Bestiarium

A bestiary of lesser known mythological creatures from around the world

[bestiarium]

The Corc-chluasask: calves of the fey bulls [Scottish/Irish folklore]

The word 'fairie' is usually associated with tiny humans living in secluded forests, but fey creatures come in all shapes and sizes. One of them is the Tairbh-Uisge, a magical aquatic bull from Scottish and Irish folktales. It resembles a normal animal, though it is smaller and has a velvety, smooth skin. I discussed them some years ago in an earlier post.

However, sometimes a Tairbh-Uisge would mate with regular cows, and the result was a Corc-chluasask. These creatures were the offspring of a fairie parent and a normal, mortal cow, and inherited supernatural characteristics from their father. They could be identified by their ears, as one half of both ears appeared to be missing. This detail tends to vary: sometimes, they are said to have no ears at all, or unnaturally small ears, or weirdly round ears. But the ears are always the characteristic that give them away. It's in the name, 'Corc-chluasask' which means something like 'split ears'.

While I found no accounts of these monsters attacking people or animals, they were apparently malicious nonetheless, and would bring misfortune to the cows around them. As such, farmers on the Isle of Skye would traditionally kill newborn calves with noticeable deformities on their ears, lest they grew up to bring bad luck to the farm.

Interestingly, these creatures appear to be bovine counterparts of a sort to the Each-Uisge, or Kelpie, a rather famous Scottish folk monster with a common recurring motif: a fey creature disguises itself as a beautiful horse, usually with some bizarre characteristics to betray its supernatural nature, and entices people to ride it. When a victim does so, the horse reveals itself to be a monster and jumps into deep water to drown its rider.

They were also said to procreate with normal horses, creating foals that were almost indistinguishable from regular horses but could be identified by their strange drooping ears.

This is actually a recurring motif in Celtic folktales, where fairie animals would mate with regular animals, often producing supernatural offspring.

Source:

Meurger, M., 1988, Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Fortean Tomes, 320 pp., p. 127.

(Image source: Bamart, this is actually an illustration of the Taroo Ushtey, the Manx variant of the same monster)

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Antiphates and the Laestrygonians [Greek mythology]

With the upcoming Odyssey movie, I thought it would be fun to pick a creature from Homeros’ Odyssey for this week's post!

After being dismissed by Aeolus, Odysseus and his men find themselves in Telepylus, in the land of the Laestrygonians. In this strange land, nightfall is followed almost immediately by morning. All the captains of his squadron steered their ships into the large, enclosed harbour. But Odysseus himself, clever as always, had his own ship tied up to a rock out of sight.

A messenger, accompanied by two soldiers, was sent to the palace of Antiphates, the leader of the Laestrygonians. Upon their arrival, the party was greeted by his wife, a truly enormous woman. She fetched her husband, who promptly tried to devour the Greeks. Two of them managed to get away to warn the fleet, which was soon set upon by a horde of Laestrygonians: terrifying giants who hunted and ate human flesh. They pelted the ships with boulders from atop the cliffs overlooking the harbour, smashing man and ship alike to splinters.

Not a single ship managed to escape the massacre, except for Odysseus’ personal vessel, which was hidden upon arrival. The Greek soldiers were carried off by the giants, like a fisherman carrying his catch on a spear.

While they only had a rather short appearance in the story (in fact, I forgot they existed before seeing giants in the new movie trailer), the Laestrygonians play a significant role in the narrative by reducing Odysseus’ fleet to one ship. The concept of the heroes ending up in a strange land inhabited by man-eating giants or other monsters is actually found in several Greek stories, and like many of Odysseus’ adventures in books 9-12, it might have been adapted from older legends and stories.

Sources:

Homeros, the Odyssey, Book X, 60-134, which you can read here.

Homeros, 1991, The Odyssey Revised Translation by D. C. H. Rieu, Penguin Classics, 416 pp., p. 29.

(Image source 1: J. C. Andrä, 1902, Griechische Heldensagen für die Jugend bearbeitet, illustration based on the fourth panel of the Odyssey Landscapes in the Musei Vaticani)

(Image source 2: François Licata on Artstation)

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The Enenra: Japanese smoke spirits [Japanese folklore; yokai]

This yokai is a sentient smoke cloud from Japanese folklore. As the story goes, a pauper once lit a fire to repel the mosquitoes from his home. The smoke from the fire was very thin and took on strange and unnatural shapes, eventually taking the shape of an ethereal living being, which was then given the name Enenra, or 'net smoke'.

As such, Enenra is composed entirely of smoke. There’s not a lot of backstory here, and it’s left ambiguous whether there are more individuals of this ‘species’ out there.

Toriyama Sekien, in his 18th century yokai encyclopedia, was the first to give a face to the smoky phenomenon. He gave it a friendly appearance with a large, round, smiling head for an almost cute aesthetic, communicating to the reader that this is not a malicious being. With this, he created the design that most future depictions of this creature would be based on.

Like many yokai in Japanese folktales, it is connected to an animistic tradition where a supernatural identity is given to a phenomenon or object. The Enenra also carries a connotation of poverty with it, because Sekien implied that the smoke is so ghostly thin because the pauper only had a little bit of firewood and couldn’t afford more. The kanji used for the ‘ra’ syllable refers to thin gauze fabric, such as the netting that trappers used.

