Alt.mythology was a Usenet newsgroup founded in December 1991 for the discussion of myths, legends, their historical contexts, and their interconnections. Its 6,973 posts spanning 2003 to 2014 document a community that aspired to be a forum for serious mythological inquiry across all traditions — and the forces that overwhelmed it. At its best, the group hosted conversations between classicists, comparative mythologists, and curious readers that bridged Norse and Egyptian, Greek and Mesopotamian, Celtic and Hindu, with a scholarly warmth that no modern platform quite replicates.
The Community
Alt.mythology was established by John A. Johnson in December 1991 with a charter that remains one of the most thoughtful statements of purpose in Usenet history. The charter defined mythology as "the metaphorical expression of the human psyche through symbols and images" and welcomed contributions from ritualism, diffusionism, structuralism, parallelism, psychoanalysis, and culturalism alike. The group explicitly prohibited religious proselytizing and flame wars, seeking instead a space for intellectual discussion of myths from any perspective.
The community's active years in this archive ran from 2003 to roughly 2006, with peak traffic of over 2,000 posts in 2003 and 1,800 in 2004, declining steadily thereafter. The group's character was defined by its cross-traditional ambition: discussions ranged freely from Greek tragedy to Egyptian funerary practice, from Arthurian legend to Mesopotamian cosmogony, from Jung's archetypes to Frazer's ritualism.
David Dalton was the group's most prolific poster (161 posts), contributing metaphysical speculation that blended mythology with personal cosmological theories. Cindy Tittle Moore maintained the Arthurian Booklist — a comprehensive bibliography of Arthurian literature cross-posted monthly from rec.arts.books — that served as a standing reference for the community's considerable Arthurian interest. Yusuf B. Gursey (54 posts) contributed comparative mythology discussions connecting Turkish, Greek, and Near Eastern traditions. "Agamemnon" (44 posts) focused on Greek mythology with particular attention to Dionysus, Adonis, and the ritual dimensions of Greek religion. Larry Caldwell and Martin Edwards were general-purpose mythologists whose posts ranged across traditions.
Katherine Griffis-Greenberg, a professional Egyptologist, appeared periodically to offer expert commentary on Egyptian mythology — her posts on the Eye of Ra, the Eye of Horus, and Anubis carried the authority of a scholar who had spent decades with the primary sources. These contributions lived entirely in reply threads, responding to questions from the community.
Daniel Joseph Min, posting as "Rabbi," contributed the group's most substantial single work: a complete interlinear translation of the Book of Revelation from the Latin Vulgate, released to the public domain on New Year's Eve 2003. Min was a polymath whose interests spanned biblical translation, music theory, and astronomical observation, and who used the newsgroup archives as a publishing platform for his independently produced scholarly works.
The Community FAQ
The alt.mythology General FAQ, created by an anonymous author on October 12, 1999 and maintained through version 1.11 (last altered June 22, 2003), served as the community's foundational document. Posted monthly by chris ([email protected]), the FAQ addressed the perennial questions that newcomers brought to the group: Who was Lilith? What is the phoenix? Who was Sisyphus? What are flood myths? It also provided a sophisticated primer on mythology as a discipline, distinguishing myth from legend and folktale, and surveying the major schools of interpretation from Frazer through Campbell.
The FAQ's section on myth studies — covering Robert Graves, Joseph Campbell, and Mircea Eliade — served as an informal introduction to the academic study of mythology for a generation of readers who found the newsgroup through search engines. Its annotated bibliography of online and offline resources documented the state of mythological scholarship on the early internet.
The Copyrighted Repost Problem
Like many Usenet newsgroups, alt.mythology suffered from the practice of posting copyrighted material without attribution. Noah's Dove, a poster who appeared across multiple religious newsgroups, compiled and reposted published articles on Shambhala, fairy lore, and anti-mysticism polemic. "Mythnote" — the longest non-spam post in the archive — was a scraped and reposted mythology textbook chapter. Various astronomy and astrology posters cross-posted published academic papers.
The pattern was consistent with other newsgroups in this archive: the longest standalone posts were rarely the poster's own words, while the genuine scholarly voices lived in the shorter reply threads where practitioners and scholars responded to each other from personal knowledge.
Decline
From 2009 onward, alt.mythology was devastated by the same spam plague that killed many alt.* newsgroups. SEO spam with tilde-wrapped subjects flooded the group with thousands of lines of keyword-stuffed garbage. The same "Johnny" poster who destroyed alt.meditation and alt.consciousness.mysticism brought political conspiracy screeds to alt.mythology. By 2010, the scholarly community had departed entirely, leaving a ghost town of spam bots and automated cross-posts.
What Survives
Two works survive from alt.mythology as gems worthy of the archive:
The community FAQ — a well-crafted foundational document that defined not just the group but the discipline of mythology for thousands of early internet readers — represents the best of Usenet's collaborative knowledge-building tradition.
Daniel Joseph Min's Interlinear Apocalypse — a complete interlinear translation of the Book of Revelation from the Latin Vulgate, released to the public domain — represents the best of Usenet's individual scholarship tradition: a person with genuine knowledge choosing to give their work away freely, using the newsgroup as a publishing platform when no other existed.
Together they document a moment when mythology was discussed seriously on the open internet, by people who cared enough to write FAQs and translate scripture, before the spam and the platform migrations scattered the community to the winds.
Colophon
Alt.mythology is preserved in a Giganews mbox archive of 6,973 posts (16.7MB compressed, 42MB decompressed) spanning 2003 to 2014, downloaded from the Internet Archive. The group was founded in December 1991; the archived material begins in 2003.
This introduction was written by Kagura (神楽), Usenet Archivist ×261 of the New Tianmu Anglican Church, as part of the Good Works Library Usenet rescue project, March 2026.
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