Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself?

From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated.

A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

A retelling of Disney Encanto featuring stunning development art from the original Disney Studio artists. Since its release, Encanto has become an instant classic thanks to its magical story, relatable characters and catchy songs from Tony (R), Grammy (R) and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Encanto won Best Animated Feature Film at the 2022 Academy Awards (R). Enjoy the hit movie through this retelling of the story, accompanied by concept art from the original Walt Disney Animation Studios artists. Alongside the art, fascinating facts about each piece of art give an insight into the design process behind the iconic movie. Also featured is a foreword from Yvett Merino, Producer at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The beautiful hardback features a textured finish, stunning foil and illustrated endpapers to ensure this is a book to treasure for years to come. This is the perfect gift for all those who have been enchanted by the magic of Encanto!

Over the past two decades, a steady stream of recordings, videos, feature films, festivals, and concerts has presented the music of Balkan Gypsies, or Roma, to Western audiences, who have greeted them with exceptional enthusiasm. Yet, as author Carol Silverman notes, "Roma are revered as musicians and reviled as people." In this book, Silverman introduces readers to the people and cultures who produce this music, offering a sensitive and incisive analysis of how Romani musicians address the challenges of discrimination. Focusing on southeastern Europe then moving to the diaspora, her book examines the music within Romani communities, the lives and careers of outstanding musicians, and the marketing of music in the electronic media and "world music" concert circuit. Silverman touches on the way that the Roma exemplify many qualities- adaptability, cultural hybridity, transnationalism-that are taken to characterize late modern experience. Rather than just celebrating these qualities, she presents the musicians as complicated, pragmatic individuals who work creatively within the many constraints that inform their lives. As both a performer and presenter on the world music circuit, Silverman has worked extensively with Romani communities for more than two decades both in their home countries and in the diaspora. At a time when the political and economic plight of European Roma and the popularity of their music are objects of international attention, Silverman's book is incredibly timely.

The Musical Playground is a new and fascinating account of the musical play of school-aged children. Based on fifteen years of ethnomusicological field research in urban and rural school playgrounds around the globe, Kathryn Marsh provides unique insights into children's musical playground activities across a comprehensive scope of social, cultural, and national contexts.
With a sophisticated synthesis of ethnomusicological and music education approaches, Marsh examines sung and chanted games, singing and dance routines associated with popular music and sports chants, and more improvised and spontaneous chants, taunts, and rhythmic movements. The book's index of more than 300 game genres is a valuable reference to readers in the field of children's folklore, providing a unique map of game distribution across an array of cultures and geographical locations. On the companion website, readers will be able to view on streamed video, field recordings of children's musical play throughout the wide range of locations and cultures that form the core of Marsh's study, allowing them to better understand the music, movement, and textual characteristics of musical games and interactions. Copious notated musical examples throughout the book and the website demonstrate characteristics of game genres, children's generative practices, and reflections of cultural influences on game practice, and valuable, practical recommendations are made for developing pedagogies which reflect more child-centred and less Eurocentric views of children's play, musical learning, and musical creativity.
Marsh brings readers to playgrounds in Australia, Norway, the USA, the United Kingdom, and Korea, offering them an important and innovative study of how children transmit, maintain, and transform the games of the playground. The Musical Playground will appeal to practitioners and researchers in music education, ethnomusicology, and folklore.

