occult/mythology degree??

You don't need to be religious to do a degree in religious studies. The point is that degree is the academic analysis of of religions in comparative perspective, not a theological training degree for ministry in a particular faith. That said as noted previously, from the sounds of it an anthropology degree would suit your interests better probably, and invariably anthropology degrees include a module/paper on the anthropology of religion. You may even find some courses that allow you to combine anthropology and religious studies, for example HSPS at Cambridge which has a joint track in Anthropology and Modern Religion.

As far as "mythology" more generally goes, outside of anthropology usually you would be studying it in the context of a particular region, culture, or language(s), for example classics, ancient near eastern studies, south (east) asian studies, african studies, east asian studies, and the various languages those entail. If you were purely interested in visual/material representations then a degree in the history of art and/or in archaeology may be appealing. If you were interested in purely literary representations then a degree in comparative/world literature may be suited to your interests.

For example, I'm doing a CertHE in South Asian Studies, and last term did a module in art history of south and southeast Asia, and through that we did discuss as background for some of the art we were looking at the cosmology and mythology involved in the figures represented (often religious, although some were more general/generic mythological figures not specific to a particular religion). Separate to that I'm also taking a module through the UCL department of classics in Greek Myth this term - so I can confirm that you definitely will have elements of that in a degree in either classics or some kind of regional studies! But anthropology definitely does relate to this, both in terms of example material from ethnography and such, as well as theoretical approaches to the material (I've been reading this morning something by Levi-Strauss, who was a foundational figure in the field of social anthropology, about myths and mythmaking).

where can I do a degree that would allow me to study the occult across different countries? i am really interested in ghost stories and pagan beliefs. something to do with mythology and folk tales would be brilliant, but i currently dont have a religion so I dont think religious studies would be right for me.

I wanted to be anonymous so I put this in the mental health section. sorry.

Essex Uni has the Centre for Myth Studies in their Dept Psychosocial Studies
Hertfordshire Uni has expertise in Folklore Studies (although I'm not sure they do an undergraduate degree in it)
Uni Wales at Trinity St Davids has the Cente for Cosmology in Culture (again no BA but you might be inspired by their tutor https://jack-hunter.webstarts.com/index.html)
Also look at Cornish Studies at Exeter and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth or Trinity St Davids or Edinburgh to see if those interest you.

thanks for the advice! that sounds very interesting, i will have a look at anthropology and arts and literature courses.

No problem, it's certainly a stimulating field, albeit not exactly what I'm going towards but that I've done a little work in incidentally

Note that if you wanted to do work that could be construed as broadly being in "mythology" at a graduate (i.e. PhD) level, you would invariably need some relevant language background, depending on what exactly you are working on. One part of this is in modern scholarly languages, the relevant ones usually being French and/or German for basically...any humanities subject tbh. Depending on the region(s) you are working on others might also be relevant e.g. Chinese for China and Inner Asia, Spanish perhaps for South and Central America, Italian if you're focusing on the Renaissance etc.

You would also generally need a background in source languages, unless your work is purely based on material and visual culture (i.e. archaeology and [history of] art); these will depend on the area(s) being researched, but may include Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Sanskrit, Avestan, (classical) Chinese, (literary/classical) Japanese, various Celtic languages and Old Norse, and any of the many, many and varied languages that are used in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region and in the Americas (with all due to respect to these, and without diminishing their individual importance of them).

For the latter languages not named individually it's less likely you would be expected to know these beforehand, although it's likely PhD programmes would prefer evidence of language learning (e.g. of scholarly languages) and possible some formal linguistics background for work in those languages/regions. For the previously mentioned languages, some may be expected to undergraduate level to do work in those languages/regions (e.g. Classics, Chinese, Japanese), while others may be appropriate (or even necessary) to develop in a masters degree or in the PhD itself.

