Pith of the Myth

The Saturday following Thanksgiving in the United States is known as Small Business Saturday. This is in answer to Black Friday which has been taken over by Big Business in hopes to keep local shops in the game for Christmas. A popular figurine in business is the Chinese God of Wealth, Caishen (aka Ts’ai Shen). He isn't just worried about your financial wealth though. He cares about your inner wealth too. Caishen is often depicted with a yuanbao (a boat shaped tool that turns iron into gold) and he takes an important role in the Chinese New Year, riding on a black tiger and carry a golden rod he descends from the heavens to check on his followers. Caishen then reports back on you so if you want to sweeten his words, best to put honey on a depiction of him before burn it. And to think, he started off as a mortal named Zhou.

The day after Thanksgiving in America is National Maize Day so who else would POTM talk about but the Maize Cob God and the Seven Serpent Goddess. Centeotl (translates to Maize Cob God in Nahuatl the Aztec language) and Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpent Goddess) are the two deities that watched over the growing of corn in all its stages but have you ever seen them in the same room? Some scholars believe the two were actually one deity...that Chicomecoatl grew up to be Centeotl. This isn't too far fetched since MesoAmerica did not think in the binary when it came to gender, however, most scholars still believe the two to were consorts and not the same being. Either way, as gods and goddesses ofttimes do, they demanded offerings to keep the corn coming. Centeotl's offering was a lot less bloody than his female counterpart's, where five elderly women were sent off to the fields to pick an ear of corn each. Those five cobs were carefully brought back and babied by the people t

We all know there are a lot of myths surrounding the American holiday of Thanksgiving, such as they served turkey or that it was the 'first' celebrated in America (indigenous people had a long tradition of giving thanks at season changes) but none so egregious as rewriting history about the true relations of the puritans to the native people they took the land from. You can read a little about it here ===》 The Native Circle's First Thanksgiving Myth

November 27th is National Tie One On Day according to my trusty internet search so I’m going to take this time to talk about the Greek god, Pan. I get that he is better known for his pick up artist ways, but don’t sell him short on the partying. I mean his best bud was none other than Dionysus, god of debauchery and all things fun. OK, so, Pan was a satyr which means he was 65/35 goat/human and he sure liked the ladies of the forest, aka, the nymphs. The story goes that he ba sically stalked this one nymph, Syrinx, so bad that the river nymphs gathered and turned her into a bunch of reeds to hide her. Pan, not to be deterred by the new form the object of his desire took, grabbed a handful of reeds and made his flute...thus creating the pan flute.  Ugh, I feel like I should have prepared a spiffy sign off like..."and that’s the Pith of the Myth" or something. I’ll work on it ;)

Pith of the Myth is all about myths, folklore, legends and everything in between. January 1, 2020 will be the first pod drop but, in the meantime, I'll be making posts here, on Twitter and on Facebook. They will follow the daily theme below and/or a theme of the day itself.