Sources: Yoda, H. and Alt, M., 2016, Japandemonium Illustrated: the Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, 319 pp., p. 180. Van der Linden, M., 2018, Toriyama Sekien och hans arv: En analys av Toriyama Sekiens yōkai kataloger, deras kawaii-estetik och Sekiens inflytande på det japanska folkets föreställningsvärld, Linnéuniversitetet, Växjö, Kandidatuppsats, 36 pp., p. 20-22.

(Image source 1: Olivia Leppard)

(Image source 2: Konjaku Hyakki Shui, Toriyama Sekien)

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Of the Buso and the Tigbanua [Filipino folklore]

Buso, also Busao or Busaw, are a type of giant humanoid monsters featuring prominently in the folktales and legends of the Mindanaoan Bagobo people in the Philippines. They are often translated as, or compared to, ogres: Buso usually eat human flesh and prefer dead corpses, which they dig up from graves. The entire body is then devoured except for the skeleton. People would placate them with offerings of rice, pigs, or even slaves, to keep them away from villages.

Buso are dangerous and physically ugly. They are embodiments of evil personalities, so it’s fitting that there is a lot of variety among them. Sometimes they have a singular, red or yellow cyclops-like eye, or sharp claws to dig up graves and rip the flesh from bodies. One account gives them disproportionally short arms but large fingers and feet, and a face equipped with two large tusks. Another Buso was described as having a large ivory horn growing from its head, that was constantly ablaze with fire. At least one account claims that these monsters can fly.

There’s a belief that you can summon these monsters with a specific ritual: when a person dies, and their coffin is being constructed, you have to cut some splinters from it and return them to the stump of the tree the wood came from. If you leave the wood fragments there, a Buso will appear on the night following the funeral. Its arrival will be heralded by a swarm of fireflies.

The Bagobo folk hero Tuglay happened upon a Buso village one day: while foraging for food, he saw smoke rising in the distance and, trying to find the source, found a vast field of giant sugarcane and trees that grew unnaturally large fruits. Going further, Tuglay saw a city consisting of a truly colossal mansion surrounded by an impossible number of smaller houses, all inhabited by hideous giants.

(It is said that the city stretched over 8 million mountaintops, and I assume this number isn’t meant to be taken literally.)

Note that despite being supernatural monsters who love to catch and devour humans, the Buso do also farm crops like we do. In fact, Tuglay saw many workers tending to the fields.

There is a folktale of a Buso who finds and captures two human kids. He puts them in a basket and carries them to its home, intending to eat them. As is often the case with these stories, the children escaped by outsmarting the monster: they wriggled free of the basket and filled it with stones, so that the Buso would not notice the difference in weight. The kids then climbed a tall tree to hide until the monster was gone.

But the ogre did discover their absence eventually, and cast a spell at a plant near the foot of the tree. It magically grew to a giant height, but before the monster could climb it, the children plucked nuts to throw at the plant until it shrunk down again. This went on for a while, the Buso’s spell against the thrown nuts, until the monster lost its patience and left without its prey.

Another, particularly interesting story features a ‘deal with the devil’ in which a starving, desperate father strikes a deal with the leader of the Buso. The ogre would deliver bananas to the man, in return for his two children.

One particular type of Buso is the Tigbanua: these are the most terrible of all Buso. They live in trees, and each individual owns/inhabits one tree. Though dangerous, they were deadly afraid of dogs, which is the main method of defending oneself against these monsters. One time, a hunter had killed a wild pig but found that it was too late to return home before nightfall. He made a shelter to spend the night, but was awoken from his sleep by voices coming from the treetops: he had unknowingly ventured into Tigbanua territory. Miraculously, they did not devour him, for the chief of the Tigbanua declared to all his people that this man was a veteran hunter who had come to this forest many times before. And terrible as he was, he respected the human and his trade.

Sources:

Ramos, M. D., 1990, The Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology, Phoenix Publishing House, 424 pp., p. 103-104, 107-109, 111-114.

Gaverza, J. K. M., 2014, The Myths of the Philipines, An Undergraduate Thesis Submitted to the College of Social Science and Philosophy Diliman, Quezon City, as Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of B. A. Linguistics, 177 pp., p. 22-25.

(Image source 1: Brian Valeza)

(Image source 2: Traci Shepard, Arcane Beasts and Critters)

(Image source 3: 'Datu of the Buso' by Artofaugusto)

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The Psoglavi [Slavic mythology]

Psoglavi (also Pasoglavci in Croatia), are a race of demons with a humanoid body and a dog-like head with a singular eye in the forehead, like a cyclops. Sometimes they are said to have a horse’s tail or the hind legs of a goat. A Psoglav hunts by smell and has an exceptional sense of smell, presumably because of the dog head. It is said that if a Psoglav hunts you, the best way to escape it is by burying yourself in a pile of manure, so as to mask your scent. In Croatia, it was believed that these creatures prefer the taste of Christians above all, and then preferably Christian women.

Besides hunting living prey, these demons were not above eating corpses and were known to defile graves to dig up rotting cadavers to eat. Specifically Christian and Muslim cemeteries were frequented by the monsters, and for this reason people would put a menhir stone on top of graves to prevent the Psoglavi from unearthing the remains.

