Epic Sagas & Canonical Lore

The ten-year war between the Olympian gods led by Zeus and the Titans led by Cronus, resulting in the establishment of the Olympian order.

The prophesied end of the world in Norse mythology. After a great winter called Fimbulvetr, the bound wolf Fenrir will break free, the Midgard Serpent will rise from the ocean, and the giants will sail to battle the gods.

In the beginning was the void Ginnungagap, with Muspelheim (fire) to the south and Niflheim (ice) to the north. When fire and ice met, they created the giant Ymir.

Baldur, the most beloved god, was troubled by dreams of his death. His mother Frigg extracted oaths from all things not to harm him, making him invulnerable - except she overlooked mistletoe.

The gods raised the wolf Fenrir in Asgard, but as he grew enormous and dangerous, they decided he must be bound. The dwarves crafted Gleipnir, a ribbon made from impossible things.

The immense ash tree that stands at the center of the cosmos and connects the Nine Worlds. Its roots extend into multiple realms, and its branches stretch over all existence.

In the beginning was the primordial waters of Nun, dark and chaotic. From these waters arose the primeval mound, and upon it stood Atum (later identified with Ra), the self-created god.

Osiris ruled Egypt as its first pharaoh, teaching agriculture and civilization. His brother Set, consumed by jealousy, murdered him and scattered his body across Egypt.

Each day, Ra travels across the sky in his solar barque, bringing light and warmth to the world. As night falls, Ra enters the underworld (Duat), facing his greatest enemy: Apophis.

After Osiris's death, his son Horus challenged Set for the throne of Egypt, leading to an 80-year conflict with many contests and trials.

When a person dies, their heart is weighed on scales by Anubis against the feather of Ma'at (truth and justice). Thoth records the results.

The epic tale of Aeneas, Trojan hero and son of Venus, who escapes the fall of Troy and journeys to Italy to found the Roman race. Guided by fate and divine will, he overcomes trials, wars, and personal loss.

Twin sons of Mars and Rhea Silvia, abandoned as infants and raised by a she-wolf. They founded Rome but quarreled over leadership, resulting in Romulus killing Remus and becoming Rome's first king.

After founding Rome, Romulus faced a shortage of women for his new city. The Romans abducted women from the neighboring Sabine tribe during a festival, provoking war. The Sabine women themselves ended the conflict by throwing themselves between their fathers and husbands.

A mortal princess so beautiful that Venus grew jealous sent her son Cupid to punish her. Instead, Cupid fell in love. After betraying his trust and losing him, Psyche undertook impossible tasks set by Venus to win back her divine husband and gain immortality.

Epic tale of Prince Rama's exile, the abduction of his wife Sita by demon king Ravana, and the great war to rescue her. Demonstrates the ideals of dharma, duty, devotion, and righteous conduct.

Epic saga of the conflict between the Pandavas and Kauravas for the throne of Hastinapura, culminating in the great Kurukshetra war. Contains the Bhagavad Gita.

Gods and demons cooperate to churn the cosmic ocean to obtain amrita (nectar of immortality). Various precious things emerge, including Lakshmi, before finally the nectar appears.

The primordial gods Izanagi and Izanami create the Japanese islands and countless kami, establishing the divine origins of Japan and its imperial line.

When Susanoo's violence drives Amaterasu into hiding in a cave, the world falls into darkness. The gods devise a plan to lure her out, restoring light to the world. Explains the importance of ritual.

Exiled storm god Susanoo encounters an eight-headed, eight-tailed dragon terrorizing a family. He slays the beast and discovers the sacred sword Kusanagi in its tail.

The Tuatha Dé Danann fight the Fomorians for control of Ireland. Lugh leads the gods to victory, slaying his grandfather Balor.

A tragedy where four children are cursed by their jealous stepmother to live as swans for 900 years.

The Aztec creation myth describing four previous worlds that were destroyed, and the creation of the current fifth world by the sacrifice of the gods.

The legendary pilgrimage of the monk Tang Sanzang and his disciples (including Sun Wukong) to retrieve sacred Buddhist scriptures.

When ten suns appeared in the sky, scorching the earth, the archer Hou Yi shot down nine of them to save humanity.

