Fun Facts from Ireland:Tir means land in Irish, and og means young, so Tir na nOg means the "land of youth". Grammar fact: the reason there is a little n in front of Og is that two vowels can't be next to each other in in a sentence. It is the same as using an instead of a in English. Fact out!!!
It's even more complicated than that: the plural definite articles of Old Irish (nan and nam) ended in nasal sounds. When those endings wore away in most conditions, they were preserved where the following word began with a vowel, only they got reanalysed as part of the following word! It's this same process that gave us urú and seimhiú, but with different kinds of sounds lost at the end of the preceding word.
The diachronic history of Irish is particularly fascinating due to the sheer quantity of historical spelling like this that it seems to have. It reminds me of English in that sense, though I don't know which language has it worse - I haven't studied a lot of Irish.
Oh, definitely English! The seemingly weird bits of Irish orthography actually continue to serve a coherent purpose, in spite of the basic rules going back to the first millennium. All the weirdness in Irish came into the vernacular between Ancient Irish and Old Irish. English, OTOH, has consistently gone out of its way to be messed up from Middle English onwards: it has multiple mutually contradictory spelling methods within its spelling 'system', and you need to know the rough etymology of words before you can even hope to get the spelling right. Things like vowel length are marked only sporadically, and with multiple different methods (because diacritics are scary), and stress is entirely unmarked. Irish, OTOH, just tries to get something workable from an alphabet that couldn't be more ill-suited to it, uses some admittedly strange methods to do so, but yet stays internally consistent. That leads to Irish looking much more scary from an orthographic standpoint than it actually is. Pre-1950s Irish was much more daunting due to the presence of lots of silent letters. Present-day Irish has only a few real spelling quirks.
Keith Gaughan yeah English definitely has a, we'll call it "fraught" history. It's funny that the two most widely spoken languages in the world, Mandarin Chinese and English, are two of the hardest to learn as a second language.
My first intro to the maiden mother and crone was through terry pratchett, so I've never had an issue with it. I read it as Maiden- A time of exploration, of learning. All her focus is external Mother- at the height of her career (whatever that may be) She controls her world, and it is hers to rule Crone - introspective, self focused. Understands the world, but has distanced herself from it. And it respects those as all important
Maiden - Fertile Mother - Fertilized Crone - Infertile Not trying to reduce women to their child baring capabilities, but you can't deny that this is a very large part of what it means to be a women, especially through history.
You can care about linguistics and also apply linguistic descriptivism, because you recognize that linguistics is a branch of science and science is based on observation rather than conforming our view of the world to the model we built and rejecting all challenges to that model. Just saying. Languages didn't evolve until now because people said "oh no, i'm being grammatically incorrect!"
There is a similar story in romanian folklore about a young prince who try to find youth without olding and life without death (as his father promised him before being born). He meet a fairy and live happily until he goes hunting in the Vally of Forgiveness and remember his world wich was extinct for a long time by now. He goes back (but his horse returns quickly in the magic world) and in the ruins of his former castle, in a chest, he finds the Death who was waiting for him. Death slaps him and he turn to dust.
TheMangakid1995 well, in Egyptian mythology, Thoth has two forms: one with the Ibis head ( the original ) and one with a baboon's head ( what they change it into )
I am Irish, so first of all, "Tir na nÓg" means "land of the young" not "land of the blessed". Secondly, the poet (who was actually a warrior)'s name "Oisin" is pronounced ush-een. Lastly, Oisin got off the horse on purpose to help an old man move a Boulder then died.
One of the best comments I've ever heard on a CC or any other channel. While this seems self evident, "We always need to be aware of how we're imposing our values on history and pre-history." Shouldn't stop there however. One could easily substitute science for history. There are probably a lot of other words to substitute. The last 2 episodes were really good, thanks for doing this.
Merry meet, Crash Course Mythology. You describe the Goddess of my heart very well in this episode. I believe Jung's theories about archetypes, and I believe the ancient Goddess-theory is very plausible, but I'm not bound to it. (I especially don't think everything was so non-violent in ancient times.) I believe in the unifying Goddess of a thousand names. She is spoken of in many myths around the world. She is the universe and we are all the stars. She is the dolphin, the night, the owl, all that lives and breathes, the wind through the leaves, the shifting of the clouds. I know this video isn't Wiccan, but thank you. You do her honor. I'm excited for the next video about the God of my heart. I've been watching every single episode of this series. It's my favorite on youtube, and I've been inspired to read myths in my own free time. Blessed be. )O(
In Scandinavia. abducted to the underworld by elves myths are quite common, and several of those has a narrative where one it taken by elves or spending the night with elves and then, when they return, many years has passed.
I notice that Gaia, the Earth Mother Goddess, was unscathed over the unpleasant conflict between Uranus and Saturn that she instigated. Uranus wronged her and I don't feel for him. Saturn did what his Mother asked for him and got cursed for it. There doesn't seem to be any justice here.
I've been reading Robert Graves. Although there is no proof of women ruling on pre-patriarchal societies, he does an amazing job telling his very plausible version of it. A lot of mammals also live as matriarchies, and you can even see some of it on current cultures, such as matrinliearity and many others, difficult to define. It is yet to imagine how different those cultures would be.
My guess is that it societies weren't necessarily matriarchal (women ruling them or having more say than men) so much as the societies revolved around accommodating the women (staying in one place for a couple years to allow for pregnancy and early child rearing, as well as the usually more physically stronger- and more biologically expendable- men going out hunting while women- the generally physically weaker and far more biologically valuable due being forced to actually carry the children- gathered nuts and berries and what have you because it is a much lighter workload for them just in case they were pregnant) With all this being said however, they really didn't address what I think is the main problem with the goddess religions and pre-historic matriarchal societies and that's just because a society has a female deity very high up in or indeed at the top of a pantheon doesn't mean that women in society had political power, just look at Japan where their chief deity is the sun goddess Amaterasu yet women were historically always considered inferior, Athenians views on Athena is another good example
Archetypes, most probably. Life, death, the divine; the thing you must not do (Pandora's box, the tree in the garden of Eden, Orpheus not looking back, lots and lots of fairy-tales from many cultures...), divine and human lovers, and so on - those are basic ingredients in many stories around the world, and they probably could've named quite a few more that tell similar stories.
