Etruscan mythology

The Romans, identifying themselves as common heirs to a very similar civilization, identified Greek deities with similar figures in the Etruscan-Roman tradition, though cult practices were not usually copied. (For details, see Similarities between Roman, Greek, and Etruscan mythologies.) Syncretic gods of the Hellenistic period found also wide favor in Rome: Serapis, Isis, Mithras are syncretic deities. Cybele, as she was worshiped in Rome, was essentially a syncretic goddess. The Greek god Dionysus was imported into Rome as Bacchus, and the Anatol ...

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Syncretism, Syncretism - Social and political roles, Syncretism - Origin of the word, Syncretism - Syncretism in Ancient Greece, Syncretism - Syncretism in Rome, Syncretism - Syncretism in Christianity, Syncretism - Syncretism in Islam, Syncretism - Syncretism in the Bahá'í Faith, Syncretism - Syncretism in the Caribbean, Syncretism - Syncretism in the Enlightenment, Syncretism - Modern syncretic religions, Syncretism - Modern syncretic social movements

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Syncretism was an essential feature of Greek paganism. Hellenistic culture in the age that followed Alexander the Great was itself syncretic, essentially a blend of Persian, Anatolian, Egyptian (and eventually Etruscan-Roman) elements within a Hellenic overall formula. The Egyptian god Amun developed as the Hellenized Zeus Ammon after Alexander the Great went into the desert to seek out Amun's oracle at Siwa. These identifications derive from the Hellenic habit of identifying gods of disparate mythologies with their own. When t ...

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Syncretism, Syncretism - Social and political roles, Syncretism - Origin of the word, Syncretism - Syncretism in Ancient Greece, Syncretism - Syncretism in Rome, Syncretism - Syncretism in Christianity, Syncretism - Syncretism in Islam, Syncretism - Syncretism in the Bahá'í Faith, Syncretism - Syncretism in the Caribbean, Syncretism - Syncretism in the Enlightenment, Syncretism - Modern syncretic religions, Syncretism - Modern syncretic social movements

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Of Roman origins, Faenza is a splendid city of art whose fame already shone in the Renaissance period of the production of exquisitely made pottery that was exported all over Europe. According to mythology, the name of the first settlement FAOENTIA, had Etruscan and Celtic roots, meaning in Latin "Splendeo inter deos" or "I shine among the Gods, in modern English. The very name, coming from the Romans who developed this center under the name of Faventia, has become synonymous with ceramics (majolica) in various languages, including French (faïence) and English (faience). Here Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piu ...

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Faenza, Faenza - History, Faenza - Main sights, Faenza - Faenza Majolica, Faenza - Art folklore and sport, Faenza - Fields flowers and water, Faenza - Landscape

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In order to consider mythology, it is first necessary to consider what is meant by the term myth. The ancient Greek Μυθος originally meant simply word or speech, and by extension, a story or narrative. This quickly took on the sense of fiction, and both Pindar (d. 443 BC) and Plato (d. ca. 347 BC) contrast Μυθος with Λογος as "historical truth." Many ancient usages of Μυθος are specifically as fiction; see here for details in the Liddell-Scott- ...

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Mythology, Mythology - What is mythology?, Mythology - Religion and mythology, Mythology - Classifications, Mythology - Related concepts, Mythology - Formation of myths, Mythology - Myths as depictions of historical events, Mythology - Other theories, Mythology - Modern mythology, Mythology - Myths by region, Mythology - Africa, Mythology - Asia non-Middle East, Mythology - Australia and Oceania, Mythology - Europe, Mythology - Middle East, Mythology - North America, Mythology - South America and Mesoamerica, Mythology - Mythological archetypes, Mythology - Mythological creatures, Mythology - Books on mythology

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Mythology - Africa. Akamba mythology - Akan mythology - Alur mythology - Ashanti mythology - Bambara mythology - Bambuti mythology - Banyarwanda mythology - Basari mythology - Baule mythology - Bavenda mythology - Bazambi mythology - Baziba mythology - Bushongo mythology - Dahomey mythology (Fon) - Dinka mythology - Efik mythology - Egyptian mythology (Pre-Islam) - Ekoi mythology - Fan mythology - Fens mythology - Fjort mythology - Herero mythology - Ibibio mythology - Ibo mythology - Isoko mythology - Kamb ...

