All posts tagged: Myth

Your Teenager May Be Spreading Himmler’s Favorite Myth

Your Teenager May Be Spreading Himmler’s Favorite Myth

Published by José Betancourt

Heinrich Himmler and other Third Reich occultists in the 1930s latched onto the strange idea that the Aryan race was not the product of evolution but descended from semidivine beings who left the heavens and established a secret civilization on Earth, possibly beneath Central Asia. Himmler, the head of the SS, was so enthralled by the possibility of what he considered celestial proof of the superiority of the white race that he provided funding for an SS expedition to Tibet in 1938 in the hope of locating his utopia, according to Black Sun, a 2001 history of Nazi occultism by the British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Almost a century later, this idea of a lost Aryan civilization, called Agartha, has caught on again, this time with teenagers posting memes online. If you’re older than 25, you likely missed it. But over the past year, memes about Agartha—a mystical, underground city in the center of the Earth full of flaxen-haired, blue-eyed people—kept going viral and have become a staple of the youth internet. If you search for …

Bob Weir was a troubadour of American myth, spirituality and belonging

Bob Weir was a troubadour of American myth, spirituality and belonging

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — There was something mythological about Bob Weir — utterly timeless and almost primeval. An American original troubadour telling stories that felt older than the nation itself, he somehow oriented toward a future just beyond our reach. You could imagine a world before him, but a world after him was unfathomable. Which is why it landed with such force and sadness to learn that Weir died over the weekend at age 78. His story begins like a folk tale. A teenage kid, forever known as “Bobby,” wanders the storefronts of Palo Alto, California, on New Year’s Eve, 1963. He hears banjo music drifting from somewhere nearby — familiar yet mysterious, close enough to follow. Something in that sound feels like truth, or at least a trail toward it. Palo Alto at the time was still a place of apricot orchards and suburban promise, not yet the global nerve center of big tech and artificial intelligence. Bobby follows the music down an alley and meets a fellow traveler: a young man named Jerry Garcia. Instruments …

The Myth of the Narcissistic Generation

The Myth of the Narcissistic Generation

Published by Jenni Sidey

Co-written by Jim A. McCleskey at Western Governors University and Houston Community College. Scroll through Instagram or TikTok for five minutes, and you will likely reach the same conclusion most pundits have: Young people are more narcissistic than ever. We are told that social media has ruined them, turning a generation of digital natives into selfie-obsessed egotists. It is a seductive narrative. It confirms our biases about “kids these days.” It also happens to be wrong. Psychologists have debated the “narcissism epidemic” for nearly two decades. But newer, more robust evidence paints a very different picture. The panic isn’t just exaggerated. The data contradict it. Anatomy of a Panic The alarm bells started ringing in earnest after a widely cited study by Twenge et al. (2008) reported increases in grandiose narcissism among U.S. college students. Media outlets ran with it. Time magazine famously labeled millennials the “Me Me Me Generation,” branding them as entitled and self-obsessed. Once that story took hold, social media became the convenient villain. Platforms built on selfies, personal branding, and algorithmic …

The Greek Myth of Demeter and Persephone Reinterpreted

The Greek Myth of Demeter and Persephone Reinterpreted

Published by Jenni Sidey

While researching for my Ph.D., I decided to delve into Greek mythology to determine whether I could find a story that could illuminate my understanding of mothering and my interest in maternal ambivalence. I discovered the myth of Demeter and Persephone, which, while thousands of years old, demonstrates how a mythical mother, Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, weathers changes and obstacles in her relationship with her daughter. The mother’s search for and ultimate reunion with her daughter, Persephone, sends symbolic messages about mothering that speak to maternal trauma and loss. Myths are not literal; they are generational stories that are continually adapted and retold. The personal experience and creativity of each narrator and listener move him or her to ascribe personal meaning to the tale as new versions continually surface In this vein, Demeter and Persephone’s story has helped me to refine and bolster my understanding of mothering and maternal ambivalence. The myth has inspired me to take core elements of the story, in particular the mother’s struggle with her light and dark feelings, …

The Myth of Stoic Masculinity

The Myth of Stoic Masculinity

Published by Miika Tikkanen

We like to believe our values are chosen—deliberated, earned. But more often, they are inherited under pressure—adopted to secure belonging, avoid shame and meet invisible standards shaped by power, fear and survival. Nowhere is this more evident than in the myth of stoic masculinity. Framed as strength, it promotes self-containment, emotional suppression and moral detachment as ideals. But this stoicism is not virtue—it is armor. And when we mistake armor for ethics, we lose something essential: the ability to feel, to connect, to care. In truth, stoic masculinity often functions as an anti-ethical force: it justifies moral disengagement, sanctions emotional neglect and isolates men from the relational core of our shared humanity. The longing to belong—to be respected, affirmed, safe—gets redirected into rigid identity roles, producing a hollowed-out version of selfhood that cannot fully participate in ethical life. It upholds a moral illusion: that dignity requires detachment, that autonomy means isolation, and that vulnerability is weakness. But human ethics—true ethics—are relational. They ask us to feel responsibility for others, to bear witness to suffering, to …

What’s the Creation Myth in Norse Mythology?

What’s the Creation Myth in Norse Mythology?

Published by Miika Tikkanen

  The Vikings conceived of a very different universe centered around the great sacred ash tree Yggdrasil, which held the nine worlds of the Norse cosmos in its roots and branches. But where did the Vikings think that the worlds came from?   The Viking creation myth describes a universe that emerges from primordial goop, and which is then shaped by cooperation and conflict between the gods and the giants. These same forces will eventually destroy the universe at Ragnarök. This is the Norse creation myth.   The Ginnungagap Audumbla licking Buri out of salt rocks while liquid flows from her udders, from Icelandic manuscript SAM 66, 74r, 1765. Source: My Norse Digital Image Repository   According to the Norse creation myth, at the beginning of time, existence was dominated by a massive void known as the Ginnungagap. This name means “yawning void” or “magical void” in Old Norse. According to the Voluspa, at the start of time: “there was no sand, nor sea, nor cool waves, no earth nor sky, no grass, only Ginnungagap.” …