Mythology
Thunderstorms strongly influenced many early civilizations. Greeks thought they were battles waged by Zeus, who hurled lightning bolts forged by Hephaestus. Some American Indian tribes associated thunderstorms with the Thunderbird, who they believed was a servant of the Great Spirit. The Norse considered thunderstorms to occur when Thor went to beat on Jötnar, with the thunder and lightning being the effect of his strikes with the hammer Mjölnir. Christian doctrine accepted the ideas of Aristotle's original work, called Meteorologica, that winds were caused by exhalations from the Earth and that fierce storms were the work of God. These ideas were still within the mainstream as late as the 18th century.
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Famous quotes containing the word mythology:
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Love, love, love—all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)