Utagawa Kunisada. Goddess Amaterasu Emerging from Earth. 1860. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.18108501. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023.
Here are a few websites you might explore to learn more about the stories, deities, and characters from a variety of cultures. As always, be careful when using websites for information, as you'll need to vet those carefully for reliability and accuracy. I recommend using these to learn new search terms to use in your library searching within Pathfinder or one of our unique databases.
- Sacred Texts Archive -- A collection of mythological tales, arranged by region or culture. Scroll through their list on the left of the page to find these organized by tradition or culture (i.e., Egyptian, Buddhism, etc.), or select their "Search Sacred-texts" option in the middle of the page.
- Encyclopedia Mythica -- An online encyclopedia of mythology, folklore, & religion.
- THEOI.com -- Great source for Greek & Roman myths!
- Mythopedia.com -- Covers a range of cultures, such as Celtic, Aztec, Egyptian, & more.
- Windows to the Universe -- A publication of the National Earth Science Teachers Association, myths from a variety of cultures that have a connection to the stars and/or cosmos.
- Mythology Crash Course -- A collection of videos (mix of animation & narration) that take a topical approach to understanding myths, such as "Tree myths" or "Apocalypse". Some focus on specific stories from cultures, such as series on "Trickster myths" featuring Anansi or "Raven & Coyote".
- Norse Mythology for Smart People -- A collection of stories and concepts from Norse mythology.
- World Encyclopedia: Mythology from Around the World -- This is a YouTube channel from the non-profit "World Encyclopedia", with a "Did you know?" approach to specific myths.
- New World Encyclopedia: Japanese Folklore -- Thought featuring a variety of cultures, the best way to use this might be to search here on a specific culture and topic, such as "Japanese mythology".
- Project Gutenberg's Mythology Series -- This is a series of books collecting stories from many cultures. Though a bit clunky to interface with, try browsing or searching with rudimentary language such as Babylon myth.
When searching the web, try using DOMAIN searching to at least have a more defined search experience. This way, you can sort of ETHOS type to a degree, forcing GOOGLE to display sources from a particular domain such as: .gov, .org, or .edu.
For example, doing a basic web search in GOOGLE for Mayan creation myth is a good start; however, it can be more efficient to go ahead and search in this way: Mayan creation myth site:.org. That will get us to quasi-reliable sources like Wikipedia, sure, but will also expose us to sources like the World History.org site's resource on the Popul Vuh, or Mayan Creation Story, or this link to a JSTOR book (which we have access to via the library's collection) here: Maya Creation Myths: Words and Worlds of the Chilam Balam.
Maybe you run a .gov search and get something like this, a NASA photograph and brief mention of the Mayan perception of celestial phenomenon, where science meets myth, granting us a better context through which we can understand these cultures a bit more clearly.
When web searching, always take care to vet these for credibility!
