Chinese Ghost Month

Chinese Ghost Month starts today

Hmmm... remember back in 2009?

When I wrote plenty of ghost stories during this period

Well, this year i planned to blog it in my movies blog

http://movietalkmovie.blogspot.com/

I will be blogging movies everyday which is related to

horror/thriller/monster/vampire/zombie/

werewolf/ghost/slasher...

Though u all might have know that i'm a horror movie fans

but hehe

visit my movie blog from today onwards

stay tune

Myth Creatures 3: Unicorn

Unicorn

A legendary animal that has been described since antiquity

 as a beast with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. 

The unicorn was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization 

and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks 

in accounts of natural history by various writers,

including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, and Aelian.

The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, 

which some translations have erroneously rendered 

with the word unicorn.

In European folklore, 

the unicorn is often depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal 

with a long horn and cloven hooves (sometimes a goat's beard). 

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 

it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, 

a symbol of purity and grace, 

which could only be captured by a virgin. 

In the encyclopedias its horn was said 

to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. 

In medieval and Renaissance times, 

the horn of the narwhal was sometimes sold as unicorn horn.

 Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, 

but rather in the accounts of natural history, 

for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, 

which they located in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. 

The earliest description is from Ctesias who, 

in his book Indika ("On India"), 

described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, 

having a horn a cubit and a half (700 mm, 27 inches) in length, 

and colored white, red and black.

Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, 

the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass".

Strabo says that in the Caucasus 

there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads.

Pliny the Elder mentions

 the oryx and an Indian ox (perhaps a rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, 

as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, 

the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, 

while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; 

it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, 

which projects from the middle of its forehead, 

two cubits (900 mm) in length."

In On the Nature of Animals

 (Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος, De natura animalium), 

Aelian, quoting Ctesias,

 adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52),

and says (xvi. 20) that the monoceros (Greek: μονόκερως) 

was sometimes called cartazonos (Greek: καρτάζωνος),

 which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, 

meaning "rhinoceros".

Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria

 who lived in the 6th century, 

made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works on cosmography. 

He gives a description of a unicorn 

based on four brass figures in the palace of the King of Ethiopia.

 He states, from report, 

that "it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive;

 and that all its strength lies in its horn. 

When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, 

it throws itself from a precipice, 

and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn,

 and so escapes safe and sound."

A one-horned animal (which may be just a bull in profile)

 is found on some seals from the Indus Valley Civilization.

 Seals with such a design 

are thought to be a mark of high social rank.

 Medieval knowledge of the fabulous beast 

stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, 

and the creature was variously represented 

as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse.

The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, 

compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus (Φυσιολόγος),

 popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, 

trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary), 

stood for the Incarnation. 

As soon as the unicorn sees her, 

it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. 

This became a basic emblematic tag 

that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn,

 justifying its appearance in every form of religious art. 

Interpretations of the unicorn myth 

focus on the medieval lore of beguiled lovers,

 whereas some religious writers 

interpret the unicorn and its death as the Passion of Christ. 

The myths refer to a beast with one horn

 that can only be tamed by a virgin; 

subsequently, some writers translated this 

into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary.

The unicorn also figured in courtly terms:

 for some 13th century French authors

 such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard de Fournival,

 the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. 

With the rise of humanism, 

the unicorn also acquired more orthodox secular meanings, 

emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage. 

It plays this role in Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity, 

and on the reverse of Piero della Francesca's portrait of Battista Strozzi, 

paired with that of her husband Federico da Montefeltro (painted c 1472-74), 

Bianca's triumphal car is drawn by a pair of unicorns.

The Throne Chair of Denmark is made of "unicorn horns" 

almost certainly narwhal tusks.

 The same material was used for ceremonial cups

 because the unicorn's horn 

continued to be believed to neutralize poison,

 following classical authors.

The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, 

was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo 

described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. 

They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. 

They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... 

They have a head like a wild boar's… 

They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. 

They are very ugly brutes to look at. 

They are not at all such as we describe them 

when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, 

but clean contrary to our notions." 

It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros.