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Mythology, Mythology - Definition, Mythology - Religion and mythology, Mythology - Classifications, Mythology - Related concepts, Mythology - Formation of myths, Mythology - Myths as depictions of historical events, Mythology - Other theories, Mythology - Modern mythology, Mythology - Myths by region, Mythology - Africa, Mythology - Asia non-Middle East, Mythology - Australia and Oceania, Mythology - Europe, Mythology - Middle East, Mythology - North America, Mythology - South America and Mesoamerica, Mythology - Mythological archetypes, Mythology - Mythological creatures, Mythology - Books on mythology

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In order to consider mythology, it is first necessary to consider what is meant by the term myth. Myths are generally narratives passed down traditionally intended to explain the universal and local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable cultural conventions, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself. Not all myths need have this explicatory purpose, however. Myths are by definition sacred and usually involve a supernatural force or deity. Many legends and narratives passed down orally from gener ...

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Mythology, Mythology - Definition, Mythology - Religion and mythology, Mythology - Classifications, Mythology - Related concepts, Mythology - Formation of myths, Mythology - Myths as depictions of historical events, Mythology - Other theories, Mythology - Modern mythology, Mythology - Myths by region, Mythology - Africa, Mythology - Asia non-Middle East, Mythology - Australia and Oceania, Mythology - Europe, Mythology - Middle East, Mythology - North America, Mythology - South America and Mesoamerica, Mythology - Mythological archetypes, Mythology - Mythological creatures, Mythology - Books on mythology

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Lares (Latin) (from Etruscan lars conductor, leader)

The tutelary household deities, or godlings, regarded as the souls of deceased ancestors and represented by images kept in the lararium of the household and to which a portion of each meal was reserved. Such belief and practice are common among many peoples, an instance of a lofty teaching becoming misunderstood and thereby degraded into popular belief and often superstition.

The original meaning of lares was the psycho-intellectual part of imbodied human beings, who therefore in a sense guide and protect mankind. Later in mythology they became mere ghosts or kama-rupic phantoms of a better and higher class than the larvae.

(See also: Lares, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A fairy tale itself is not a myth. Myths are not the same as fables, legends, folktales, fairy tales, anecdotes or fiction, but sloppy usage has blurred the distinctions in many people's minds. The term myth is sometimes used pejoratively in reference to common beliefs of a culture or for the beliefs of a religion to imply that the story is both fanciful and fictional. Myth is often used to refer to a commonly ...

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Mythology figures prominently in most religions, and most mythology is tied to at least one religion. Some use the words myth and mythology to portray the stories of one or more religions as false, or dubious at best. While nearly all dictionaries include this definition, "myth" does not always imply that a story is either false or true. The term is most often used in this sense to describe religions founded by ancient societies whose belief systems are nearly extinct. By extension, many people do not regard the tales surroundi ...

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Although not all agree on the reliability of Old Testament accounts of Abraham, most scholars who use the term "Abrahamic Mythology" believe these belief systems originated four to five thousand years ago under the influence of earlier traditions — primarily Chaldean mythology — and subsequently developed through interaction with contemporaneous religions such as Zoroastrianism. Many historians, comparative mythologists and archeologists came to hold this view towards the end of the 19th Century, as academia became increasingly secularized and non-Abra ...

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Abrahamic mythology, Abrahamic mythology - Controversy of terminology, Abrahamic mythology - Abrahamic views, Abrahamic mythology - Secular views, Abrahamic mythology - Recent developments

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Sadhya (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root sadh to finish, complete, subdue, master]

To be fulfilled, completed, attained; to be mastered, won, subdued. As a plural noun, a class of the gana-devatas (divine beings), specifically the jnana-devas (gods of wisdom).

In the Satapatha-Brahmana of the Rig-Veda their world is said to be above the sphere of the gods, while Yaska (Nirukta 12:41) gives their locality as in Bhuvarloka. In The Laws of Manu (3:195), the sadhyas are represented as the offspring of the pitris called soma-sads who are offspring of Viraj; hence they are children of the lunar ancestors (pitris), evolved after the gods and possessing natures more fully unfolded; while in the Puranas they are the sons of Sadhya (a daughter of Daksha) and Dharma -- hence called sadhyas -- given variously as 12 or 17 in number.