IceMetalPunk I understand the concept of "archetypes" within the "collective unconscious" as proposed by Jung, but this deals with more overarching concepts and broad brush ideas, these two myths are way beyond that in similarities. Very weird... Perhaps both peoples are drawing from a much older singular story, though the geography doesn't support that.... Hmmmm... Stumped!
Err... sorry, I _am_ Christian. And I didn't use fairy-tales to group them together - there are many actual fairy-tales (i.e. Brothers Grimm stuff) that use this narrative device. And that is the point - whatever you think about the actual story, from a story-telling point of view, there are similarities in structure that are by no means exclusive to any religion or tradition. Even stories that are true for certain people, are stories - they share similar structures and narrative devices ("tropes", for the internet generation). That goes together with my "archetypes" above - I don't really subscribe to Jung's theories about the collective subconscious in all details. I think of those structural similarities more as literary devices that are common to many cultures because they touch something in the human condition itself.
Otohime is pronounced Oh-Toh-He-Meh, not Ah-To-He-Meh. The Japanese language is generally really easy to pronounce so long as you remember the five syllables. Also, the full story is that the young fisherman, Urashimataro, saves a sea turtle from being teased and bullied by some rowdy kids, and in gratitude the turtle allows Urashimatarou to ride his back to the Ryuugujyo, the Sea Palace. There, he meets Otohime and he stays in the palace for a few days to a few weeks with her eating food and watching dancers. The rest of the story is as told in the video.
I just want to say there's also an indigenous Australian story about a mermaid trying to keep a man in the underwater world until he realises how much he misses his family and decides to return - very similar to otto-hime and the tirnanog story
When the Irish story was being told in the Thought Bubble all I could think of was how similar this story was to the fairytale of Urashima Taro, so I'm glad it got included haha
I'm anxious expect the episode about Irish Mythology, is one of the moust marvellous and influential ones. It inspired Lord of the Rings to be the point where you can almost understand one by reading the other (Numerians > Nemed tribes)
The supernatural lady and mortal lover match up did work out between Princess Tryamon/Triamour of Olyroun and Sir Launfel of the Round Table. Legend has it you can hear him riding his magic horse and one day out of the year he'll even joust with you.
The first time I heard about the story of Otohime I was floored by how similar it was to Oisín i dTír na nÓg. Glad to see a bit of Irish stuff in here, since so many of us have been asking if it'd be included. :)
Nowadays she's called "The Woman of Willendorf" because calling her a "Venus" imposes Grecko-Roman ideology onto her. Art historians and anthropologists still don't really know why she was made or what her roll was in her society.
Жабокречина Thank you for replying, but I think you misunderstood my point. First of all, any society that has laws, an economy, a political system, or religion has an ideology. Rome had all of those. Secondly, Grecko-Roman in this instance means a traditionally western mindset, not literally ancient Greeks and Romans. Lastly, Venus is a Roman Goddess of love, but you can't just assume that the Woman of Willendorf is a goddess of love or fertility based on her looks. That is an inherently western idea based on Grecko-Roman tradition. Hope that clears up my comment!
PalladiumAlchemist This must be some new definition of ideology that i never heard about :( I didnt say your wrong but in Jungian context venus is archetype, you can call it whatever godess you like (same like zeus, thor, perun share same archetype). Cheers!
I think it would be interesting to see how all the knowledge and theories about the Mythology's of the world apply to Mythologys of fictional worlds like Middleearth or Westeros.
fantasy mythologies, especially tolkein's are rooting in his historical knowledge and study. He was a historical professor for years, focusing on linguistics. He would have had an indepth understanding of most of the worlds mythos and religions and an expert's understanding in Norse Mythology which is something he often taught. So the LOTR universe underthe kind of evaluation you suggested would fit the archetypes perfectly, but would poorly match up to any particular source or religion, other than North Germanic.
They actually have a class like that at my University, it is taught by the head of the religion department, and he goes in-depth into compare and contrasting different fictional religions like the ones from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Star Trek, with religions from our world. Apparently it is a high-level class because he likes to focus more on the fictional religions so you have to have already taken at least one or two religion classes before it so you already have an understanding of our world's religions, but apparently it is a pretty fun class.
I still think that sometimes goddesses were portrayed outside the sexual/fertility context. Like goddess of War Athena, in Greece, goddess of writing and knowledge Seshat in Egypt.
That and the "Tir-nan-og" It's Tir na nOg! I'd forgive the lack of fadas seeing as even I can't be arsed to put them in but at leasr put the letters in the right words!
It's actually really strange he got that wrong. I can get a mispronunciation because a lot of people would be reading the names without hearing them but to actually miswrite the name it needs to be the reverse, you'd need to hear it and then write down how you think its spelled based on the pronunciation. I wonder where or how the people who made the graphic heard of Tir Na nOg. Because even a simple search on google using the wrong spelling automatically redirects to the right one.
9:15 The Japanese folktale of Urashima Taro doesn't quite go like that, especially in the beginning. The reason the fisherman was brought down to Oto-hime *wasn't* because she fell in love with him; he had actually saved a turtle of whom was a guard of the palace under the sea, and was brought there as a token of thanks. Please look up "The Story of Urashima Taro" for the full story.
I like this guy (have always been a fan of mythology, too). He never comes off as condescending or anti-feminist. He doesn't talk too fast and always makes the episode entertaining. (I also like John Green, but sometimes he talks too fast & I have to keep 'rewinding'.) Maybe after the mythology course he can do one on the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World and, even tho we have little-to-no evidence of most of them (such as the Hanging Gardens), we seem so eager to believe they really existed?
there is literally the same story as the Tir nan og in Romania as well. basically this fair prince, seeking everlasting youth and life without death finds a fair maiden (or sometimes a fair maiden and her sisters, lucky chump) and he lives with them for an indefinite happy long time. but eventually he misses all those he left behind, wishes to go back and goes to visit his friends and relatives. but he only finds ruins of his family's palaces and all the landscapes that he thought he knew were changed and he ages centuries within moments and dies.
The Venus figurines do not necessarily confirm the existence of matriarchal societies. However, from anthropology, I think we can postulate that such societies may have existed. In pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer communities, most of the men would be usually absent doing the hunting and gathering. This would leave the women back home free to do other stuff. It's plausible that thus women back then would have had a more important role to play than men, relatively speaking.