They were not unintelligent beasts, but had a functioning society, and were even known to keep dogs. In one story, three Psoglavi captured a group of kids who were left by their parents to guard the cattle. They subdue the children without killing them and bring them to their house, where the mother of the Psoglavi prepares to cook them. As is often the case in these stories, the kids defeat the monster with trickery rather than strength, and in the end they escape and push the creature into her own cauldron where she is boiled alive. The children escape, but the demons who captured them soon find the corpse of their mother and realize what happened. They release the hounds and try to track the children.

This story takes an odd turn when the children find a woman who is married to a Psoglav, and still takes pity on the kids. She agrees to hide them when the monsters come looking for them, and then sends them away across a river. They all escaped with their lives.

Interestingly, these demons supposedly hail from a strange distant country that is exceptionally rich in precious stones.

Another, entirely different origin story claims that Psoglavi are born from human women who have committed especially evil acts, as a divine punishment to the mother.

In reality, these dog-headed demons are theorized to be the Ottomans, whose attacks on the Croatian people inspired propagandized tales of monsters assaulting the good, innocent, religious people. Eventually, these stories were twisted until the attackers were completely inhuman, savage demons.

Sources:

Šešo, L., 2021, Dog-headed Creatures as the Other: The Role of Monsters in the Construction of the Croatian Identity, Časopis za književnost, kulturu i književno prevođenje, VOL 11, No. 2, DOI 10.15291/sic/2.11.lc.1.

Detelic, M., 1998, Flesh and Bones: on Literary and Real Codes in Fairy Tales, Balcanica – Annual of the Institute for Balkan Studies, XXIX, p. 269-305.

(Image source 1: Laslo Ludrovan)

(Image source 2: Anthony Rivero)

(Image source 3: Alexandru Munteanu)

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The Shiqq, the goul, and related monsters [Arab folklore]!

(Image source: ‘Nasnas’ by Niko Boiko)

Ghouls play a large role in Arab and Bedouin folklore, usually as a devil, genie or undead monster that eats people. Before the creature was incorporated into Islamic belief and legends, the Ghoul was usually a shapeshifting female demon that inhabited the desert and preyed on travelers. The later Islamic ghoul was a demon or a type of genie that either attacked travelers in deserted areas, or destroyed stored food by eating or corrupting it (which made it spoil). One can banish them by citing a verse from the Holy Quran. Some medieval texts also mention that ghouls set fires at night, so that travelers would get lost.

Different versions exist, however, and there are stories in which ghouls are always female and seduce men before hurting them. Interestingly, some Islamic scholars believed that ghouls did indeed exist in the distant past, but were destroyed by God to protect humanity.

One very peculiar version was mentioned by 12th century author Muhammad al-A’drīsī, who claimed that Ghouls originate from an island. Both the males and females have a very feminine appearances, their eyes are bright like lightning, and they have long fangs. Some other popularly recurring traits of ghouls are a taste for human flesh, a weakness to rabbit foot charms (you are supposed to hang one around your neck to ward off the ghouls) and the ability to possess human bodies and render them insane. In fact, it is believed that the Bedouin people considered rabies to be caused by a Ghúl inhabiting the body.

The ghoul as it currently exists in the popular perception, is largely influenced by the Arabian Nights (and further by Galland’s translation). This version is usually male and tend to inhabit graveyards. They feed primarily on corpses, and dig up bodies from graves to feast, which was apparently all added by Galland.

(Image source: ‘Shiqq’ by ALiteralCar)

There is also a peculiar pre-Islamic creature called a Shiqq, which is considered a type of ghoul. These strange beings resemble half a human, as in a human who was bisected longitudinally, though the extent to which this resemblance is portrayed varies. They famously have one leg, one arm, and one eye, and often appear before travelers to frighten them to death. Alternatively, they sometimes bludgeon victims to death as well.  One story tells of a hero who travelled to Mecca on a donkey and met a Shiqq. The monster fought him with a sword, and in the end, both combatants succumbed to their wounds.

It is related to, and often conflated with, the Nasnas, a similar creature that resembles half a human, but lives in the woods. In fact, Nasnas are sometimes said to be the offspring of a human and a Shiqq.

In 1888, Charles Doughty mentioned in his ‘Travels in Arabia Deserta’ that the desert wasteland was inhabited by a creature the locals called a Ghrôl: it had a long neck with a humanoid head equipped with a singular eye in the middle and a beak with one or two tusks. It had two arms, unlike the traditional Shiqq, but both arms resembled the fledgling wings of a chicken, except they ended in hands with undivided fingers. It had two legs, one of which ended in an ostrich foot and the other had the hoof of an ass. These creatures are exclusively female and would call people by their names, to make them believe a family member was calling them, and so lure them into the desert.

Sources: Al-Rawi, A., 2009, The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture, Cultural Analysis 8: 45-69. Alsowaifan, S. H., 2001, Qasim’s Short Stories: An Example of Arabic Supernatural/Ghost/Horror Story, thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of philosophy, University of Alberta, 283 pp., p. 36-37.

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The automaton assistants of Hephaestos [Greek mythology]

Hephaestos was the craftsman of the Greek gods and the patron god of smiths and metalworkers, and for good reason: his skill with metal was unmatched, both on Earth and among the immortals of Olympus. The armour and shield of Achilles were forged by him, as were the jewels of Thetis. But besides his skill with armour and trinkets, he had the ability to build living automatons out of inanimate metal.