After her husband Hou Yi saves the world by shooting down nine suns, Chang'e drinks the elixir of immortality and floats to the moon, where she dwells in eternal solitude with only a jade rabbit for company.

The primordial giant Pangu is born from cosmic chaos, separates Heaven and Earth, and upon his death, his body transforms into all the features of the world.

A divine child born after three years in the womb kills a dragon prince, defies his father, commits suicide to save his family, and is reborn from lotus flowers to become one of Heaven's greatest warriors.

A mortal cowherd falls in love with a celestial weaving maiden. When Heaven discovers their marriage, they are separated by the Milky Way, permitted to meet only once a year when magpies form a bridge across the stars.

When the water god and fire god wage war and break the pillar of Heaven, the sky cracks and chaos engulfs the world. The goddess Nuwa melts five-colored stones to repair the sky and saves all living things from destruction.

The Titan Prometheus defies Zeus to bring the gift of fire to humanity, suffering eternal punishment for his transgression yet ensuring civilization's advancement.

The hero Perseus, aided by divine gifts from the gods, undertakes a perilous quest to slay the Gorgon Medusa and uses her severed head to rescue the princess Andromeda.

The Athenian hero Theseus volunteers as tribute to Crete, navigates the impossible Labyrinth with the help of Ariadne's thread, and slays the monstrous Minotaur.

The legendary musician Orpheus descends to the realm of the dead to rescue his beloved wife Eurydice, moving even the gods of the Underworld with his song, only to lose her at the final moment.

The epic decade-long conflict between Greece and Troy, sparked by Paris's abduction of Helen, featuring the wrath of Achilles, the cunning of Odysseus, and the fall of the greatest city in the world.

Odin's cunning quest to obtain the mead of poetry from the giants, involving shapeshifting, seduction, and theft. This sacred drink grants the gift of poetic inspiration to gods and mortals alike.

Thor, Loki, and their companions travel to the castle of the giant king Utgard-Loki, where they face a series of humiliating challenges that prove to be elaborate illusions concealing cosmic forces.

Odin hangs himself on the World Tree Yggdrasil for nine nights, wounded by his own spear, neither eating nor drinking, in order to gain the wisdom of the runes and the power of sacred knowledge.

The soul's perilous journey through the Egyptian underworld, facing demons and trials before reaching the Hall of Ma'at where the heart is weighed against the feather of truth.

Ra sends his Eye in the form of the lioness goddess Sekhmet to punish humanity for plotting against him, but her bloodlust grows beyond control, and only a trick with beer dyed red like blood can save mankind.

The divine child Krishna grows up among cowherds in Vrindavan, performing miraculous feats: defeating demons sent to kill him, stealing butter from the village women, and revealing the entire universe within his mouth to his foster mother.

Parvati creates a son from her own body to guard her privacy. When Shiva returns home and the boy refuses him entry, Shiva beheads him in anger. To restore him, Shiva gives him the head of an elephant, creating Ganesha, the beloved remover of obstacles.

After his wife Izanami dies giving birth to the fire god, Izanagi descends to the underworld to bring her back. But when he breaks the taboo against looking at her, he sees her rotting corpse and must flee, sealing the boundary between life and death forever.

After losing his brother's magical fishhook, the hunter Hoori journeys to the palace of the sea god, where he wins the heart of the dragon princess Toyotama-hime. Their love produces an heir, but forbidden knowledge destroys their union.

Queen Medb of Connacht invades Ulster to seize the Brown Bull of Cooley, but finds the province's warriors struck helpless by a curse. Only the seventeen-year-old hero Cu Chulainn stands against her entire army, fighting alone at the fords.

The god Midir pursues the beautiful Etain across lifetimes and incarnations, as jealousy transforms her into a fly, a pool of water, and finally a mortal woman who must choose between two worlds.

The god of love himself falls sick with longing for a woman who visits him only in dreams, and must search all Ireland to find her before he wastes away.

When the sons of Tuireann murder Lugh's father Cian, the god of skills sets them an impossible eric-fine: eight quests that will take them to the ends of the earth and cost them their lives.

The greatest hero of Ulster meets his end when his enemies use his own sacred geasa against him, forcing him to break taboo after taboo until he can be killed.