"We serve she who is Virgin, Mother, and Crone." Any other Witcher fans thought of Skellige NPCs who'd say that when he talked about the triple goddess?
Love what you guys are doing on Crash Course Mythology. But why are you ignoring the Indian myths and Goddesses from Hinduism? There are many goddesses there with amazing stories behind them. Would love for you to do a part 2 to this video with Indian Goddesses as well.
They didn't say it explicitly but the )O( moon they've been using is actually a longstanding symbol of the triple goddess (neopaganism). The moons are waxing, full and waning to represent the maiden, mother and crone.
The version that I learned in school of the Irish myth is that Oisín was a warrior, hunting with the Fianna when he saw Niamh on a magical horse down by a river. She said that his reward for his great deeds was being able to come with her to Tír na nÓg so he went but before he did he promised his father that he will return one day. The magical horse then carried them over the sea to Tír na nÓg and shortly after they arrived they married, and Oisín unknowingly spent 400 years in Tír na nÓg, but one day he remembered his promise. Reluctantly, Niamh gave him her magical horse and let him go on the condition that he will return and that he will not step a foot on the soil of Ireland. He agreed, and returned back to the place where he was hunting with the Fianna before, only to see that many things had changed. Confused, he rode up to a number of farmers trying to roll a boulder off of their field to ask them what had happened to this place, and seeing how much trouble they were having and seeing as he was the stuff of legend he leaned down in the saddle and picked up the boulder easily with one hand. When he went to throw it, however, the saddle strap broke and he fell to the ground. The horse, frightened, galloped back to niamh, and Oisín instantly aged all of the years that he had spent in Tír na nÓg. With the little time of life he had left, asked the farmers about the Fianna to which they responded that the warriors of myth were long gone, dead for many centuries. He died with that knowledge, and Niamh, upon the returning of the horse with no rider, grieved for a long, long time.
Oisin reminds me of Taro Urashima... great rainbow bridge connection there!!! The message in both stories is: never tarry more than half a day in a magical land. Who knows if a day there equals a decade, or even a century, of Earth time.
Virgin, Mother, and Crone is almost exclusively a Victorian and later Wiccan concept. Hecate may have had a triple headed statue, which Wiccans mistake as a triple goddess thing, but any Greek Reconstructionist will tell you those head were all young. It's embrace and popularization outside a few tweedy academics came not from men, but from Women - like Gimbutas' friend Starhawk, who saw it as a way to see elderly women as having their own Wise Power. "Croning" ceremonies are very common among Wiccans as a celebration of the knowledge gained over a lifetime, and the idea is to embrace the uniqueness and beauty of every phase of life - old age included. Now, it IS a little off kilter that the Hunter, Warrior, and Sage titles of the masculine side of things are more job descriptions than ages, but the Wiccan Virgin archetype does include hunters like Diana, so "Virgin Huntress, Youthful Hunter" makes things vaguely more equal, especially since Sage and Crone are both seen as similar statements of wisdom as well. The only split then is Mother / Warrior. Personally, having these archetypes BE so binary is a positive, I think. It puts the extremes binary onto the archetypes, freeing up individual humans from having to carry it. Gender politics aside, on an individual experience level, some people think they must fit ALL of a gender stereotype to be that gender, and thus if you're say a guy who likes playing music more than sports and cars, you may wonder if you're non-binary based on that - nevermind that thousands of Greek males followed Apollo and made music instead of playing sports or racing chariots or what have you.(Also true of other deities, like Bragi.) Same for women who worry it isn't feminine to be a warrior who was good at track racing (like Athena for example, or even Freya).
Great video as always, but It'd be awesome if you guys elaborated on the "dead gods" archetype that tou mentioned briefly, and their roles in mythology. (Not just gods of death or the underworld, gods that have "died" in myths, like Balder in Norse mythology.)
Question for Thought Café: Which CC has been your favorite to animate (as a team) up to this point? You make such an excellent work. Kudos to all of you! Edit: Oh, and please don't fall into the politically correct "we had loved all of them equally". Please.
I think the outline of matriarchal (or matrilineal) societies around 2:00 to be misleading to a certain point, giving the idea that these societies where "better" than patriarchies. The "cooperative" label, which is thrown around alot, strikes me as a generalization, since while the internal social structure was much more emphatetic and peaceful, tribalism and violence between rival tribos was definetly widespread and brutal. It also ignores that "nurturing"directly implies feeling-based and, more importantly, collectivist, with little space for individual growth, specially for males (hell, the male deity archetype of the time was a "son-lover" that was bred by the Goddess, mated with her only be eaten after intercourse and had his soul reborn as the son he made with her.) This also meant that this societies did not see progress in a good light, preferring accomodation over innovation. This is significant, since All the societies that have been labeled (though most of the incorrectly) as "matrilineal" are still bound to stone age technologies and aid from (ironically) the evil foreign patriarchal systems that domitated them in order to survive.
Most goddess-centric modern religions refer to "Maiden, Mother, Crone". I am told, this is to clarify the word virgin. As you probably know, it can mean someone who has not had intercourse or someone who is merely unmarried.
You kind of messed up the story of Tír na nÓg. Firstly, Oisín is pronounced "ush-een". Secondly, Oisín didn't die immediately. He slipped out of his saddle after trying to help some men lift a heavy boulder. Thirdly, Oisín was actually a member of the Fianna, Ireland's mightiest army, not a poet. Fourthly, time flowed differently in Tír na nÓg. For every year Oisín stayed there, three hundred years passed in Ireland. Lastly, before he died he met Saint Patrick, who repented Oisín of all his sins. I understand that you were probably on a tight schedule and probably had to condense the myth but just thought you might want to know. Keep up the good work on this awesome series.
I heard a different version of the Ossian story. He was from a time when men were as giants, so when he went back to the world of men, he saw that the people there were small and weak. He saw a group of men struggling to move a boulder that was keeping their crops from being irrigated, so, being the compassionate poet he was, Ossian moved the bolder from atop his steed. The boulder proved to be too heavy for him to carry with the easy he thought it would, and he lose his balance. Falling to the ground his years caught up with him causing him to die and decay.
