Question: It's been a long time since I read any books about mythology. Could you suggest a combo of pantheon/book/author to read?
Hmm. I'm actually not sure what you're looking for, so it's hard to make recommendations. Were you after some fiction options set in a Scion-like world? Nonfiction, scholarly books on mythological subjects? Or retellings of the myths themselves?
It's hard to recommend since we don't know where your interests lie, but for retellings of myths, I'm a big fan of the blood-and-guts pantheons like the Elohim. Michael Coogan's Stories from Ancient Canaan is a great read for both looking at the original text and getting good summaries and theories in readable format. The Canaanite gods have some great, vivid stories and it's a shame more people haven't heard of them.
If you're more interested in a nonfiction book discussing a mythology and its gods, try Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, which is a great look at the popular misconceptions surrounding how the conquest of the Aztecs went down and what it meant for their religion, especially when it comes to interaction with Cortes and his men and syncretization with Catholicism.
As far as fiction goes, there's a huge world of it out there; if you haven't already read Neil Gaiman's American Gods (about ancient gods in the modern world, spanning many different cultures) and/or Anansi Boys (primarily concerned with African myths in the modern age), they're the stories that Scion itself was actually based on. One of our players is currently reading M. D. Lachlan's Wolfsangel series about the Norse gods and enjoying it, and Roger Zelazny has two different books - Lord of Light, based on Hindu mythology, and Children of Light and Darkness, based on the Egyptian gods - that do a spectacular job of updating ancient myths and fusing them with science fiction.
For what it's worth, John's currently reading The God of Ecstasy: Sex-Roles and the Madness of Dionysos by Arthur Evans, and I'm currently reading Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arab Myth by Jaroslav Stetkevych in our scraps of free time. We pretty much go to university libraries and pick up the first book in the religion and mythology section that interests us whenever we run out of reading material.
I know it's cheesy but I really enjoyed the Percy Jackson Series and it's follower The Heroes of Olympus, it had a very Greek Scion feeling for me.
ReplyDeleteI did find them pretty unbearably cheesy, but they're definitely right up Scion's alley. You don't have to feel bad for enjoying them - lots of folks do! :)
DeleteI enjoyed Clash and Wrath of the Titans. You know whats comming up, it's predictable, but it's epic and kinda follows the Saga writeup. And it has a few cool tracks to use in my Scion games.
DeleteI recommend them. Not oscar-winning, but it's fun to see him deal with his son, handle relics, fight giant monsters and whatnot. It's more for fun that factual myth tough.
I liked Io and her dress made out of dead muppets.
DeleteI think those movies give John actual hives.
DeleteFor bad Hollywood myth movies, I'd always recommend Immortals over the Clash movies - just as piss-poor on plot and mythology, but Immortals has more genuinely kickass god moments in it.
I'm still waiting for the day that I love a movie about mythology. I know someone can make one for me someday! I can dream!
Immortals is an absolute train wreck of a movie that will take what you know of mythology and urinate on its grave. And yet it still manages to be pretty cool.
DeleteOh, definitely - it's a horrible mess that doesn't make any sense and occasionally manages to elevate itself to being offensive. But I figured, if we were going to be talking about bad movies with the Clash franchise anyway... ;)
DeleteAnd Immortals does have a few really shiningly amazing scenes, as long as you can ignore the ridiculous mess surrounding them. I wouldn't want to spoiler for anyone, but: OMG Poseidon.
"I think those movies give John actual hives."
Delete-> Me too.
nothing more need be said on the subject from this one.
oh I guess that I only watched Clash of the Titans because Liam Neeson as Zeus made me squeal. But then I watched it. And I had to just get up and go. I never looked back.
I will never look back.
(Oh and I have a blogger account now.)
Percy Jackson is my 9 year old sister's favorite book series. I don't have the heart to tell her "I roleplay that with my grown-up friends."