To aid him in his work, he forge god had crafted handmaidens of gold. They were shaped like human women and were designed to assist their maker. Far from unthinking machines, these mechanical creatures were capable of speech and thought, and in fact were said to be quite intelligent. Though none of them were as competent as Hephaestos himself, these automatons had learned their considerable skills from the gods themselves.

Not all of Hephaestos’ automatons were humanoid, however. When the goddess Thetis visits him in the 18th book of Homeros’ Iliad, she finds the forge god working on a set of 20 mechanized metal tripods. These were equipped with wheels and could move by themselves, so that Hephaestos could command them to serve the gods of Olympus during their gatherings.

In modern interpretations, people tend to re-imagine these metal servants as clockwork robots, though they were never actually said to contain gears or other moving mechanical components. It is likely that Homeros imagined them as magically animated constructs rather than robots in a literal sense of the word.

Sources: Homeros, Iliad, book 18, lines 365-425. Silverman, K., 2022, The Androids of Hephaestus: Between Human and Machine in the Iliad, Selected Proceedings of the Classics Graduate Student Symposium at the University of Florida, 1. doi: 10.32473/pcgss.v1i.130426. (Image source: Kekai Kotaki, actually unrelated concept art for Guild Wars, but I thought it fits and I like his artstyle)

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The Lagarfljót Worm [Icelandic folklore]

Local folklore has it that Lagarfljót, a lake in Iceland, is supposedly home to a giant lake monster. It resembles a colossal slug-like worm or snake, and has been known to attack people and animals. Sightings of this creature (or just vaguely of ‘something’ that supposedly inhabits the lake) date as far back as 1345, and there are still locals who claim to believe in the creature or even to have encountered it. Among the people who live near Lagarfljót, the creature is often called ‘Ormur’, simply ‘the worm’. Sometimes, it would even crawl onto the shore and spit poison onto the land.

Unlike most lake monsters, this one actually has a very specific origin story! According to an old Icelandic folktale, there once was a little girl who lived on a farm. She received a gold ring from her mother and, determined to get the most possible gold out of it, she tested out a local old wives’ tale. Supposedly, if you put some gold underneath a slug, both will magically grow in size. The slug in question is a lingworm, but it is unclear to me whether this is an old (translated) Icelandic term for a generic slug, or a specific, possibly mythical type of slug.

In any case, the girl found one and kept both the ring and the slug safe in a linen chest, seeing no harm in testing out an old piece of folklore. When she eventually came back to check on the chest, she found it close to bursting, so much had the gold and the slug expanded. Severely frightened by the creature, the girl threw the chest in a nearby lake, not realizing that both the ring and the animal would keep on growing. And grow it did, until the tiny slug became a giant dragon.

A lot of time has passed since, and the monster kept causing trouble for the locals. Two Finns, both shamans wielding magical power, eventually showed up and claimed they were going to kill the creature and take the gold, but they quickly returned and claimed the beast couldn’t be slain. In the end, they did manage to bind the creature to the bottom with two ropes, one around its tail and the other around the head, so now it can no longer reach out of the lake and attack people.

Sometimes, however, an arch of the monster’s snake-like body rises out of the water, and this is considered to be a bad omen.

The same story is told about different bodies of water, such as Skorradalsvatn, and the resulting lake monsters are often conflated with each other.

Sources: Árnason, J., 1862, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri, Vol. I, Leipzig, 666 pp., p. 638-639. Sigurðsson, A., 2016, Museum of Hidden Beings: A Guide to Icelandic Creatures of Myth and Legend, Wool of Bat series, Eye of Newt Press, 80 pp., p. 50-51. Lees, C. A. & Overing, G. R., 2017, Women and Water: Icelandic Tales and Anglo-Saxon Moorings, GeoHumanities, 00 p. 1-15, DOI 10.1080/2373566X.2017.1403859 (Image source 1: Halldor Baldursson) (Image source 2: ‘Lagarfljótsormurinn’ by Spring Bee on Artstation)

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Spring-Heeled Jack, a 19th century London cryptid story

(Image 1: The cover of a fiction magazine ‘Spring-Heeled Jack 2 by Robert Prowse, 1904)

In 1837 and 1838, northwest London was terrorized by a series of attacks from a mysterious figure. He would come out at night and mainly assault women, ripping their clothes with his cold iron fingernails and stealing valuables.

After every sighting, the creature would always escape by leaping unnaturally high, a trait that earned him the nickname ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’.

Supposedly, he was often seen jumping from one rooftop to another, laughing maniacally during his escape. He usually only scared people, but there are also stories of Jack tearing a child to shreds with his iron talons, and crashing a carriage by suddenly appearing in front of it and then disappearing. There are several accounts of the cryptid scaring people to death.

Many people claimed he was a supernatural creature. Sometimes he was said to wear a suit of armor or a black cape, and other times he supposedly took the form of a bear or a white bull. He was described as ‘devil-like’, smelled like brimstone, had glowing red eyes, and sometimes would spit blue fire (in some stories, the fire was produced from a magic bullseye lantern). Some sources equated him with the actual devil.

