Bestiary |
Hera
The first lady of the Greek pantheon, like her siblings, spent part of her existence inside her father’s stomach; Cronus, the supreme god at the time, took this measure to protect himself from a coup d’état. As has already been recounted here. It is also said that she was born on the island of Samos (or in Argos), that she was raised by Temenus and the Horae in Arcadia. And that, as soon as she reappeared in the world, the goddess Tethys abducted her and confined her to the edge of the world in the endless waters of Oceanus, where Zeus also began to visit her after his side’s victory. And to seduce her. Other versions admit that he did not have to travel so far, that he found her in Knossos on Crete or on Mount Thornak in Argolis; in any case, the newly crowned supreme god finally reached her in the form of a cuckoo, allowed the tender-hearted goddess to take him into her arms, and only then revealed his true form and acted.
In all honesty, he then married her, spent a wedding night with her that lasted three centuries, after which he seated her on a golden throne beside his own, and they ruled the world of gods and mortals contentedly. Ahem, contentedly…
Hera was given roles associated with being the partner of the supreme god; she was the protector of marriage, ensured future offspring, and assisted in childbirth. From her true past, she brought with her the privilege of bestowing prophetic gifts upon humans and animals, and, unobtrusively, her former influence over the weather—specifically the winds, as revealed by her intervention in the case of Aeolus. The cuckoo (for the reason mentioned above), the peacock, and the crane were dedicated to her. Also pomegranates, as a symbol of fertility. She could change her form and controlled storms, fog, and other meteorological phenomena.
Her husband often consulted her on serious matters of which the other Olympians had no inkling; he granted her nearly every wish, for otherwise a monumental quarrel threatened, which, like most men, he preferred to avoid. However, if Hera thwarted his plans—as was the case with her persecution of Heracles—he knew how to deal with her by virtue of his position. And so, for example in the aforementioned case, she ended up temporarily bound in golden chains. With golden bracelets and anvil-like shackles on her feet, she also hung in the heavens after the failed rebellion she led alongside Apollo and Poseidon against Zeus; this scene may also be related to the story in which Hephaestus trapped her in a golden throne he had made and refused to release her until she confessed who her real father was (surprisingly, no one).
For only three legitimate offspring emerged from the marital bed: the god of war Ares, the blacksmith Hephaestus himself, and the eternally youthful Hebe, who, according to some authors, was not Zeus’s offspring but Hera’s parthenogenic child. Sometimes a fourth daughter, Eileithyia, is also mentioned. To complicate matters, there are rumors about other children as well (Hephaestus’s father could also have been Talos, Daedalus’s nephew, but this legend is even more forgotten than the one about parthenogenesis). The self-conception variant assumes that Hebe, too, came into being when Hera touched a lettuce, while Ares and his twin Eris were born after touching a certain flower. But Greek myths often resemble the famous Czech gossip circles.
The official version, however, speaks with a clear voice, just as in the case of the host of her husband’s illegitimate children, whom Hera—including their mothers, of course—hated with all her heart and persecuted. As is well known, this didn’t work out very well with Heracles, but for the most part, her actions against her husband’s mistresses were successful. In the guise of an old woman, for example, she persuaded the pregnant Semele that the father of her unborn child should reveal his true form to prove he had nothing to hide—this ended with Semele’s death and the gestation of her son Dionysus within Zeus’s thigh. She was at her worst with the children of the Libyan queen Lamia, whom she slaughtered without mercy and turned their mother into a monster. Leto, the mother of the future co-conspirator Apollo, also suffered her share in her time.
She was, however, able to protect other children, often just as ruthlessly as she punished Zeus’s illegitimate ones. Take Athamas, king of Boeotia, who married Hera’s doppelgänger Nephele; he experienced her wrath from both sides—first, the supreme goddess lashed out at him because of his treatment of Nephele’s children, Phrixus and Helle, and second, because he failed to intervene against Ino when she was raising Dionysus in his home.
Her presence is most often mentioned in the myths of Heracles and Paris, which are well-known enough that I won’t go into detail about them; I’ll simply note that in the case of Zeus’s greatest human son, she ensured that his half-brother was born first, while at the root of the Trojan War, Paris had to choose the divine queen of beauty between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, which ended as it had to—namely, with Aphrodite’s victory. And the ensuing intrigues of the defeated, who refused to let it go. This well-known scene, incidentally, is a mythological misunderstanding of mythology; for Paris’s Judgment does not depict the Trojan prince presenting the apple to the most beautiful goddess, but most likely Heracles receiving an apple branch from the Hesperides (the Triune Goddess).