ReplyDeleteI love the Percy Jackson stuff. It's awesome. If you're gunna watch Clash of the Titans, watch the Original. Immortals is great for the "stunting". Along the same route as Percy is the Red Pyramid stuff. That one's great for egyptian relic ideas.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Rick Riordan plays Scion with his kids.
The movie Red Cliff is good for more Hero-esque action. It's based on the famous battle in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so if you're big on the Shen or want to see Guan Yu kick amazing amounts of ass while still mortal, one should watch it. (the international version, which is still rather good despite cutting out a good deal, is on netflix, as is Immortals).
ReplyDeleteAs for books (besides Gaiman's fantastic American Gods and Anansi Boys, which one should read regardless. Also, there's the short story he wrote called The Monarch of the Glen which ties in with Shadow of American Gods. Actually, many of Gaiman's short stories, and works as a whole, deal with so much mythology they're worth a perusal. Perhaps look through the collection Fragile Things, which has Monarch as well as a little Pesedjet flavored story called Sunbird amongst much else), besides the source materials? Hard to think of some. If I recall though, the Scion books themselves give a few pieces of fiction and nonfiction to look at for help. I could be wrong, been a bit since I read through, but it's White Wolf's tradition to do so with their books.
I'm looking for some mythlogy reference books for christmas on Finnish, Mayan, and Buddhist Myth. I'm looking to expand on my mythological understanding and looking for a good book to get started. Do you have an recommendations?
ReplyDeleteFor Finnish myth, you really can't do better than picking up a copy of the Kalevala, which is the source from which we get most Finnish mythology. I'm pretty fond of the Friberg translation; the Oxford World Classics one is also decent (and cheaper!), though it gets distressingly vernacular in some areas.
DeleteThere's a slew of books on Maya mythology out there, but if you'd like a quick rundown of the gods and ideas, try Miller & Taube's Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. If you'd like more of a narrative story, there's always the Popol Vuh; try the Christenson translation (though I've also heard good things about the Tedlock edition - Griff, you around? Any recommendations?).
Buddhist myth varies widely depending on what part of the world you're in; Japanese Buddhism is very different from Indian Buddhism which is in turn very different from Tibetan Buddhism and so on. You'll probably need to zero in on one of those, or else grab books from a bunch of different areas to get an overview of different kinds of Buddhism around the world.
Zen Buddhism kind of fits the book type i'm looking for but i don't known if zen has any deities or myths. Tibetan sounds like it would have a zen focus but i'm not sure.
DeleteZen is actually one of the most deity-free forms of Buddhism out there; it's more about the philosophy and inner strength of the person performing it and really doesn't have much to do with worship of any gods. Certainly something to look up if you're interested, but not very Scion-friendly.
DeleteTibetan Buddhism, on the other hand, has a crazy soup of gods and monsters and is pretty unique for its fusion of Indian Buddhist concepts, Chinese Buddhist interference and the underlying gods and ideas of the indigenous Tibetan religion, Bon. The Diamond Path from the Myth & Mankind series gives you a good introduction to ideas from both Bon and Tibetan Buddhism; for a much heavier Buddhist focus, try Indroduction to Tibetan Buddhism by John Powers.
So i got the John Powers book on Tibetan Buddhism for christmas & now i'm wondering how your future pdf on tibetan mythology will use the Bardo Being. Page 347 in the book basically says the Bardo being rushes towards the parent of the opposite gender before rebirth and tries to displace the parent of the same gender. Will this be included at all in your section on the tibetan afterlife?
DeleteMan, I'd love to help you, but we seriously have no way of knowing what will and won't be in our Tibetan writeup when/if it happens in the misty future. We're up to our eyeballs in Maya jungle gods and Slavic chameleon powers at the moment.
DeleteBut I happen to know that TerriblyUncreative over on the Scion forums has worked on and off on a Tibetan Buddhist/Bon pantheon a bit, so you could try running over there and making a post to see if he's got any input for you.