These attacks happened during a time when ghost stories were popular entertainment (newspapers would even publish dramatized reports of supposedly haunted locations), and as a consequence Jack got mixed with folklore ghosts in the public eye. He was regarded as a devil or a ghost, and parents even used him as a bogeyman to scare misbehaving children.

(Image source 2: illustration from an unknown penny dreadful, BBC Hulton Picture Library)

In fact, Spring-Heeled Jack was soon connected to an earlier ghost sighting of a figure in a white robe in the cholera burial ground (which contains a mass grave for the Sheffielders who died in the epidemic of 1832).

Some people, according to an 1873 article in the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, believed that Jack was actually the ghost of a cholera victim who came back to haunt the world of the living. Supposedly, he would regularly return to this graveyard. Also, in one account from a carpenter who claimed to have been attacked, Jack summoned two ghosts to aid him when the victim tried to fight back.

Interestingly, he was sometimes described as an athletic (but not supernatural!) human being wearing a devil mask and a suit. In these stories, the giant leaps were explained by way of spring-loaded shoes.

The newspapers named a suspect: Lord Henry de la Poer Beresford, marquis of Waterford, who was already notorious in the area for his love of pranks. He would pull practical jokes on passersby, which were often needlessly cruel and outright dangerous. In 1838, The Times published an anonymous letter to the mayor of London, claiming that the local prankster nobleman was indeed the culprit, though hard evidence was never found. Some people formed armed mobs to patrol the streets in an attempt to catch Spring-Heeled Jack in the act, but they never succeeded.

(Image source 3: Vladimir Lemajic)

The character seemed to stick, however, and became popular in the ‘penny dreadfuls’: cheap, weekly fiction stories that often featured crime and action plots. In these books, Jack usually had horns and bat wings. He was usually a vengeful anti-hero rather than a villain, despite being based on a cryptid who assaulted women. In fact, he was often written as a hero of the working class in these books, fighting aristocrats who abused their power and money.

Spring-Heeled Jack’s popularity resulted in the appearance of several copycats by the mid-19th century: some of these were harmless pranksters, dressing up as a winged devil to scare and confuse people, while others would rob or assault their victims.

It is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction: though I doubt he actually performed even half of the feats ascribed to him, I don’t find it unlikely that there really was a masked robber. The foggy streets of 19th century London were no safe places for women, after all.

Sources:

Clarke, D., 2006, Unmasking Spring-heeled Jack: A case study of a 19th century ghost panic, Contemporary Legend n.s. 9: p.28-52. Mackley, J. S., 2016, Spring-heeled Jack: the Terror of London, Aeternum: the Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, 3(2), p. 1-20. 2324-4895.

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The horses of Aeneas [Greek mythology]

(Image: Aeneas Knocked Down by Diomedes, painting by Giulio Romano for the Palazzo Ducale. Notice the horses to the left of Aeneas)

In Homeric canon, when the gods took Ganymedes to Olympus for his exceptional beauty, his father Tros received horses as compensation from mighty Zeus himself. While this probably doesn’t make up for kidnapping one’s child, these animals were a special divine breed and were bred by the gods of Olympus. As such, they were better than all regular horses bred by mortals.

These heavenly horses were eventually passed down to Laomedes. King Anchises, who was presumably aware of their divine origin, managed to get his own mares to breed with them behind Laomedes’ back and without his permission, effectively stealing the breed and acquiring his own supernatural equines. When the mares gave birth to six supernaturally swift foals, Anchises gifted two of them to his son Aeneas, one of the heroes of Troy.

(Image: ‘The Battle of Diomedes and Aeneas’ by Jan van Orley, ca 1720)

Aeneas put them to good use in the Trojan war, having them drive his chariot into battle against the Greeks. Not much is known about their appearance, other than that their manes were white. Unfortunately for Aeneas, the horses were stolen by the Greek hero Diomedes, who was honestly kind of a dick throughout the book. They were entrusted to Deïpylus, who drove them back to the safety of the Greek camp.

Aeneas would have perished then and there, had not his divine mother Aphrodite intervened: she held a magic sheet of garment over him that sheltered him from harm before rescuing him from the battlefield.

Source: Homeros, Iliad, book 5, lines 255-329. Image source 1: Bridgeman Images Image source 2: The MET Museum

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Nineteenth century hypothesized lifeforms on the moon, life on the sun, and why they're all probably sinners:

(Image: the Lunarians from Georges Méliès’ 1902 silent movie ‘Le Voyage Dans la Lune’)

Is there life on the moon? It’s a question that humanity has been pondering for thousands of years. Thomas Dick, a Christian minister and astronomer, wrote in 1838 that he was certain of the existence of extra-terrestrial life. The existence of an incredible variety of lifeforms on Earth implies that God actively delights in bringing both life and enjoyment to otherwise dead worlds. He believed that God is always consistent in His creation, and therefore concluded that other worlds must be inhabited by living creatures as well.

He mentioned the existence of vegetation on the moon, which was a point of discussion among astronomers at the time, and did not deem it impossible that animal life existed on the lunar surface as well.

So what did Dick suppose these Lunarians looked like? Sadly, he never attempted to make hypotheses on the appearance or biology of these hypothetical aliens. But he likely assumed they resembled humans. Befitting his job as a church minister, Dick consistently tried to interpret every astronomical hypothesis in a strict biblical framework. And since humans are supposedly created in the image of God, we can assume that the Lunarians are, too.