In plain fact, Hera represented the supreme goddess of the receding matriarchy, a lunar deity whom the Hellenes had to defeat. It was a long-distance race; it took many human generations and four divine ones before the Great Mother finally left the stage. This development is not apparent at first glance.
The cuckoo may have signified that some Hellenic refugees who had settled at the Cretan and Mycenaean courts behaved like cuckoo eggs and plotted a conspiracy; (a god seducing in the form of a cuckoo can also be found in the Indian Ramayana—there it is Indra—so the roots may indeed run deep). Rape and the resulting forced marriage speak more clearly. Another significant clue is the aforementioned privilege of Hera to bestow the gift of prophecy, because prophetic abilities were one of the last privileges that remained to women after the Dorian invasion.
Hera, Athena and Iris in the Trojan War: Jacques Réattu, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
8.7.2026 (10.2.2008)
Nephele
I simply had to place this figure from several Greek myths right after Hera. After all, she was—at least in appearance—her exact double, and indeed, the very purpose of her existence was to serve as a stand-in. But let’s start from the beginning.
When Zeus absolved Ixion of the murder of Lapith (who had set a trap for his future father-in-law, Eion, and whom the lesser gods refused to absolve), he also invited him to Olympus and to his table. It is hard to say what led the supreme god to do this; Graves suggests that it was likely the similar nature of the two philanderers. What is certain is that Ixion did not hesitate to seduce Hera herself, which was an audacity that cried out to the heavens and could not go unpunished. And it did not. Zeus, reading his guest’s thoughts, created a copy of Hera from a cloud, lured Ixion into a sexual encounter, and at the height of it all, caught him as if by accident. And he could punish him in an exemplary manner.
As the myth of the Centaurs also tells us, Ixion and Nephele became the parents of the first of them.
The false Hera remained on Olympus for some time before the real one found a suitable husband for her, the Boeotian king Athamas. At first, things looked promising, especially after Nephele bore the king three children: Phrixus, Leucon, and Helle. But… yes, we are entering the greatest adventure of Greek mythology, a tangled web of gods, heroes, and daring deeds, the legendary quest for the Golden Fleece. Nephele’s children were at its beginning. For Athamas had fallen in love with Ino (who secretly bore him two sons, Learchus and Melicertes). Nephele complained to Hera, but even though the supreme goddess took her side, Athamas and Ino had their kingdom perfectly under control. Instead of seeing her unfaithful husband destroyed with Hera’s blessing, Nephele discovered with horror that the Boeotians were preparing to sacrifice her own son, Phrixus (which Ino had arranged by bribing the messengers from the oracle). At the eleventh hour, he was saved by Heracles—who would later sail for some time with the Argo—and at the very last moment by Hera, who sent a winged golden ram for the children of her doppelgänger.
As the goddess of the clouds (what else, since she was created from this very substance), Nephele still intervened slightly in Heracles’ battle with the centaurs, attempting to disable the hero’s bow and prevent him from moving by sending down a heavy rain. She did not succeed very well.
8.7.2026 (17.2.2008)
Vari-ma-te-takere
The Polynesian universe is a giant coconut. It is hollow, and within that hollow lies the underworld of Avaiki. It is a fascinating world, and we are going to take a brief, non-exhaustive tour of it—or rather, pay a visit to one of its inhabitants.
Deep down at the bottom, in a cramped space known as Te Enua-teki, where she can only sit in a crouched position so that her knees touch her chin, resides Vari-ma-te-takere, the Beginning of All Things, a female demon, mother of several powerful beings.
Six, to be exact. And since we’re in the realm of myths, we don’t need to search for a father—there isn’t one. Vari-ma-te-takere approached motherhood in an interesting, perhaps somewhat painful way. When she longed for an offspring, she simply tore a piece of flesh from herself.
She started on her left side, and thus Vatea was born, the first human (and father of gods and humans in other myths), whose appearance, however, was somewhat different than an anthropologist might expect. From the left side (yes, we are working with vertical axial asymmetry, not so popular in myths but still occurring), he looked like a human; from the right, like a fish. Or rather, a whale, but the Polynesians were not as well-versed in zoological theory as they were in practice, so we can forgive them this faux pas.
As a dwelling, he was given the highest region of the inner world, Te Papa-rairai, the Thin Land, later also called the Bright Land of Vatea, Te Enua-marama-Vatea.