On the matriarchial goddess movement, one example I can think of related to it involves the etymology of the Chinese character for surname (姓). The character is composed of the characters for female (女) + life (生). Because of the "female" radical, some Chinese scholars over the years have theorized that the Chinese civilization had originally began as a matriarchial society, or at least one where descent was tracked matrilineally. Indeed, the Chinese goddess credited with creating humanity Nüwa (女媧) is given a fairly prominent role in the ancient mythology, being the one to repair the 4 pillars holding up the world when they were broken in a great war between the water god Gong'gong and Zhurong, the fire god who had taught humanity how to control fire. Some sources also expressly say that the greater role that Fu Xi, the husband of Nüwa, takes afterwards with providing humanity writing and basic technology and the fact that the tribal chiefs (recorded as the legendary sage-emperors) were all male represents a shift in "realizing men play a bigger role than women in life" (an idea I find really appalling & stupid). However, I'm not sure if the Chinese myths itself offer that interpretation or if that's an interpretation of the myths by modern scholarship.
another way to conceptualize virgin/mother/crone is: virgin = pure spirit, is not a part of the material world but has immense wisdom about the spiritual world and sometimes gives this wisdom to mortals. mother = the source from which all things material come from, the gate through which spirit passes through to become physical, the entity that gives everything life. crone = death, the afterlife where we must all go, the space we all inhabit waiting to be reborn
To be that one Irish guy who complains . . . it's pronounced "Uh-sheen" xD Also, I noticed a few differences between the version of the Tir Na nÓg (another translation of which is "The Land of the Young") story told in this video and the one I learned, but then again I learned about the Christianized version where Oisín meets Niamh while he's out hunting with his dad and the Fianna (a legendary group of warriors in Irish Myth), and at the end, he meets Saint Patrick and gets baptized. Of course that version of the story was written to try and get people to convert to Christianity, but it's just an interesting to think about the differences between various versions of a myth and why those differences exist. I'm also kinda rambling here, so, bear with me if I don't make sense xD
The title "Great Goddesses" led me to think that this episode might be about major goddesses that millions of people around the world still worship today, like Kwan Yin, Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati.
The triple aspect is used on male gods too in many types of paganism. And it's maiden, mother and crone. The reason they are separated is symbolic of the cycle of life. Sadly they do focus more on the sex parts in mythology. But alot of the myths we know could be distorted over time and there are alot of multifaceted mother goddesses who are also warriors. Kali-ma. The Morrigan. Etc.
Sioraf asNaCillini Victorian Science was like a broken clock, It was right every so often but mostly it was wrong. (or at the very least off the mark.)
Hekate is also used alot in wicca and witchcraft we love her lol and I cant speak for all but for me personally triple goddess also signifies that earth maiden being end of winter spring mother being summer into fall and crone being fall and winter
She's the face of change, and of deep power, much like you see the sacrificed god in the Oak/Holly Kings and tales spun around John Barleycorn. Pretty much all of the existing monotheist traditions still touch on these really early relationships that the people had with the land and what we considered our place in it.
First of all, Oisín is pronounced Usheen. And the proper spelling of the 'Land of the Youth' is Tír na nÓg. But, fair play to you, you actually pronounced Niamh correctly. I hope to see more of the Irish Gods and Goddesses in future videos :)
Fun Facts from Ireland:Tir means land in Irish, and og means young, so Tir na nOg means the "land of youth". Grammar fact: the reason there is a little n in front of Og is that two vowels can't be next to each other in in a sentence. It is the same as using an instead of a in English. Fact out!!!
It's even more complicated than that: the plural definite articles of Old Irish (nan and nam) ended in nasal sounds. When those endings wore away in most conditions, they were preserved where the following word began with a vowel, only they got reanalysed as part of the following word!
It's this same process that gave us urú and seimhiú, but with different kinds of sounds lost at the end of the preceding word.
The diachronic history of Irish is particularly fascinating due to the sheer quantity of historical spelling like this that it seems to have. It reminds me of English in that sense, though I don't know which language has it worse - I haven't studied a lot of Irish.
Oh, definitely English! The seemingly weird bits of Irish orthography actually continue to serve a coherent purpose, in spite of the basic rules going back to the first millennium. All the weirdness in Irish came into the vernacular between Ancient Irish and Old Irish.
English, OTOH, has consistently gone out of its way to be messed up from Middle English onwards: it has multiple mutually contradictory spelling methods within its spelling 'system', and you need to know the rough etymology of words before you can even hope to get the spelling right. Things like vowel length are marked only sporadically, and with multiple different methods (because diacritics are scary), and stress is entirely unmarked.
Irish, OTOH, just tries to get something workable from an alphabet that couldn't be more ill-suited to it, uses some admittedly strange methods to do so, but yet stays internally consistent. That leads to Irish looking much more scary from an orthographic standpoint than it actually is.
Pre-1950s Irish was much more daunting due to the presence of lots of silent letters. Present-day Irish has only a few real spelling quirks.
Keith Gaughan yeah English definitely has a, we'll call it "fraught" history. It's funny that the two most widely spoken languages in the world, Mandarin Chinese and English, are two of the hardest to learn as a second language.
That is very interesting, you are very interesting. Thanks for the facts.
My first intro to the maiden mother and crone was through terry pratchett, so I've never had an issue with it. I read it as
Maiden- A time of exploration, of learning. All her focus is external
Mother- at the height of her career (whatever that may be) She controls her world, and it is hers to rule
Crone - introspective, self focused. Understands the world, but has distanced herself from it.
And it respects those as all important
Albinojackrussel omg you're right!! I had been wondering where I first heard that.
Maiden - Fertile
Mother - Fertilized
Crone - Infertile
Not trying to reduce women to their child baring capabilities, but you can't deny that this is a very large part of what it means to be a women, especially through history.
I know other people have been asking this too but can you guys make a crash course linguistic happen, please.
omg please
+
Needs to happen
Germanic Pstrąg I want this so bad
You can care about linguistics and also apply linguistic descriptivism, because you recognize that linguistics is a branch of science and science is based on observation rather than conforming our view of the world to the model we built and rejecting all challenges to that model. Just saying. Languages didn't evolve until now because people said "oh no, i'm being grammatically incorrect!"