Bran mac Febal sails west to the Otherworld, visiting the Land of Women and the sea-realm of Manannan, only to discover that centuries have passed when he tries to return home.

The world's oldest known literary epic follows Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, on his quest for immortality after the death of his beloved friend Enkidu. His journey takes him to the ends of the earth and reveals profound truths about mortality and meaning.

The Queen of Heaven descends to the underworld to confront her sister Ereshkigal, passing through seven gates where she is stripped of her power at each one. She dies and hangs upon a hook, and is only revived through cunning intervention.

The Babylonian creation myth tells how the young god Marduk slew the primordial chaos dragon Tiamat and fashioned the universe from her body, becoming king of all the gods.

The gods decree a great flood to destroy humanity, but the wise god Ea warns Utnapishtim to build a boat and save the seed of all living things. This is the oldest known flood narrative, predating the biblical story of Noah.

The creation of Enkidu to balance the tyrannical Gilgamesh, his transformation from wild man to civilized hero, and the forging of history's greatest literary friendship.

After the destruction of the Fourth Sun, Quetzalcoatl descends to the underworld to retrieve the bones of previous humanity and create a new race of people for the Fifth Sun.

The central narrative of the Maya Popol Vuh: the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque descend to the underworld, outwit the lords of death, resurrect their father the Maize God, and ascend to become the sun and moon.

The Maya myth of the Maize God's death, burial, and resurrection - a sacred narrative that explains the agricultural cycle and the deep connection between human sacrifice, agriculture, and cosmic renewal.

The demigod Maui uses a magical fishhook to pull islands from the ocean floor, creating the lands where Polynesian peoples would live. This foundational myth explains the origin of Pacific islands.

When the sun raced too quickly across the sky, leaving people without enough daylight for their work, Maui captured and beat it until it agreed to move slowly. This myth explains the length of days.

Maui tricks his ancestress Mahuika, goddess of fire, into giving him her flaming fingernails, then preserves the secret of fire in the wood of trees when she tries to destroy him.

The epic saga of Pele's love for the mortal chief Lohiau, and the dangerous journey her sister Hi'iaka undertakes to bring him to Hawaii - a story of love, jealousy, and the conflict between divine sisters.

The Maori creation myth telling how the children of the Sky Father and Earth Mother, trapped in darkness between their parents' embrace, debated and finally succeeded in pushing them apart, bringing light into the world.

How Obatala descended from heaven with a snail shell of sand and a white hen to create land from the primordial waters, founding the sacred city of Ile-Ife.

The story of the fourth king of Oyo, who mastered thunder and lightning but faced tragedy, only to be elevated to divine status after his death.

When the world was dying and all the male Orishas had failed, Oshun transformed herself into a peacock and flew to heaven, sacrificing her beauty to save creation.

A classic trickster tale in which Eshu teaches two best friends a painful lesson about the dangers of perspective and assumption.

A tale of rivalry between two great Orishas - Ogun of iron and Shango of thunder - who compete for supremacy with unexpected results.

Coatlicue, the earth mother, becomes mysteriously pregnant after a ball of feathers falls upon her. Her daughter Coyolxauhqui leads the Centzon Huitznahua in an attack, but Huitzilopochtli emerges fully armed to defend his mother.

Through cunning tricks and dark sorcery, Tezcatlipoca causes the righteous priest-king Quetzalcoatl to break his sacred vows, leading to his shame, exile, and promise to return.

The perilous four-year journey of the soul through the nine levels of the Aztec underworld, facing wind of obsidian knives, crushing mountains, and the final crossing to rest before Mictlantecuhtli.

The clever spider Anansi bargains with the sky god Nyame to purchase all the world's stories by completing four impossible tasks.

After Obatala fails his divine mission, Oduduwa descends from heaven to create dry land and establish the sacred city of Ile-Ife.

An introduction to Yoruba twin commemoration and the carved figures known as ere ibeji, based on a documented museum object.

The Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque face the terrifying Camazotz in one of Xibalba's deadly trial houses.

Pluto, god of the underworld, abducts Ceres' daughter Proserpina and takes her to reign as his queen. Ceres' grief causes the earth to become barren until a compromise is reached, explaining the cycle of seasons.

The virtuous noblewoman Lucretia is violated by the king's son Sextus Tarquinius. Her suicide and the public display of her body spark a revolution that overthrows the monarchy and establishes the Roman Republic.

