The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A–Z of Fantastic Beings from Myth and Magic. John Matthews
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hemisphere, the Southern Cross forms the toes of a great ostrich in South American star-lore, while in Brazil it is seen as a huge ray fish. The Milky Way is the Ostrich Way for the Australian Aborigines while for the Hopi of North America it is the stream of stars that Coyote let out of the pot. The Polynesians see it as the Long-Blue-Cloud-Eating shark. Legends of the Pleiades are very vivid. The Ibos of Africa, like the Dyaks of Polynesia, see them as the hen with chickens, while to the Greeks they were a roost of doves. An Onandaga Indian story from North America tells us how dancing children became animals who formed the Pleiades.
While their elders set up camp around Bear Lake, the children amused themselves by making up dances that imitated animals, especially the birds like Hawk, Eagle and Falcon. One day, an old silver-haired man attired in white feathers came to warn them to stop, but they ignored him. The next day the children begged their parents for food while they were out dancing, but their elders told them they must come home to eat like everyone else. After several days of going without their dinners, the children grew light-headed from lack of food. As they danced, so their dancing feet began to leave the ground. They felt strange, as if something was happening to them, but they realized that they must not look down if they were to keep dancing.
An old woman gathering firewood saw the children rising like smoke and called after them to come back, but they kept circling into the sky. She rushed to their parents who piteously begged the children to return. Only one of the children looked down and fell through the sky like a falling star. The rest of the children reached the stars and became the constellation we call the Pleiades, though the Onandaga call it the Ootk-watah.
CENTAUR
The centaurs had the upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse. They were the offspring of Centaurus, a son of Apollo and Stilbe, one of the Mares of Magnesium. The cento part of their name means ‘to prick’, ‘to goad’ or ‘to wound’, and they were certainly known as wild, brutal and untameable creatures, all except the wise and gentle Cheiron; tauro refers to the ‘bull’, although centaurs were really half equine in nature and appearance. Centauros was the offspring of Ixion who visited Juno in the form of a cloud. But instead of giving birth to something divine, she bore ‘the most unblest of the Graces’. Centaurs frequented the mountains of Thessaly, where they retained an orgiastic, sensuous and unruly reputation, especially when they descended upon the wedding party of Lapiths, Greeks from the north of Thessaly, who had gathered to celebrate the marriage of Pirithous. ‘The Rape of the Lapiths’ showing centaurs killing, raping and overcoming the Lapiths was a famous subject depicted in many tapestries and paintings in later Renaissance times. Their passionate and untamed nature made them suitable associates for the Bacchic or Dionysian revels, and centaurs were depicted on tombs and funerary monuments as underworld guardians.
Xenophon called centaurs Hippocentaurs, because of their extremely horsy nature. The centaur with the bow and arrow remains the emblem of the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius. Some have seen similarities between centaurs and the Gandhavas, the cloud-horses of Vedic tradition. Christian iconography used centaurs to depict the
When Hercules was upon his fourth labour, he was welcomed by the centaur Pholos who was the guardian of a great jar, a gift intended for Hercules’ refreshment, which had been given by Dionysus. Pholos did not know that it was wine in the jar, having never tasted it. Once the jar was opened, all the centaurs from miles around were drawn by its intoxicating and alluring scent. The centaurs fell into a drinking bout, growing wilder and more intoxicated on the wine, becoming combative and dangerous. Hercules had to defend himself and so he drew out one of the arrows, poisoned by the blood of the Hydra. Aiming at an unruly centaur, Hercules accidentally struck gentle Cheiron. He tried in vain to save the wise centaur with healing herbs but Cheiron was pierced in the knee and could neither recover nor die, and so he retired with his incurable wound to his dark cave. He suffered for many years until he offered himself to Zeus as a substitute for the tormented Prometheus who had been sentenced to have his liver torn out daily for the sin of stealing fire from heaven. As Pholos was trying to pull out a poisoned arrow from a fellow’s corpse, the bolt pierced his foot and killed him too. Hercules buried Pholos and continued on his way to Mount Erymanthos.
devil aiming fiery arrows at the ungodly, attempting to stimulate man’s animal nature and rouse his passions to commit acts of lewd indecency and harbour heretical thoughts. But other theologians saw centaurs as symbols of Christ’s mortal sufferings who were allowed to take revenge upon those who had betrayed him to his death. In CS. Lewis’s Christian allegories, the Narnia books, such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe, centaurs are part of the train of Aslan, the great lion king, the most notable of which, Glenstorm, acts as the herald of Prince Caspian in the book of the same name.
The magical powers of centaurs enable human beings to unlock repressed desires and thoughts. They unchain instinctual forces that have been imprisoned or denied, but you must never offer them wine unless you are prepared to take the consequences! (See Cheiron, Eurytion, Nessus, Pholos.)
CENTAURO-TRITON
In classical mythology, the Centauro-Triton was a composite creature which was essentially a centaur with the dorsal fin and tail of a dolphin, able to go over and under the sea.
CENTICORE
This is the name that the French give to the creature known elsewhere in European heraldic tradition as the Yale. It has the breast and thighs of a lion, the ears, mouth and hooves of a horse, the muzzle of a bear and the voice of a man. The classical historian, Solinus, wrote that it came from the plains of India.
CENTIMANES
In Roman mythology, this is the alternative name given to the Hecatoncheires, the hundred-headed giants, Kottus, Gyges and Briareus. The Centimanes helped the Olympian gods conquer the Titans, becoming their jailors lest they escape and let loose chaos upon the world once again.
CENTIPEDE
In Japanese legend, the giant centipede was a monstrous insect which lived upon cattle and humans in the northern mountains. The people of that locality sent messengers to help rid them of its terrible depredations. The hero Hidesato hunted it, successfully shooting an arrow through the centipede’s head. In return for his services, the Dragon King of Lake Biwa gave him an eternally-renewing bag of rice.
CEPHUS
At Memphis, Cephus was a creature which originated in Ethiopia and was worshipped by the Egyptians. Cephus had the head of a satyr and the body of a bear.
CERASTES
The two-horned desert snake of Egypt. The name cerastes was used by Greeks for the African snake which has a horny protuberance over each eye. Herodotus held that it was harmless, but Aristotle suggested that the horny parts over each eye might be horns. Pliny wrote that the Cerastes buried itself in the sand and moved its horns to attract birds. Like many other snakes, it was believed to be a detector of poison in food and drink, and to protect people from the evil eye.
CERBERUS
Cerberus was the three-headed (sometimes fifty-headed) dog with a serpent’s mane found in classical Greek tradition who guarded the entrance to Hades. His task was to prevent the living from entering the underworld – a task he fulfilled except in the cases of Orpheus, Aeneas and Odysseus, each of who tricked their way into the land of the dead and out again on their own particular errands. Aeneas had the help of a sibyl who drugged Cerberus with honeyed opiate while