There is a similar story in romanian folklore about a young prince who try to find youth without olding and life without death (as his father promised him before being born). He meet a fairy and live happily until he goes hunting in the Vally of Forgiveness and remember his world wich was extinct for a long time by now. He goes back (but his horse returns quickly in the magic world) and in the ruins of his former castle, in a chest, he finds the Death who was waiting for him. Death slaps him and he turn to dust.
Sorry the ending is really funny
Did something happen to Thoth's face or am I crazy?
TheMangakid1995 I saw it too. I was about to comment this exact thing
turned to the side?
Harambe died exactly one year ago
TheMangakid1995 well, in Egyptian mythology, Thoth has two forms: one with the Ibis head ( the original ) and one with a baboon's head ( what they change it into )
Mary Chong cool I didn't know that
I am Irish, so first of all, "Tir na nÓg" means "land of the young" not "land of the blessed". Secondly, the poet (who was actually a warrior)'s name "Oisin" is pronounced ush-een. Lastly, Oisin got off the horse on purpose to help an old man move a Boulder then died.
lol thanks
I feel like they should do a little more research before making these video's
One of the best comments I've ever heard on a CC or any other channel. While this seems self evident, "We always need to be aware of how we're imposing our values on history and pre-history." Shouldn't stop there however. One could easily substitute science for history. There are probably a lot of other words to substitute.
The last 2 episodes were really good, thanks for doing this.
Comment sections never disappoint me because I expect disappointment and receive it every time.
Bennie Saying Things lmao
Same
"Great goddesses are always complex and contradictory."
Wow, basically sums up human behaviour.
Merry meet, Crash Course Mythology. You describe the Goddess of my heart very well in this episode.
I believe Jung's theories about archetypes, and I believe the ancient Goddess-theory is very plausible, but I'm not bound to it. (I especially don't think everything was so non-violent in ancient times.)
I believe in the unifying Goddess of a thousand names. She is spoken of in many myths around the world. She is the universe and we are all the stars. She is the dolphin, the night, the owl, all that lives and breathes, the wind through the leaves, the shifting of the clouds.
I know this video isn't Wiccan, but thank you. You do her honor. I'm excited for the next video about the God of my heart.
I've been watching every single episode of this series. It's my favorite on youtube, and I've been inspired to read myths in my own free time.
Blessed be. )O(
Rose Heimbichner oh my....
"She is often supPLANTED with Demeter" aaaayyyyyyy good pun
In Scandinavia. abducted to the underworld by elves myths are quite common, and several of those has a narrative where one it taken by elves or spending the night with elves and then, when they return, many years has passed.
"Six seeds of the blood-red pomegranate, and I am Queen."
👑🌬🕯🌫
Quick note: it's Tír na nÓg, and Oisín is pronounced Uh-sheen.
How perfect! I'm taking greek mythology this summer for a core class. Thanks a million!! :)
I can't get enough of this series.
I love stories about Mother Goddess, but mainly creation and growth myths in general.
I notice that Gaia, the Earth Mother Goddess, was unscathed over the unpleasant conflict between Uranus and Saturn that she instigated. Uranus wronged her and I don't feel for him. Saturn did what his Mother asked for him and got cursed for it. There doesn't seem to be any justice here.
"is it hot in here or is it all the mother goddesses" needs to be in a tote bag!
This is by far my favorite series from crash course!!
0:36 Carl Jung kinda looks like an older John Green that has a different haircut
I've been reading Robert Graves. Although there is no proof of women ruling on pre-patriarchal societies, he does an amazing job telling his very plausible version of it. A lot of mammals also live as matriarchies, and you can even see some of it on current cultures, such as matrinliearity and many others, difficult to define. It is yet to imagine how different those cultures would be.
Ceronocero I know from school there are several aboriginal tribes in North America that are matriarchal.
My guess is that it societies weren't necessarily matriarchal (women ruling them or having more say than men) so much as the societies revolved around accommodating the women (staying in one place for a couple years to allow for pregnancy and early child rearing, as well as the usually more physically stronger- and more biologically expendable- men going out hunting while women- the generally physically weaker and far more biologically valuable due being forced to actually carry the children- gathered nuts and berries and what have you because it is a much lighter workload for them just in case they were pregnant)
With all this being said however, they really didn't address what I think is the main problem with the goddess religions and pre-historic matriarchal societies and that's just because a society has a female deity very high up in or indeed at the top of a pantheon doesn't mean that women in society had political power, just look at Japan where their chief deity is the sun goddess Amaterasu yet women were historically always considered inferior, Athenians views on Athena is another good example
This crash course has helped me so much with developing the creation myth and following religion in my story :D
Thank you!
I love that the Japanese goddess Izanami is holding Calcifer in her arms.
Are there any hypotheses about why the Japanese and Irish myths here are so similar, even though they're separated by a large amount of geography?
Archetypes, most probably. Life, death, the divine; the thing you must not do (Pandora's box, the tree in the garden of Eden, Orpheus not looking back, lots and lots of fairy-tales from many cultures...), divine and human lovers, and so on - those are basic ingredients in many stories around the world, and they probably could've named quite a few more that tell similar stories.
Psychology
IceMetalPunk I understand the concept of "archetypes" within the "collective unconscious" as proposed by Jung, but this deals with more overarching concepts and broad brush ideas, these two myths are way beyond that in similarities. Very weird... Perhaps both peoples are drawing from a much older singular story, though the geography doesn't support that.... Hmmmm... Stumped!
Err... sorry, I _am_ Christian. And I didn't use fairy-tales to group them together - there are many actual fairy-tales (i.e. Brothers Grimm stuff) that use this narrative device.
And that is the point - whatever you think about the actual story, from a story-telling point of view, there are similarities in structure that are by no means exclusive to any religion or tradition.
Even stories that are true for certain people, are stories - they share similar structures and narrative devices ("tropes", for the internet generation).
That goes together with my "archetypes" above - I don't really subscribe to Jung's theories about the collective subconscious in all details. I think of those structural similarities more as literary devices that are common to many cultures because they touch something in the human condition itself.
Proto Indo-Europeans?
Japan also has the chaoskampf that you see in other Eurasian myths.
I love this series. Mike does such a great job.
how does this channel not have a million views
bout time we get some Celtic myth! More Tuatha De Danann!
