Search
Search Results
Definition
Melusine
Melusine (pronounced Mel-ew-seen, also given as Melusina) is a legendary figure from European folklore depicted as a mermaid, sometimes with two tails, as a serpent from the waist down, or as a dragon. She is associated with the ruling houses...
Definition
Medieval Folklore
Medieval folklore is a body of work, originally transmitted orally, which was composed between the 5th and 15th centuries in Europe. Although folktales are a common attribute of every civilization, and such stories were being told by cultures...
Definition
Menehune
Menehune is the term applied to short-statured, forest-dwelling creatures of Hawaiian mythology and is part of a common mythology throughout Polynesia that describes secretive, supernatural beings with human-like attributes. Mysterious supernatural...
Article
Ancient Egyptian Medical Texts
Medicine in ancient Egypt was understood as a combination of practical technique and magical incantation and ritual. Although physical injury was usually addressed pragmatically through bandages, splints, and salves, even the broken bones...
Article
Ancient Egyptian Medicine: Study & Practice
In Europe, in the 19th century CE, an interesting device began appearing in graveyards and cemeteries: the mortsafe. This was an iron cage erected over a grave to keep the body of the deceased safe from 'resurrectionists' - better known as...
Article
Religion & Superstition in Colonial America
Religion and superstition went hand in hand in Colonial America, and one’s belief in the first confirmed the validity of the second. The colonists' worldview was completely informed by religion and so everything that happened - good or bad...
Article
Twelve Menacing & Protective Mythological Figures
The term mythology comes from the Greek words mythos (“story of the people”) and logos (“word”) and so is defined as the spoken (later written) story of a culture. Modern scholars have divided myths into different types which serve many different...
Article
Egyptian Medical Treatments
The ancient Egyptians experienced the same wide array of disease that people do in the present day, but unlike most people in the modern era, they attributed the experience to supernatural causes. The common cold, for example, was prevalent...
Definition
Religion in the Ancient World
Religion (from the Latin Religio, meaning 'restraint,' or Relegere, according to Cicero, meaning 'to repeat, to read again,' or, most likely, Religionem, 'to show respect for what is sacred') is an organized system of beliefs and practices...
Article
Ancient Mesopotamian Ghost Spell
Medicine in ancient Mesopotamia was based on the belief that illness was caused by supernatural agencies and, although medicines were given and injuries treated, magical spells and incantations were also understood as effective. Among these...