This page groups mythical creatures by whether anyone has ever claimed they were real. Wikipedia defines a legendary creature as one that "may be featured in historical accounts before modernity, but has not been scientifically shown to exist." Browsing by historicity lets a visitor separate a creature once treated as a real animal from one always understood as symbolic.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingFoxes credited with long life, magical power and the ability to take human form. The type has separate developments across East Asia - the Chinese huli jing and the Japanese kitsune among them - which are related but are not one being. 2 Learn More
The Fox Spirits
This small group holds a fox spirit, the shapeshifting fox of East Asian folklore (the huli jing, kitsune or kumiho), a being of magic and cunning able to take human form, at once alluring and dangerous.
The browser will find the figure the atlas classes here. The entry describes its form and mythological role in the tradition that tells of it.
Historicity
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore
Michael Dylan Foster, University of California Press, 2015the chapter on kitsune
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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