So do bear that in mind, and avail yourself of any language opportunities that present themselves and/or consider a language focused degree (or joint honours course) if you do want to seriously consider continuing to a doctorate in some area related to that.

thank you again! mythology in languages looks very interesting. is a masters and phd course a lot of work tho? dont you have to write a whole book based on your topic for a phd? why does it take 3 or 4 years?

A PhD is a lot of work, as I understand (I do not hold a PhD and am not a doctoral candidate ). It's basically a full time job, not a degree in the same way an undergrad or masters course is. So it's really about long term dedication and working on things; the PhD is a marathon, not a spring (whereas the masters is usually a sprint...). A doctoral thesis is usually ~80-100k words I think, might vary depending on field. Said doctoral thesis might be adapted into a book by some PhDs, although that isn't necessary or even, I think, that common. But the point of it is that you are contributing new, original research in your field - something that nobody has done before (or at least, hasn't done the way you are doing it). So there's likely going to be a lot of problem solving along the way, because when you get stuck on something you can't just check a textbook solution or something, because there won't be one!

The reason you need the scholarly languages is because as part of a PhD you'll be doing a lot of reading into what current and previous academics are/have written in the area you're writing on. For humanities related work across a wide range of subjects, there is a lot of historical scholarship that was done in France and Germany (in French and German), so those are pretty commonly needed, although depending on what you're focusing on other languages may be as or more relevant. The source languages are needed because, certainly by the doctoral level, if not before, while learning about mythology it isn't enough to just read in a book written by someone else what the myths were - you need to read the original texts that the myths come from, which requires you to be able to translate from that language.

Because for example, an encyclopedia page on some myth will be based on a translation by some other person, or several, and those different layers may have distorted the original meanings of things since it's not usually possible to do a one to one, word for word translation to English in many languages. Also learning the language and reading the texts in the original language lets you understand better what the world view of the people who created the myth (or whatever it may be, literary text, historical document, art-object, etc.) through their own world view, rather than coloured by your modern perceptions and preconceptions of that culture. Of course remember also that in many cultures there may not be texts and the myths may be given down in a oral tradition, so you might need to do fieldwork there and record (either digitally with an audio recorded or by writing down, or even just listening and remembering the material, depending on what the person you are learning the material from consents to)

Sounds like a masters and phd subject, it would be a bit naff for undergraduate degree. But if it's what you want maybe somewhere does it. You don't actually believe in that stuff do you?

Hey, have you considered something like Liberal Arts? That would allow you to look at languages, literature, history, history of art - all of which could be useful if you do decide to pursue more specialised further study later on. What are your subjects and grades? That way I can offer more specific recommendations.

hey, thanks for the suggestions!

im in year 12 and doing chemistry, english lit and history. not sure about predicted grades yet but i think my last report said B, B, A

Those are super grades for the start of Year 12, well done. Those subjects leave you pretty open to most things, and you could probably safely look at choices in the AAA range, depending on how comfortable you are with that. Off the top of my head, I know Exeter, Durham and Nottingham do good Liberal Arts courses in the A*AA-AAB range, and LSE does a Bsc Languages, Societies and Cultures course for around AAB. Those would leave you pretty open for a lot of subjects post-grad. You could also try something with a language - as you already do English Literature and History, perhaps one of those with a language? Good luck with whatever you choose

so i can research world / east asian mythology as a phd???? that sounds really cool i think i could be interested in studying korean (i'm a big kpop person!)

so do phd students get to travel abroad? doesn't it get boring because you're studying the same topic for 3 or 4 years, also dont you feel really behind compared to your friends who are already in a job?

what sort of jobs can i get with a phd degree?? do you know anyone with a languages phd that has a good career?