Minos and the Moderns considers three mythological complexes that enjoyed a unique surge of interest in early twentieth-century European art and literature: Europa and the bull, the minotaur and the labyrinth, and Daedalus and Icarus. All three are situated on the island of Crete and are linked by the figure of King Minos. Drawing examples from fiction, poetry, drama, painting, sculpture, opera, and ballet, Minos and the Moderns is the first book of its kind to treat the role of the Cretan myths in the modern imagination.
Beginning with the resurgence of Crete in the modern consciousness in 1900 following the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans, Theodore Ziolkowski shows how the tale of Europa-in poetry, drama, and art, but also in cartoons, advertising, and currency-was initially seized upon as a story of sexual awakening, then as a vehicle for social and political satire, and finally as a symbol of European unity. In contast, the minotaur provided artists ranging from Picasso to Durrenmatt with an image of the artist's sense of alienation, while the labyrinth suggested to many writers the threatening sociopolitical world of the twentieth century. Ziolkowski also considers the roles of such modern figures as Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud; of travelers to Greece and Crete from Isadora Duncan to Henry Miller; and of the theorists and writers, including T. S. Eliot and Thomas Mann, who hailed the use of myth in modern literature.
Minos and the Moderns concludes with a summary of the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological revisions enabled precisely these myths to be taken up as a mirror of modern consciousness. The book will appeal to all readersinterested in the classical tradition and its continuing relevance and especially to scholars of Classics and modern literatures.

In Leaves from the Garden of Eden, Howard Schwartz, a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, has gathered together one hundred of the most astonishing and luminous stories from Jewish folk tradition.
Just as Schwartz's award-winning book Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism collected the essential myths of Jewish tradition, Leaves from the Garden of Eden collects one hundred essential Jewish tales. As imaginative as the Arabian Nights, these stories invoke enchanted worlds, demonic realms, and mystical experiences. The four most popular types of Jewish tales are gathered here--fairy tales, folktales, supernatural tales, and mystical tales--taking readers on heavenly journeys, lifelong quests, and descents to the underworld. King David is still alive in the City of Luz, which the Angel of Death cannot enter, and somewhere deep in the forest a mysterious cottage contains the candle of your soul. In these stories, a bride who is not careful may end up marrying a demon, while the charm sewn into a dress may drive a pious woman to lascivious behavior. There is a dybbuk lurking in a well, a book that comes to life, and a world where Lilith, the Queen of Demons, seduces the unsuspecting. Here too are Jewish versions of many of the best-known tales, including "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Rapunzel." Schwartz's retelling of one of these stories, "The Finger," inspired Tim Burton's film Corpse Bride.
With its broad selection from written and oral sources, Leaves from the Garden of Eden is a landmark collection, representing the full range of Jewish folklore, from the Talmud to the present. It is a must-read for everyone who loves fiction and an ideal holiday gift.

From the twelve days of Christmas to the Spring traditions of Valentine, Shrovetide, and Easter eggs, through May Day revels and Midsummer fires, and on to the waning of the year, Harvest Home, and Hallowe'en; Ronald Hutton takes us on a fascinating journey through the ritual year in Britain.
His comprehensive study covers all the British Isles and the whole sweep of history from the earliest written records to the present day. Great and lesser, ancient and modern, Christian and pagan, all rituals are treated with the same attention. The result is a colorful and absorbing history in which Ronald Hutton challenges many common assumptions about the customs of the past and the festivals of the present debunking many myths and illuminates the history of the calendar we live by.
Stations of the Sun is the first complete scholarly work to cover the full span of British rituals, challenging the work of specialists from the late Victorian period onwards, reworking our picture of the field thoroughly, and raising issues for historians of every period.

An innovative and accessible overview of how ancient Scandinavians understood and made use of their mythological stories. Old Norse Mythology provides a unique survey of the mythology of Scandinavia: the gods THorr (Thor) with his hammer, the wily and duplicitous Odinn (Odin), the sly Loki, and other fascinating figures. They create the world, battle their enemies, and die at the end of the world, which arises anew with a new generation of gods. These stories were the mythology of the Vikings, but they were not written down until long after the conversion to Christianity, mostly in Iceland. In addition to a broad overview of Nordic myths, the book presents a case study of one myth, which tells of how THorr (Thor) fished up the World Serpent, analyzing the myth as a sacred text of the Vikings. Old Norse Mythology also explores the debt we owe to medieval intellectuals, who were able to incorporate the old myths into new paradigms that helped the myths to survive when they were no longer part of a religious system. This superb introduction traces the use of the mythology in ideological contexts, from the Viking Age until the twenty-first century, as well as in entertainment.