Driven mad by Juno's curse, Hercules kills his own family. To atone, he must complete twelve impossible tasks for King Eurystheus, ultimately achieving redemption and immortality through his heroic labors.

The Trojan prince Aeneas, fleeing the destruction of his city, finds refuge with Queen Dido of Carthage. They fall deeply in love, but fate demands Aeneas continue his mission to found Rome, leading to Dido's tragic death.

After the Fifth Sun is created, Quetzalcoatl descends to Mictlan, the underworld, to steal the bones of previous humans and create a new humanity, proving the gods' willingness to sacrifice for their creation.

Xipe Totec, the Flayed Lord, skins himself alive so that maize and other plants can grow from the earth, establishing the connection between death, renewal, and agricultural fertility.

The beautiful flower goddess Xochiquetzal dwells in paradise but is tempted to eat forbidden fruit. Her transgression brings both suffering and certain arts to humanity.

The goddess Mayahuel discovers the maguey plant and its intoxicating drink pulque. Her four hundred rabbit children, the Centzon Totochtin, become the gods of drunkenness, each representing a different degree of intoxication.

When the demon king Hiranyakashipu gains a boon that makes him nearly invincible, only his own son Prahlada remains devoted to Vishnu. The god appears as Narasimha, the man-lion avatar, to save the boy and destroy the tyrant.

King Dushyanta falls in love with the hermit girl Shakuntala, but a curse makes him forget her entirely. Only when she produces his ring does memory return, reuniting them after years of separation.

After the death of his first wife Sati, the god Shiva withdraws into eternal meditation. The goddess is reborn as Parvati, who through years of devotion and penance wins the heart of the ascetic god.

When Sita is held captive by the demon king Ravana, the monkey god Hanuman leaps across the ocean to Lanka, facing supernatural obstacles, to find her and bring hope before the war begins.

The master craftsman Daedalus and his son Icarus escape imprisonment in Crete by means of wings Daedalus constructs. But Icarus, ignoring his father's warnings, flies too close to the sun with fatal consequences.

When three goddesses ask the Trojan prince Paris to judge which of them is most beautiful, his choice of Aphrodite sets in motion the events that will lead to the Trojan War.

The sculptor Pygmalion, disillusioned with mortal women, carves an ivory statue so beautiful that he falls in love with it. When Aphrodite grants his prayer and brings the statue to life, art and love unite.

The nymph Echo loves the beautiful youth Narcissus but is cursed to only repeat others' words. Narcissus, who rejects all love, falls fatally in love with his own reflection, and both are transformed in death.

Storm god Susanoo rages through Amaterasu’s heavenly fields, wrecking her loom and sacred halls until the sun goddess seals herself in a cave — and Susanoo is cast from heaven.

Okuninushi endures murder by jealous brothers, underworld tests from Susanoo, and the love of Suseri-hime before becoming the great earthly kami who “makes the land.”

When the gods plague humanity for making too much noise, Ea warns Atrahasis to build a boat. Floodwaters erase the old world — then the gods regret famine and grant a new order of mortality.

King Etana, childless, aids a betrayed eagle and rides it toward heaven seeking the plant of birth — a flight that shows both the hope and terror of rising too near the gods.

Having slowed the sun and fished up islands, Maui tries to win immortality by crawling through the body of Hine-nui-te-pō — and fails when laughing birds wake the goddess of death.

When the sun raced too fast for Hina to dry her bark cloth, Maui and his brothers snared it with ropes of flax (or, in Hawaiian tellings, coconut fibre and hair) until it promised to walk slowly across the sky.

Prince Vladimir of Kiev raises six idols on a hill outside his palace in 980, an official state pantheon he himself would tear down eight years later.

A modern scholarly reconstruction, not a medieval text: linguists Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov pieced together a hypothetical myth of Perun battling a serpent-shaped Veles from later folklore, place names, and comparative Indo-European mythology.

Saxo Grammaticus describes the sacred white horse kept at Arkona for Svantevit's exclusive use, led over crossed spears before war to divine victory or defeat, and the god's annual harvest divination with his drinking horn.