Loving the Conchobhar reference in the gravestones at 19:00+/-. Excellent little Easter Egg for that branch of Mythology.
Otohime is pronounced Oh-Toh-He-Meh, not Ah-To-He-Meh. The Japanese language is generally really easy to pronounce so long as you remember the five syllables. Also, the full story is that the young fisherman, Urashimataro, saves a sea turtle from being teased and bullied by some rowdy kids, and in gratitude the turtle allows Urashimatarou to ride his back to the Ryuugujyo, the Sea Palace. There, he meets Otohime and he stays in the palace for a few days to a few weeks with her eating food and watching dancers. The rest of the story is as told in the video.
Virgin, Mother, Crone...Man that brought back some nostalgia of the Discworld Series.
I just want to say there's also an indigenous Australian story about a mermaid trying to keep a man in the underwater world until he realises how much he misses his family and decides to return - very similar to otto-hime and the tirnanog story
When the Irish story was being told in the Thought Bubble all I could think of was how similar this story was to the fairytale of Urashima Taro, so I'm glad it got included haha
I'm anxious expect the episode about Irish Mythology, is one of the moust marvellous and influential ones. It inspired Lord of the Rings to be the point where you can almost understand one by reading the other (Numerians > Nemed tribes)
The supernatural lady and mortal lover match up did work out between Princess Tryamon/Triamour of Olyroun and Sir Launfel of the Round Table. Legend has it you can hear him riding his magic horse and one day out of the year he'll even joust with you.
The first time I heard about the story of Otohime I was floored by how similar it was to Oisín i dTír na nÓg. Glad to see a bit of Irish stuff in here, since so many of us have been asking if it'd be included. :)
Nowadays she's called "The Woman of Willendorf" because calling her a "Venus" imposes Grecko-Roman ideology onto her. Art historians and anthropologists still don't really know why she was made or what her roll was in her society.
pocket porn
Aaron Blades Definatly a possibility.
PalladiumAlchemist Romans didnt have ideology dudeeeee, Venus is an archetype not identity of a deity...
Жабокречина Thank you for replying, but I think you misunderstood my point. First of all, any society that has laws, an economy, a political system, or religion has an ideology. Rome had all of those. Secondly, Grecko-Roman in this instance means a traditionally western mindset, not literally ancient Greeks and Romans. Lastly, Venus is a Roman Goddess of love, but you can't just assume that the Woman of Willendorf is a goddess of love or fertility based on her looks. That is an inherently western idea based on Grecko-Roman tradition. Hope that clears up my comment!
PalladiumAlchemist This must be some new definition of ideology that i never heard about :( I didnt say your wrong but in Jungian context venus is archetype, you can call it whatever godess you like (same like zeus, thor, perun share same archetype). Cheers!
I think it would be interesting to see how all the knowledge and theories about the Mythology's of the world apply to Mythologys of fictional worlds like Middleearth or Westeros.
fantasy mythologies, especially tolkein's are rooting in his historical knowledge and study. He was a historical professor for years, focusing on linguistics. He would have had an indepth understanding of most of the worlds mythos and religions and an expert's understanding in Norse Mythology which is something he often taught. So the LOTR universe underthe kind of evaluation you suggested would fit the archetypes perfectly, but would poorly match up to any particular source or religion, other than North Germanic.
DeathssynProductions I disagree
Yay
They actually have a class like that at my University, it is taught by the head of the religion department, and he goes in-depth into compare and contrasting different fictional religions like the ones from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Star Trek, with religions from our world. Apparently it is a high-level class because he likes to focus more on the fictional religions so you have to have already taken at least one or two religion classes before it so you already have an understanding of our world's religions, but apparently it is a pretty fun class.
waffle2434 that’s cool
I still think that sometimes goddesses were portrayed outside the sexual/fertility context. Like goddess of War Athena, in Greece, goddess of writing and knowledge Seshat in Egypt.
as soon as you mentioned oto-hime I remembered okami... what a great game :D
What happened to thoth's head?
Zhechel Lin people said be gone thot too much and he left. that's his understudy
I thought he was just looking straight at the camera and the animators drew him weird.
You should've done your research on the Irish pronunciation!
Oisín is pronounced 'Uh-sheen'.
Tosh Molloy ahhh it made me so uncomfortable
That and the "Tir-nan-og" It's Tir na nOg! I'd forgive the lack of fadas seeing as even I can't be arsed to put them in but at leasr put the letters in the right words!
His Japanese pronunciation is atrocious too. Why don't they just consult people on this stuff >.
It's actually really strange he got that wrong. I can get a mispronunciation because a lot of people would be reading the names without hearing them but to actually miswrite the name it needs to be the reverse, you'd need to hear it and then write down how you think its spelled based on the pronunciation. I wonder where or how the people who made the graphic heard of Tir Na nOg. Because even a simple search on google using the wrong spelling automatically redirects to the right one.
The Japanese is pretty easy too. Oto is always oh-toh. O is always a short o sound, never Ah.
Irish is crazy hard for me though.
9:15 The Japanese folktale of Urashima Taro doesn't quite go like that, especially in the beginning. The reason the fisherman was brought down to Oto-hime *wasn't* because she fell in love with him; he had actually saved a turtle of whom was a guard of the palace under the sea, and was brought there as a token of thanks. Please look up "The Story of Urashima Taro" for the full story.
I like this guy (have always been a fan of mythology, too). He never comes off as condescending or anti-feminist. He doesn't talk too fast and always makes the episode entertaining. (I also like John Green, but sometimes he talks too fast & I have to keep 'rewinding'.) Maybe after the mythology course he can do one on the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World and, even tho we have little-to-no evidence of most of them (such as the Hanging Gardens), we seem so eager to believe they really existed?
Of course he doesn't come off as anti-feminist, he's pandering to you.
Small part was hoping great goddess cards would be merch. Darn.
Vanessa Chan OMG I wish
I'd love to see you guys discuss some South East Asian myths such as Nyi Roro Kidul, the Goddess of the sea or Hyang.
I love these crash course episodes! Mike's voice is awesome and engaging.
Legend of Zelda is another goddess myth. All hail Hylia!