In German, since the 16th century, 

Einhorn ("one-horn") has become

a descriptor of the various species of rhinoceros.

 The horn itself and the substance

 it was made of was called alicorn, 

and it was believed that the horn holds magical and medicinal properties.

The Danish physician Ole Worm 

determined in 1638 that the alleged alicorns 

were the tusks of narwhals.

Such beliefs were examined wittily

 and at length in 1646 by Sir Thomas Browne 

in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

False alicorn powder, 

made from the tusks of narwhals or horns of various animals, 

has been sold in Europe for medicinal purposes as late as 1741.

The alicorn was thought to cure many diseases and have the ability to detect poisons, 

and many physicians would make "cures" and sell them. 

Cups were made from alicorn for kings and given as a gift; 

these were usually made of ivory or walrus ivory.

 Entire horns were very precious in the Middle Ages 

and were often really the tusks of narwhals.

 One traditional method of hunting unicorns involved entrapment by a virgin.

In one of his notebooks Leonardo da Vinci wrote:

The unicorn, through its intemperance 

and not knowing how to control itself, 

for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; 

and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel 

and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.

The famous late Gothic series of seven tapestry hangings 

The Hunt of the Unicorn are a high point in European tapestry manufacture, 

combining both secular and religious themes. 

The tapestries now hang in the Cloisters division 

of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

 In the series, richly dressed noblemen,

 accompanied by huntsmen and hounds, 

pursue a unicorn against mille-fleur backgrounds 

or settings of buildings and gardens. 

They bring the animal to bay 

with the help of a maiden who traps it with her charms, 

appear to kill it, and bring it back to a castle;

 in the last and most famous panel,

 "The Unicorn in Captivity," the unicorn is shown alive again and happy,

 chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, 

in a field of flowers. 

Scholars conjecture that 

the red stains on its flanks are not blood 

but rather the juice from pomegranates, 

which were a symbol of fertility. 

However, the true meaning of the mysterious resurrected unicorn

 in the last panel is unclear. 

The series was woven about 1500 in the Low Countries,

probably Brussels or Liège, 

for an unknown patron. 

A set of six engravings on the same theme, 

treated rather differently, 

were engraved by the French artist Jean Duvet in the 1540s.

Another famous set of six tapestries of Dame à la licorne 

("Lady with the unicorn") in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, 

were also woven in the Southern Netherlands before 1500, 

and show the five senses (the gateways to temptation) 

and finally Love ("A mon seul desir" the legend reads), 

with unicorns featured in each piece. 

Facsimiles of these unicorn tapestries 

are currently being woven for permanent display 

in Stirling Castle, Scotland, 

to take the place of a set recorded 

in the castle in a 16th-century inventory.

A rather rare, late-15th-century, 

variant depiction of the hortus conclusus 

in religious art combined the Annunciation to Mary 

with the themes of the Hunt of the Unicorn 

and Virgin and Unicorn, so popular in secular art. 

The unicorn already functioned 

as a symbol of the Incarnation and 

whether this meaning is intended in many prima facie 

secular depictions can be a difficult matter of scholarly interpretation. 

There is no such ambiguity in the scenes where the 

archangel Gabriel is shown blowing a horn, 

as hounds chase the unicorn into the Virgin's arms, 

and a little Christ Child descends on rays of light from God the Father.

 The Council of Trent finally banned this 

somewhat over-elaborated, if charming, depiction,

partly on the grounds of realism, 

as no one now believed the unicorn to be a real animal.

Shakespeare scholars describe unicorns 

being captured by a hunter standing in front of a tree, 

the unicorn goaded into charging; 

the hunter would step aside the last moment 

and the unicorn would embed its horn deeply into the tree.

 In heraldry, a unicorn is often depicted 

as a horse with a goat's cloven hooves and beard, 

a lion's tail, and a slender, spiral horn on its forehead

(non-equine attributes may be replaced with equine ones, 

as can be seen from the following gallery). 

Whether because it was an emblem of the Incarnation 

or of the fearsome animal passions of raw nature, 

the unicorn was not widely used in early heraldry, 

but became popular from the 15th century.

