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The Complete A–Z Index

All 510 entries in the Codex, alphabetically. Narrow by tradition or by kind; the two combine.

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AchillesBest of the AchaeansThe greatest fighter at Troy, doomed by his own choice of a short glorious life over a long quiet one, and undone in the one place he could still be wounded.Hero · Greek Adad (Ishkur, Mesopotamian Storm God)Lord of AbundanceThe Mesopotamian storm god who could drown the land in flood or bless it with rain, worshipped as Ishkur in Sumer and Adad across Babylonia and Assyria.Deity · Mesopotamian Aegir and RanLord and Lady of the SeaAegir brews ale for the gods in a hall lit by gold; Ran drags the drowned down in her net. Together they are the Norse sea, hospitable and lethal.Deity · Norse AeneasFather of the Roman PeopleThe Trojan prince who escaped burning Troy carrying his father and household gods, wandered the Mediterranean, and became Rome's mythical ancestor.Hero · Roman The AeneidRome's National EpicVirgil's unfinished epic of Aeneas's flight from Troy and the founding of Rome — composed for Augustus, nearly burned at its author's own request.Sacred Text · Roman Aengus (Oengus, Angus Og)God of Love and YouthThe young god of Brú na Bóinne — conceived in a stolen day, owner of a house won by a pun, and the lover who followed a dream into a lake of swans.Deity · Celtic AeolusKeeper of the WindsKeeper of the winds on the floating island of Aiolia. He gave Odysseus a leather bag holding every gale but one — and the crew opened it.Deity · Greek The Aesir-Vanir WarThe First War in the WorldVoluspa calls it the first war in the world. Gullveig burned three times, Odin cast the first spear, and the truce reshaped the Norse pantheon.Event · Norse Agni (Hindu Fire God)The Sacrificial Fire, Messenger of the GodsThe fire god who opens the Rigveda — household priest among men and messenger among the gods, carrying every offering from the altar to the deities themselves.Deity · Hindu Ah Puch (Maya Death God)God ASchellhas's God A, the skeletal Maya death deity behind the name Ah Puch — a label colonial and modern sources actually apply in different ways.Deity · Mayan Ahuizotl (the Water Creature)Friend of the Rain GodsA small, dog-sized water beast with a hand at the end of its tail, said to drown swimmers and eat their eyes, nails, and teeth.Creature · Aztec AkituThe Babylonian New YearBabylon's spring festival, when Enuma Elish was recited, the king was ritually slapped, and a claimant to the throne had to take the hand of Bel.Rite & Festival · Mesopotamian Alatyr (the Sacred Stone)Father of All StonesThe "father of all stones" at the center of the world in Russian folk charms and the apocryphal Book of the Dove - a formula more than a place.Artifact · Slavic AlfheimRealm of the Light-ElvesThe realm of the light-elves, given to Freyr as a baby present — one of the least described places in the Norse cosmos.Realm · Norse AmaterasuGoddess of the SunThe sun goddess who shines in heaven — ruler of the Plain of High Heaven, ancestor of Japan's imperial line, and the kami enshrined at Ise.Deity · Japanese Ame-no-UzumeGoddess of Dawn, Mirth, and DanceThe kami whose bawdy trance dance drew the sun goddess out of hiding, and whose fearless meeting with a road-god gave Japan its oldest ritual dance.Deity · Japanese AmmitDevourer of the DeadDevourer of the dead — the crocodile-lion-hippopotamus hybrid who crouched beside the scales and swallowed the hearts that failed the weighing.Creature · Egyptian Amun (Amun-Ra)The Hidden OneThe imperial god of the New Kingdom — a once-minor Theban god whose name means "hidden," fused with Ra until Akhenaten tried to erase him from Egypt.Deity · Egyptian Ankh (Egyptian Symbol of Life)The Sign of LifeThe looped cross Egyptian gods hand to kings on every temple wall, the hieroglyph for life itself, worn as an amulet for three thousand years.Artifact · Egyptian AnnwnThe Welsh OtherworldWales's Otherworld — a rival kingdom ruled by Arawn, raided by Arthur for