How is the Greek mythology look like and some comparison of Chinese, Norse and Greek mythology.

This week I continued my research of the cultural awareness of the mythology in different places. I have already done a lot of research on the Chinese and the Norse mythology, so I did some research of the Greek mythology this week.

I searched for information on the website, and I found a website, www.greekmythology.com. In this website, I can find the descriptions to all the gods and characters in the Greek mythology, and it seems that the Greek mythology has the most systematic background and relations in all mythology, and it is also very complicated. Here are some examples of the Greek mythology.

The first story is about Sisyphus. Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra (Corinth) in Greek mythology. He was the son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete. He founded Ephyra, which he ruled over as its first king. His spouse was the nymph Merope, with whom he had four children; Glaucus, Ornytion, Almus, and Thersander. Although Sisyphus helped its city become a commercial hub and invested in navigation, he was a sly and deceitful person. In numerous occasions, he violated the Xenia, the concept of hospitality and generosity shown to travellers and guests, by killing them, so he could prove that he was a ruthless king. These violations made him fall in the eyes of Zeus, who was in charge of promoting the Xenia. Another time that Sisyphus infuriated Zeus when he told the river god Asopus where his daughter Aegina was - Zeus had previously kidnapped her. In return, Asopus created a spring to flow on the Acropolis of Corinth. The now furious father of gods decided to punish Sisyphus for good. He asked Thanatos, personification of death, to take him and chain him in the Underworld. When Thanatos went to Sisyphus, the king asked how the chains actually worked; Thanatos agreed, but Sisyphus swiftly managed to chain Thanatos instead. With Death now in chains, no mortal could die and go to the Underworld. After a while, the situation aggravated, and the god of war Ares, unhappy that his wars were no longer interesting as no one died, released Thanatos. He then trapped Sisyphus and gave him to Thanatos too. Another version of the story has it that Hades was sent instead of Thanatos, and it was him that was tricked and chained by Sisyphus. As a result, people could no longer make sacrifices, and the sick would no longer find peace as they couldn't die. All gods told Sisyphus they would make his life a living hell if he didn't free Hades, and he reluctantly agreed. Before surrendering though and dying, Sisyphus told his wife Merope to later throw his lifeless body in the middle of the city square, as a test for his wife's love for him. As a result, his body ended up on the banks of the river Styx. Sisyphus, now in the Underworld, told Persephone, queen of the underworld, what had happened, and told her to release him and send him back to the living, so he could punish his wife. Persephone agreed, and Sisyphus went back to the realm of the living. He found his wife and scolded her, but he then refused to return to Tartarus. In the end, the god Hermes took him and dragged him there. Zeus, fed up with Sisyphus' tricks and cunning as well as his hubris - believing he was more cunning than Zeus - punished him to eternally push a boulder uphill. However, as soon as he would reach the top of the hill, the boulder would roll off and Sisyphus had to push it back again.

Another story from Greek mythology is about the Trojan War. This is a very famous war in the Greek mythology. The beginning of this war is because of a party. The god of gods organised a grand feast in celebration of Peleus' and Thetis' marriage, in which all of the gods and important figures were invited, except the goddess of strife, Eris. The goddess was stopped at the door by Hermes, infuriating her. Before she left, she threw her gift amidst the guests; the Apple of Discord, a golden apple on which the words "to the fairest" had been inscribed. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite started quarreling over who should be the one to take the apple, and demanded that Zeus decide on this matter. Zeus knew that if he made a choice, he would cause the anger of the other two that wouldn't be picked, and decided to abstain; instead, he appointed Paris, the young prince of Troy, as the judge. Paris could not make a decision, even after seeing the three goddesses naked, so they started bribing him; Hera said that he would get political power and be the ruler of the continent of Asia; Athena would give him wisdom and great skills in battle; and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite, and returned to Troy. The story later is too long so I just pick this part of this story as it is enough to prove my topic.

The Greek mythology is quite different in many places compared with the Chinese mythology and the Norse mythology. The gods also have emotion in the Greek mythology, they would be angry, envy, vain, happy, and they will also make mistakes and be punished (like Sisyphus), and Gods in Greek mythology seems have lots of conflicts, and often harm each other. But gods in Greek mythology is the most powerful. The relationship between gods and humans can’t be surpass in the Greek mythology. This is different in the Chinese mythology, humans can be gods if they keep discipline themselves for a very long time, but the main point to be a god is to be motionless in Chinese mythology.

