World Mythology Library
54 cultural traditions — the mythology, the figures, the cosmologies, and the stories that produced each Story World's structural architecture.
Aboriginal Australian peoples — the many distinct First Nations of Australia, the world's oldest continuous living cultures, each with their own languages, Countries, Law, and Dreaming. Engaged here ONLY as a general structural pattern, never as reproduction of sacred or restricted knowledge.
Akan peoples — Ashanti, Fante, Akyem, Akuapem, Kwahu — Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire
The many distinct Indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest — sovereign nations with living sacred traditions of healing and vision. Engaged here ONLY as a general structural pattern, never as reproduction or instruction of sacred practice.
Ancient Egyptian civilization — Nile Valley from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean Delta
The Quechua-speaking Inca and the wider Andean peoples, who used the quipu — an elaborate system of knotted, colored cords — to record numbers, information, and (in ways still being understood) narrative and account.
Babylonian civilization — Akkadian-speaking, central Mesopotamia
BaKongo peoples — Kongo, Vili, Yombe, Woyo, Solongo — of the Congo River Basin, spanning the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Angola (Cabinda), and Gabon. The Kingdom of Kongo was one of Central Africa's great states from the 14th century.
Celtic peoples — the Irish (Gaelic) and Welsh (Brythonic) traditions above all, heirs to a rich mythological and storytelling heritage preserved in the medieval manuscripts.
Chinese literary tradition — the classical poetics of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), the golden age of Chinese poetry, and the qǐchéngzhuǎnhé four-part structure that shaped its regulated verse.
Chinese literary tradition — the wuxia genre of martial heroes, rooted in classical tales of chivalrous swordsmen (youxia) and the great vernacular novels, and flourishing in modern literature and film.
Mbuti, Baka, Aka, Efé and related forest peoples of the Congo Basin (the Ituri forest and the wider equatorial rainforest of Central Africa).
Diné (Navajo) people — Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo homeland in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado), within the four sacred mountains.
Dogon people — Bandiagara Escarpment, Mali, West Africa
The European/American dramatic and narrative tradition — a refinement of the classic linear arc that treats the midpoint as an act break, dividing the long middle into two escalating movements.
The European/American storytelling-craft tradition — a modern structural framework that plots a story through seven key points, designed from the ending backward, with the resolution as the mirror-opposite of the hook.
The European/American comparative-mythology and craft tradition — the "monomyth" articulated in the 20th century from the study of world mythologies, and widely adopted in Western storytelling craft.
The European/American dramatic and narrative tradition — rooted in classical Greek dramatic theory (Aristotle's Poetics), developed through Western theatre and the novel, and codified in modern screenwriting and craft.
Finnish and Karelian peoples — Finno-Ugric tradition
Mbuti (Ituri Forest, Democratic Republic of Congo), Baka (Cameroon, Central African Republic, northern Congo, Gabon), Aka (western Congo Basin), Efé and Twa peoples — the hunter-gatherer forest peoples of the Central African rainforest. Distinct peoples with distinct languages, united by a shared relationship to the forest as living parent.
Guaraní peoples — Mbyá, Ava (Ñandeva), Kaiowá, and Paĩ Tavyterã — of Paraguay, southern Brazil, northeastern Argentina, and Bolivia. A major Indigenous nation of South America with a profound spiritual and poetic tradition.
Haudenosaunee (the "People of the Longhouse," also known as the Iroquois Confederacy) — the Mohawk (Kanien'kehá:ka), Oneida (Onʌyoteʼá·ka), Onondaga (Onöñda'gega'), Cayuga (Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ'), Seneca (Onöndowa'ga:'), and later the Tuscarora (Ska:rù:rę') — of what is now upstate New York and the surrounding Great Lakes and St. Lawrence regions.
Sanskrit literary and religious tradition — attributed to the sage Vyasa, compiled from older oral tradition roughly 400 BCE–400 CE, pan-Indian in reach and influence.
The Indian (Sanskrit) dramatic and aesthetic tradition — the theory of rasa articulated in the Natyashastra (the ancient Sanskrit treatise on dramaturgy attributed to Bharata Muni) and developed across Indian poetics, drama, dance, and music.
East Asian literary tradition — originating in classical Chinese poetics (qǐ chéng zhuǎn hé) and developed in Japanese narrative, poetry, and art as kishōtenketsu.
Japanese aesthetic and artistic tradition — developed across Noh theatre, ink painting (sumi-e), poetry, garden design, and music, and rooted in Zen and older Japanese sensibility.
Javanese peoples — the island of Java, Indonesia, in a tradition synthesizing indigenous Javanese cosmology, Hindu-Buddhist epic (the Ramayana and Mahabharata, adapted into Javanese forms), and later Islamic and Sufi elements.
The K'iche' Maya of highland Guatemala, whose sacred book the Popol Vuh preserves the creation cycle; and the broader Maya world.
