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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 17, 2019 21:46:36 GMT -5
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 0:12:13 GMT -5
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 3:34:34 GMT -5
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 3:46:38 GMT -5
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 17:49:23 GMT -5
calcars
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 17:52:06 GMT -5
Nymphs
A nymph in ancient Greek folklore is a supernatural being associated with many other minor female deities that are often associated with the air, seas, woods, water or particular locations or landforms. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate or maintain Nature (natural forces deified and considered as a sentient being) for the environments where they live, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young, and graceful maidens. They were not necessarily immortal, but lived many years before they died.
They are often divided into various broad subgroups, such as the Meliae (nymphs of ash trees), the Naiads (nymphs of rivers and streams), the Nereids (nymphs of calm seas), and the Oreads (nymphs of mountains).
Nymphs often feature in many classic works of art, literature, mythology and in fiction. Since medieval times, nymphs are sometimes popularly associated, or even confused, with the mythical or spiritual fairies.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 17:54:13 GMT -5
IMP
An imp is a mythological being similar to a fairy or demon, frequently described in folklore and superstition. The word may perhaps derive from the term ympe, used to denote a young grafted tree.
Imps are often described as mischievous more than seriously threatening, and as lesser beings rather than more important supernatural beings. The attendants of the devil are sometimes described as imps. They are usually described as lively and having small stature.
Originating from Germanic folklore the imp was a small lesser demon. Unlike the Christian faith and stories, demons in Germanic legends were not necessarily always evil. Imps were often mischievous rather than evil or harmful and in some regions they were attendants of the gods
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 17:57:39 GMT -5
Incubus
An incubus is a fiend in male form who, according to mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleeping women in order to engage in sexual activity with them. Its female counterpart is a succubus. Salacious tales of incubi and succubi have been told for many centuries in traditional societies. Some traditions hold that repeated sexual activity with an incubus or succubus may result in the deterioration of health, mental state, or even death.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 17:58:02 GMT -5
Spoorns
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 17:58:32 GMT -5
Men-in-the-oak
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:00:21 GMT -5
Hell-wains
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:01:02 GMT -5
Fire-drakes
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:02:27 GMT -5
Will-o'-the-wisp
An illusion, ignis fatuus, is a natural phenomenon reported in many cultures and appearing in British folklore as a will-o'-the-wisp or will-o'-wisp. It is an atmospheric ghost light seen at night, especially over bogs, swamps, or marshes. The phenomenon is known in English folk belief, English folklore, and much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, hinkypunk, and hobby lantern, and is said to mislead travelers by resembling a flickering lamp or lantern. In literature, the illusions sometimes have a metaphorical meaning, e.g. describing a hope or goal that leads one on, but is impossible to reach, or something one finds sinister and confounding.
Ignis fatuus phenomena appear in folk tales and traditional legends of numerous countries and cultures; notable ones include St. Louis Light in Saskatchewan, Marfa lights of Texas, the Naga fireballs on the Mekong in Thailand, and the Hessdalen light in Norway.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:03:34 GMT -5
Kit-a-can-sticks
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:03:54 GMT -5
Tom-tumblers
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:05:16 GMT -5
Melch-dicks
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:07:33 GMT -5
Larrs Lares
Lares were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgamation of these.
Lares were believed to observe, protect, and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function. The statues of domestic Lares were placed at the table during family meals; their presence, cult, and blessing seem to have been required at all important family events.
Roman writers sometimes identify or conflate them with ancestor-deities, domestic Penates, and the hearth.
Because of these associations, Lares are sometimes categorised as household gods, but some had much broader domains. Roadways, seaways, agriculture, livestock, towns, cities, the state, and its military were all under the protection of their particular Lar or Lares. Those who protected local neighbourhoods (vici) were housed in the crossroad shrines (Compitalia), which served as a focus for the religious, social, and political lives of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualifications from most administrative and religious offices.
Compared to Rome's major deities, Lares had limited scope and potency, but archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life. By analogy, a homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late fourth century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early fifth century AD.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:08:11 GMT -5
Kitty-witches
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:08:52 GMT -5
Hobby-lanthorns,
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:09:21 GMT -5
Dick-a-Tuesdays
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:09:49 GMT -5
Elf-fires
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:10:07 GMT -5
Gyl-burnt-tales
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:11:42 GMT -5
Knocker (folklore)
The Knocker, Knacker, Bwca (Welsh), Bucca (Cornish) or Tommyknocker (US) is a mythical creature in Welsh, Cornish and Devon folklore. It is closely related to the Irish leprechaun or clurichaun, Kentish kloker and the English and Scottish brownie. The Cornish described the creature as a little person two feet tall, with a big head, long arms, wrinkled face, and white whiskers. It wears a tiny version of standard miner's garb and commits random mischief, such as stealing miners' unattended tools and food.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:14:13 GMT -5
Elf/Elves
An elf (plural: elves) is a type of humanlike supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them.[1] However, the details of these beliefs have varied considerably over time and space, and have flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures.