Another difference in these mythology is the fate. In Greek and Norse mythology, the gods cannot fight with the destiny, they all need to followed the destiny, but in Chinese mythology, we do not emphasize the importance of destiny, and the destiny can even be changed by some gods. When facing some disasters, the gods in the Greek and Norse mythology cannot fight against them because this is their destiny, but in Chinese mythology, gods or the humans could fight, and in most cases they will win and alive. So someone summarized the Chinese mythology as the history of fighting with the nature, and summarized the Greek mythology as the history of incest and obstruct others.

This topic is too complicated in some ways so I cannot learn a lot of it, but I still get a lot of information and learn a lot from it. I hope the readers can also learn something from my blog.

What can we know from the Chinese mythology?

Last time, I talked about something about the Chinese mythology and Norse mythology. After learning about this topic, now I have some more information about this topic after doing some research.

First I want to talk about some more about the Chinese mythology. Last time I talked about the mythology from China of the time of gods. And today I want to talk about something about the time of the heroes. They are the offspring of those gods, but more like human beings nowadays. The time of heroes in Chinese mythology is more likely like a transition of the mythology and the real history, lots of heroes real exists in the history, but the mythology gives them some legendary deeds. Some of the mythology are quite famous nowadays, and I would like to pick one of them to talk about.

This story is about Kuafu. He is the leader of a big tribe, and very tall and strong. At that time, the sun was so hot, and people were suffered from the high temperature. Crops cannot grow cause it was too hot, and rivers dried up. Kuafu felt so sad that his clansmen cannot live, so he decided to chase the sun when the sun declined westward, and ask the sun to follow his order and serve the people. He started to chase the sun, and he runs so fast through the mountains and rivers. After nine days, he finally caught the sun, but he felt so hot when he tried to get close to the sun, and felt very thirsty. So he drank over the water of the Yellow River, and the Wei River. But he still felt very thirsty, and want to go to the north of the land for the water, but he was too thirsty, and thirst to death on his way. Kuafu felt very regretful before he died, and he threw his cane, and the place that the cane landed became a forest for travelers to rest.

This is a very famous story of Chinese mythology, and we can find a lot of information from it. As I talked about last time, the mythology can reflect how people feel and live in the ancient time. The first thing I can learn from this story is the change of the ability of a “god”. The gods before are so powerful and omnipotent, they can do everything they want, and has the power to change everything. But at this time, people realized that god is not omnipotent, and there is a lot of things that gods also cannot change. Gods tend to become a more powerful human. The second thing I can know is people wanted to control the nature. At that time, the science and technology was not developed, people cannot understand how nature works, and they did not have the ability to resist the nature disastrous. So people at that time wanted to have the power to control the nature, they believed that the nature is controlled by someone, and the disastrous are caused by some monsters, and they hope someone could do something to stop the disastrous, so they could live happily. And also, we can found some information of how ancient Chinese people consider the world from the part of “how the sun works”. From the story, we can found that ancient Chinese people think that the sun rises from the ground, and will fall into a place like a valley. But the western part of China are mostly deserts and mountains, and are very cold. So ancient people cannot live in that place, or even cannot explore. They believed that the sun rises from the see, and falls into a valley, they cannot meet the sun because they cannot go into the see or explore in the valley. We can find how ancient people consider the law of the nature and the geography of the land they live. The last thing I can learn from this story is the characteristic of Kuafu, which could reflect how people consider “good characteristic” is. Kuafu, as a leader of a tribe, he is responsibility at first. When his people has trouble, he stood out to fight for them. Also, he is so strong, which could reflect the thing that ancient people adored: strength. Strong people are easily to be the leader of a group of people in ancient time, because people at that time need a lot of manual labors, and strong people could do more jobs, and got more preys, so they could get more admiration. Also, Kuafu is kind and selfness. At the last time of his life, he still thought of his clansman, and he still used his cane to benefit other people, and this is the thing that people think should be respected.

This time I mostly do some research of how ancient Chinese people think, how the image of gods in the mythology changed, and what can we know from the mythology. Next time I want to do some more research of western mythology, and make some comparison between Chinese mythology and Western mythology. I will continue doing this research topic.