Yamato Japanese peoples — the Kojiki ("Record of Ancient Matters") compiled in 712 CE by Ō no Yasumaro from older oral tradition, drawing on myths far predating writing in Japan.
Korean peoples — the pansori tradition flowered under the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), with roots in shamanic (mudang) ritual song, developing especially in the southwestern Jeolla region.
The Lakota (part of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ / Great Sioux Nation) and, more broadly, Plains Indigenous nations for whom the sacred hoop and the four directions carry deep meaning. This library engages the *narrative structure* of the four directions and the hoop at a respectful, general level, honoring that the sacred specifics belong to the living Lakota and other nations.
Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Bambara, Dyula, Soninke — Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso
Mandinka, Bambara, Dyula peoples — Mali Empire and successor states
K'iche' Maya peoples of the Guatemalan highlands, heirs to the broader Classic Maya civilization; the Popol Vuh preserves the sacred narrative of the K'iche', written down in the mid-16th century from far older tradition.
Papua New Guinea peoples and Melanesian island peoples — 800+ languages in PNG alone
The Arabic, Persian, Indian, and wider Middle Eastern and South Asian traditions that flowed together into the great compilation of the Thousand and One Nights — a cross-cultural masterwork of nested storytelling.
Māori — the Indigenous Polynesian people of Aotearoa (New Zealand), organized in iwi (tribes) and hapū (sub-tribes), descendants of the Polynesian voyagers who arrived by waka (canoe).
The Mexica (Aztec) and wider Nahua peoples of central Mexico, and the broader Mesoamerican codex tradition (Mixtec and others) — makers of the painted books (amoxtli) that recorded history, calendar, cosmology, and sacred knowledge.
Native American / Indigenous peoples of North America — a great diversity of distinct nations, each with its own languages, cosmologies, and traditions. This library engages a widely-shared *narrative pattern* (the seeker guided and taught by an animal being) at a respectful, structural level, never as a single monolithic belief.
Native American / Indigenous nations of North America (Plains and beyond) for whom the medicine wheel and the four directions carry meaning — a great diversity of distinct, sovereign nations. This library engages the *circular narrative structure* at a respectful, general level, distinct from (and complementary to) the Sacred Hoop library's Lakota directional emphasis: here the focus is the storytelling movement itself through the directions.
Zulu (amaZulu), Xhosa (amaXhosa), Swazi (emaSwati), and Ndebele (amaNdebele) — the Nguni-speaking peoples of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Eswatini, and surrounding regions of southern Africa.
Dinka and Nuer of South Sudan, Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, Acholi of northern Uganda and South Sudan — Nilotic peoples of the East African savannah and the Nile Basin, defined by a profound relationship with cattle.
Norse peoples — the medieval Icelanders and the wider Scandinavian world, heirs to the Viking Age, who preserved the sagas and the Eddic mythology.
Philippine peoples — Tagalog, Visayan (Bisaya), Ilocano, Bikolano, Kapampangan, and many others — of the pre-colonial Philippine archipelago, before and beneath the Spanish colonial and Catholic overlay.
The Lakota (Očhéthi Šakówiŋ) and other Plains Indigenous nations — sovereign nations with living sacred ceremonies. Engaged here only as a *structural pattern*, never as reproduction of ceremony.
The Polynesian peoples — Hawaiian, Māori, Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan, and the many peoples of the vast Polynesian triangle — master voyagers who settled the Pacific across immense distances by non-instrument navigation.
San (Bushmen) — !Kung, !Xóõ, Taa, /Xam, ǀXam, Naro — Kalahari Desert peoples of southern Africa
Slavic peoples — the East Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians), West Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Sorbs), and South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and others), sharing a common pre-Christian mythological and folkloric heritage.
Sufi Islamic mystical tradition — centered on Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–1273), who lived and taught in Konya (in present-day Turkey), wrote in Persian, and whose followers founded the Mevlevi Order (the "whirling dervishes").
Sumerian civilization — the city-states of Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Nippur, Eridu — of southern Mesopotamia (modern southern Iraq), roughly 3000–1750 BCE, and the Akkadian and Babylonian cultures who inherited and transmitted their literature.
Tamil peoples — Tamilakam (the ancient Tamil country of southern India and Sri Lanka), during the Sangam age (roughly 300 BCE–300 CE), under the Chera, Chola, and Pandya dynasties.
Chinese Taoist tradition — Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou, c. 369–286 BCE) and Laozi (traditionally 6th century BCE), of the Warring States period of ancient China.
Bantu-speaking peoples — Zulu (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu), Xhosa, Ndebele, Shona (hunhu), Sotho (botho), Tswana, Swazi, Venda, Tsonga — Southern Africa
Yoruba peoples — Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, Ile-Ife, Ekiti, Ijesa, Igbomina — southwestern Nigeria and Benin Republic. Diaspora: Cuba (Lucumí/Santería), Brazil (Candomblé), Trinidad, Haiti (Vodou roots), United States.
Zapotec peoples — Oaxaca Valley; Monte Albán civilization