Though sometimes shown collared and chained, 

which may be taken as an indication that it has been tamed or tempered, 

it is more usually shown collared with a broken chain attached, 

showing that it has broken free from its bondage.

  In heraldry the unicorn is best known as the symbol of Scotland. 

The unicorn was chosen because it was seen as a proud and haughty beast

 which would rather die than be captured, 

just as Scots would fight to remain sovereign and unconquered.

Two unicorns supported the royal arms of the King of Scots,

 and since the 1707 union of England and Scotland, 

the royal arms of the United Kingdom have been supported by a unicorn 

along with an English lion. 

Two versions of the royal arms exist: 

that used in Scotland gives more emphasis to the Scottish elements,

 placing the unicorn on the right and giving it a crown, 

whereas the version used in England 

and elsewhere gives the English elements more prominence.

Golden coins known as the unicorn and half-unicorn, 

both with a unicorn on the obverse, 

were used in Scotland in the 15th and 16th century. 

In the same realm, 

carved unicorns were often used as finials on the pillars of Mercat crosses,

 and denoted that the settlement was a royal burgh. 

Certain noblemen such as the Earl of Kinnoull were given special permission

 to use the unicorn in their arms, 

as an augmentation of honour. 

日本妖怪 4: 天狗

天狗（てんぐ）是日本傳說中的一種生物，民間信仰常認為是妖怪。中國的《山海經》記載了中國式天狗，並描述牠是像狐狸般的動物。但現時在日本一般說法認為，天狗有高高的紅鼻子與紅臉，手持團扇、羽扇或寶槌，身材高大、穿着修驗僧服或昔時武將的盔甲，背後長着雙翼。通常居住在深山之中，具有令人難以想像的怪力和神通，腰際懸著武士刀，穿著日式傳統高腳木屐，隨身帶着蓑衣以便隨時把自己隱藏起來，也具有不可一世的傲慢姿態。

日本的天狗最早源自中世紀後期，當時人們想像中的天狗，有一雙大大的翅膀，和有一把可以攻擊人類的鳥嘴，能在天空中飛翔，又名「鴉天狗」。另有傳說天狗會拐走迷失於森林裡的人，因此古時稱小孩突然失蹤的事件叫做「神隱」，就是被神明隱藏起來的意思（《神隱少女》的「神隱」即是此義）。

日本最早記載天狗的是《日本書紀》，該書記載有一名僧人聽到天空中傳來奇怪的聲音，接著有東西像流星般迅速地從頭頂飛過，書中首次用「天狗」來描述僧人所見之物，當時的人們把其想像成「老鷹」的形象。而平安時代的《今昔物語集》更記載天狗會幻化成佛、僧、聖人的形象，或附身於人類身上。

此外也有人認為中國式天狗是江戶時代隨中國商人一起傳到日本，隨後在民間的流傳中被人們加油添醋，加入當地的色彩。另一說法是基於天狗紅臉高鼻的外貌，有人認為他的起源應該是猿田彥命，即《古事記》裡接引瓊瓊杵尊自高天原前往葦原中國的國津神。書中描寫他相貌怪異、面如紅棗，由於接引有功，被封為道祖神之一。

平安時代佛教在日本盛行，淨土宗在天皇以及公卿貴族間更廣為流傳。據說天狗想來欺騙修行普通的僧人，便附之其身並使之生病。因此僧侶們便與天狗大戰，打敗天狗並將之比喻作人世的異常和動亂的根源，主張將天狗鎮壓，因此有人說「天狗」一詞是天台宗的僧人所創。

鎌倉時代的《是害坊繪卷》繪畫出中國天狗「是害坊」和天台宗僧侶大戰的情景，傳說大戰時「是害坊」鬥法失敗受傷，被日本的天狗援助湯治（溫泉療養），傷癒後歸國。中世紀後期原本以「老鷹」為形象的天狗，轉變為「鼻高天狗」，鼻高象徴傲慢的態度，即日語中所謂的「自慢」、「鼻高高」。並演變為說那些修行一般並態度傲慢的山僧，死後會化成天狗。到了中世以後，更產生了天狗出現便會招致天下大亂的說法。