You probably can do a PhD project on some element of comparative mythology, for example in an Indo-Eurpopean Studies programme. As for travelling, the location and extent of it depends on your PhD project, and also what funding you can get to do it. Several months at least of fieldwork is typically required in anthropology PhDs at least in the US, and common for linguistics PhDs, both of which may end up on things related to mythology. For something like a classics oriented PhD, unless it were archaeology based you probably wouldn't do fieldwork per se, but you might undertake travel to study manuscripts and papyri related to your PhD project in person (although a great many of these have been and continue to be digitised. Also on any PhD project you will probably travel to at least a couple conferences (which you may or may not be presenting on).

The only jobs that really require a PhD are academic positions, in academia normally, plus maybe a few sort of like...archival or senior curatorial positions in heritage organisations/museums/etc. Of course there are plenty of other jobs you can do with a PhD, and the experience of extended independent research can be good preparation for lots of careers. You'll also usually develop a range of skills; typically PhDs will do some teaching of undergraduates before they graduate, you might have some quantitative or programming skills developed in your PhD if it's relevant to your project (e.g. something involving computational linguistics, or digitising material), which can be broadly applicable.

In terms of getting bored, I wouldn't expect so, if only because the entire process of actually writing a project proposal and applying to the PhD would probably filter out anyone not really in it for the long haul. It's definitely not something for everyone I guess, but if you're at the point where you've identified something you're really fascinated by, where there is a gap in the current research/knowledge that you have ideas on how to fill, and you've gone through all the rigmarole of writing a proposal, contacting prospective supervisors, applying to the unis offering the doctorate, to the funding bodies to get funding for it, etc, etc....you would have to be pretty committed! It's not always going to be enjoyable or even interesting I guess, but again it's a marathon not a spring, so part of that is being in the mindset of keeping the long term goals on the horizon in mind as you work your way towards them (even if your route is somewhat meandering).

Unfortunately I don't know any PhDs in those kinds of subject areas, although if you look at doctoral student placement histories (usually published on the department's webpages) for relevant departments (e.g. classics, various area/regional studies or language departments, archaeology, art history, anthropology, (comparative) literature, etc) you can see where they may end up. Some might end up in academic positions, some might get a generalist business/management type job afterwards, some might become (school) teachers, go to work in galleries, museums, archives, etc, work in the civil service, become librarians, retrain and go into a different field entirely...who knows!

The PhDs I do know personally were all in physics, and of them one became a data scientist (totally unrelated to his PhD other than his computational/programming background) at a big insurance company, one stayed in the department he did his PhD in but as a lab manager for his former supervisor, rather than as an academic (in his own words "I can keep doing the stuff I liked doing in my PhD but I don't have to publish stuff constantly"), and one became a GCSE/A-level student tutor because he started doing that in his PhD to earn a bit of extra money, and by the end of it he was so experienced that his hourly rate was higher than anything else on offer

wow, thanks for the options! might go for the top unis but i might not; depends on how things go next year i suppose.
thank you

so it requires a lot of patience huh? hmm i guess i will have to actually do a bachelor's degree first and then figure out if i want to do a masters and/ or a phd later on. i guess you need to be super interested in the thing you're working on. 3 or 4 years is a long time!

that's soo cool, i would love to be able to travel around to research things. thanks so so much for this!
does a masters in languages also require lots of writing?

A masters in anything requires a lot of writing! You will invariably need to write a dissertation for it, and while it will be a lot shorter and not require the same level of originality as a doctoral dissertation, it will still be substantial. Looking quickly at a couple taught masters courses in those fields, the dissertation usually seems at that level to be 10-15k words. For a research masters it would presumably be longer.

But yeah you don't need to know you want to do a PhD when you start your undergrad degree. Just focus on that first, and if there are any opportunities to get involved in research as an undergrad besides the UG dissertation (e.g. summer projects, independent study/extended essay modules) then be sure to consider those! Often you can get funded for these; I did a summer project that was funded by the EPSRC back when I was studying engineering, which paid as I recall ~£2000 over 10 weeks. Not a bad way to spend the summer! Didn't produce anything publishable from it but it was an interesting experience for sure