Bestiary |
Ilmatar
After some time, the lonely life of Ilmatar, the Wind Maiden, grew tiresome. So she descended from the heavens into... the water, for there was no land yet below. As she swam in the waves, the East Wind, which lifted them, blew seawater into the heavenly maiden, thereby performing what was considered natural and normal for horses in the Mediterranean, albeit not by the ocean, but by the air currents themselves.
He made her pregnant.
We often want something that we don't like afterwards, and the Heavenly Daughter went through the same stage. She swam in the water for nine ages, and the child did not want to come out. Centuries of labor pains exhaust even divine creatures. Similarly, new loneliness, compounded by cold and other unpleasant environmental influences, is worse than the original, boring one after a while. Ilmatar lamented that she should have remained a wind being, implored the supreme Ukka—and it wasn't long before a duck appeared. With a similar problem, she needed to lay eggs. But there was no place to build a nest in the eternal ocean, so the sympathetic Ilmatar offered her knee.
The waterfowl built a bed on it, in which she laid six golden and one iron egg. As she warmed them, the heat from the embryos burned Ilmatar and made her move; the eggs spilled onto the surface, broke, and...
...and so our world came into being. Some stories say that it was Väinämöinen, not Ilmatar, who lay in the sea, but in the Kalevala, which is a synthesis of Finnish and Karelian folk songs, the story is told this way. It continues that it took many years before Väinämöinen, for it was he who had been basking in Ilmatar's womb all along, decided to leave this safe but cramped environment. He was born of his own free will, feet first, if you want some gynecological details.
Meanwhile, his mother had reshaped the world into a habitable form, an activity that both water and wind, which she represented, do quite commonly. She then departed from the story.
When Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen encountered her much later while sailing on the Neva, they did not recognize her, nor did she identify herself to them as their mother, but only as the Eldest (and most beautiful). When they asked her about the fire they had seen falling from the heavens and whose trail they had followed, she explained to them in detail how it had come about (Ukko was making a new Sun, which had fallen from the hands of an wind fairy charged with watching over it), what it caused after falling through nine heavens and six skies (it burned buildings, people, dried up a lake) and where to find it (in a trout that swallowed the flame, which was then swallowed by a salmon, which was eaten by a pike).
The brothers and the fire continued their adventure, as can be learned in the following chapters, pardon, songs of the Kalevala. Ilmatar—the fate of the Founding Mothers and Fathers, mentioned several times on these pages—went into permanent retirement on the edge of human memory after this unexpected addition.
Illustration by Joseph Alanen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
2.9.2025 (2.1.2022)
Hiisi
Today, his name is used as a synonym for the devil or an imp (you will find him under this name even in Finnish translations of Tolkien's books), and Hiisi himself is, at first glance, an evil forest demon, ugly, without eyelids, and, of course, terrifyingly dangerous.
He was not always like this; do not expect a story of thwarted love or anything similar. This is about the usual development of a supernatural being that used to be a forest spirit in pagan times. It wasn't always like that, though. Don't expect a story of thwarted love or anything like that. This is the usual development of a supernatural being who used to be a pagan forest god, guarding sacred groves and proudly claiming to be one of Kaleva's twelve sons. But that was long ago, so long ago that it was forgotten that the word itself meant a sacred place.
2.9.2025 (27.11.2025)
Gwragedd Annwn
Somewhere in Wales, there is a lake, and beneath its surface lies a sunken city whose church bells can sometimes be heard and whose church towers can occasionally be glimpsed, when the right times come together.
Nothing new under the sun, there are quite a few such towns and villages across Europe, but this place is also inhabited by lovely and beautiful female creatures, lake maidens or Gwragedd Annwn, who like to seek partners among mortals.
Such mesalliances are well known, of course, so you don't even need to read on to find out how the story of the son of a certain widow from a farm near Mydffai ended.
He used to graze his cattle on the shores of Llyn y Van Ffach, a peaceful place with plenty of good grass.
One noon, as he sat down by the water to eat, he was astonished to see a girl combing her long golden hair on the surface of the lake. In an instant, he forgot about the cattle feeding on the lush grass and the bread he was holding in his hand, which he had intended to eat himself. He stood up, took a few mindless steps, and stretched out his arms as if to embrace the distant girl.