ReligionForBreakfast not exactly
there is literally the same story as the Tir nan og in Romania as well. basically this fair prince, seeking everlasting youth and life without death finds a fair maiden (or sometimes a fair maiden and her sisters, lucky chump) and he lives with them for an indefinite happy long time. but eventually he misses all those he left behind, wishes to go back and goes to visit his friends and relatives. but he only finds ruins of his family's palaces and all the landscapes that he thought he knew were changed and he ages centuries within moments and dies.
The Venus figurines do not necessarily confirm the existence of matriarchal societies. However, from anthropology, I think we can postulate that such societies may have existed. In pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer communities, most of the men would be usually absent doing the hunting and gathering. This would leave the women back home free to do other stuff. It's plausible that thus women back then would have had a more important role to play than men, relatively speaking.
Ohhkay. How is that relevant?
Love this channel :D
I like ur videos AstroFocus !!!
+AstroFocus who dosnt?
"We serve she who is Virgin, Mother, and Crone." Any other Witcher fans thought of Skellige NPCs who'd say that when he talked about the triple goddess?
Love what you guys are doing on Crash Course Mythology. But why are you ignoring the Indian myths and Goddesses from Hinduism? There are many goddesses there with amazing stories behind them. Would love for you to do a part 2 to this video with Indian Goddesses as well.
Sexy Lawn Ornaments is my new indie band.
I love these so much! Also, the host is super cute :)
The stories about goddesses spiriting away their lovers reminds of 'Wise Man's Fear' when something similar happens to Kvothe
They didn't say it explicitly but the )O( moon they've been using is actually a longstanding symbol of the triple goddess (neopaganism). The moons are waxing, full and waning to represent the maiden, mother and crone.
The version that I learned in school of the Irish myth is that Oisín was a warrior, hunting with the Fianna when he saw Niamh on a magical horse down by a river. She said that his reward for his great deeds was being able to come with her to Tír na nÓg so he went but before he did he promised his father that he will return one day. The magical horse then carried them over the sea to Tír na nÓg and shortly after they arrived they married, and Oisín unknowingly spent 400 years in Tír na nÓg, but one day he remembered his promise. Reluctantly, Niamh gave him her magical horse and let him go on the condition that he will return and that he will not step a foot on the soil of Ireland. He agreed, and returned back to the place where he was hunting with the Fianna before, only to see that many things had changed. Confused, he rode up to a number of farmers trying to roll a boulder off of their field to ask them what had happened to this place, and seeing how much trouble they were having and seeing as he was the stuff of legend he leaned down in the saddle and picked up the boulder easily with one hand. When he went to throw it, however, the saddle strap broke and he fell to the ground. The horse, frightened, galloped back to niamh, and Oisín instantly aged all of the years that he had spent in Tír na nÓg. With the little time of life he had left, asked the farmers about the Fianna to which they responded that the warriors of myth were long gone, dead for many centuries. He died with that knowledge, and Niamh, upon the returning of the horse with no rider, grieved for a long, long time.
Your channel is pure genius! Thanks guys, excellent excellent work!🤙
"Earth mom actually *did* come first" YOU THOUGHT WE'D MISS THAT
Do a video on Celtic/Irish mythology!
nice that you uploaded this today! it's Mother's Day in Sweden !
jokes on me!! it's 0:26 so it's no longer Mother's Day in sweden
I know I'm late to the party but I don't think maiden mother crone is "sexist" or whatever is implied by that.
Very interesting video. Loved the way you dealt with the topic. Wish it went even more in depth but this was very informative
Suspicion that the other reason we're doing mothers first is to line up with mothers day and fathers day?
Oisin reminds me of Taro Urashima... great rainbow bridge connection there!!! The message in both stories is: never tarry more than half a day in a magical land. Who knows if a day there equals a decade, or even a century, of Earth time.
Can y'all guys make a crash course about insomnia, it's history, and all aspects related to it?
Virgin, Mother, and Crone is almost exclusively a Victorian and later Wiccan concept. Hecate may have had a triple headed statue, which Wiccans mistake as a triple goddess thing, but any Greek Reconstructionist will tell you those head were all young. It's embrace and popularization outside a few tweedy academics came not from men, but from Women - like Gimbutas' friend Starhawk, who saw it as a way to see elderly women as having their own Wise Power. "Croning" ceremonies are very common among Wiccans as a celebration of the knowledge gained over a lifetime, and the idea is to embrace the uniqueness and beauty of every phase of life - old age included. Now, it IS a little off kilter that the Hunter, Warrior, and Sage titles of the masculine side of things are more job descriptions than ages, but the Wiccan Virgin archetype does include hunters like Diana, so "Virgin Huntress, Youthful Hunter" makes things vaguely more equal, especially since Sage and Crone are both seen as similar statements of wisdom as well. The only split then is Mother / Warrior. Personally, having these archetypes BE so binary is a positive, I think. It puts the extremes binary onto the archetypes, freeing up individual humans from having to carry it. Gender politics aside, on an individual experience level, some people think they must fit ALL of a gender stereotype to be that gender, and thus if you're say a guy who likes playing music more than sports and cars, you may wonder if you're non-binary based on that - nevermind that thousands of Greek males followed Apollo and made music instead of playing sports or racing chariots or what have you.(Also true of other deities, like Bragi.) Same for women who worry it isn't feminine to be a warrior who was good at track racing (like Athena for example, or even Freya).
Great video as always, but It'd be awesome if you guys elaborated on the "dead gods" archetype that tou mentioned briefly, and their roles in mythology. (Not just gods of death or the underworld, gods that have "died" in myths, like Balder in Norse mythology.)
Was that Calcifer in Isanami's arms? Nice shout-out. ^_^ This has got to be my favorite installment in this great Crash Course series.
the concept of time "catching back" to a human is explored really well in Space 1999 episode " death other domain "!
I'm increasingly convinced that the scriptwriter is some flavor of pagan. They write about the gods with such affection and warmth.
Thank God he mentioned that good for nothing Zeus.
I got the innuendo almost immediately.
Did anyone else catch Thoth with the shamrock around 8:03? Getting lucky with the goddesses eh buddy?
5:51 not gonna lie that is a pretty badass story
I really needed an explanation for the change of Thoth’s head. Life didn’t make any sense for a moment! How dare you?