These various manners of describing the ancestry of the sadhyas originated in different ways of envisioning their origin. In later mythology they are superseded by the siddhas, the difference between sadhyas and siddhas being in many respects slight. Their mythological names are given as Manas, Mantri, Prana, Nara, Pana, Vinirbhaya, Naya, Dansa, Narayana, Vrisha, and Trabhu. Two of the names are two of the theosophic seven human principles -- manas and prana; while Nara and Narayan, are other aspects of man, human or cosmic. Blavatsky terms the sadhyas divine sacrificers, "the most occult of all" the classes of the dhyanis (SD 2:605) -- the reference being to the manasaputras, those intellectual beings who sacrificed themselves in order to quicken the fires of human intelligence during the third root-race. "The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara" (SD 2:90); thus they are called ajitas, tushitas, satyas, haris, vaikuntas, adityas, and rudras. The key to the various names given to these higher beings lies in the composite nature of each one of them. In every manvantara and in each minor cycle of a manvantara, every being unfolds another aspect of itself, just as mankind unfolds new but latent powers and senses in each age. Special names were often given to each of the sevenfold, tenfold, or twelvefold aspects of these high beings.

In the cosmic sense the sadhyas signify the names collectively of the twelve great gods, the first twelve cosmic hierarchs emanating from Brahma, out of which flow not only the twelve cosmic planes, but the hierarchies inherent in these twelve planes. Their importance lies in the fact that they are the earliest emanations in serial order from the formative and productive Brahma-prakriti, and therefore are really the origin of all beings and things in the cosmos arranged from the beginning in the duodenary hierarchical scheme. Plato had the same thought when he spoke of Divinity forming the universe according to the number twelve. They are reminiscent of the Latin dii consentes, taken over from the ancient mystical Etruscans who stated that these twelve "agreeing or consenting divinities" form the council of Jupiter, the Latin Brahma. The twelve dii consentes consisted of six feminine and six masculine divinities, and the Etruscan theology stated that they govern not only the world, but time also, coming into existence periodically at the commencement of a world period, and passing into rest or pralaya when the world period ended -- only to reappear at the end of the succeeding world period.

Seneca in his Quaestiones Naturalis (2:41) states that there is a more sublime Council of Divinities, superior even to Jupiter and the twelve dii consentes, whose combined will and intelligence govern even the deliberations of Jupiter and the twelve great consenting gods.

See also SATYAS

(See also: Sadhya, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Film and book series like Star Wars and Tarzan have strong mythological aspects that sometimes develop into deep and intricate philosophical systems. These items are not mythology, but contain mythic themes that, for some people, meet the same psychological needs. An excellent example is that developed by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. Fiction, however, does not reach the level of actual mythology until people believe that it really happened. For example, some people believe ...

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Mythology, Mythology - Definition, Mythology - Religion and mythology, Mythology - Classifications, Mythology - Related concepts, Mythology - Formation of myths, Mythology - Myths as depictions of historical events, Mythology - Other theories, Mythology - Modern mythology, Mythology - Myths by region, Mythology - Africa, Mythology - Asia non-Middle East, Mythology - Australia and Oceania, Mythology - Europe, Mythology - Middle East, Mythology - North America, Mythology - South America and Mesoamerica, Mythology - Mythological archetypes, Mythology - Mythological creatures, Mythology - Books on mythology

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What forces create myths? Robert Graves said of Greek myth: "True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially." (The Greek Myths, Introduction). Graves was deeply influenced, perhaps too strongly, by Sir James George Frazer's mythography The Golden Bough, and he would have agreed that myths are generated by many cultural needs (more ...

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Mythology, Mythology - Definition, Mythology - Religion and mythology, Mythology - Classifications, Mythology - Related concepts, Mythology - Formation of myths, Mythology - Myths as depictions of historical events, Mythology - Other theories, Mythology - Modern mythology, Mythology - Myths by region, Mythology - Africa, Mythology - Asia non-Middle East, Mythology - Australia and Oceania, Mythology - Europe, Mythology - Middle East, Mythology - North America, Mythology - South America and Mesoamerica, Mythology - Mythological archetypes, Mythology - Mythological creatures, Mythology - Books on mythology

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The traditional perspective of adherents of the Abrahamic faiths is that there is indeed a common source and history for the world's religions, and borrowing which has produced a shared folklore, which is a kind of shared memory of the truth, partially obscured elsewhere, but preserved in Scripture by divine revelation. The view does not claim, as it may at first seem, that the pagans borrowed from Scripture; but rather the view is that Scripture directly confronts the history, folklore and religious perspectives of the surrounding peoples, ...

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Abrahamic mythology, Abrahamic mythology - Controversy of terminology, Abrahamic mythology - Abrahamic views, Abrahamic mythology - Secular views, Abrahamic mythology - Recent developments

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By the Victorian era, the solar-phallic ideas of Payne Knight along with the less risqué work of scholars like Max Müller had taken strange turns as they made their way into popular discourse. Groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were using scholarly parallels between Christ, Osiris and other putative solar dying-and-rising gods to build up elaborate systems of mysticism and theosophy. By the twentieth century, this spiritualized turn to the universal-dying-god hypothesis had made its way into the sunlit uplands of acad ...