Sent by her cruel stepmother into the forest to beg fire from Baba Yaga, Vasilisa survives the witch's household tests with the help of a doll left by her dead mother, and returns with a fire that consumes her tormentors.

A woman falls from a torn-open hole in the Sky World, is caught by waterfowl, and set on the back of the Great Turtle, whose back the diving animals build into Turtle Island.

Sky Woman's grandsons, the good-minded Sapling and the hard-minded Flint, shape the young earth's features in opposite directions, one toward ease and abundance, the other toward difficulty.

The Peacemaker and Hiawatha persuade the feared Onondaga leader Tadodaho to accept peace, uniting the warring nations under the Great Law of Peace at Onondaga Lake.

Raven tricks his way into the household of a wealthy old man at the head of the Nass River to steal his nested boxes holding the stars, moon, and sun, freeing daylight into the world.

Walking alone on the beach at Rose Spit, Haida Gwaii, Raven finds a giant clamshell full of small frightened beings and coaxes them out to become the first Haida.

Hades carries off Persephone, daughter of Demeter, with Zeus's consent. Demeter's grief and her withholding of the harvest force the gods to bargain, but because Persephone has eaten a pomegranate seed below, she must return to the underworld for part of every year.

The sky god Nyame means to divide his lands between his sons Tano and Bia, but a goat's advice sends the wrong son to receive the fertile country, and the rivalry of two rivers begins.

A young woman runs away with a handsome stranger who takes her to a lodge beneath a lake; when she discovers he is a horned serpent, the Thunderer Hi'non strikes the monster down and brings her home.

Hiawatha, destroyed by grief after the deaths of his daughters, strings shells to carry words of comfort; the Peacemaker finds him and condoles him, and the words that restore him become the Condolence still used by the Confederacy.

Sky Woman's daughter dies giving birth to the twins Sapling and Flint, and from her grave grow the corn, beans, and squash the people live on.

Raven tricks Petrel, who owns the world's only fresh water, drinks his everlasting spring dry, is blackened by the smoke of Petrel's fire as he escapes, and spits out the water to make the rivers of the northern coast.

A Kaagwaantaan hunter of Sitka marries a bear woman and fathers bear children; returning to his people under a promise never to touch or smile at his human family, he breaks it and is killed by his cubs.

A carver of the Tsague'dî tries wood after wood until killer whales carved from yellow cedar come alive, and sends them into the sea to hunt, forbidding them ever to harm a human being.

A Hurrian song, preserved in Hittite translation, in which kingship in heaven passes from Alalu to Anu to Kumarbi, who bites off Anu's loins and finds himself pregnant with the storm-god who will overthrow him.

Kumarbi fathers a giant of basalt on a great rock and hides it on the shoulder of Upelluri in the sea, where it grows until it reaches heaven; Teššub is defeated until Ea cuts the monster from its base with the ancient copper tool that once separated heaven and earth.

Two versions of an Anatolian myth recited at the Purulli festival of Nerik: in one the goddess Inara traps the serpent with a feast, in the other the Storm-god's son wins back his father's stolen heart and eyes.

The farming god Telipinu leaves in anger and the land withers; after the gods' searches fail, Hannahanna's bee finds him asleep, and the goddess Kamrušepa's ritual locks his rage away in the Dark Earth.

Yam, the Sea, favoured by El, demands that the gods hand Baal over as his captive; armed with two clubs made by Kothar-wa-Khasis, Baal strikes Yam down and claims kingship.

Having defeated Yam, Baal still has no house of his own; Anat threatens El, Athirat persuades him, and Kothar-wa-Khasis builds a palace of cedar, silver, and gold on Mount Zaphon, with a window through which Baal thunders.

Baal goes down into the throat of Mot, Death, and the land dries up; Anat finds his body, destroys Mot like threshed grain, and El dreams that Baal lives; seven years later the two gods fight, and Mot yields.

The righteous Danel is granted a son, Aqhat, who receives a divine bow; when Aqhat refuses to give it to the goddess Anat even for immortality, she has him killed, and the land withers as his sister Pughat sets out for revenge.

King Kirta, bereft of his family, follows El's dream-instructions to win a new bride, but forgets his vow to Athirat and falls deathly ill; El himself creates a healer to save him, before Kirta's own son challenges his right to rule.