The water girl couldn't help but notice such a gesture. She just interpreted it differently. She stopped combing her hair and swam over to the shepherd. He was expecting anything but what she said when she looked at him:
"That bread has a very crispy crust."
Then she disappeared into the depths.
The shepherd hurried home. He confided in his mother, and the loving woman did not dismiss the strange underwater creature from his mind. On the contrary, the next day she packed her son some unbaked bread dough for his lunch, just in case...
But of course, just in case was not enough, and so on the third day, her son set off to graze with bread that had a properly lightly baked crust.
A majestic old man with a long white beard appeared in the lake, accompanied by two beautiful women.
"If you want my daughter as your wife, you must get to know her, of course," he said to the shepherd. The young man in love agreed.
He passed the test, as is usually the case in such stories. So he took the water girl home, and as a bonus, he took with him a dowry in the form of as many head of cattle as the future farmer's wife could count in one breath (and she had a long breath) and, finally, some well-meaning advice:
"You must take care of my daughter. If you hurt her three times for no reason, she will leave, taking with her the cattle she has now brought you. Remember that."
The widow's son said he didn't know why he would hurt his chosen one, and as for accidental injuries, such as a sprained ankle, that couldn't happen even by mistake, because he would carry her in his arms for the rest of his life.
Soon after, the wedding took place, and in due course, the happy couple began to have sons. Three in total. And life went on and on, and the farmer had nothing to complain about except for one thing...
There is always something... The former water girl did not always behave as was customary in the region.
She stayed away from celebrations and laughed at funerals, so after some time, the marriage came to an end without any crisis. The farmer exceeded the permitted limit, and the water girl disappeared, along with all the livestock from her dowry, all the offspring of that livestock, including the slaughtered calf whose skin still hung on the wall.
The farmer never saw his wife again, and he was left with only three sons. Their mother did not forget them; she secretly visited the children at night and taught them medicine, and they became renowned doctors and founded a tradition of a medical family that has survived to this day.
2.9.2025 (27.11.2005)
Séps
When Perseus carried Medusa's freshly severed head across the Libyan desert, drops of blood that fell into the sand turned into a nest of poisonous snakes. The Argonaut Mopsos paid for this on the return voyage of the Argo from Colchis, when he stepped on one of them and it bit him on the heel.
It is difficult to say whether the séps (and with it the other beasts of the bestiary, the amphisbaena, the hammodyte, and the basilisk) is a direct descendant of this story, but Lucanus already mentions that the séps, a small but very poisonous snake, was created from the blood of the once beautiful, then ugly, and finally dead Gorgon.
The séps' venom may indeed be extremely deadly, but the former monster has now mutated, like the amphisbaena, into a completely harmless creature, namely one of the legless lizards.
Seps, as depicted by the illustrator of the Medieval Bestiary: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
2.9.2025 (4.12.2005)
Tikbalang
Half man, half horse, what is it? No, don't bet on a centaur, we've already talked about them. This creature is at home in the Philippines, where it hides in remote corners of swamps.
2.9.2025 (4.12.2005)
Kabandha
He originally belonged to the forest spirits known as gandharvas, but after a certain unpleasant incident involving the god Indra and his thunder, he was transformed into a creature that could be distinguished from the gandharvas at first glance. It is also said that his appearance is the result of a curse placed on him by a certain sage, but that would only delay the reader from the description.
What is certain is that this son of the goddess Sri did not exactly look like the dreamboy of girls and women, and until an important milestone in his existence, he did not behave in an appropriate manner, but more on that in a moment.
At the time of Kabandha's literary fame, that is, in the pages of the Ramayana epic, he looked like a large pile of flesh and slime without a head, endowed with many tentacles and dangerous teeth in his mouth, which opened on his chest, under one large eye. He fed on whatever he caught in the swamp, including humans. Until he encountered Lakshmana and Rama, who were searching for Sita. The outcome of this close encounter of the heroic kind is obvious. The dying monster still had time to ask Rama for a favor, and the prince had no reason to refuse. When he burned the corpse as requested, Kabandha emerged from the fire in his original Gandharva form and promised Rama his loyalty and support in the upcoming war with Ravana.
2.9.2025 (4.12.2005)
Abaasy
Usually, these inhabitants of the Yakut underground world (I originally wrote "underworld," but this word has a deathly connotation, so I'm taking it back) travel in groups of seven and encounter various heroes and stories, which has earned them a place in popular Yakut songs. In these songs, they are represented by rough voices, while human heroes recite in bass and developing human heroes in tenor.
