Volcanoes, waterfalls, stars and flowers. The legends that turned love into geography and sky.
Volcanoes, waterfalls, stars and flowers. The legends that turned love into geography and sky.
4
The poet driven mad by love
The poet driven mad with love for Layla, married off to another by force; his longing became a Sufi allegory of the soul seeking God.
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5
He went down to the underworld for love
The musician who descended to the underworld to retrieve his love and lost her by looking back one moment too soon.
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10
The warrior who became a volcano
The warrior sent to war who receives a false report of his death; the princess dies of grief and he watches over her body forever. The two become Mexico's twin volcanoes.
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18
A bridge of magpies once a year
The mortal cowherd (star Altair) and the heavenly weaver girl (star Vega), separated by the Milky Way and reunited once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, by a bridge of magpies.
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24
The Romeo and Juliet of China
Zhu disguises herself as a man to study; Liang never realizes she is a woman; she is betrothed to another; he dies of heartbreak and she throws herself into his grave, from which they emerge as butterflies.
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26
The love that created Iguazú Falls
The maiden Naipí, destined to be sacrificed to the serpent god M'Boi, flees by canoe with the warrior Tarobá; the enraged god splits the river to create the falls, turning her to rock and him to a tree leaning over the water.
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28
The love that divides the year into seasons
The god of the underworld who abducts — or seduces, depending on the version — Persephone; their pact of spending part of the year together and part apart explains the cycle of the seasons.
Read the storyThe potion that doomed two lovers
The knight who escorts Isolde to marry his uncle, King Mark; on the voyage they mistakenly drink a love potion and fall into an impossible passion that destroys them.
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31
The soul that won love itself
The mortal so beautiful she enraged Venus; her son Eros falls for her and visits only in darkness. When Psyche lights a lamp to see him, she loses him, and must pass impossible trials to win him back.
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34
Divine love made devotion
The love between the god Krishna and Radha, the milkmaid: an earthly romance that Hindu tradition reads as the supreme metaphor of the soul's longing for the divine.
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35
The legend of betrayed love
The woman who, betrayed by her lover, drowns her children and herself and wanders weeping "Oh, my children!": the legend of love turned to damnation that all of Latin America knows.
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37
Twenty years weaving the wait
While Odysseus takes twenty years to return from Troy, Penelope holds off 108 suitors by weaving and unweaving a shroud to buy time, faithful until the reunion.
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40
The legend of the Vitória-régia
The maiden Naiá, obsessed with becoming a star to join the moon Jaci, sees his reflection in a lake, dives to embrace it and drowns; Jaci turns her into the "star of the waters," the giant Amazon water lily.
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47
The love that decided the Trojan War
The greatest Greek warrior and his companion Patroclus, whose love antiquity read as a model of devotion; Patroclus's death unleashes the rage that defines "The Iliad."
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50
Two mountains that reconciled
The enmity of two kings passes to their sons, who kill each other but forgive in death; Pachamama turns their stars into the snow peaks Illimani and Illampu, their snow "tears of regret."
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51
The face that launched a thousand ships
The Trojan prince Paris abducts — or seduces — Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and wife of the king of Sparta, igniting the Trojan War.
Read the storyTopping the list is Layla & Majnun: The poet driven mad with love for Layla, married off to another by force; his longing became a Sufi allegory of the soul seeking God.