Ancient Wisdom

Before Ainu hunters in 18th century Hokkaido ever lifted a spear toward a salmon, they performed the kamuy nomi—a ritual address to the fish explaining exactly why they needed to take its life, what they would use it for, and expressing advance...

At precisely noon in Thailand's forest monasteries, something unusual happens: monks finish their last meal and don't eat again until dawn. This isn't intermittent fasting repackaged. The Theravada Buddhist practice of vikala...

When Egil Skallagrímsson's son drowned off the coast of Iceland in 960 CE, the warrior-poet locked himself in his bedchamber and refused food for three days, determined to die of grief. His daughter Thorgerd tricked him into survival with a...

In the gurukula system of ancient India, documented extensively in the Chandogya Upanishad (circa 800-600 BCE), a student entering the first stage of learning—brahmacharin—would spend years performing menial tasks for their teacher without...

In 13th-century Konya, Jalal ad-Din Rumi dictated his six-volume Mathnawi to his scribe Husam al-Din over fifteen years. But something strange happens throughout this 25,000-verse masterwork: stories break off without warning, mid-narrative,...

When Ögedei Khan died in 1241, his widow Töregene did something that baffled visiting European emissaries: she announced a series of messenger relay races across the empire's arterial road system, the Yam. The winner wouldn't become...

In 6th century BCE India, the physician-sage Sushruta documented something radical in the Sushruta Samhita: he prescribed treatments not when patients fell ill, but according to the calendar. His ritucharya system—literally "seasonal...

In 4th century BCE Athens, a philosopher named Diogenes of Sinope made his home in a pithos—a large ceramic wine jar—in the Agora. When Alexander the Great visited him and offered any gift he desired, Diogenes replied: "Stand out of my...

At Camelot's Round Table, according to the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle, one seat remained perpetually empty—the Siege Perilous. Any knight who sat there unworthily would be swallowed by the earth or struck dead. For decades,...

In the Hall of Two Truths, beneath the gaze of forty-two divine judges, the deceased Egyptian stood before Anubis and his scales. On one side: a single ostrich feather representing Ma'at. On the other: the human heart, now required to account...