A combined volume of three of the best-selling titles in the Reed New Holland Aboriginal series: Aboriginal Legends - Animal Tales, Aboriginal Fables and Legendary Tales, and Aboriginal Myths - Tales of the Dreamtime. The emphasis throughout the book is on the mystical bond that existed between Aborigines, their environment, and the spirit life of the Dreamtime.

A.W. Reed. Why are there black swans only in Australia? How did snakes become poisonous? Learn about the powerful Rainbow Snake, red and black flying foxes, the Eagle-hawk and the Medicine Man in these incredible tales of the Dreamtime. A unique collection of stories for those interested in learning more about this fascinating culture.

Soon after 9/11, wild rumors began to spread: that Arab-Americans were celebrating publicly, that some people had been warned, that politicians knew all along.
The Global Grapevine reveals how--through our everyday thoughts and conversations, and the rumors we spread--we grapple with the new global world. Drawn from diverse sources, the book illuminates urban legends like the claim that a certain t-shirt with a Chinese pictogram brands the wearer as a prostitute, conspiracy theories such as the "9/11 Truth Movement," or stories of tourists infected with AIDS by locals. These rumors, the authors argue, reflect our anxieties and fears about contact with foreign cultures--how we believe foreign competition to be poisoning the domestic economy and foreign immigration to be eroding American values. Focusing on the threat posed by terrorism, the impact of immigration, the risks involved in international trade, and the dangers faced by naive tourism, the book provides a broad survey of the most widely circulated rumors and examines what these tales reveal about contemporary society.

The Book of Changes, or I-Ching, is the primary reference work for advanced Armabella. While any version of the Book of Changes can be used, the commentaries in most are, at best, unhelpful and, at worst, misleading for the purposes of Armabella practice since they lean towards divination and philosophy, rather than the heavy focus on direct, real-time practical application that lies at the heart of Armabella. This is Armabella's own commentary-free version of the book, and has significantly better and more extensive cross referencing, as well as using Armabella's standard naming conventions for the Trigrams and Hexagrams, the unique SCRE classification system, and providing easy-access references for 21s in situ for all entries. This book is not suitable for beginners.

This book contains a detailed account of the various types of Icelandic folk-story, their likely origins and sources, the folk-beliefs they represent, and their meanings. In Iceland, people do not compose verse just to comfort themselves; they worship poetry and believe in it. In poetry is a power which rules men's lives and health, governs wind and sea. Icelanders have faith in hymns and sacred poems too, because of their content. They also have faith in secular poetry composed by themselves, believing it to be no less able to move mountains than religious faith is. By this belief in their own culture, they transfer it into the realm of mythology, and the glow of the super-human is shed over it. Whatever may have been their origin, the folk-stories of Iceland come to mirror the people's life and character, and in the period when the idea gained ground that all power comes from the people, their poetry and lore became sacred things that were revered and looked to as a potential source of strength. Icelandic folk-stories were similarly an important element in the Icelanders' struggle for national and cultural integrity in the nineteenth century. They were more truly Icelandic than anything else worthy of the name.

In Sorcery in Salem, local author John Hardy Wright examines the witchcraft delusion that afflicted Salem Village and Salem Town in the winter of 1691-92. Twenty inhabitants lost their lives at that time; nineteen were hanged on Gallows Hill, and one elderly man, Giles Cory, by remaining mute as a personal protest to the proceedings of the court, was pressed to death under heavy weights. Once the prosecuting examinations began on March 1, 1692, local authorities were uncertain what course the following trials would take. Spectral evidence, in which the shape of a suspected witch tortured people, was a primary indication of guilt, as was the "touch test," in which a victim was released from the witch's power upon the laying on of hands. Not being able to correctly recite the Lord's Prayer was also damning.