How is Chinese mythology and western mythology different?

Everyone has some imagination to what they cannot understand. In the ancient time, when the science and technology was not as developed as nowadays, people would use their imagination to think about questions such as, how the world formed, where are we from, who controls the world. There is a lot of interest to read those stories of myths and tales, and different culture, obviously, do have different myths and tales.

As a Chinese, I have read a lot about Chinese myth since I was very young. The system of Chinese myth has lots of versions, and different versions do have some differences. The first god was formed in the very ancient time, called Pangu. Pangu is the one who creates the world which we are living in. The world is chaotic before, the sky and the ground were mingled with each other, and energy was filled in. Pangu was formed in the chaos, and he was so strong, that he used a big axe to split on the space, and the sky and the ground separate a little. Pangu then held the sky, and stood up, to made enough space between the sky and ground. After Pangu died, his two eyes turn into the sun and the moon, his body turns into the mountain and the ground, his blood turns into the rivers and lakes, and his muscles turn into the farmland, and the world formed. After that, Pangu’s energy turns into two dragons and people (god people), and they created five tribes. One interesting thing is that all the gods that related to Pangu all had dragons’ head and snakes’ body. The two dragons got part of Pangu’s ability, one can control the change of day and night, the other can control the weather of the world. Then here comes lots of different versions, but all the versions have the same theme, it is a long time of war. The five tribes had three empires, and they turned into five empires. The empire of the west has two sons, Huang and Yan. They had a very big fight with an enemy called Chiyou, and they won at last.

After that, we still have a lot of myths, but I am not quite familiar with them as they were too long, and had too many versions. The time of gods ends at an empire called Xiao, and he did exist in the real history, he is the first empire of the Xia dynastic. But the real history is quite different from that of the myths. There are too many versions and too many things I cannot make sure right now, so I need more information to know this.

The reason why I have interests of studying the differences between Chinese and western countries’ myths is because of a novel I read before. The novel is a fantasy story, and the background is mostly based on Norse mythology. I didn’t know a lot about it before, all I know is just some famous words, such as “Ragnarok”, so this novel taught me a lot about it. From this book, I knew that the world of Norse mythology is based on Yggdrasil, and there were four kinds of lives, Giants, Gods, Elves, and Dwarves. The Gods were the offspring of Giants, but they were the enemy of them, and had several fights. The Giants lost, and they escaped to Jothuheim. Elves and Dwarves were half gods, and they worked for gods. The leaders of the god were called Odin and Njord, and Odin was the one who created the world and humans.

I don’t know a lot of details of the Norse mythology, as it is just the background of that novel, but I still get a lot of information from it, and find a lot of difference between Chinese mythology and Norse mythology. One important thing is the different concept of gods. In the Chinese mythology, all the gods were so powerful and perfect. They can do anything they want, and get anything they want. But this is quite different in the Norse mythology. In the Norse mythology, the gods are not perfect, and they seem like humans in some ways. For examples, when Odin wanted to have the great wisdom from the giants, he paid the cost of one of his eyes. And was tormented for nine days in order to get the Gungnir. This shows that gods still have lot of problems, and they were not invincible, they also need to cost something when they want something.

Another famous part of Norse mythology is the Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and gods would die. This is because of the conflicts between gods and giants, and they all knew they would have a fight. Although the gods knew that they were destined to lost, they still accepted this ending calmly, and they believed that the gods left will rebuild the world after the end of the world. This is an important difference from Chinese myths. In Chinese myths, the world never ends, it just has some differences of good or bad. But in the Norse mythology, the world was doomed to end, and was rebuilt later. So gods in Norse mythology is different from that in the Chinese mythology, they would loss, they would be destroyed, they need to pay when they want something, and they are not afraid of lost and death. But in Chinese culture, the god is the god, they never have faults. They are all modest, clever, brave, responsible, they have all the good characters. So Chinese gods are very positive, which people need to learn from them.

I think mythology is a very important part of culture, because it reflects how people from this culture think, how do they perceive the world, how do they treat others, what kinds of people do they respect. I think myths of this culture can answer these questions in some ways. Also, the mythology will have influence to the literature and politics. I won’t stop learning this topic, and I think I will have more discovery if I search for some more information about mythology later.