Question for Thought Café:
Which CC has been your favorite to animate (as a team) up to this point?
You make such an excellent work. Kudos to all of you!
Edit: Oh, and please don't fall into the politically correct "we had loved all of them equally". Please.
yay, first reference to irish mythology. cant wait for more of tuatha de danann.
I think the outline of matriarchal (or matrilineal) societies around 2:00 to be misleading to a certain point, giving the idea that these societies where "better" than patriarchies. The "cooperative" label, which is thrown around alot, strikes me as a generalization, since while the internal social structure was much more emphatetic and peaceful, tribalism and violence between rival tribos was definetly widespread and brutal. It also ignores that "nurturing"directly implies feeling-based and, more importantly, collectivist, with little space for individual growth, specially for males (hell, the male deity archetype of the time was a "son-lover" that was bred by the Goddess, mated with her only be eaten after intercourse and had his soul reborn as the son he made with her.) This also meant that this societies did not see progress in a good light, preferring accomodation over innovation. This is significant, since All the societies that have been labeled (though most of the incorrectly) as "matrilineal" are still bound to stone age technologies and aid from (ironically) the evil foreign patriarchal systems that domitated them in order to survive.
There was a tv show called Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog and this video just revived some crappy CGI memories.
Amazing as always
I really hope that you guys do an episode on Aboriginal dream time!!!! 😍
Oh thank gos (get it?) you are back. I thought the series ended prematurely.
This guy is a sitcom. 🤘
Soooo who else is just watching this just for fun?
I reflected way too much about "Goddess Petting Zoo" gag...
Most goddess-centric modern religions refer to "Maiden, Mother, Crone". I am told, this is to clarify the word virgin. As you probably know, it can mean someone who has not had intercourse or someone who is merely unmarried.
You kind of messed up the story of Tír na nÓg. Firstly, Oisín is pronounced "ush-een". Secondly, Oisín didn't die immediately. He slipped out of his saddle after trying to help some men lift a heavy boulder. Thirdly, Oisín was actually a member of the Fianna, Ireland's mightiest army, not a poet. Fourthly, time flowed differently in Tír na nÓg. For every year Oisín stayed there, three hundred years passed in Ireland. Lastly, before he died he met Saint Patrick, who repented Oisín of all his sins. I understand that you were probably on a tight schedule and probably had to condense the myth but just thought you might want to know. Keep up the good work on this awesome series.
I heard a different version of the Ossian story. He was from a time when men were as giants, so when he went back to the world of men, he saw that the people there were small and weak. He saw a group of men struggling to move a boulder that was keeping their crops from being irrigated, so, being the compassionate poet he was, Ossian moved the bolder from atop his steed. The boulder proved to be too heavy for him to carry with the easy he thought it would, and he lose his balance. Falling to the ground his years caught up with him causing him to die and decay.
my favourite is the Trickster
On the matriarchial goddess movement, one example I can think of related to it involves the etymology of the Chinese character for surname (姓). The character is composed of the characters for female (女) + life (生). Because of the "female" radical, some Chinese scholars over the years have theorized that the Chinese civilization had originally began as a matriarchial society, or at least one where descent was tracked matrilineally.
Indeed, the Chinese goddess credited with creating humanity Nüwa (女媧) is given a fairly prominent role in the ancient mythology, being the one to repair the 4 pillars holding up the world when they were broken in a great war between the water god Gong'gong and Zhurong, the fire god who had taught humanity how to control fire.
Some sources also expressly say that the greater role that Fu Xi, the husband of Nüwa, takes afterwards with providing humanity writing and basic technology and the fact that the tribal chiefs (recorded as the legendary sage-emperors) were all male represents a shift in "realizing men play a bigger role than women in life" (an idea I find really appalling & stupid). However, I'm not sure if the Chinese myths itself offer that interpretation or if that's an interpretation of the myths by modern scholarship.
another way to conceptualize virgin/mother/crone is: virgin = pure spirit, is not a part of the material world but has immense wisdom about the spiritual world and sometimes gives this wisdom to mortals. mother = the source from which all things material come from, the gate through which spirit passes through to become physical, the entity that gives everything life. crone = death, the afterlife where we must all go, the space we all inhabit waiting to be reborn
What a great episode! 😍🦄
To be that one Irish guy who complains . . . it's pronounced "Uh-sheen" xD
Also, I noticed a few differences between the version of the Tir Na nÓg (another translation of which is "The Land of the Young") story told in this video and the one I learned, but then again I learned about the Christianized version where Oisín meets Niamh while he's out hunting with his dad and the Fianna (a legendary group of warriors in Irish Myth), and at the end, he meets Saint Patrick and gets baptized. Of course that version of the story was written to try and get people to convert to Christianity, but it's just an interesting to think about the differences between various versions of a myth and why those differences exist.
I'm also kinda rambling here, so, bear with me if I don't make sense xD
The title "Great Goddesses" led me to think that this episode might be about major goddesses that millions of people around the world still worship today, like Kwan Yin, Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati.
The triple aspect is used on male gods too in many types of paganism. And it's maiden, mother and crone. The reason they are separated is symbolic of the cycle of life. Sadly they do focus more on the sex parts in mythology. But alot of the myths we know could be distorted over time and there are alot of multifaceted mother goddesses who are also warriors. Kali-ma. The Morrigan. Etc.
Victorian science was fantastic. It gave us the theory of evolution and vaccines.
Sioraf asNaCillini Victorian Science was like a broken clock, It was right every so often but mostly it was wrong. (or at the very least off the mark.)
Hekate is also used alot in wicca and witchcraft we love her lol and I cant speak for all but for me personally triple goddess also signifies that earth maiden being end of winter spring mother being summer into fall and crone being fall and winter
She's the face of change, and of deep power, much like you see the sacrificed god in the Oak/Holly Kings and tales spun around John Barleycorn. Pretty much all of the existing monotheist traditions still touch on these really early relationships that the people had with the land and what we considered our place in it.
That Zeus thing completely explains Greek Mythology.
First of all, Oisín is pronounced Usheen. And the proper spelling of the 'Land of the Youth' is Tír na nÓg. But, fair play to you, you actually pronounced Niamh correctly. I hope to see more of the Irish Gods and Goddesses in future videos :)