His younger brother from the right side, Tini-Rau, resembled Vatea in appearance, except that his fish half belonged to a different species. He lived one level below, in the land of Motu-tapu, while another child from the left side, Tango, moved into the first available (i.e., the next) location, the Land of Red Parrot Feathers, Motu Tapu.
Vari-ma-te-takere secured lands for the other two children as well; Tumu-teananoa received the fourth land, Te Parai-tea, and Raka became the ruler and father of the winds, which from his land, the Deep Ocean, Moana-irakau, blow through the holes on the horizon into ours. There are thirty-two holes; the Polynesians knew them well because they helped them navigate, and I’ll skip this chapter because it’s quite interesting and therefore a candidate for a separate story.
The last descendant, born essentially because the left side of Vari-ma-te-takerina suffered more and the pain needed to be distributed, was Tu-metua, who remained with her mother in Te Enua-teki. As the youngest child (though originally just to make up the numbers), she became the most beloved child. She communicated with her mother using gestures (they know no other language in those parts besides sign language) before she became the wife of the sun god Ra.
8.7.2026 (23.3.2008)
Adaro
The soul of the Melanesians is composed of two elements. The first is the aunga, the good part, which goes to better places after death, while the adaro (the bad part) is a spirit, a ghost in the general sense of the word.
In the Solomon Islands, they’ve embellished the legend of the adaro a bit. They’ve turned it into an evil water demon, half-man and half-fish, with gills behind its ears, a horn shaped like a shark’s dorsal fin, and a sharp swordfish horn on its head, with fins on its legs. He is said to live in the sun and travel to earth on a rainbow. He hurls poisonous flying fish at people; while a hit may not result in death, it certainly causes severe nausea.
8.7.2026 (30.3.2008)
Habaek and his daughter Yuhwa
The Amnokkang River, which forms the border separating the Korean Peninsula from mainland China (where it is known as the Yalu River), was inhabited, like many others around the world, by a river god. His name was Habaek, and he had three daughters. It begins like a fairy tale, and it also continues like a fairy tale; after all, fairy tales—at least the original ones—are often a distorted reflection of myths.
So the king—pardon me, the god—had three daughters named Yuhwa, Hweonhwa, and Wuihwa. The eldest was honored to become the matriarch of the royal dynasty of the land of Koguryeo, but I’ve jumped ahead to the end. It began when the sun god Haemosu, traveling every day—another common trope; this story is full of them—across the sky in his sun chariot from east to west, noticed Yuhwa one day, fell in love with her, and abducted her. Usually, that’s how such a story ends, but Yuhwa was no ordinary girl and she resisted; moreover, Habaek protested vehemently—not, of course, against his future son-in-law as such, but against the way he had gone about getting her. So the sun god had to go and beg her father nicely.
That suited Habaek just fine. Then came the official, much-loved transformation contest. In the first round, Habaek transformed into a carp, Haemosu chased him as an otter; in the next attempt, when Habaek took the form of a deer, the sun god pursued him as a wolf; and finally, when the river god transformed into a quail, Haemosu countered with a metamorphosis into a falcon, thereby (obviously, in mythological terms) not only winning but confirming his divine dominion over air, earth, and water.
Habaek then happily married his daughter to a man of high standing, but—and this is not how fairy tales usually go—Yuhwa was not very enthusiastic about it, and before the sun chariot climbed back into the sky, she fled from it and returned to her father. This did not please him; in fact, it enraged him. He silenced his disobedient daughter and threw her into the water. That is, he cast her into the current—after all, they already lived in the water. And back to the fairy tale, or rather to tried-and-true storytelling tricks—after some time, the king’s fisherman hauled in his nets and, instead of a pile of fish, pulled out a girl. With three cuts, he opened her mouth so she could thank him; he took her to King Keumwo, and the monarch welcomed the young woman into his home—whereupon, for a change, a classically mythological scene unfolds, in which the rejected husband of a goddess impregnated his wife in exile with a ray of sunlight.
After due time, Yuhwa laid an egg from her left armpit. It was a shock to her human protector. An egg? That’s… unnatural. Monstrous. Destroy it!
Let’s cut to the chase. The horses in the stable didn’t trample it, the wild beasts in the mountains didn’t devour it but instead protected it; tell the wise, hit the foolish over the head with something—Keumwa was the former, so he didn’t even need to see (though he did) how a sunbeam warmed the egg through the clouds to realize he’d better keep his hands off such things. He returned the egg to his mother, and in due time, Chumong hatched from it—the future founder of the aforementioned Korean kingdom of Koguryeo, which, according to historians, was founded thirty-seven years before Christ, so today’s story is nicely anchored in time.
