Every culture that ever looked at a thunderstorm decided somebody must be doing that on purpose. The names change — Zeus, Thor, Indra, Raijin — but the instinct is identical, and the stories that grew out of it are still the ones we retell.

What's striking about the old gods is how badly behaved they are. Greek myth in particular reads less like scripture and more like a family that should not be allowed near each other. Zeus is a serial disaster. Hera's revenge plots are creative and horrifying. Nobody in the pantheon is a role model, and that's rather the point: these were stories for explaining a world that also isn't fair.

The monsters carried the other half of the work. Minotaurs, dragons, krakens and world-serpents gave shape to whatever people were actually afraid of — the maze, the deep water, the end of everything.

This collection reaches across traditions for gods, mythical creatures and the symbols attached to them — hammers, tridents, eyes, serpents and coiled fate.

Set one as your pointer and you've got a few thousand years of storytelling doing the clicking for you.