Apart from their underworld address, the Abaasy are also endowed with metal teeth, and as one of the readers of Bestiary wrote to me, the head of this nation is a gray giant with green teeth and fiery eyes named Arson-Duolai.
2.9.2025 (11.12.2005)
Citipati
Citipati osmolskae is an oviraptor, or dinosaur, and as such appears today exclusively in the form of petrified bones. Similarly, its godparents, the Tibetan citipati (Lords of the Cemeteries), are most often depicted as dancing skeletons.
2.9.2025 (11.12.2005)
Matagaigai
This is what the Papuans call tree spirits that look almost human. This applies mainly to female matagaigai, because their breasts are asymmetrical. If you come across a tree in the forest that is affected by some disease (the name of which I cannot find, so I cannot show off my knowledge), you will see where the Papuans probably got at least part of their belief in the forest origin of matagaigai.
These demons only appear to the sick, so you don't have to go far, and you can be sure if you remember the practice that has moved from myths to fairy tales, with the Grim Reaper standing here at the feet, there at the head. Matagaigai, however, do not stand there; they diagnose by touch: when their fingers dig into the body, it is bad for the sick person.
2.9.2025 (11.12.2005)
Dionysus
The divine twins Apollo and Artemis certainly had problems when they came into the world. But compared to the prenatal adventures of their half-brother Dionysus (also known as Bacchus), these were mere trifles.
As in the previous (and many other) cases, the originator was the deceived and enraged wife Hera, who could not bear another affair of her divine partner Zeus and caused the now popular god of wine and winemakers, but also of the fertile forces of nature and orchards, to have several guaranteed birthplaces and, above all, a special problem with his natal mother.
He was conceived in the usual way, when Zeus fell in love with the daughter of the Theban king, Semele. Unfortunately, Hera found out and, having learned from previous affairs, took action. She took on the form of Semele's nanny and doubted the identity of the princess's lover for so long that she managed to persuade Semele to force the impostor, who claimed to be the highest of the gods, to reveal himself in his divine greatness and essence. He would not be able to do that, she said.
Semele allowed herself to be persuaded, convinced Zeus, and that was the end of her; she did not survive the sight of Zeus waving his lightning bolts. Neither did the palace of Thebes survive, which, like Semele, was reduced to ashes. The unfortunate girl, in horror and pain, gave birth prematurely, to which Zeus reacted. He let ivy grow around the premature fetus, and when the fire burned out, the supreme god took his offspring and carried the child to term, sewn into his thigh. That's the story, right? From his father's thigh, Dionysus came to Crete, Naxos, Eleuthera, Teos, or possibly Eulida, which is what the aforementioned places have long disputed.
Dionysus' adventures continued.
Hera would not be deterred and tried to be thorough. She sent the Titans after him, and they tore the boy to pieces and boiled him in a cauldron, from whose drops of blood an apple tree with pomegranates grew. Rheia put the future god back together again.
Zeus then handed the newborn over to Persephone to raise, or according to others, to Hermes, but the divine messenger, otherwise a bachelor, gave up this honor for quite understandable reasons and passed the infant on to Semele's sister, Ino. We have already mentioned her, so you can read this part of the story elsewhere.
The next stop was asylum in the Nyssa Valley, where he (like his father) was raised by nymphs, later known as the Hyades star cluster. It was there that he was introduced to alcohol, specifically wine, and began his career, getting drunk with satyrs and his teacher Silenus. When he brought the first vine seedling outside, he gave it to the Athenian shepherd Icarius. He also gave him the technological know-how, so that soon the whole of Greek civilization began to spread a love of wine like wildfire, as did the first attempts at prohibition. However, standing up to a god is a courageous but fundamentally foolish and futile act, as the Theban king Pentheus found out when he was torn apart by Dionysus' followers, the Bacchantes, led by the queen mother herself.
On the Euphrates, during the young god's triumphal ride (which also saw a number of military successes), he defeated the king of Damascus. Long before Alexander the Great, he arrived in India, which he conquered and founded large cities there, fought the Amazons, dealt with Lycurgus... this part of history is a bit monotonous and, above all, well described.
