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Tradition

This page groups mythical creatures by the wider artistic and religious tradition that pictures them. Wikipedia notes that "in medieval art, animals, both real and mythical, played important roles." Browsing by tradition lets a visitor read every creature from one cultural tradition together.

Facts

Overview

What Defines This Grouping

A cover term. "Spirit" is a translator's word: the jinn of Islamic cosmology, for one, are a created and corporeal species rather than disembodied spirits, and the beings collected here belong to unrelated traditions with little in common but the English label. 2

Peoples and Traditions Covered

Algonquian-speaking nations of the northern woodlands and subarctic - distinct peoples, not one tradition - tell of the being English spells "wendigo". Basil Johnston writes of the Anishinaabe wiindigoo and of the ethics of hunger it carries. 3

Peoples and Traditions Covered

Islamic: the jinn are a created species named in the Qur'an, with the ifrit and the qarin among their kinds - part of Islamic cosmology rather than folklore about ghosts. 2Islam

Sources

1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree

Category: Mythical Creatures

2. Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn

Amira El-Zein, Syracuse University Press, 2009on the jinn as a created and corporeal order of beingsView the Source

3. The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway

Basil Johnston, HarperCollins, 1995The Manitous, on the wiindigooView the Source

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