I’m picking the question of how certain magical stories/beings originated in human cultures.
I’m fascinated by the idea that despite differences in landscape, culture, surroundings, and native species, many people from many areas of the world have some sort of spirit, magical beast, or higher power/entity that has magical capabilities. There are a few reasons why I want to look at this question. The first, primarily, is that I have always loved the idea of magic and sorcery and creatures like dragons. There’s so much potential within these things that even today it’s possible to come up with new perspectives or ideas on these various subjects, despite them originating hundreds of years ago. I also enjoy creating fantasy scenarios in my head and writing magical fantasy stories. It’s been a part of my life for longer than I can remember, and I still love it.
There are a lot of different ways that magic appears in cultures, and what I specifically want to focus on are magical creatures. Many magical beings are gods, but there are always monsters or other creatures as well. I think I want to consider creatures like pegasi, dragons, the animal-headed gods of Egypt, Greek monsters, and perhaps some other cultures that I’m not yet familiar with, such as native American stories or those from Hinduism. I want to explore the question as if there is one specific, tangible origin point for this human tendency to create creatures to explain seemingly magical events. Were dragons in China and Europe established by the same ideas/experiences? Or were they different? Why do people even believe in magical creatures when it’s not likely that they ever have or ever will see them? There are a lot of different ways to approach this question, but I’d prefer to tackle it from a “general origin” standpoint.
Chinese Dragon, Temples, Storybooks, Greek Monster, Worshipers, magic animals, bard
Pegasus, Anubis, Horus (Falcon)