Across the Inuit Arctic a young woman is wronged, thrown into the sea, and maimed, and becomes the keeper of the sea animals; the details, and even her name, change from region to region.

A young woman discovers that the visitor who comes to her in the dark is her own brother; she flees with a blazing torch and becomes the sun, and he follows with a torch burned down to embers and becomes the moon.

After a storm raised to avenge a mistreated orphan drowns the kayakers who mocked him, Kiviuq alone survives and begins a journey of many lifetimes, meeting a murderous woman, giant snapping shells, a fox-wife, and a goose-wife.

In the Iñupiaq tradition of Point Hope, Alaska, Tulunigraq, the Raven Man, harpoons a great creature of the sea whose body becomes the land of Tikiġaq, where the whaling village stands.

A Kulin creation story from central Victoria, shared publicly by Kulin people: Bunjil the eagle shapes the land and the first men, his brother Pallian brings the first women from the water, and Bunjil gives them law before rising into the sky.

Shared by Martu, Ngaanyatjarra, and Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara custodians through the National Museum of Australia: ancestral sisters flee across the deserts from a man who uses magic to pursue them, and rise into the sky as the Pleiades.

Shared by the Ngemba people and their neighbours at Brewarrina, New South Wales: the ancestral creation being Baiame revealed the design of the stone fish traps in the Barwon River by throwing his net over it, and gave each family group a trap to use and maintain.

Shared publicly by Whadjuk Noongar people: in the Nyitting, the creation time, the Wagyl moved across the land and shaped the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River) and the waterways of the Perth region.

Shared publicly by Aṉangu at Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park: when Liru warriors kill her nephew, Kuniya the woma python woman confronts one of them at Muṯitjulu Waterhole and strikes him down with her digging stick.

In the Diné origin story, beings journey upward through a series of lower worlds, leaving each because of wrongdoing or disaster, until, fleeing a flood caused by Coyote's theft of the Water Monster's child, they emerge through a reed into this, the Glittering World.

In many tellings, First Man finds an infant girl on Chʼóolʼį́ʼí amid dark cloud and rain; raised by First Man and First Woman, she grows swiftly to womanhood, and her puberty ceremony becomes the first Kinaaldá.

The twin sons of Changing Woman set out to find their father, the Sun; guided by Spider Woman, they pass through deadly places, survive the Sun's tests, and return with armour of flint and arrows of lightning.

After Yéʼiitsoh, Monster Slayer destroys the other monsters that prey on the people, from the horned Déélgééd to the monster eagles of Shiprock, but spares Old Age, Cold, Poverty, and Hunger when each explains why the world needs it.

With the monsters gone, Changing Woman goes to live in the west in a house the Sun built for her on the water; there she makes the first Diné clans from her own skin and sends them east to the land between the sacred mountains.

Rising from Lake Titicaca into a world of darkness, the Creator turns a first, disobedient people to stone, makes the sun, moon, and stars at Tiwanaku, shapes the nations in stone and sends them underground to emerge at their own places, then walks away across the western sea.

The Sun sends his son and daughter from Lake Titicaca with a golden rod to find the place where it will sink into the earth; it vanishes at Huanacauri, and there they found Cusco. A second tradition tells instead of four brothers and four sisters emerging from a cave at Pacaritambo.

The ragged trickster Cuniraya fathers a child on the proud huaca Cavillaca through a lúcuma fruit; when the child crawls to him before all the gods, she flees in shame to the sea at Pachacamac and turns to stone, while Cuniraya blesses and curses the animals he meets in pursuit.

A llama refuses to graze and tells its astonished owner that the sea will rise in five days; the man follows it up the mountain Villcacoto, where the animals crowd together as the water climbs, and becomes the ancestor of everyone who lives today.

Pariacaca's poor son Huatyacuri overhears two foxes reveal why a rich lord who claims to be a god is dying; he cures him by exposing a two-headed toad and serpents in his house, wins the lord's daughter, and with his father's help defeats his jealous brother-in-law in every contest.

Born from five eggs, Pariacaca drowns a village that refused a stranger drink, brings irrigation water to the fields of Cupara for the woman Choque Suso, and at last drives the child-eating lord of the old hot world, Huallallo Carhuincho, out of the highlands in a war of water against fire.