8.7.2026 (6.4.2008)
Dýmovec
Even a dense network of hiking trails often fails to prevent a statistically likely not entirely negligible number of hikers from straying off the path, only to find themselves, after a few minutes/ten minutes/an hour (delete as appropriate based on your own experience), nervously darting their eyes around and staring at the map. There are people who (yes, I freely admit it) can get lost even with GPS navigation. After all, getting lost sometimes has its charm (and without it—another personal memory—we would never have found the “Hooray-we’re-finally-out Forest”), and in 21st-century Central Europe, it’s rarely life-threatening anymore.
Things used to be worse. Will-o’-the-wisps or wandering roots lay in wait for inattentive travelers. As did other, less geographically widespread, or not-so-popular spectres. Today’s visitor belongs to the strictly local revenants, appearing in the vicinity of the village of Stachy in the Vimperk region, Bohemia. Just like the aforementioned, its job was to lead travelers astray; unlike will-o’-the-wisps, however, it did not lure them with a light, but rather tried to frighten people so much that they would flee and lose their bearings out of terror; this is a much more reliable modus operandi than relying on curiosity. The Dýmovec itself is a creation of the devil and appears, as the name suggests, as a misty figure, or a visual effect that fog or darkness can cast upon trees, bushes, or rocks.
8.7.2026 (20.4.2008)
Maahinen
Gnomes, or small folk who sometimes cause mischief and sometimes lend a hand, are a diverse group found all over the world. The Maahiset (the plural form of the singular “maahinen”) are native to Finland and belong to that group of gnomes that do not particularly specialize in household chores. Much like the British pixies or the Lusatian ludeks, the maahiset tend to offer only occasional help; they live their own lives underground (which is why, according to common traditions, they are very, very rich). In appearance, they also do not differ from common descriptions—they are tiny and ugly, except for the female members, who are, on the contrary, beauties. Young gnome girls receive such a large dowry, after all, that it doesn’t really matter.
More interesting are other characteristics associated with the Maahinen. A Maahinen’s day lasts fifty human years; their toes are reversed, and their left side is swapped with their right.
People treated them with deference because an angry and therefore mischievous maahinen would steal children from their cradles or lead them astray, while a contented elf in a good mood, on the other hand, would tend to the crops. For crops, as is well known, grow from the earth, and thus the maahiset, as an element of the earth, are entrusted with their care. At first glance, this is a somewhat unusual concept; a deeper study—which we certainly will not undertake here—would, however, reveal deep roots not in flora but in mythology, in which the soil and its fertility belong to the deceased, reflecting the vegetative cycle with deities that inevitably die in winter, deities who descend into the underworld and come back to life in the spring, as well as the fact that elves and dwarves have always belonged to the ancestors—that is, to the dead—and therefore everything is in perfect order.
8.7.2026 (27.4.2008)
Rugidboba
A few words have already been said here about the Grain Mothers; for the most part, they were merely symbolic representations in the form of the last ears of grain or sheaves. Vegetation demons of this type have been lost to time, leaving behind only traditions—traditions that remain alive to this day. The Baltic Rugidboba, a former goddess of fertility, has remained more or less unchanged. Like other Grain Mothers, she dwelt in the grain fields, where she protected the harvest from the elements. In ancient times, children were sacrificed to her; long after the ritual changed, it was still said that any child Rugidboba found in the field would be crushed against her breast. The ritual, incidentally, did not change much; the customary last sheaf was shaped into the form of a child and doused with water, in order to summon sufficient irrigation for the coming season.
8.7.2026 (27.4.2008)
Kua Fu
The Chinese giant Kua Fu is another creature of today that has a certain influence on vegetation. Unlike the previous ones, however, there is no tending, no pushing sprouts out of the soil into the sun—nothing of the sort. Kua Fu is responsible for the fact that certain vegetation simply exists.
He was the son of the demon Kung-kung, a giant with a breath so powerful that it caused gales and storms. He was also a rather self-confident giant—so self-confident that one day he decided to outrun the sun. He won the race only in the home stretch, in the west, in the valley where our life-giving star arrives every evening. Dehydrated after his strenuous run, he drank two rivers at once, but a giant body demands correspondingly giant portions, and so even that wasn’t enough, and Kua Fu died of thirst.