In short, Dionysus traveled the world to introduce himself to the general public through alcohol and revelry, or through the sword and fear, and to earn divine respect. He then moved to Olympus to join Zeus, and the goddess Hestia voluntarily gave him her place among the twelve Olympian gods.
Even though I am shortening it as much as possible, and there is not much room left, I cannot resist listing what the Greek gods have in common, regardless of their field of endeavor: namely, a long line of offspring.
Dionysus' romance with Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, resulted in the birth of Priapus, who later became a gardener. Hera (again) punished him with an unattractive appearance and endowed the child with an unnaturally large penis. He married Ariadne, who had been abandoned by Theseus; their legitimate offspring, Oinopion, Thoas, Staphylos, and Euanthos, are, judging by their (relatively unknown) names, merely a multiplication of the number of mythological figures.
Finally, to give his life story a happy ending, he bribed Persephone and got his mother Semele out of the underworld. Even though Hera gnashed her teeth, Zeus took care of his former lover (renamed Thyone for security reasons) and gave her accommodation on Mount Olympus.
I don't have room for any explanatory background here, so just a quick conclusion:
Belief in the god of wine (who probably came to the Greeks from Thrace or Asia Minor) has survived in some form to this day, but in addition to countless references and allusions of an alcoholic nature, something more sublime has also been preserved from the cult of Dionysus. The dithyrambs, performances held at the end of the Bacchic mysteries, developed into a theatrical form known today as Greek tragedy, while the cheerful rural drinking songs developed into comedy. Names such as Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes, whose plays are still performed in theaters today, began their careers at the Dionysian festivals.
And that's probably all for today.
Dionysus in high spirits, supported by his friend the satyr, as depicted in a Roman mosaic: MrArifnajafov, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
2.9.2025 (18.12.2005)
Hrabě Deym (Count Deym)
In reality, he was a minor nobleman named František, Baron Deym of Střítež, but Prague legend elevated him.
He left St. Bartholomew's Church after midnight, wearing a hat with feathers and a sword at his side; as soon as he stepped outside, a large dog appeared in front of him. The count drew his sword and slashed and stabbed, but to no avail, as the blade passed through the dog without resistance, leaving no visible wounds.
In accordance with tradition, at one o'clock in the morning, both apparitions disappeared, only to repeat the performance the following night. This was said to be because the count had once cursed a man to become a dog during his lifetime. In doing so, he had prepared himself for an undignified afterlife, as he, being a ghost, could no longer break the curse.
Popelka Biliánová, a writer who recorded more or less authentic folk tales, states that the core of the legend may lie in how the real Baron Deym was buried in an older tomb, which had been built two hundred years earlier for one of the founders of the hospital that stood next to the church of St. Bartholomew. The man's name was Huncleder, and the legend may have originated from this dog skin (which is supposed to be the translation) and the later Deym tomb.
2.9.2025 (25.12.2005)
Tancující židovka (The Dancing Jewess)
She would leave Prague house "U desíti panen" (At the Ten Maidens) and hunt for late-night passers-by; whoever addressed her, she forced to dance, during which she duly destroyed his body until his soul departed. She wore a white dress and had black hair, and while dancing, she sang, "Turn your pockets inside out, you'll chase away the monsters," which was a simple but almost useless way to get rid of her.
Some men who struck up a conversation with the dancer at night survived only because dawn was approaching; others were torn apart.
How the dancer got rid of her curse—because that's what it was—is not difficult to figure out. The house "U Desíti panen" (At the Ten Virgins), otherwise known as "U Kopřivů", which was once a brothel (originally, the Ten Virgins were actually ten nuns, but they were replaced by tenants of a slightly different orientation), and once, on Good Friday, when the party was in full swing, a hooded man in black entered and began to preach about the need to honor Christ's death and not to revel in godless merriment. He was not only a preacher with his mouth, but also with his heart and, above all, with his fists. He took out his whip and dispersed the merry company except for one Jewish woman who refused to leave. So he had to use stronger measures and cursed the godless woman.
2.9.2025 (25.12.2005)
Ptah
The creator of the world and its inhabitants, patron of craftsmen and artists, is one of the ancient Egyptian gods. He is an important god, not only because he gave the country its name – Hekuptah, He-ka-Ptah, or House of Ptah – which foreign tourists have shortened to Egypt. He was originally the god of the former Egyptian metropolis of Memphis, and his wife was Sekhmet, the punitive form of the goddess Hathor. Sometimes also the cat Bastet, but this version is giving way to the first one. What is clear is Ptah's descendants, who are the lotus god Nefertem, the lion Maahes, and today's most famous Imhotep, the legendary builder and polymath, essentially the Leonardo da Vinci of ancient Egypt.
