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 GroupingGreat snakes and snake-beings, collected by body-form as the comparative folklore indexes collect them. The serpent carries opposite values between traditions, so the group is a shape and not a meaning. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredEuropean: the basilisk descends from a Latin natural-history report - Pliny's serpent of Cyrenaica - and lives in books and bestiaries rather than in any cult. 3 Peoples and Traditions CoveredGreek: the Hydra of Lerna is a many-headed water-snake killed by Herakles as the second of his labours. 4 Peoples and Traditions CoveredHindu: nagas are serpent beings of waters, treasure and the underworld who receive cult, and they appear in Buddhist and Jain narrative as well as Hindu. 5 Peoples and Traditions CoveredNorse: Jormungandr, the Midgard serpent, encircles the inhabited world and is Thor's adversary at Ragnarok. 6 Learn More
The Serpents
This group holds mythical serpents, the great snakes and snake-beings that recur across the world's mythologies as figures of chaos, wisdom, fertility, guardianship or cosmic threat. The serpent is one of the most widespread and charged symbols in religious imagination.
The browser will find the serpent figures the atlas gathers. The entries describe each creature's mythological role, noting the very different meanings serpents carry between traditions.
Historicity
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends
Stith Thompson, Indiana University Press, 1958B0-B99, Mythical Animals
3. Naturalis Historia (Natural History)
4. The Library (Bibliotheca)
Pseudo-Apollodorus, (various editions)the second labour of HeraclesView the Source 5. Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008the article on nagas and serpent-worshipView the Source 6. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs
John Lindow, Oxford University Press, 2001the entry on JormungandrView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.