(Image: Giant spiders spin a web between the moon and Venus at the command of the Lunar King Endymion, in ‘A True History’ from Lucianus of Samosata, 2nd century AD)

While his book did not discuss the appearance of these moon people, Dick did provide an extensive discussion on their moral character. He interpreted volcanoes as ‘agents of destruction’ and bringers of calamity, and therefore reasoned that they were divine punishments for humanity’s sins. As there weren’t any sins yet in Eden, there could not have been any volcanoes on the Earth at the time. And many astronomers at the time believed to have seen evidence of the existence of volcanoes on the moon. Therefore, he concluded that if there are volcanoes on the moon, the Lunarians must be sinners, or at least as sinful as the people from Earth.

Though it should be noted that Dick himself was not convinced by the supposed observations of volcanoes on the moon, instead believing that these were artifacts created by reflection of light from the earth.

If lunar people exist, then why not solar people? For obvious reasons, most astronomers at the time believed that there is no life on the sun (and, obviously, most astronomers still agree). Thomas Dick, however, pointed to the earlier works by Sir W. Herschel, who rejected the notion that it is impossible. Sunspots, which were interpreted by some astronomers as holes or openings, appear dark, meaning there is a layer of black matter underneath the solar surface. He rejected the notion that the sun is incredibly hot, because if it were, this ‘subsolarian’ matter would visibly glow with heat, and we can tell from empirical observation that it is dark.

In this model, the sun consists of a huge sphere of dark, unknown matter surrounded by two layers of ‘clouds’. The outer layer glows brightly and is the source of the light that illuminates our world. The inner layer protects the surface of the black sphere from these rays, maintaining a liveable temperature for whatever creatures live there.

(Image: the court of the Lunarian king in Le Voyage Dans la Lune, 1902)

If this all sounds ridiculous, that’s because it so obviously is ridiculous. But keep in mind that Dick was a die-hard creationist and believed that every celestial body was designed by an intelligent creator. 

He also points out that such creatures are likely intelligent and intellectual, as God would have wanted them to be able to appreciate the beauty of the worlds He created. In fact, he theorized that extraterrestrial creatures may be much smarter than humans: the gap in intelligence and wisdom between man and the lowliest lifeforms is vast, but that between humanity and God is even greater, so there is no reason to assume it is devoid of other living things.

Source: Dick, T., 1838, Celestial scenery; or, The wonders of the planetary system displayed, Harper & Brothers, 422 pp., p. 239-242, p. 264-266, p. 270-274, p. 348, p. 393-395.

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The Bahkauv [German folklore]

In the German city of Aachen, a local folktale concerns an aquatic monster that supposedly once inhabited the old drainage canal, specifically of the Büchel and Kaiser springs. The creature somewhat resembled a monstrous calf, so the locals took to calling it ‘Bahkauv’, meaning something like ‘creek calf’.

Accounts on the appearance of the Bahkauv tend to vary. While it always resembles a calf with monstrous characteristics, accounts disagreed on the details. Common characteristics for the Bahkauv are a thick shaggy fur, glowing eyes, sharp teeth, bear-like paws that ended in sharp talons, and a long tail that dragged behind it.

It was known to bite people: at least one account claims that a victim was bitten in the neck. It is also known that the monster was equipped with chains around its legs and neck. The rattling of these chains was often heard in the vicinity of the city’s waterways.

The Bahkauv was strictly nocturnal and preferred to attack drunkards at night. While there are accounts of the monster mauling its victims, it was actually more of a trickster than a real danger: the monster never killed people. Instead, it played a particular and supernatural prank: when the Bahkauv spotted a suitable victim, usually a drunk man trying to get home after a night out, the creature jumped on the victim’s back in order to be carried. As soon as the victim reached their home, the Bahkauv released him and disappeared. Interestingly, the creature would inexplicably become heavier if the victim tried to pray while carrying the unwanted rider. Conversely, if the victim cursed the monster, it would become lighter.

While this might seem like a strangely particular thing, the concept of a supernatural monster that hops on people’s backs and demands to be carried is actually a recurring trope in European folktales. In Germany, there are stories about a different bogeyman that does this, which is called Aufhocker. Usually, these unwanted piggyback riders have a wolf-like appearance but that is not always the case. In Austrian folklore, it was a witch, and yet another version featured an undead wandering spirit who needed to be carried to a church in order to redeem his soul.

Interestingly, it has been hypothesized in recent years that these mythological creatures were actually phantom-body connectomes, a neurological phenomenon in which the brain incorrectly believes that a heavy load is being carried, which is caused by the activation of the brain’s temporo-parietal junction. This would explain why a strangely specific premise is so common in folktales across several cultures.

For what it’s worth, the Bahkauv eventually disappeared. The locals theorized that when the entrances to the city’s underground waterways were closed, the creature ended up locked inside.

Sources: Braun, W. W., 2024, Sagenhaftes, Mythen, Märchen und Legenden aus Deutschen Landen und der Welt, BoD Books on Demand, 320 pp., p. 157. Lecouteux, C., 2016, Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, Mythology, and Magic. Armand, F., 2021, Aufhocker: Quand l’Identité Alien d’un de nos corps-fantômes se porte sur le dos, Caietele Echinox, 41 :85-99. (Image source 1: Evgeny Shvenk, illustration for the TTG ‘Cryptic Nature’) (Image source 2: Phasemoth)

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Sakarabru [Agni mythology]

In the religion of the Agni people, who live in Senegal in Guinea, Sakarabru is known as the demon of darkness. He is a very dangerous spirit.

