The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A–Z of Fantastic Beings from Myth and Magic

Whose Account Counts?

In the exploration and classification of magical creatures, who decides what creature is real or unreal? Who observes them, and why? What do they say about an animal? Whose account is authoritative? The poem The Six Blind Men and the Elephant by the 19th-century American John Godfrey Saxe is a children’s favourite, based upon a Sufi fable. As the six blind sages feel the unknown object before them with their questing hands, they try hard to determine what kind of beast it really is. As they each feel the side, tusk, trunk, leg, ear and tail of the elephant, the sages think they have found, respectively, a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan and a rope. The moral concludes:

‘So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean. And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!’

Very many of the reporters of magical creatures are often as well equipped as the Six Men from Hindoostan above who have no notion of what they are talking about. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century is perhaps the most notorious non-eye-witness of them all, relying upon the testimony of others to speak of animals that even the original observers did not linger to describe too carefully. What Pliny and others have observed (or not actually witnessed) is similar to the half-truths and observations that we make about all the animals around us in the natural world. One of the reasons we believe animals behave in certain ways is due to our lack of patience or to the rationalist or fabulist’s fall-back which conveniently explains away why a thing is so. The real observer of the natural world soon learns a better truth, although may still not always understand what is being witnessed.

It is only recently, for example, that scientists have learned that whale-song is not just about communicating with other whales but about the practical ultrasonic mapping of coastlines and sea beds by which whales steer their course. Yet, within our own lifetime, we have heard the most fabulist explanations of whale-song which have inspired composers such as Alan Hovhaness (whose And God Created the Whale includes whale-voices with orchestral backing) or films like Star Trek 4 where the very real environmental concerns of the 1980s impinge on the fictional future of the Galactic Empire.

The sources of this book are varied. Where possible we have gone to the first tellers of tales as much as to the more recent accounts. Many of these early reporters lived at a time when only the known world was mapped. The uncharted regions, as in many mariners’ maps of the sea, sported monsters that kept people at bay. Some cultures maintained a policy of exclusion, allowing no foreigners to step into their territory, much as China did until only recently. Medieval explorers and travellers such as Marco Polo (c. 1250-1323) and Sir John Mandeville (1300-72) returned with accounts of things unknown to Europeans, animals and customs that were indeed magical and fabulous. Whereas Marco Polo actually did travel to China and was in the service of Kublai Khan, Mandeville only travelled to the Middle East, although he reported creatures in regions beyond such as Africa and the Orient.

The main classical source which everyone in the ancient world consulted for matters of natural history were the writings of the philosopher Aristotle, who attempted to classify all animals in the 4th century BC. This, in turn, influenced another important work – the Physiologus which was not a book as such but rather a collection of lore compiled in the melting pot of ancient wisdom that was the city of Alexandria from a variety of classical and Biblical sources reinterpreted by Christian clerics. The word physiologus simply meant ‘a naturalist’. Over many transcriptions of manuscripts, copyists misunderstood the phrase ‘the naturalist says…’ as an actual person called Physiologus! This lore became the progenitor of the many medieval bestiaries that circulated across the centuries. These were, in the words of T.H. White, ‘a kind of naturalist’s scrapbook which has grown with the addition of several hands’. These beautifully illustrated bestiaries are a delight to behold, full of fantastic creatures that in many cases only the clerical imagination could devise.

Other important resources include the 3rd-century Roman historian Aelian, who wrote a On the Characteristics of Animals that included some far from natural creatures; the marvellous Herodotus, (c. 484 BC) whose skilful storytelling was only outstripped by his imagination; and the great Diodorus Siculus, (c. 44 BC) who wrote a Universal History in 40 volumes which covered the period from the creation to 60 BC and included many of the most strange and fascinating beasts.

While for the most part we referred to authoritative and well-researched sources, we also listened to that mischievous creature ‘common report’ which continues to tell tales of hearsay and amazing encounters between humans and magical creatures, such as the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster, both of which have a well-attested lineage. We have always tried to use accounts by people who were indigenous to the countries and regions where such creatures have shown themselves. These myths have both the primacy of local report as well as a depth of metaphor and meaning. They also hold that humans and animals are part of a sacred continuum of life, not living in separate worlds.

Magical Creatures – An Extinct Species?

The extreme rationality of our time has led magical creatures to the very brink of extinction, engulfed in shoals of disbelief. Whenever such terrible times come round, there is usually a corresponding defence and rallying of forces. The magical creatures that once so occupied the imaginations of adult scholars of all ages, had become merely the stuff of children’s stories, suitable for infants and fanciful people of little intelligence. Just when it seemed that all magical creatures were ‘only imagination’, the very imagination that society so spurns came to the rescue. In literature and in film, magical and fabulous creatures began to flourish and spread once more. From the monster movies of Godzilla and King Kong through to Jurassic Park, from the horror films of the Wolf Man through to the zombies of Night of the Living Dead, and the successive school terms of Hogwarts where Harry Potter and friends learn more about griffins, dragons and the practicalities of dealing with pixies, mandrakes and serpents.

Are there yet more magical creatures about whom we as yet know nothing, animals and other beings that are still about to reveal themselves? If we look at the evidences of cryptozoology websites dedicated to sightings of unknown animals, we find many new creatures everyday, such as the Moth Man, the Chupacabras (Goatsucker) and many others whom we don’t yet rightly know. Not all the magical creatures were described by Pliny the Elder or the bestiaries of the Physiologus, nor are all species pinned down and classified by naturalists. Our evolutional history is still being written, as the Epilogue demonstrates; while in the realm of the imagination we have only to look at the species invented by the fertile mind of George Lucas in his Star Wars films to see how new creatures continue to appear.

Despite our sophistication and civilization, our electric light and concrete roads, not all creatures are domestic, friendly, tamed or under our control. When darkness falls, when the sidewalks fall into shadow, on the lonely roadside, in the mountain passes, rustling in the trees, bubbling mysteriously in the waters, other creatures lurk. Some we do not see, some we do not wish to be seen by, some make us hurry onwards.

We believe that life finds many forms and will seek its unfolding evolution in ways that we cannot yet dream. Despite its extent, this book is a work in progress, a report of magical creatures whose numbers increase and decrease on a daily basis. Those that we believe to be dead and gone are not really extinct – they merely slip sideways into the Otherworld to haunt our imaginations, choosing their moment of reappearance. New composites and creations have yet to appear, wondrous, fabulous, magical. As you close this book at the end of the day, laying your head upon your pillow, what magical creatures will dance out of the darkness to enter your dreams? For in our dreams and imaginations, there is no ‘extinct’ or ‘ yet-to-be’, only an eternal present where all creatures meet together.