Stories & symbols
30 related entries. Shared tags aid navigation; they do not imply identical beliefs or practices.
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Ngoyo and Woyo proverb wisdom
A historically grounded introduction to Ngoyo and to the Woyo art of using carved proverbs for counsel, disagreement, and reflection.
Lower Congo · Cabinda · 9 highlights↗Kongo cosmology
Related Kongo-speaking traditions that connect cycles of life, the ancestral realm, ritual specialists, and community concerns.
West Central Africa · 5 highlights↗Akan thought
A rich field of ideas about personhood, character, memory, community, and symbols.
Ghana · Côte d'Ivoire · 5 highlights↗Luba lukasa memory boards
Luba lukasa are crafted memory boards interpreted by trained members of the mbudye association.
Democratic Republic of the Congo · 5 highlights↗Mesopotamian wisdom and Gilgamesh
Mesopotamian literature asks how people face mortality, friendship, rule, and loss.
Iraq · ancient Near East · 5 highlights↗K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh
The Popol Vuh is a K’iche’ Maya narrative of creation, the Hero Twins, and community origins.
Guatemala · 5 highlights↗Nahua wisdom and poetry
Nahua thinkers and poets asked about life, mortality, knowledge, and the force of song.
Central Mexico · 5 highlights↗Aṉangu Tjukurpa
Aṉangu understand Tjukurpa as living law, knowledge, and responsibility connecting people, ancestors, and Country.
Uluṟu–Kata Tjuṯa · Central Australia · 5 highlights↗Yolŋu law, art, and Country
Yolŋu communities express ancestral law, clan identity, and connection to Country through languages, art, and collective action.
Northeast Arnhem Land · Northern Australia · 5 highlights↗Marlaloo Songline
The publicly shared Marlaloo Songline links story, named places, language, and cultural relationships in the Kimberley.
Kimberley · Australia · 5 highlights↗Hermetica and Hermes Trismegistus
The Hermetica are varied late antique writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.
Egypt · Mediterranean · 5 highlights↗Historical alchemy
Alchemy was a varied history of making, experimenting, interpreting texts, and thinking about the transformation of matter.
Multilingual traditions · 5 highlights↗Tarot: cards, game, and later divination
Tarot began as a card game in fifteenth century Italy.
Europe · diaspora · 5 highlights↗Gnostic movements and the problem of the label
Gnosticism is a modern umbrella for varied ancient writings and groups concerned with knowledge, divine reality, and human estrangement.
Late antique Mediterranean · 6 highlights↗Sethian writings
Sethian is a scholarly name for a group of ancient writings that give Seth, son of Adam and Eve, a distinctive place in stories of origin and revelation.
Late antiquity · 6 highlights↗Valentinian Christianity
Valentinian Christians drew on the teaching associated with Valentinus and developed diverse interpretations of God, Christ, ignorance, and restoration.
Second century and later · 6 highlights↗Jewish Kabbalah and the Zohar
Kabbalah is a family of Jewish mystical traditions rooted in texts, interpretation, prayer, and communal life.
Medieval Spain · wider Jewish worlds · 5 highlights↗Renaissance Christian Kabbalah
Christian Kabbalah was a Renaissance Christian reinterpretation of Jewish Kabbalistic texts and methods.
Italy · Europe · 5 highlights↗Solomonic ritual magic texts
Solomonic magic is a family of ritual texts that claim the authority of the biblical Solomon.
West Asia · Europe · 5 highlights↗Manding Kankurang
Kankurang is a Manding initiatory tradition in parts of Senegal and The Gambia.
Senegal · Gambia · 6 highlights↗Shintō traditions
Japanese shrine traditions and practices relating kami, place, festivals, and community.
Japan · 5 highlights↗Manichaeism and Mani
Manichaeism was a distinct religion founded by Mani in the third century.
Sasanian Iran · Silk Roads · 6 highlights↗Carolinian wayfinding and canoe making
Carolinian wayfinding brings together canoe construction, observation of sea and sky, apprenticeship, and communal labour.
Caroline Islands · Micronesia · 5 highlights↗Sámi árbediehtu
Árbediehtu is Sámi inherited and developing knowledge about people, land, language, and ways of living.
Northern Norway · Sweden · Finland · Kola Peninsula · 6 highlights↗Gullah Geechee cultural and spiritual life
Gullah Geechee communities carry a distinct African American Creole language and traditions along the southeastern Atlantic coast.
United States · Carolinas to Florida · 6 highlights↗Garifuna language, music, and coastal knowledge
Garifuna heritage joins an Arawakan language, African and Indigenous Caribbean histories, song, dance, and coastal knowledge.
Belize · Guatemala · Honduras · Nicaragua · 6 highlights↗Rabinal Achí dance drama
Rabinal Achí is a Rabinaleb’ Maya dance drama in which political conflict, ancestry, masks, and music meet.
Rabinal · Guatemala · 6 highlights↗Wajãpi kusiwa oral and graphic knowledge
Kusiwa is a Wajãpi system of graphic and oral expression whose patterns relate to stories, social life, and ways of knowing.
Amapá · Brazil · 6 highlights↗Taíno heritage and living identity
Taíno heritage is part of the living Indigenous Caribbean, despite a long colonial story that declared Native peoples vanished.
Puerto Rico · Dominican Republic · Cuba · diaspora · 6 highlights↗El Güegüense and colonial satire
El Güegüense is a Nicaraguan street drama that turns wit, masks, dance, and music against colonial power.
Diriamba · Nicaragua · 6 highlights↗