Traditional Cosmology (5); The Global Mythology of Cosmic Creation and Destruction; volume: Solar and Lunar Anomalies

This work, in 6 volumes, is a compendium of traditional cosmologies worldwide. The material includes the global mythology of creation and destruction, but also comprises information drawn from other areas of traditional knowledge, ritual, iconography, shamanism, costume, and dance. Relying on original sources, universal points of agreement are identified, often on counterintuitive ideas. These suggest a single template, a blueprint for a universal mythology of origins with local variations. This volume documents a large number of traditions concerning unusual and often undesirable properties and activities of the sun and moon. To name just a few examples, prominent beliefs were that the moon was originally brighter than the sun and that the earth once suffered from the heat caused by the sun’s former proximity, its greater strength, its failure to move or the appearance of multiple luminaries.