a magic cauldron, and only later flattened by Christian Welsh into a word for hell.Realm · Celtic AnuFather of the GodsFather of the gods — the Mesopotamian sky, whose written sign meant "god" itself; the source of all authority, and almost never the one who uses it.Deity · Mesopotamian AnubisGuardian of the DeadGuardian of the dead — the black jackal god who embalmed Osiris, watched over the necropolis, and weighed the heart against the feather of truth.Deity · Egyptian Anzu (the Lion-Headed Eagle)Thief of the Tablet of DestiniesThe monstrous lion-headed eagle who stole the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil's sanctuary and was hunted down by the god Ninurta.Creature · Mesopotamian AphroditeGoddess of Love and BeautyBorn from sea foam or fathered by Zeus — the goddess of desire, whose power over gods and mortals starts wars as easily as marriages.Deity · Greek Apkallu (the Seven Sages)The Sages Before the FloodMesopotamia's seven antediluvian sages, half-fish or bird-headed, who brought civilization from the sea and were later buried as protective figurines.Creature · Mesopotamian ApolloGod of Prophecy, Music and the BowTwin of Artemis, lord of Delphi. God of prophecy, music, healing and plague — the far-shooter whose arrows bring both the cure and the sickness.Deity · Greek Apollo in Roman ReligionThe God Rome Kept GreekThe one great Greek god Rome adopted without renaming him — plague-healer, oracle-giver, and the personal patron Augustus built into the imperial order.Deity · Roman Apophis (Apep)The Serpent of ChaosThe great serpent who attacks the sun boat every night — Apophis is Egypt's embodiment of chaos, repelled again each dawn but never finally destroyed.Creature · Egyptian AresGod of WarThe Greek god of war as slaughter rather than strategy — hated by his own father, beaten by Athena, and worshipped anyway on the edges of the Greek world.Deity · Greek ArjunaThe Peerless ArcherThe Pandava hero of the Mahabharata, winner of Draupadi's hand and wielder of the bow Gandiva, whose crisis on the battlefield draws out the Bhagavad Gita.Hero · Hindu Arkona (Temple of Svetovid)The Cliff Where a God Was Dragged DownA Rugian temple-fortress with the best-documented pagan cult in the Slavic world - and the site of its most precisely dated destruction, in 1168.Sacred Site · Slavic ArtemisGoddess of the Hunt and the WildVirgin huntress, mistress of animals, twin of Apollo. Protector of the young and the wild — and a goddess whose arrows kill without warning.Deity · Greek AsgardRealm of the AEsirThe stronghold of the AEsir. A walled citadel of halls at the top of the world tree, reached by the rainbow bridge and built on a bargain the gods broke.Realm · Norse AthenaGoddess of Wisdom and WarGoddess of wisdom, strategy and craft, born fully armed from the head of Zeus. Patron of Athens, of heroes, and of Odysseus above all.Deity · Greek AtrahasisThe Exceedingly WiseThe Old Babylonian flood epic — the fullest account of why the gods nearly drowned humanity, and the source behind Gilgamesh's own flood story.Sacred Text · Mesopotamian Augury and the AuspicesReading the Sky for RomeHow Roman magistrates read the will of the gods from bird-flight and lightning before every public act — the state's oldest form of applied religion.Rite & Festival · Roman AvalonThe Isle of ApplesThe isle of apples: the healing island where Excalibur was forged and where the wounded Arthur was carried, neither dead nor returned.Realm · Arthurian The Aztec Sun StoneThe Calendar Stone That Isn't a CalendarA 24-ton basalt disc unearthed in 1790 under Mexico City, long called the Aztec Calendar even though it was never used to track a single day.Artifact · Aztec AztlanThe Place of HeronsThe island homeland the Mexica claimed to have left behind — a founding-migration legend whose real location no one has ever settled.Realm · Aztec

B

