Mystical Angels

What are the origins of these mystical creatures?

Vampires, werewolves, goblins, elves, fairies, unicorns, trolls, centaurs, minotaurs, etc. You really don't have to pin point the origins of all, just of the ones you know.

Public Comments

1. To be honest most countries has a variation of all of these, they just may be named something different...example: Elves (yes I mean the little ones not the human sized ones Tolkien made famous) (Scandanavia), Brownies (England) - Elves and Brownies are mythologically the same thing.
2. Goblins come from Christian Scandinavia, as do trolls. People-sized elves come from Viking/Pre-Christian Scandinavia. Little elves, of various names, and fairies were a superstition of the British Isles. Unicorns were first described by Greek historians talking about Africa, but they basically described rhinoceroses (big, fat, wrinkly, dark-colored, ugly, mean). Medieval Western Europe invented the unicorn-horse. Centaurs are an invention of Greek mythology, as was the Minotaur. He was not a race, though. Werewolves I think come from Germany, as I first saw them in Grimm's fairy tales. Some people insist that there were werewolves in Greek mythology. This is not true. Lycaon was turned into a wolf, just like various people were turned into trees. Neither ever changed back, or were semi-human. Vampires have various origins. The people of the mountains of Peru believed in a fat-sucking vampire; various Middle Eastern/classical cultures believed in soul/life-sucking women, perhaps more akin to succubi than vampires. They became known to western Europe sometime in the 1800s or so as an import from Balkan/Eastern European/Medieval Greek folklore.
3. unicorn is actually in the bible, but not what most envision due to the fairy tales, they were wild (now extinct) type of ox, said to been vicious and strong. werewolf is part archaic Old English with elements of the Germanic language, Three different terms from which it could be derived are the Old English terms wearg-wulf, wer-wulf, or weri-wulf. Wer-wulf simply translates as “man wolf” (The Old Norse word for the same thing was verulfr) and is the most generally accepted origin. Then we also have the terms wearg and weri. the Old English wearg ( or “warg”) and its counterpart in Old Norse (vargr) are thought to stem from an older Proto-Germanic root word that meant “strangler” and referred to the vilest of criminals, an accursed person In more mundane terms it was also the word for a specific kind of wolf, a rogue animal which preyed on livestock and killed far more than it could eat out of what must have seemed sheer blood lust – which is a real phenomenon, usually involving a lone wolf too old (or wounded) to effectively hunt more challenging game. This image of horrific slaughter led to many allusions to wolves in warfare; for instance, the 8th century Anglo Saxon poem “The Battle of Maldon” refers to Viking raiders as waelwulfas; “slaughter-wolves Weri” in Old English means “to wear,” in which case the term could refer to a man wearing a wolf pelt. Both of these – wearg meaning “outlaw” and the weri meaning “one wearing a wolf skin” – could be in reference to the fierce Ulfhednar of the Norse sagas. Roughly translated as “wolf coats” the Ulfhednar were identical to the better known Berserkers (Old Norse; Bear Shirt) except that rather than a bear skin, they wore the pelt of a wolf Period accounts attest that these warriors would assemble on the battlefield, chewing on their shields as they growled and shuffled, stomping their feet. In the grip of the berserkergang the howling, snarling Ulfhednar performed feats of strength and ferocity that became legend, often continuing in battle even after having receiving mortal wounds. Some tales say they were impervious to weapons, others that they sometimes dropped their own weapons to attack their enemies with bare hands and teeth, The warrior cult is almost universally as savage barbarians who killed indiscriminately, these men wearing wolf skins which were outlawed in 1015 AD centaurs and minotaurs have greek orgins, the lesson is teaches is the evils of men copulating with animals, makes them monsters, however they do say that mythology is abased on some truth, which goes back to even the fall of the angels in heaven, who mated with two hundred of everything, human greated bloodlustful giants, birds, different beast 200 different ones in total creating monsters of various types. Centaurs and minotaurs are even categorized with sirens, and merimades, which interesting a mermade is one who cast spells., but more interesting all are demons. The gobles, elves, fairires and trolls also have demononic orgins. Vampire (also vampyre) is from the Magyar vampir, a word of Slavonic origin occurring in the same form in Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian and Bulgarian. The word is apparently unknown in Greece and the general modern term is vrykolakas. This must undoubtedly be identified with a word common to the whole Slavonic group of languages, and is the equivalent of the English "werewolf"; Scotch "warwulf"; German "Werwolf" and French "loup-garou." The one language in which the word does not bear this interpretation is the Serbian, for here it signifies "vampire." But it should be remarked that the Serbian people believe that a man who has been a werewolf in life will become a vampire after death, and so the two are very closely related. It was even thought in some districts that those who ate the flesh of a sheep killed by a wolf might become vampires after death. However, it must be remembered that although the superstitions of the werewolf and the vampire in many respects agree, there is, especially in Slavonic tradition, a very great distinction, for there the vampire is precisely defined as the incorrupt and re-animated body which returns from its grave The first example of the use of the word vampire in literature seems to be that which occurs in The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, written about 1734 Now for the parts that i think are interesting some claim it goes back to creation or a different spin on the creation story much like gnoisism; according to vampire legend, Cain wandered until he found Lilith (being a demon) by the Red Sea. She took him in and showed him the power of blood. a poem Beowulf: Till the monster stirred, that demon, that fiend, Grendel, who haunted the moors, the wild Marshes, and made his home in a hell Not hell but earth. He was spawned in that slime, Conceived by a pair of those monsters born Of Cain, murderous creatures banished By God, punished forever for the crime O
4. The origin of the vampire is a hotly debated issue. It has been linked to diseases like Porphiria or Rabies, chalked up to people not understanding the process of decomposition or outbreaks of contagious diseases or psychosis and serial killers or even linked to premature burial. Wikipedia has a great and detailed article on this. Werewolves are linked very closely and even merge with vampires in some folklore so the explainations are very similar. Again, wiki has a great article on this, which is way too long to summarize. Minotaurs, on the other hand, come directly from Greek mythology. The minotaur was a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull that lived in the middle of the labyrinth. Centaurs are also from Greek mythology. They are the upper body of a man with the lower portion of a horse. Where the line was drawn changed over time - the older drawings depict a man with the hindquarters of a horse attached and later images depict a torso of a man attaching where the horse's neck attached to the body. They are thought to be a first reaction of a non-riding culture to a nomadic culture that rode horses. Elves, goblins and trolls are all mythological creatures as well, however I think they can also be explained by the lack of cultural interchange at that period of time due to poor transportation. Few people experienced any culture beyond their small town and as a result a chance meeting with a different race or culture or a genetic defect could easily lead to a story about goblins or elves or trolls and so on. Specifically, goblins come from Norse mythology, elves come from Norse and Germanic mythology, goblins come from British folklore, There are just too many different fairy beliefs to possibly summarize in this format, so I linked the wiki article. Unicorns are thought to come from ancient encounters with wooly rhinocerouses or the Elasmotherium, a now extinct single horned creature, in later times it could have been travel encounters with the modern rhino or human modification of goat horns so they grew together (which is known to have been done). It could also have been a genetic defect of any horned animal, or just an angle of observation that made it appear they had only one horn, they oryx and eland have 2 unicorn like horns. "Unicorn" horns that people kept in the middle ages were actually the ivory tusk of the male narwhal.
5. Werewolves are people who have been scratched by a werewolf and who obtained the symptom lycanthropy. This gives a human wolfish like abilities. As vampire’s werewolves senses are 8x’s stronger than human. Werewolves can only change during a full moon which is normally once or twice a month and when they do they store their clothes somewhere they can get to. While in form the person attacks anything that’s gets in its way even its closest friend or mother. Werewolves designedly go to graveyards for some supposed reason and dig up dead bodies. Then once all is done the sun rises and they return to their homes get there and live their life until the next full moon