The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages and seems originally to have meant 'white being'. Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends largely on texts, written by Christians, in Old and Middle English, medieval German, and Old Norse. These associate elves variously with the gods of Norse mythology, with causing illness, with magic, and with beauty and seduction.
After the medieval period, the word elf tended to become less common throughout the Germanic languages, losing out to alternative native terms like Zwerg ("dwarf") in German and huldra ("hidden being") in Scandinavian languages, and to loan-words like fairy (borrowed from French into most of the Germanic languages). Still, beliefs in elves persisted in the early modern period, particularly in Scotland and Scandinavia, where elves were thought of as magically powerful people living, usually invisibly, alongside everyday human communities. They continued to be associated with causing illnesses and with sexual threats. For example, a number of early modern ballads in the British Isles and Scandinavia, originating in the medieval period, describe elves attempting to seduce or abduct human characters.
With urbanisation and industrialisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, beliefs in elves declined rapidly (though Iceland has some claim to continued popular belief in elves). However, from the early modern period onwards, elves started to be prominent in the literature and art of educated elites. These literary elves were imagined as small, impish beings, with William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream being a key development of this idea. In the eighteenth century, German Romanticist writers were influenced by this notion of the elf, and reimported the English word elf into the German language.
From this Romanticist elite culture came the elves of popular culture that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The "Christmas elves" of contemporary popular culture are a relatively recent tradition, popularized during the late nineteenth-century in the United States. Elves entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in the wake of works published by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien; these re-popularised the idea of elves as human-sized and humanlike beings. Elves remain a prominent feature of fantasy books and games nowadays.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:16:07 GMT -5
Rawheads
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:16:28 GMT -5
Meg-with-the-wads
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:18:36 GMT -5
Old-shocks
Black Shuck, Old Shuck, Old Shock or simply Shuck is the name given to an East Anglian ghostly black dog which is said to roam the coastline and countryside of East Anglia, one of many ghostly black dogs recorded in folklore across the British Isles. Accounts of Black Shuck form part of the folklore of Norfolk, Suffolk, the Cambridgeshire fens and Essex, and descriptions of the creature's appearance and nature vary considerably; it is sometimes recorded as an omen of death, but, in other instances, is described as companionable
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:19:10 GMT -5
Ouphs
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:19:42 GMT -5
Pad-foots
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 9, 2020 18:21:01 GMT -5
Pixie
A pixie (also pixy, pixi, pizkie, piskie and pigsie as it is sometimes known in Cornwall) is a mythical creature of folklore. Pixies are considered to be particularly concentrated in the high moorland areas around Devon and Cornwall, suggesting some Celtic origin for the belief and name.
Akin to the Irish and Scottish Aos Sí, pixies are believed to inhabit ancient underground ancestor sites such as stone circles, barrows, dolmens, ringforts or menhirs.
In traditional regional lore, pixies are generally benign, mischievous, short of stature and attractively childlike; they are fond of dancing and gather outdoors in huge numbers to dance or sometimes wrestle, through the night, demonstrating parallels with the Cornish plen-an-gwary and Breton Fest Noz (Cornish: troyl) folk celebrations originating in the medieval period. In modern times they are usually depicted with pointed ears, and often wearing a green outfit and pointed hat although traditional stories describe them wearing dirty ragged bundles of rags which they happily discard for gifts of new clothes. Sometimes their eyes are described as being pointed upwards at the temple ends. These, however, are Victorian era conventions and not part of the older mythology.
Pixies are variously described in folklore and fiction.
They are often described as ill-clothed or naked.[18] In 1890, William Crossing noted a pixie's preference for bits of finery: "Indeed, a sort of weakness for finery exists among them, and a piece of ribbon appears to be... highly prized by them."
Some pixies are said to steal children or to lead travellers astray. This seems to be a cross-over from fairy mythology and not originally attached to pixies; in 1850, Thomas Keightley observed that much of Devon pixie mythology may have originated from fairy myth. Pixies are said to reward consideration and punish neglect on the part of larger humans, for which Keightley gives examples. By their presence they bring blessings to those who are fond of them.
Pixies are drawn to horses, riding them for pleasure and making tangled ringlets in the manes of those horses they ride. They are "great explorers familiar with the caves of the ocean, the hidden sources of the streams and the recesses of the land."
Some find pixies to have a human origin or to "partake of human nature", in distinction to fairies whose mythology is traced to immaterial and malignant spirit forces. In some discussions pixies are presented as wingless, pygmy-like creatures, however this is probably a later accretion to the mythology.
One British scholar stated his belief that "Pixies were evidently a smaller race, and, from the greater obscurity of the ... tales about them, I believe them to have been an earlier race."
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