《太平記》記載的御靈化身為天狗登場。京都市上京區有一座「白峯神宮」，祭祀的是崇德天皇。崇德天皇在保元之亂中敗北流亡到讚岐（今香川縣），並含恨而死，而其怨靈更化成了大天狗，持續在人世間作亂。久而久之人們便把天狗的首領想像成崇德天皇的形象。同時人類怨靈化為天狗為禍的說法，也越來越多。

室町時代蒐集民間傳說的的《御伽草子》裡有一個描寫「天狗」的故事：著名武將源義經的父親源義朝在平治之亂戰敗，被平氏家族捉去，於是將他寄養在京都的鞍馬寺[1]。源義經在寺中修行期間，決心要為父親報仇，因而每天入山習劍。他遇見了傳說中的天狗，並學習到了劍術，後來他真的打敗了平氏。

作為神而成為信仰對象的大天狗以愛宕山的「太郎坊」、鞍馬山的「僧正坊」（鞍馬天狗）、比良山的「次郎坊」、比叡山的「法性坊」、英彥山的「豐前坊」、筑波山的「法印坊」、大山的「伯耆坊」、葛城山的「高間坊」、高雄山的「內供坊」、富士山的「太郎坊」、白峰山的「相模坊」等較知名。

這段時期開始，將天狗視為怨靈的說法也開始減少，而天狗是山神的說法則因而開始盛行，從一些妖怪圖鑑上看到的天狗，外貌像一個白鬍子白長眉的怪老人，而其隱居於山中，則視為其修煉之地。

Myth Creatures 2: Centaur & Centauride

 Centaur 

A mythological creature with the head, arms,

 and torso of a human and the body and legs of a horse.

In early Attic and Beotian vase-paintings, 

they are depicted with the hindquarters of a horse attached to them;

in later renderings centaurs are given the torso of a human 

joined at the waist to the horse's withers, 

where the horse's neck would be.

This half-human and half-horse composition 

has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, 

caught between the two natures, embodied in contrasted myths, 

both as the embodiment of untamed nature, 

as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), 

or conversely as teachers, like Chiron.

The centaurs were usually said 

to have been born of Ixion and Nephele (the cloud made in the image of Hera). 

Another version, however, makes them children of a certain Centaurus, 

who mated with the Magnesian mares. 

This Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele 

or of Apollo and Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. 

In the later version of the story his twin brother was Lapithes, 

ancestor of the Lapiths, thus making the two warring peoples cousins.

Centaurs were said to have inhabited 

the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly,

 the Foloi oak forest in Elis, 

and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. 

They continued to feature in literary forms of Roman mythology. 

A pair of them draw the chariot of Constantine the Great and his family 

in the Great Cameo of Constantine

which embodies wholly pagan imagery.

 Centauromachy

The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths, 

which was caused by their attempt to carry off Hippodamia 

and the rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, 

king of the Lapithae, himself the son of Ixion. 

The strife among these cousins is a metaphor for the conflict 

between the lower appetites and civilized behavior in humankind. 

Theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, 

threw the balance in favour of the right order of things, and assisted Pirithous. 

The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed.

Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, 

was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. 

Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as wild as untamed horses.

 Like the Titanomachy, the defeat of the Titans by the Olympian gods,

 the contests with the Centaurs typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism.

The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the Parthenon metopes by Phidias

and in a Renaissance-era sculpture by Michelangelo.

 Earliest representations

The tentative identification of two fragmentary 

Mycenaean terracotta figures as centaurs, 

among the extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit,

 suggests a Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth.

A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi, 

and by the Geometric period,

 centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. 

An often-published Geometric period 

bronze of a warrior face-to-face 

with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Theories of origin

The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs

came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, 

as in the Minoan Aegean world, 

o nomads who were mounted on horses.

The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal

 (Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the 

Aztecs had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen).

 Horse taming and horseback culture 

arose first in the southern steppe grasslands of Central Asia, 

perhaps approximately in modern Kazakhstan.

The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, 

who were the kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, 

were described as the inventors of horse-back riding by Greek writers. 

