In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, is a sea serpent, the middle child of the giantess Angrboða and the god Loki. According to the Prose Edda, Odin took Loki’s three children by Angrboða, the wolf Fenrir, Hel and Jörmungandr, and tossed Jörmungandr into the great ocean that encircles Midgard. The serpent grew so large that he was able to surround the earth and grasp his own tail. As a result, he received the name of the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent. When he lets go, the world will end. Jörmungandr’s arch-enemy is the god Thor.
4:29 pm • 8 April 2012 • 662 notes
The lake of fire appears, in both ancient Egyptian and Christian religion, as a place of after-death punishment of the wicked. The phrase is used in four verses of the Book of Revelation.
An image in the Papyrus of Ani (ca. 1250 BC), a version of the Book of the Dead, has been described as follows:
The scene shows four cynocephalous baboons sitting at the corners of a rectangular pool. On each side of this pool is a flaming brazier. The pool’s red colour indicates that it is filled with a fiery liquid, reminding one of the “Lake of Fire” frequently mentioned in the Book of the Dead.
4:25 pm • 2 April 2012 • 17 notes
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology.
He is also the Liberator, whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the powerful. Those who partake in his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. His cult is also a “cult of the souls”; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.
12:31 pm • 30 December 2011 • 74 notes
In Scandinavian folklore, the Huldra is a seductive forest creature. Male hulders do appear, called Huldrekall. Like the female counterpart, the huldrkall is a shapeshifter who often lures girls under a fair countenance (Glamour). Both male and female hulder could be revealed as rather ugly when the glamour was lifted from them.
In some traditions, the huldra lures men into the forest to have sexual intercourse with her, rewarding those who satisfy her and often killing those who do not. The Norwegian huldra is a lot less bloodthirsty and may simply kidnap a man or lure him into the underworld. She sometimes steals human infants and replaces them with her own ugly huldrebarn. In some cases, the intercourse resulted in a child, being presented to the unknowing father. In some cases, she forces him to marry her.
12:52 pm • 30 November 2011 • 352 notes
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.
According to Hyginus, sirens were fated to live only until the mortals who heard their songs were able to pass by them.
12:45 pm • 25 November 2011 • 179 notes
Kraken are legendary sea monsters of giant proportions said to have dwelt off the coasts of Norway and Iceland.
Early stories about Kraken, from Norway in the twelfth century, refer to a creature the size of an island. Even in 1752, when the Bishop of Bergen, Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, wrote his Natural History of Norway he described the Kraken as a “floating island” one and a half miles across. He also noted: “It seems these are the creatures’s arms, and, it is said, if they were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom.”
12:30 pm • 22 September 2011 • 57 notes
Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud (completed between 500 and 700 AD/CE), who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons in Mesopotamian texts.
In Jewish folklore, from the 8th–10th Century Alphabet of Ben Sira onwards Lilith becomes Adam’s first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same earth as Adam. This contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam’s ribs. Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael.
12:30 pm • 29 August 2011 • 176 notes
Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of the Underworld, stopped the wailing ghosts who wanted to return to the Earth above. As well as the three heads (all dripping with venomous drool), Cerberus had a serpent’s tail, a mane of hissing snakes and lion feet with massive claws.
One of the great hero Heracles’s tasks was to steal him and deliver him to King Eurytheus of Tiryns. Eurystheus was a cowardly man, and as soon as he saw his new pet, he hid in an olive oil jar. Heracles had to take Cerberus all the way back to his master, the dark God Hades. The poisonous aconite flower is said to have grown from Cerberus’s slobber.
12:31 pm • 28 August 2011 • 26 notes
The Scandinavian Goddess of Hel rules the underworld named after herself. Her plate is Hunger and her sliverwear is Famine. Her appearance is described as half-black and half-flesh colored, and as further having a gloomy, down-cast appearance.
12:30 pm • 25 August 2011 • 22 notes
Baba Yaga, known by various other names, is a haggish or witchlike character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant pestle, kidnaps (and presumably eats) small children, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs.
According to Russian folklore, Baba Yaga dwells, in the words of the preface to Alexander Pushkin’s fantasy poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, in a “cabin on chicken legs… with no windows and no doors”. Baba Yaga herself usually uses the chimney to fly in and out on her mortar. The door sometimes appears at the other side of the hut; to see it, a hero should say “Hut, O hut, turn your back to the woods, your front to me” and thus force the cabin to turn around and discover the door.
Baba Yaga is sometimes shown as an antagonist, and sometimes as a source of guidance; there are stories in which she helps people with their quests, and stories in which she kidnaps children and threatens to eat them. Seeking out her aid is usually portrayed as a dangerous act. An emphasis is placed on the need for proper preparation and purity of spirit, as well as basic politeness. It is said she ages one year every time she is asked a question, which may explain her reluctance to help. This effect, however, can be reversed with a special blend of tea made with blue roses.
6:00 pm • 23 August 2011 • 140 notes
