References to Gold in Ancient and Modern Myths and Legends.
The ancient mythology beliefs, crystal mythology, and references to crystals, minerals, metals, semi-precious stones and rocks in Greek, Roman, Native American, and Egyptian Mythology are many. There are also Mineral Legends, mining folklore, heroes in mining, myths about jewelry, stories of buried treasure, Vedic Myths, and more. We have gathered the best legends, mythological references and rock folklore in this section of JewelrySupplier.com.
So deep ingrained in the human psyche is the lust for Gold that nearly every culture has its own myths associated with Gold. Some of the most famous follow.
Blackbeard’s
Gold
According to legend, Blackbeard, a pirate who prowled the oceans off of
North and South Carolina and Virginia in the early 1700s, buried a large
treasure that included vast amounts of gold. Historians doubt the truth of
this story.
El
Dorado
Beyond the normal greed and racism that drove the Spanish
Conquistadors to commit the acts they did in the new world, was the search
for the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado. In the 1500s, they searched for
the city, expecting to find it with each exploration, then changing its
location to drive their men into new regions. By the middle of the 1500s
they had pillaged and plundered all the way to Western New Mexico.
The
Golden Chariot
Phaethon,
son of Helios in Greek myth, lost control of his father’s golden
chariot, which created the Libyan Desert.
Jason
and the Golden Fleece
King
Midas and the Golden Touch
The
Greek and Roman Myth of Midas is about a king (Midas) who wished
everything he touched would turn to gold but when Dionysus granted the
wish, Midas soon saw the foolishness of his wish and asked Dionysus to
release him the curse. To do so, Dionysus had Midas wash in the Pactolus
River (in modern day Turkey). This is the mythological source of the real
gold present in the river.
Mormon
Gold Obsession
The myth of the book of Mormon says that Joseph Smith received it from
heaven on tablets of Gold.
St.
Patrick
The Irish St. Patrick destroyed a large Gold stone in Magh Slaecht
that was a symbol of the pagan god Cromm Cruaich. The cult surrounding
Cromm Cruaich had several other gods but required human sacrifice.
Tommyknockers
Welsh miners told stories of Tommyknockers, gnomes who lived within mines
and would knock on the walls of the mines before a collapse. These stories
traveled with the Welsh immigrants who worked in the gold mines of the
Western US.
The
Wind River Gold
Gold
legends abound in the American the American West. Typically, they reveal
and feed upon the fears of residents of the area. One typical story is the
legend of a group of prospectors in the Wind River Mountains who found
large nuggets of gold in a stream. Marauding natives killed two of the men
and the third fled the area. When he returned the area months later to
search for the cabin where they had hidden their gold, he could not find
it. Legend has it that the gold is still at its original hiding
place.
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