Aside from his role as a demon of darkness, Sakarabru presides over the changing of the seasons, as well as the renewal of the moon. During these times, a dancing ritual is performed for this spirit.

Interestingly, while Sakarabru is a malicious creature and the Agni people greatly fear him, he can also be called upon to heal illness. In fact, he is known to administer justice as well.

In modern English, the words ‘god’, ‘demon’ and ‘spirit’ are usually associated with three distinct classes of supernatural beings, that sometimes but not usually overlap. But in many religions, this isn’t always the case. Sakarabru, for example, has been referred to as all three, because a being of worship isn’t always easily classifiable for translators.

Interestingly, Sakarabru did not originate in the indigenous mythology of the Agni people. He started out as the deity of the Yacasse village before being incorporated into the mainstream Agni religion.

His place of worship is a richly decorated hut with fetishes and with paintings of alligators and snakes on the walls, as these animals are associated with Sakarabru. The spirit itself is represented by a ball-shaped idol made of maize and grains, and the hut also contains a collection of egg shells, bones, wreaths and dried seeds.

I have noticed that depictions of Sakarabru (which are pretty rare to begin with) tend to show him without arms. I’m not actually sure where that came from, or if it was always a part of the Agni religion.

Sources: Graves, R. & Guirand, F., 1987, New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Crescent Books, New York, 479 pp., p. 472-473. (Image source: Robert Ingpen)

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The Flodder [Dutch folklore]

In Noord-Brabant, in the Netherlands, people would tell tales about supposed sightings of a dangerous swamp monster. Flodder is a large, hellish dog with black fur and four legs that end in frog-like webbed feet rather than paws. The creature is associated with hellfire, and it was said that when it shook water from its hide, you could hear the hot droplets sizzle when they hit the ground. He makes his home in the soggy swamp soil and only ventures above ground at night. His coming is often heralded by the sound of his barking, which has been described as resembling the noise of an otter, but short and hoarse and malicious.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what an otter sounds like.

Oddly, this creature is often referred to as ‘the flodder’ with an article and without a capital letter, as if it was a title rather than a name. The word ‘flodder’ is an old Dutch term for mud or mire, which is fitting for a swamp-dwelling monster.

Flodder was often sighted by smugglers at night. These encounters usually happened the same way: the victim would hear a panting noise before the monster jumped on their back, wrapping its four limbs around the victim’s body and pressing them to the ground with its weight. The victim usually blacks out and awakes the next morning, feverish and frightened on the cold swamp ground but otherwise unharmed. Not everyone was so lucky though: there is at least one account of a victim who was pressed into a swampy stream and drowned under the weight of the monster on his back. The man in question was a constable whom the locals convinced to kill Flodder, though needless to say, he did not succeed.

There is a story about a farmstead that the locals considered haunted, due to the strange phenomena happening there. One day, a farmer found a cat with pitch black fur and glowing fiery eyes sitting in a tree. The man asked the cat what it was doing there, upon which the animal replied ‘nothing, nothing at all!’ Hearing a talking animal frightened the farmer greatly, as cats are not usually capable of speaking.

The same farmstead was supposedly plagued by a werewolf, and people also claimed to have seen a black carriage flying through the sky.

Curiously, all of these hauntings would immediately cease whenever Flodder approached the farmstead. I don’t understand the significance of this. Perhaps other supernatural beings are as afraid of the Flodder as we are?

Sources: Sinninghe, J. R. W., 1980, Nederlands Sagenboek, Kruseman’s Uitgeversmaatschappij, Den Haag, 192 pp., p. 22- 26. Calisch, I. M., 1875, New complete dictionary of the English and Dutch languages, Volume 1, Campagne, 816 pp., p. 211. (Image source: Arnoud Paashuis, illustration for Nederlands Sagenboek)

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The Tornat spirits and the tale of Akamak [Inuit mythology]

Tornat or Tornait (singular: Tornak) are guardian spirits who can be called upon by Angakut (Inuit ‘shamans’) to aid, advise and protect them. An Angakuq in training must eventually communicate with Tornarsuk (literally ‘the Great Tornak’), a supremely powerful spirit, to bind the lower Tornat spirits to help them. It is through the aid of these spirits that Angakut can cure diseases, control the weather, and cast other spells. He cannot call himself a true Angakuq until Tornarsuk gifts him a powerful guardian Tornak, and until he is able to summon it by himself. These guardian Tornat come in three kinds: those that take the form of a human, stone spirits, and bear spirits, with the last one supposedly being the most powerful.

But there is great variety among the other different kinds of Tornat. Inue, the spirits that are inherent to the land (a bit like the Japanese Kami) can be made into tornat. Animal spirits and the souls of deceased humans could also be Tornat, and an Angakuq had multiple Tornat bound to his service, usually for different purposes. Kivingak, for example, is a kind of Tornak who appeared as a sentient iceberg.

