I'm trying to find autism in mythology and folklore.

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Sadly all I come up with is change-lings.

I proposed the idea of autistic as archetypal wise fool once-got some interesting responses.

The Wise Fool

Check out the Lear Legend - the daughter rejected for plain unadorned speaking. Look also at all the cases where the despised dumbbell younger brother or sister wins out while the strong ands "clever hang themselves. They are not all cripples.

There is surely more, but it will takew a bit of thought.

The 0 card in the tarot? Maybe the hermit (card 9).

Personally, I think aspies probably invented mythology and folklore

Some folks reckon that the traditional job of shaman was filled by aspies/auties. I can see that.

I'm going to rack my brain now for more examples. Good thread!

Red paths are scary.
I see red paths in my mind and I automatically see bushes and the place I have been (South Africa) where those red paths are, there are people who steal automobiles from other people after they jump from the bushes.
They usually have guns, they make things easier.

What's a red path ?

A Red Path is like shamanism, mainly Native American.

I always thought of the Goddess Artemis (Greek mythology- otherwise known as Diana) as being kind of Aspie. I associated myself with her when I was younger. (I am definitely NOT a woman who comes from Venus). Artemis was a loner who lived by herself in the wilderness, loved animals, never married.

I have also read that it is believed that shamans and oracles were autistic.

I´ll try to think of more examples.

Some of the prophets in the Old Testament display spectrum like tendencies. The level of detail in descriptions of buildings not yet built, but only imagined, that you see in the Torah, the precision of food laws etc. I'm not saying Moses was aspie, but you can certainly see how those particular traits helped form a nation... if they hadn't had those rigid food laws in the middle of a desert they'd have died. The whole invention of quarantine in the Torah as well. And some of the later prophets as well... I think of Jeremiah, who was compelled to tell the truth despite immense opposition, who, from the sound of it, had only one friend in his life. He said that if he didn't fulfill his mission he felt like his bones burned within him... he continued with his truth telling even at the bottom of a well.

Of course, people did take things much more literally then than they do now, and I'm not trying to retrospectively diagnose people. Just saying that these men in particular struck me as having spectrum like tendencies.

In Irish faery tale and legend someone who had the "sight" would often fit aspie like tendencies. Even in my own personal knowledge, in rural communities in Ireland people on the spectrum have some respect locally, because folks think they know how they fit in. My mother had a cousin, who everyone thought had the sight... he was actually an autistic savant, so far as I can tell. But the point is, he was normalised, and could fit into life, in his own terms.

Oh, sorry... it's people who are believed to have the second sight, or to be sensitive to the other world.