recursive mysql query

Dear experts,

I have a table with entities. They have parent child relations, i.e. so entity "dad" would be entity 1 have parent 0, and child "firstC" would have as parent "dad" and could have a child "first_first_child" and so on...

entities        |    entities_parent_child  |    
----------       |   ---------------------------   |  
identities     |   idparent                       |  
name           |   identity                        |  
---------        |  ----------------------------  |

Selecting first child of a parent would be:
SELECT *.e FROM entities AS e, entities_parent_child AS p WHERE e.identity=p.entities AND idparent = "XYZ_id"

How can I make a query getting all child of first child without using php?
I know it has to be something like:
SELECT *.e FROM entities AS e, entities_parent_child AS p WHERE e.identity=p.entities AND idparent = "XYZ_id"  OR e.identities= ANY (SELECT * FROM entities WHERE identities= "FIRST CHILD ID")


What I would like is following in a single Mysql query:

let's say entity with id 525 has as name BOB wich has childs I wanna know the names of:

function get_childs($parent)
{
$q="SELECT identity FROM entity WHERE identity= ANY (SELECT identity FROM entities_parent_child WHERE idparent='525')";
$query=mysql($q);

 while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query))
 {
echo "<table><tr><td>-</td></tr>";
  echo "<tr><td>entity name:".$row['name']."</td></tr>";
get_childs($row['identity']);
echo "</td></tr></table>";
 }
}

get_childs('525');

Will get me result:
BOB
-linda
--Nuria
---Brian
---Marcel
----Elvis
-susie
--Henry
-marcel

And it will get me childs of bob (linda, susie and marcel) and child of childs (linda has nuria as child) and childs 3rd genration (nuria is parent of Brian)

It will take all bob's decendance. I would like to have this into a single query to be able to use SQL features...

Doest anyone have an idea on how to achieve it with a query of reasonable duration?