Myth CodexRotA Wiki

All Concepts in the Codex

Ideas and forces the myths treat as real: fate, cosmic order, and the shape of time.

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Traditions
16 entries

B

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

D

DashavataraThe Ten Avatars of VishnuFish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, dwarf, and five more — the standard list of Vishnu's ten descents, though the Puranas themselves never quite agree on it.Concept · HinduThe DruidsThe Priesthood the Romans FearedThe learned class of Iron Age Gaul and Britain, known mostly through hostile Roman writers and later Irish legend — and reinvented from scratch in the 1700s.Concept · Celtic

E

The Eight ImmortalsThe Baxian of Daoist LegendEight Daoist immortals — a beggar, a drunk, a girl, a courtier, a flute player — who cross the sea by their own strange powers instead of by boat.Concept · ChineseThe Ennead of HeliopolisThe Nine Gods of CreationThe nine gods of Heliopolis's creation myth, from self-made Atum down to Osiris, Isis and Set — and the tribunal that judged their heirs.Concept · Egyptian

F

The Four SymbolsAzure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, Black TortoiseThe four beasts of the Chinese sky — dragon, tiger, bird and tortoise-and-snake. A star map first, a mythology second, and both for over two thousand years.Concept · Chinese

K

Ka and Ba (the Egyptian Soul)The Parts of a PersonAncient Egypt's answer to the soul: the ka that needs feeding, the ba that can fly, and the akh a person only becomes after death.Concept · Egyptian

L

The Lotus-EatersThe Flower-Eating MenThe flower-eating men — Homer's gentlest disaster, a people whose food is no weapon and yet erases the desire to go home.Concept · Greek

M

The Matter of BritainOne of Three MattersThe medieval term for the whole Arthurian tradition, coined around 1200 to separate British legend from the Matter of France and the Matter of Rome.Concept · ArthurianThe Maya Long Count CalendarThe Count of Days Since CreationThe Maya's linear day-count from a mythical zero date — the calendar a 2012 doomsday craze misread, though Classic scribes never treated it as an ending.Concept · MayanThe Maya World TreeWakah Chan, the Raised-Up SkyThe great ceiba that joins underworld, earth and sky in Maya cosmology — carved at Palenque's Temple of the Cross and reborn each time maize is planted.Concept · Mayan

N

The Nine RealmsThe Worlds of YggdrasilThe Worlds of Yggdrasil. Norse sources count nine worlds on the world tree — but no medieval text ever lists them, and the familiar roster is modern.Concept · Norse

R

The RunesThe Elder FutharkThe runic alphabets of the Germanic world, won by Odin on the tree in Havamal — a real writing system long before it became a modern divination kit.Concept · Norse

T

The TitansThe Elder Gods Before OlympusThe twelve children of Sky and Earth who ruled before Zeus. Cronus, Rhea, Oceanus, Prometheus' line — and the ten-year war that buried them in Tartarus.Concept · GreekTonalpohualli (the 260-Day Sacred Calendar)The Count of FateThe 260-day sacred count that set every Aztec's birth-fate, built from 13 numbers and 20 day-signs, inherited from far older Mesoamerican tradition.Concept · Aztec

W

WyrdThe Weave of FateThe weave of fate. The Germanic idea that what happens has already turned — laid down at a well by the norns, binding gods and men alike.Concept · Norse