Mythology

It is, of course, no easy task to infuse a spirit of originality into matter which has already achieved such a measure of celebrity as have these wild and wondrous tales of Rhineland. But it is hoped that the treatment to which these stories have been subjected is not without a novelty of its own. One circumstance may be alluded to as characteristic of the manner of their treatment in this work. In most English books on Rhine legend the tales themselves are presented in a form so brief, succinct, and uninspiring as to rob them entirely of that mysterious glamour lacking which they become mere material by which to add to and illustrate the guide-book.

The little tales which follow, drawn from the most striking and picturesque of the Northern myths, are put together in the simplest possible form, and were written only with a design to make the subject interesting to children. By-and-bye, however, as we through their means become in a slight degree acquainted with the characters belonging to, and the parts played by, the various deities of this mythology, it will not be uninteresting to consider what their meaning may be, and to try if we can trace the connection of one with another.

There is a threaded connection to Egypt in Christianity from Ham, Abraham, and Jesus. Could it be that the Egyptian religion is the acutal progenitor of Christianity?

One of the most widely disseminated systems of Indian thought, Buddhism, grounds its basic view of life on its thesis that the cause of all of man's wretchedness on the earth is his craving for life. Somehow, it is asserted, there was generated in him the desire to experience sensation and the feeling and consciousness of existence, to enjoy the concrete sense of being. And it was this yearning after the awareness of existence that directed him out of a condition of absolute and unconditioned being and precipitated him into the realm of limitation and painfully conditioned experience.

The author's expertise and knowledge of the Sumerian language helped to hasten the early decoding of the Indus Valley seals.

The Stone of Destiny traced. A presentation of the cumulative evidence which reveals the fate of the Bible's most famous stone - the stone on which Jacob rested his head, while experiencing his famous dream, on that momentous occasion.