Baba YagaThe Witch of the WoodThe witch of the wood — the iron-toothed old woman in a hut on chicken legs, who eats some visitors and hands the others exactly what they need.Creature · Slavic The Bacabs (Sky-Bearers of the Four Directions)The Four PauahtunsThe four brothers who hold up the sky at the world's corners, tied to colours and directions in Landa's account of Maya cosmology and calendar.Deity · Mayan Bacchus (Liber)God of Wine and the BacchanaliaRome's own wine and fertility god Liber, so thoroughly merged with Greek Bacchus that the Senate outlawed his mystery cult across Italy in 186 BC.Deity · Roman Baku (Dream Eater)The Devourer of NightmaresA Chinese-born chimera with an elephant's trunk and a tiger's claws, called on in Japan to eat bad dreams before they can do their damage.Creature · Japanese BaldrGod of LightGod of Light. The most beloved of the Aesir, made immune to all harm but one plant — and killed by it, which set the world's ending in motion.Deity · Norse Balor of the Evil EyeThe Fomorian KingThe Fomorian king whose single destroying eye must be lifted open by four men — and who dies exactly as prophesied, by his own grandson's hand.Creature · Celtic Bannik (Bathhouse Spirit)Master of the Third SteamThe irritable spirit who owns the Russian bathhouse after dark — a fortune-teller at Yuletide, a danger to anyone who bathes in his hour uninvited.Creature · Slavic BansheeHerald of DeathHerald of death — the "woman of the mound," heard rather than seen, whose keening outside a house announces that someone of the family is about to die.Creature · Celtic Bastet (Bast)Cat Goddess of BubastisEgypt's cat goddess — a lioness of the Eye of Ra who softened into the guardian of the home, honoured at Bubastis with the loudest festival in Egypt.Deity · Egyptian The Battle of BadonBritain's Last VictoryA single line in a 6th-century sermon became the British win historians can't agree on the date or site of — and the victory later tradition gave to Arthur.Event · Arthurian The Battle of CamlannWhere the Round Table DiedThe battle that ended Arthur's reign: a single line in a medieval annal grew, over nine centuries, into the mutual destruction of Arthur and Mordred.Event · Arthurian Bellona (Roman War Goddess)Goddess of WarRome's own war goddess — named straight from the Latin word for war, whose temple hosted the Senate's dealings with generals and enemies alike.Deity · Roman Beltane (Bealtaine)The Fires of MayThe Gaelic May Day quarter-day, first recorded in a 10th-century glossary as two fires driven between by cattle — not proof of a god named Bel.Rite & Festival · Celtic Bennu (Egyptian Phoenix)The Heron of HeliopolisHeliopolis's solar heron, the ba of Ra, whose myth reached the Greek historian Herodotus and became, centuries later, the Greek phoenix.Creature · Egyptian Bes (Egyptian Household Protector)Protector of the HomeThe grinning dwarf god who guarded bedrooms rather than temples — a fierce, funny protector of mothers and infants, armed with noise and a terrifying face.Deity · Egyptian The Bhagavad GitaThe Song of the LordEighteen chapters embedded in the Mahabharata where Krishna counsels Arjuna — read, translated and argued over more than any other Hindu text.Sacred Text · Hindu Bifrost (The Rainbow Bridge)The Burning Bridge to AsgardThe burning rainbow bridge from earth to Asgard. Strongest thing ever built, guarded by Heimdall - and fated to shatter under the riders of Ragnarok.Concept · Norse Blot (Norse Sacrifice)The Sacrifice That Fed the GodsThe Old Norse sacrifice: an animal killed, its blood sprinkled on altar and idols, its meat boiled and shared in a hall feast to buy the gods' favour.Rite & Festival · Norse The Books of Chilam BalamThe Jaguar Priest's BooksColonial Yucatec Maya town books mixing prophecy, history, medicine and Christian material — named for a jaguar-priest said to have foreseen the Spanish.Sacred Text · Mayan BragiGod of Poetry and SkaldshipNorse god of poetry and eloquence, husband of Idunn, who greets fallen kings at Valhalla's door and may have begun as a real ninth-century skald.Deity · Norse BrahmaThe CreatorThe four-faced creator from whom the worlds issue at the dawn of each cosmic day — immensely powerful in myth, and almost never worshipped in temples.Deity · Hindu