From the Gathas' two primal spirits and the choice between truth and the lie to the Bundahishn's cosmic drama: Ohrmazd in light and Ahriman in darkness, a created world attacked and corrupted, and the promise of its final renewal.

The star Sirius descends to the cosmic sea as a white horse to release the rains, but the black horse of drought, Apaosha, defeats him; only when he is worshipped by his own name does Tishtrya return in strength, drive Apaosha away, and send the rain across the world.

Yima, the first king, declines to be Ahura Mazda's prophet but agrees to rule and protect the world; he enlarges the earth three times, then builds an enclosure to preserve the best of every living thing from the coming winters, before his pride costs him the royal Glory.

Tempted by Iblis, the prince Zahhak kills his father and seizes Jamshid's throne; serpents grow from his shoulders and must be fed on human brains, until the blacksmith Kaveh raises his leather apron as a banner and Fereydun defeats the tyrant and chains him in Mount Damavand.

The hero Sam abandons his newborn son on Mount Alborz because the child's hair is white as an old man's; the great bird Simurgh carries him to her nest and raises him, and when the repentant father comes for him, she gives the boy a feather to burn whenever he needs her.

Rostam fathers a son on a night in Samangan and leaves a token for him; years later the young champion Sohrab leads an army against Iran seeking his father, and the two meet in single combat without either knowing the other, until Rostam's dagger strikes home.

The air-maiden drifts for centuries on the primeval sea until a duck nests on her knee; when the eggs break, their pieces become earth, sky, sun, moon, stars, and clouds, and at last the aged singer Väinämöinen is born.

Defeated in a singing duel, young Joukahainen pledges his sister Aino to old Väinämöinen; unwilling to marry him, she drowns herself in the sea, and when Väinämöinen later hooks a strange fish, it is Aino, who mocks him and slips away forever.

Stranded in the North, Väinämöinen promises that his brother-smith Ilmarinen will forge the Sampo for Louhi in exchange for passage home; after four days of failed wonders, Ilmarinen forges a mill that grinds grain, salt, and money, and Louhi locks it deep in a mountain.

Sent by Louhi to shoot the swan on the black river of Tuonela, the reckless Lemminkäinen is killed and cut to pieces; his mother, warned by his bleeding hairbrush, searches the world, rakes his body from the river of the dead, and brings him back to life.

Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen sail north to take the Sampo; on the way Väinämöinen makes the first kantele from a giant pike's jawbone, and with its music puts Pohjola to sleep; Louhi pursues them as a giant eagle, and in the battle the Sampo shatters in the sea.

Born into slavery after his family is massacred, Kullervo is mistreated from childhood; he takes revenge on Ilmarinen's wife, unknowingly seduces his own sister, destroys the clan that wronged his family, and dies on his own sword at the place of his sin.

The son of the Lord of Heaven descends to Mount Taebaek to rule the human world; a bear who endures twenty-one days of darkness on mugwort and garlic becomes a woman, marries him, and bears Dangun, founder of the first Korean kingdom.

Born from an egg laid by the River Earl's daughter, Jumong grows into a matchless archer at the court of East Buyeo; fleeing the jealous princes, he is saved when fish and turtles rise to bridge a river, and he founds the kingdom of Goguryeo.

The six village chiefs of the Gyeongju plain, seeking a king, see a white horse kneeling at the Najeong well beside a purple egg; the horse rises into heaven, and from the egg comes the radiant boy who will found Silla, crowned at thirteen with a queen born from a dragon.

Cast away at birth for being a seventh daughter, Princess Bari is the only child willing to journey to the Western Heaven for the water that can save her dying parents; after years of labor and hardship she returns in time to revive them, and becomes the goddess who guides the dead.

Mireuk separates heaven and earth, props the sky with copper pillars, makes stars from an extra sun and moon, learns the secrets of fire and water from a mouse, and creates people; but the rival Seokga wins the world by stealing the flower that bloomed on Mireuk's knee, and so the present age is full of wrongs.

King Munmu of Silla asks to be buried in the East Sea so he can become a dragon and guard the kingdom; his son receives from a sea dragon a bamboo that is two by day and one by night, and makes from it a flute that drives off enemies, heals the sick, brings rain, and stills the waves.