One such story tells of an Angakuq named Akamak (also called Kuvitsina). When he was kayaking along the shore, when a rock suddenly opened, seemingly by itself, as if to invite him in. Akamak obliged and entered the crevice, but soon found himself surrounded by strange dwarves. These were Ingnersuit, malicious supernatural creatures who were greatly feared among humans. They easily overwhelmed him and smashed his kayak to pieces. Akamak was dragged into the house of the dwarves, where they cut off his nose. Knowing that he could never overpower these creatures by himself, the Angakuq summoned his guardian spirit: a Tornak named Napatarak.

Napatarak was enraged and shouted at the dwarves. ‘What have you done to this Angakuq? You should not hate the mortals, no, you should not hate the people of the surface. In fact, you should respect them and hold them in high regard! For unlike us, they capture and kill the large animals that we fear so much, like the whales! They build harpoons with floating bladders, and other weapons, to kill these animals!’

The spirit cut the ropes that bound Akamak and gave him a protective amulet. The man wasted no time in fleeing, and summoned another Tornak: this one was named Nepingasuak. This spirit cast a spell on the pieces of the smashed kayak by breathing on it, and the kayak repaired itself. Nepingasuak then repaired Akamak’s nose, magically gluing it to his face. He did not do a perfect job though – the nose was a bit crooked.

What I find really interesting here is what Napatarak told the dwarves. He suggests a kind of rock-paper-scissors mechanic: the supernatural creatures (spirits, dwarves) are afraid of the large natural animals, which are hunted and killed by the mortal humans. Humanity, in turn, is mostly helpless against the supernatural creatures. Each has their place.

Inuit religion has an important distinction between Angakut summoning spirits to cast magic, and witchcraft, the latter of which is considered extremely evil and taboo. Witches (who can be both male and female, like the Angakut) do not get their power from Tornarsuk, and therefore their magic is never ‘approved’ by the spirits. This ‘black magic’ is usually referred to as Ilisineq or Kusuineq. This practice strictly serves the user, as opposed to the magic an Angakuq wields, which is supposed to be in service to the community.

Interestingly, it is theorized that this ‘witchcraft’ is actually a remnant from an earlier religion, which was demonized and eventually regarded as ‘black magic’.

Sources:

Rink, H. J., 1875, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, with a sketch of their habits, religion, language and other peculiarities, William Blackwood and Sons, 472 pp.

Dixon-Kennedy, M., 1998, Native American Myth & Legend, Brockhampton Press, 288 pp., p. 19, p. 247.

(Image source 1: Juliette Cousin)

(Image source 2: Lars Grant-West, illustration for Magic: The Gathering)

(Image source 3: Lorenzo Mastroianni, illustration for Magic: The Gathering)

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Japan's tiny rag dragons: the Shiro-Uneri [Japanese folklore; yokai]

Toriyama Sekien’s yokai encyclopaedias were a series of 4 books (each subdivided into 3 volumes) published in the 18th century. The first two collected commonly known monsters and creatures from Japanese folklore, and the third has entries on more obscure creatures.

The fourth book is somewhat different, as Sekien himself invented most of the creatures he described in this volume. The narrative thread throughout the book is that Sekien supposedly encountered all of these monsters in a particularly strange dream about a palace filled with wondrous creatures.

Being published in these books did, however, give many of these creatures a presence in Japanese stories and media, eventually turning them into the folklore creatures they were originally presented as.

Among these is the Shiro-uneri, whose name means something like ‘white twister’. When an old rag acquires a certain age, it comes to life and gains sentience. It then gains a draconic appearance and turns into a small white dragon made of cloth.

Though the dragon seems to be Sekien’s invention, he did build upon an old belief that is common in Japanese folklore: when a tool is used for a very long time, it can come to life. Tools that have been properly cared for will gain a certain sense of wisdom and respect, while objects that have been abused or prematurely discarded will turn into malicious creatures. We can assume this applies to the Shiro-uneri as well.

Source: Yoda, H. and Alt, M., 2016, Japandemonium Illustrated: the Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, 319 pp., p. 252.

(Image source 1: Huàshi Hào Yuan)

(Image source 2: Toriyama Sekien)

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The Kalku and the Wakufu [Mapuche mythology]

Among the indigenous Chilean Mapuche people, Kalku (also Calcu) are sorcerers who command the power of spirits. These spellcasters are usually, but not exclusively, malicious.

They contrast with the Machi, which are benevolent shamans. If a Kalku curses you, you can enlist the aid of a Machi shaman.

The source of a Kalku’s power is their Wakufu: these are enigmatig, spirit-like beings who are deeply malicious. They exist to disturb the balance of the world. In fact, they differ from people and regular spirits in that Wakufu do not have souls.

The relationship between the Kalku and the Wakufu is mutually beneficial. The sorcerer can enable a Wakufu spirit to possess a victim’s body, in order to curse the victim with disease or to kill them. Wakufu are also known to hunt the spirits of deceased humans and enslave them for their Kalku. If a Kalku dies, their children can inherit the Wakufu that was bonded to them. In fact, most Kalkus have inherited the role from a parent, though this is not always the case. There are stories of Machi shamans who break the Admapu, the cultural and religious taboos of the Mapuche people, and descend into evil to become Kalkus.

Source:

Cruz, E. A., 2010, The Grand Araucanan Wars (1541-1883) in the Kingdom of Chile, Xlibris Corporation, 688 pp.

(Image source: Luke Magwaza on Artstation)