Cross-Tradition
Thread · around 300 BCE
The World Tree
Four Trees, One Theory
Four unrelated trees — Norse, Indian, Siberian, Maya — gathered into one archaic myth after Eliade, 1949.
SignificanceEliade's reading is that the tree marks the axis mundi — the centre where the three worlds connect and traffic between them becomes possible. Whether the four trees are one myth or four, the reading itself is the claim that a cosmos needs a place where its levels touch.
The FindingEach of these trees is real in its own text; the one myth joining them is Eliade's, assembled 1949–1951, and the Maya tree was fitted to it only in 1990–93 — Klein and colleagues traced that in 2002 to Freidel's student reading of Eliade.
Thread · Comparative Religion · 2010
The Making of Modern Yoga
Mark Singleton · Cross-Cultural Synthesis (2010)
The scholarly revelation that modern postural yoga is a 20th-century transnational synthesis.
SignificanceScholarship demonstrates that modern postural yoga is a dynamic transnational hybrid created to renew vitality, rather than an unchanged ancient monastic asceticism.
The FindingLiving traditions maintain vitality by adapting external innovations to express perennial spiritual aims.