if you think about it, a lot of classical japanese lit is about putting monks in situations

My university library’s copy of R.S. Loomis’ The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, was copiously marked up by a long-ago undergrad.

“Weird book” is definitely my favorite piece of marginalia.

Amazon and Centaur

Franz Stuck

The wumpus is a mythical beast from frontier folklore, so it’s definitely public domain.

Anyone else lowkey terrified everytime you go in a public place with a mask that you hallucinated the entire pandemic and you're gonna look ridiculous wearing this mask for no reason 😷

“Why are you wearing that mask?”

“Because of the Pandemic.”

“The Pandemic ended a hundred years ago.”

(crumbles to dust)

Monster in my Pocket. These things were my childhood. I’m devastated I don’t have them anymore.

(Image source.)

mantises are the closest living thing to centaurs

it checks out but dont ever say it again

modern gods are among us

Manabozho, the great white rabbit - 1918 - via Internet Archive

He’s seen some shit.  Most likely the Great War.

Money Trees

Hammering coins into trees is an ancient tradition in the north west part of the UK in Cumbria and the north of Wales in the village of Portmeirion. According to a research conduction completed by the BCC, this practice is said to date back to the early 18th century in Scotland. It was believed that if people hammered florins into trees, it would cure them of their sickness. 

Mythology from my Country aka Tired of European based Mythology

We all love dragons (even though they are not from Europe only), we all love fairies, nimphs, trolls, unicorns, and many others. But you know what? eff them all. They are not my mythological creatures, they are not familiar to me, they do not belong to me. As a reader, it gets tiring reading about them in every fantasy book and many times I wonder, if you’re creating a whole new world, why on earth are you using the same old creatures?

That’s why I’m posting some mythological creatures from my country and its regions. There are many more than the ones that follow but these ones are my favourites and they are different from the ones we all know.

Behold, the creatures that used to haunt my nightmares when I was a kid.

El Invunche

Once a child, now a monster. El Invunche is the first born given to witches or abducted by them. He or she works as a butler but they don’t look like one. The process begins with breaking the right leg of the child and wrap it around their own back, unguents are used to make the hair grows thicker and their tongue is cut in two. The witches feed the child with meat, dead people’s meat. El Invunche can’t speak, they only emits unpleasant sounds. I wouldn’t go alone hiking in the woods, because you can’t see a Invunche but they can see you, and if they haven’t eaten enough your bones might end up in the Witches’ cave.

El Caleuche

Caleuche is the name given to a ship. A ghost ship. I know there are many ghost ships sailing around the seven seas. But this one is commanded by the devil himself (that’s what I once heard). Witches and wizards are the crew while unfortunate souls do the hard work. Some of them are living humans beings with a leg wrapped to their backs so they can’t run, some others were dead until they stepped on El Caleuche and came back to life. None of us can see this ship, to our eyes it’d look like a piece of wood floating in the sea. It never sails during the day, only at night where an endless party takes place. There’s the idea that El Caleuche is a concious being, a ghost ship given feelings by Millalobo, the most powerful creature if the oceans. (The name, Caleuche, comes from the mapudungun kalewtun, to transform, and che, people)

El Tue Tue

El Tue Tue is a bird, but not any bird. Is a head whose ears are now wings. And is not any head either, is the head of a witch or a wizard. Their soul leaves the body and the head splits from it, then they fly to meet with other witches and wizards. Their name comes from their screams “Tué tué!”. If you hear one, tell them you don’t have nor bread nor salt, because if you invite them for dinner next day, they’ll show up in your front door as a young woman or as an old one. Some of them don’t go to these meetings, instead they fly over someone’s house to cause damage or to announce a death. Before the transformation they have to apply a lotion and carry with them another one, this way they can go back to their human form. It is told that if they say: No God, no Holy Mary, the devil gives them more power. I’ll keep my ears open tonight, in case a Tue Tue is around

El Alicanto

Another bird. An actual bird. A golden bird. It feeds woth gold and silver and many men have followed the Alicanto trying to find a golden or a silver mine. But you must not be seen, otherwise, you will be fooled by the Alicanto. If your desires of fortune are too desperate the Alicanto will take you to a cliff where you’ll find certain death.

La Cuca

Half woman, half cow. Wanders around to enter into a house and take people from their bed to place them somewhere else without any harm. How she became what she is now? No one knows. But her face is always covered and you can’t hear her coming.

El Cuero

The literal translation would be The Leather, but we’ll keep calling it Cuero. Lives in pools, lakes and the seashore, but preferably in small and dark gaps. It has the form of a cattle leather. Just a few have seen its head, only to find tentacles ending in red eyes. Underneath its body there’s the mouth and when it feeds it sucks the blood out of its prey. Be careful when walking or swimming in these places, El Cuero has the ability to control the tides, raising the waters to wrap its victim and to drag it to the bottom of the pond. To get rid of El Cuero, if you can, you’ll need the help of a Machi, where they blind it using caulker.

These are the versions I know about these mythological creatures. There are many others versions and there are more creatures to know. Many of them are directly related to a culture. El Alicanto is found in the Northen region of my country where mines are more common than in the Southern region, where El Invunche, El Caleuche, El Cuero and El Tue Tue are found. The last ones (I’d leave El Cuero behind) have elements of two different cultures. Many mythological creatures have a shared ancestry, where two or more cultures collide (usually) a long time ago. 

The natural course of mythology is the story to change, some elements are removed, others are added. The same when someone tells a story. Use different elementes, try new things, you might end up surprising not only yourself but many people with the things that are in your mind.

L.-

Polyphemus: Who the fuck are you?

Odysseus: Who the fuck are you?

Polyphemus: I asked you first.

Odysseus: I asked you second.

Now I’m really wondering what this book was.  It’s not the Carol Rose or Arthur Cotterell book. 

I checked it out from the school library in fourth or fifth grade (1992-94) and it was written for roughly that age group.  The illustrations were black and white.  I remember an ink drawing of a giant and a photograph of a model of a dragon in a cave.  Besides the aforementioned entries, there was one for the genie, which said their correct name was “jinn.”

One thing I remember was that the aigamuxa entry ended with something like, “Nobody knows how they kept sand from getting in their eyes.”  In the early ’00s I went to a website about mythical creatures that transcribed parts of the book, including that cute little comment.

Does anyone remember the book I’m describing?

All the same, please tell cartoons to stop turning Anansi into Shelob. It’s like turning Batman into Dracula! 

Also stop giving deer antlers to wendigos. Stick to the frostbitten corpses you COWARDS

Some authentic descriptions of the wendigo are not only a frostbitten corpse but like a hundred feet tall with popped-out eyeballs that endlessly leak blood and I’ve just never seen one in any comic or anime or video game even remotely that cool or scary

Sometimes they’re giant ice golems with the transformed people inside.  I wrote a post about this on my main blog.