Cosmos

Cosmos is the journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society, founded in Edinburgh in 1984 by Dr Emily Lyle. It is an international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal published annually in Edinburgh. Cosmos is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of myth, religion, cosmology, ritual and traditional worldviews, and to the ways in which human societies have imagined, represented and experienced the relationship between the human, natural and supernatural worlds.

Founded within the intellectual tradition established by the Traditional Cosmology Society and the scholarship of Emily Lyle, Cosmos provides a forum for research across folklore, anthropology, religious studies, archaeology, history, literature, philology, art history, ethnology and related disciplines. It brings together approaches ranging from comparative mythology, structural and symbolic analysis, and textual scholarship to historical research, material and visual analysis, ethnography, and fieldwork. The journal welcomes contributions concerning all geographical regions and historical periods, while maintaining particular strengths in European, Indo-European, Celtic and Nordic traditions. 

At the heart of Cosmos is an interest in how cultures give form and meaning to the cosmos: how sacred order is expressed through narratives, symbols, landscapes and material culture, and how mythic worlds are encountered and actualised through ritual, performance and everyday experience. Contributions examine mythology, folk belief and legend, folktales, religious and ritual practices, music, art and craft, alongside the symbolic systems through which communities understand time, space, nature, society and the supernatural. 

The journal is particularly attentive to the continuing life and transformation of traditional cosmologies. Its research traces relationships between past and present, examining how inherited myths, symbols and ritual forms are transmitted, adapted, and reinterpreted in changing religious, political and cultural contexts. Recent work encompasses pre-Christian Nordic ritual and sacred kingship; lived encounters with mythic powers in contemporary Heathenism; Celtic otherworld traditions and Christian reinterpretation; pilgrimage and the ritual actualisation of myth; saints, serpents and seasonal symbolism; ancient and modern women's festivals; urban ritual and communal identity; fire symbolism and counterculture; Indo-European and Romanian traditions of miraculous birth; weaving and goddess traditions; and the contemporary ecological reception of Celtic cosmology. 

Cosmos approaches traditional cosmology not as a static inheritance but as a dynamic field of cultural knowledge: one in which myth, ritual and symbolic thought continually mediate relationships between worlds, between communities and their environments, and between inherited traditions and contemporary experience. The journal encourages scholarship that crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries while combining rigorous research with sustained attention to the meanings that cosmological traditions hold for the people and cultures that create, transmit and transform them.