And that would be it—but no, I forgot about the certain vegetation I mentioned. It became a dense forest that grew from the staff the giant had thrust into the swamp, which remained there after his demise and took root.
8.7.2026 (27.4.2008)
The Multi-Headed Deities of Korenice
It is not only dragons or giants that tend to have multiple heads. Among the Western Slavs, as has already been mentioned here, the gods themselves boasted of their multi-headedness. The faithful erected shrines to three of them in Korenice on Rügen, and thanks to this—and to Saxo Grammaticus—we know a little about them today.
Rugievit,
known as the Lord of Rügen, was the most abundantly endowed with heads. The Korenice idol, as Saxo describes it, had seven faces, seven swords at his waist, and an eighth weapon in his hand. There was also a swallow’s nest beneath one of his mouths, which, of course, was not a sacred symbol but a work of nature. Like his other Slavic counterparts, a white horse was dedicated to him, serving for divination.
Porevit
had a somewhat more sober appearance. Unarmed, with five heads. His function is now completely forgotten, so we can move on to the last one, namely
Porenutius.
Porenutius’s name reveals that it has been preserved only in Latin transcription. It is generally believed that the true name of this deity might have been Perunic, meaning “son of Perun.” He, too, had five faces, though only four on his neck; the fifth gazed down upon the faithful from his chest.
The three Rügen gods were not merely supplementary local deities; their cult spread beyond the geographical borders of the former peninsula. They are also mentioned in the Knytlinsága, an epic about the Knut family, which lists the trio under the names Rinvit, Puruvit, and Turupit; the latter is thought to be Porenutius, though it does not appear to be so. Sources attribute a certain peculiarity to all three, apparently related to their shared oversight of the fertility cult. A copulating couple (which is a common ritual in many ancient cultures) could not be separated within the city limits.
Porenutius, Original: W. Dollese; Derivative work: Sławobóg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
8.7.2026 (2.5.2008)
Xana
Xanas are beautiful Asturian water nymphs who, as is often the case in such stories, live in springs, waterfalls, and forest streams—in short, anywhere where the water can be called clear. They are of small stature and, as is also a common trait of water nymphs, have long golden or light brown, often curly, hair, which they like to comb with golden or silver combs. They have adopted even more from the common European heritage: for example, concern for offspring; since they cannot care for their own children, they steal human babies and substitute their own in their place. Such newborns, of course, often give themselves away by growing rapidly. To fully reveal their origins, the same trick is used as in the Welsh folktale “Cooking the Shells,” recorded by Joseph Jacobs in his collection, which shows that belief in the xany dates back to the time when the Celts lived in Spain. Eggshells are left lying by the hearth, the examiner hides, and when he hears the baby shaking its head in bewilderment and saying, “I’ve been in this world for a hundred years, but I’ve never seen so many eggshells by the fire,” the case is clear.
8.7.2026 (11.5.2008)
Arkan Sonney
If anyone catches this elusive magical pig—white, with red ears, and able to change size—they will be lucky. At least that’s what they say on the Isle of Man.
8.7.2026 (11.5.2008)
Bakeneko
Japanese cats may have a more interesting life cycle than their non-Japanese relatives. All they need to do is reach a certain age, or live for a certain number of years (isn’t that almost the same thing?), and grow to a certain size. Or grow a second tail—or rather, have one long enough that it splits in two (and in that case, the magical cat isn’t called the Lion from the Czech coat of arms, but a nekomata).
A bakeneko—or its two-tailed variant, the nekomata—is no longer a cute pet, nor a fearless hunter of mice, flies, blackbirds, or steamrollers. (Our cat once tried to catch an airplane; when she landed on the ground after a murderous leap, she watched that hideous thing—which she had come so close to reaching, just a few hundred meters away—usually with a glassy, predatory gaze, and waited for that coward to descend lower. The disparity in size clearly left her cold.) Bakeneko haunts the house where she lives, terrifying her sleeping owners; she is responsible for phantom lights, strange noises, and worst of all, she can take on human form. Usually that of her former mistress, whom she torments and then takes her place, because in her cat form she has fallen in love with the master. She can also wake the dead, when she enters a room with a corpse and jumps over the deceased. The reanimated corpse, like any proper zombie, is then subservient to the terrifying cat.
Illustration: Yosa Buson (与謝蕪村, Japanese, *1716, †1784)), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
8.7.2026 (18.5.2008)
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