As the Creator of the gods, the earth, and its inhabitants, he was sometimes called Ta-tennen, who is, of course, the god of vegetation and the Creator, known throughout Egypt, not only in Memphis. The popular Memphidian cult of the bull Apis (Hapi) is also associated with Ptah.
In later times, Ptah merged with another Memphite god, the underworld god Sokar, into the deity Ptah-Seker, as both gods were patrons of craftsmen, Ptah of stonemasons and Sokar of metallurgists, and the merger made divine assistance more effective. However, the integration continued further, into the deity Ptah-Seker-Osiris, Lord of the Dead. Incidentally, in Heliopolis at that time, another combined being was also worshipped, namely Ptah-Seker-Atum. Ptah-Seker-Osiris represents the well-known classical (though in other cultures female) trinity, symbolizing the course of life.
Ptah in one of his forms was drawn by Jeff Dahl [GFDL or CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons
2.9.2025 (1.1.2006)
Calacht
The Irish Calacht and Scottish Cailleach are the same as the German Kormutter, or Corn Mother, represented by the last uncut stalks or the last sheaf of corn. The custom, described by J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough, which has probably been lost to our ancestors, was called the Cutting of the Calacht and consisted of the last uncut stalks being woven together and the reapers throwing their sickles at them – whoever managed to cut them had the right to the first toast, The calacht was then tied around the neck of the housekeeper, who took it to the kitchen, where it hung on the wall and watched everyone toast. This entertainment is called a Churn and is the only part of the ritual that has survived to this day.
The Grain Mothers themselves are not supernatural beings, they are only their symbols and echoes of ancient mysteries, as the case of calacht clearly shows, since the word itself means old woman (as I mentioned years ago, many Corn Mothers are called Old Woman in various languages) and represents an evil witch who harms farmers throughout the growing season and whom the farmers cut down at the end of the season, at harvest time, so that they can have peace.
2.9.2025 (8.1.2006)
Burhi Khes
The Old Mother of Rice is the Corn Mother of the Indian Oraon people. Their harvest customs are similar to those in Europe, only the crop is different.
As time passed, only fragments of the original strict rituals remained. In the past, a field guard, several unharvested ears of rice, remained in the field to guard the land until the next sowing. Later, someone – who could not be a member of the farmer's family – took this guard home. Sometimes, on the contrary, the head of the family did it himself, on a certain day, most often on Monday.
The grain mother Burhi Khes is then the last handfuls of threshed rice that the Oraons leave on the threshing floor, hidden under straw, as a protection against evil spirits.
2.9.2025 (8.1.2006)
Xilonen
The last representative of the cereal vegetation cycle today is not a form of the Corn Mother, but the goddess herself, wife of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, Xilonen. She represented ripening corn and, together with her colleagues Ilamatecuhtli and Centéotl, the vegetation life of this crop in all its beauty and length.
Centéotl (sometimes a god, but in this case female) represented ripe crops, Ilamatecuhtli withered plants, and Xilonen dried plants. Centéotl (sometimes a god, but in this case female) represented the ripe crop, Ilamatecuhtli the withered plant and dried grains, leaving Xilonen with the young, still adolescent plant. As such, farmers invoked her in the summer so that their agricultural efforts would not be in vain and the harvest would be above average.
Xilonen was considered a kind of successor to the goddess of fertility Chicometóatl and, represented by a young girl, was married every year to a human substitute for the divine Tezcatlipoca. Three of her colleagues, Atlatonan, Huixtocíhuatl, and Xochiquetzal, shared this fate with her. While in ancient European societies the king was sacrificed after such celebrations, in Central America it was the four girls, representing the divine brides, who ended up on the altar.
2.9.2025 (8.1.2006)
Bicho-Papăo
We know this well – children don't listen, they don't want vegetables on their plates... Educational bogeymen almost deserve their own index.
Today's monster is no exception to tradition, just an addition. It comes from Portugal, from where it spread to Brazil; in these countries, parents use it to scare disobedient non-eaters.
2.9.2025 (19.2.2006)
