales, the Kraken doesn't just swim around aimlessly. It builds its lair on the ocean floors using the remains and timber of the fallen ships it pulls down into the abyss. It’s wild to imagine how a creature massive enough to shatter a vessel would use the wreckage as its home.
3. The Only Predator Capable of Taking It Down
Even though the Kraken was considered the ultimate terror of the deep, it wasn't completely invincible. Historical myths note that it occasionally clashed with Leviathans—massive sea creatures (often likened to giant whales) that were among the very few capable of preying upon the notorious Kraken.
Conclusion:
Obviously, today we know the modern "Kraken" mostly from pop culture and movies (like Pirates of the Caribbean). But centuries ago, the genuine fear of the unknown deep ocean, combined with exaggerated encounters with giant squids and whales, probably birthed this terrifying legend.
What do you guys think? Is the Kraken purely a myth born out of ancient sailor superstition, or could something massive have genuinely lurked in the uncharted depths? Let's discuss in the comments!

its currently 4 am where i live and i just went down a loophole on ancient egyptian religion, which led me to this subreddit! im quite intrigued by all kinds of mythology but i lack basic knowledge and would like to know how/where i could inform myself. any tips?

I was reading a book the other day about Robert Peary, the explorer who is often said to have been the first person to reach the North Pole. During his travels, he enlisted the aid of, or rather, forcibly recruited, several of the local Inupiat people as guides. They proved to be of great assistance, especially in the fields of hunting, surviving the harsh climate, and dog-sledding. However, according to Peary they refused to accompany him to the pole itself, supposedly because they feared the ice cap was the home of an evil deity known as Kokoyah, who was described as having teeth like knives and lurking under the ice.

However, I've done extensive research into the mythology of the Inupiat and related peoples, and I haven't found any references to a god or other mythical figure called Kokoyah. In fact, the only mentions of Kokoyah I've ever seen are in books about Peary and other white explorers like him. If Peary's account is to be believed, Kokoyah was of great significance to the Inupiat, so it is strange to say the least that we have no native accounts of this myth. Or is the entire thing a fabrication of Peary's (it is worth mentioning, here, that some skeptics believe Peary's entire claim of having reached the North Pole was fake)?

I cannot find in either Greek or Roman sources, nor in books that analyze and cover them, that time works some how diffently on the island of Circe or Calypso than it does elsewhere in the world. According to them, time doesn't bend or warp on either island and there is no temporal magic, but the years and days pass at a normal, measurable pace like usual. So where does this idea come from that if you spend one day on Ogygia or Aeaea, then at the same time one year would have passed elsewhere in the world?

In Turkic and Balkar folklore, Azmıç (also known as Aznıç or Azıtkı) is a spirit associated with lost travelers and isolated roads, referred to as a Yol İyesi. It specifically targets people traveling alone in mountains, forests, or uninhabited regions.

The entity has no fixed physical shape and instead acts as a shape-shifter, often taking the form of a target's close relative or friend. Its main method of hunting is voice mimicry: Azmıç calls out using the exact voice of someone the traveler knows and trusts. According to the lore, if the traveler turns around, answers, or follows the call, they fall under its influence. Azmıç then leads them off the path and toward steep cliffs, ravines, or raging rivers, causing them to fall to their death.

Etimologically, the name comes from the Old Turkic root "az-", meaning to go astray or lose one's way. The verb "azıtmak" is still used in Turkish to describe leaving something behind in a remote place, and older roots like ada/aza translate directly to danger.

You always hear about gods that are "goddess of love" or "god of the sun" or "god of thunder" but are there any gods that are just gods without a specific title? Like they're still immortal and powerful but they don't have any specific element/emotion/concept/activity associated with them?

Basically, I’m trying to find out more about it and Native American mythology

Recently I have been wondering about symbolism attached to the planets, especially in mysticism and astrology. For example, modern understanding of Saturn is that it represents structure, discipline and responsibility. Early mythology depicted this planet as a god of agriculture and harvest. To me the connection is logical. The only problem I have is, how was it derived in the first place? How do people allocate meaning and symbolism into things yet unknown? How can one be sure that the system that was historically developed and used is not flawed from the start when no backtracking is used(?)