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Life-death-rebirth deity, Life-death-rebirth deity - The naturalist approach, Life-death-rebirth deity - The internal approach, Life-death-rebirth deity - Criticisms of the category, Life-death-rebirth deity - Christianity, Life-death-rebirth deity - Proposed life-death-rebirth deities, Life-death-rebirth deity - External link

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Of the two major life-death-and-resurrection approaches to hermeneutics, the naturalistic explication has more support in ancient sources. These rituals were closely linked to the cycle of seasons, as when Athenian women planted "gardens of Adonis" in pots and then, when the young green growth withered in the heat of the summer, wept for the dead young god. Already in Antiquity, the rationalizing approach of Aristotle could be elaborated to a rigidly naturalistic interpretation of myth origins as explanations of natural seasonal phenomena. S ...

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In addition to Turan and Aphrodite, other figures possibly corresponding to Venus are: Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli in Aztec mythology Kukulcan in Maya mythology Frigg and Freya in the Norse mythos Ushas in Vedic religion. Etymologically, Venus is cognate to Sanskrit vanas- "loveliness; longing, desire", an epitheton of Ushas, suggesting a Proto-Indo-European link. ...

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Venus mythology, Venus mythology - Venus in other mythologies, Venus mythology - External link

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In addition to Turan and Aphrodite, other figures possibly corresponding to Venus are: Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli in Aztec mythology Kukulcan in Maya mythology Frigg and Freya in the Norse mythos Ushas in Vedic religion. Etymologically, Venus is cognate to Sanskrit vanas- "loveliness; longing, desire", an epitheton of Ushas, suggesting a Proto-Indo-European link. ...

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Venus mythology, Venus mythology - In art, Venus mythology - Venus in other mythologies, Venus mythology - External link

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Although myths are often considered to be accounts of events that have not happened, many historians consider that myths can also be accounts of actual events that have become highly imbued with symbolic meaning, or that have been transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed. One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what pe ...

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Mythology, Mythology - Definition, Mythology - Religion and mythology, Mythology - Classifications, Mythology - Related concepts, Mythology - Formation of myths, Mythology - Myths as depictions of historical events, Mythology - Other theories, Mythology - Modern mythology, Mythology - Myths by region, Mythology - Africa, Mythology - Asia non-Middle East, Mythology - Australia and Oceania, Mythology - Europe, Mythology - Middle East, Mythology - North America, Mythology - South America and Mesoamerica, Mythology - Mythological archetypes, Mythology - Mythological creatures, Mythology - Books on mythology

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The chief criticism that has been brought against the universal life-death-resurrection deity category is that it is reductionist: in seeking to fit disparate myths into a single box, critics would contend, the hypothesis obscures distinctions that really matter. Furthermore, since death and resurrection are more central to Christianity than most other faiths, it risks making Christianity the standard by which all religion is judged. For exte ...

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Life-death-rebirth deity, Life-death-rebirth deity - The naturalist approach, Life-death-rebirth deity - The internal approach, Life-death-rebirth deity - Criticisms of the category, Life-death-rebirth deity - Christianity, Life-death-rebirth deity - Proposed life-death-rebirth deities, Life-death-rebirth deity - External link

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The Latins founded a group of small settlements that united against the Etruscans and Samnites, and which came under Roman dominance in 338 BC. Rome granted all Latins Roman citizenship after the Social War in 90 BC. Latium has great importance for history, art, architecture, archaeology, religion, and culture in general. The immense patrimony of the city of Rome forms only a part of the treasures spread over the hundreds of towns, villages, abbeys, churches, monumen ...

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Latium, Latium - Etymology, Latium - History, Latium - Notable cities

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History of Rome - Origins. Further information: Founding of Rome, and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and See also:

History of Rome, History of Rome - Ancient Rome, History of Rome - Origins, History of Rome - Early peoples of Italy, History of Rome - Etruscan dominance, History of Rome - Roman Republic, History of Rome - Roman Empire, History of Rome - Medieval Rome, History of Rome - Barbarian and Byzantine rule, History of Rome - Holy Roman Empire, History of Rome - Roman Commune, History of Rome - Boniface VIII and the Babylonian captivity, History of Rome - Cola di Rienzo and the Pope's return to Rome, History of Rome - Modern Rome, History of Rome - Renaissance Rome, History of Rome - Sack of Rome and Counter-Reformation, History of Rome - Italian unification, History of Rome - Current state

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