The Thessalian tribes also claimed 

their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs.

Of the various Classical Greek authors who mentioned centaurs, 

Pindar was the first who describes undoubtedly a combined monster.

Previous authors (Homer) only use words such as pheres (cf. theres, "beasts")

 that could also mean ordinary savage men riding ordinary horses. 

However, contemporaneous representations of 

hybrid centaurs can be found in archaic Greek art.

Lucretius in his first century BC philosophical poem 

On the Nature of Things denied the existence of centaurs 

based on their differing rate of growth. 

He states that at three years old horses are in the prime of their life while, 

at three humans are still little more than babies, 

making hybrid animals impossible.

Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumezil 

argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Indian gandharva), 

speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered,

 pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.

 A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea. 

Kinnaras, another half-man half-horse mythical creature from the Indian mythology, 

appeared in various ancient texts, arts as well as sculptures from all around India. 

It is shown as a horse with the torso of a man 

in place of where the horse's head has to be, 

that is similar to a Greek centaur.

The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as of obscure origin.

 The etymology from ken – tauros, 

"piercing bull-stickers" was a euhemerist suggestion

 in Palaephatus' rationalizing text on Greek mythology,

 On Incredible Tales: mounted archers from a village called Nephele

 eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom.

Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer".

Some[who?] say that the Greeks took the constellation of Centaurus, 

and also its name "piercing bull", from Mesopotamia, 

where it symbolized the god Baal who represents rain and fertility,

 fighting with and piercing with his horns the demon Mot who represents the summer drought. 

In Greece, the constellation of Centaurus 

was noted by Eudoxus of Cnidus in the fourth century BC a

nd by Aratus in the third century.

Female centaurs

Though female centaurs, called Kentaurides, 

are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, 

they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. 

A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC 

is one of the earliest examples of the Centauress in art. 

Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome 

who committed suicide when her husband 

Cyllarus was killed in the war with the Lapiths.

In a description of a painting in Neapolis,

 the Greek rhetorician Philostratus the Elder 

describes them as sisters and wives of the male centaurs 

who live on Mount Pelion with their children.

"How beautiful the Centaurides are, 

even where they are horses;

 for some grow out of white mares, 

others are attached to chestnut mares, 

and the coats of others are dappled, 

but they glisten like those of horses that are well cared for. 

There is also a white female Centaur that grows out of a black mare, 

and the very opposition of the colours 

helps to produce the united beauty of the whole."

The idea, or possibility, 

of female centaurs was certainly known in early modern times, 

as evidenced by Shakespeare's King Lear, Act IV, Scene vi, ln.124–125: 

"Down from the waist they're centaurs, / Though women all above"

In the Disney animated film Fantasia, 

during the Pastoral Symphony, 

some of the main characters are female centaurs, 

referred to as "Centaurettes" by the Disney studio.

 Persistence in the medieval world

Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection 

in the 12th century Romanesque 

carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne, 

where other capitals depict harvesters, 

boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme) 

and griffins guarding the chalice that held the wine.

Centaurs are shown on a number of Pictish carved stones 

from north-east Scotland, erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle, Perthshire). 

Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire, 

these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes.

Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great, 

the hermit monk of Egypt, written by Athanasius of Alexandria, 

was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages;

 it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur, 

who challenged the saint but was forced 

to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. 

The episode was often depicted; notably,

 in the The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot 

and St Paul the Hermit by Stefano di Giovanni called "Sassetta",

 of two episodic depictions in a single panel 

of the hermit Anthony's travel to greet the hermit Paul, 

one is his encounter along the pathway 

with the demonic figure of a centaur in a wood.

A centaur-like half-human half-equine creature 

called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art, 

and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. 

Polkan is originally based on Pulicane, 

a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino's poem I Reali di Francia, 

which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations.

 Modern day

Main article: Centaurs in popular culture

The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee 

hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos", in its library. 

The exhibit, made by sculptor Bill Willers, 

by combining a study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony is entitled 

"Do you believe in Centaurs?" 

and was meant to mislead students 

in order to make them more critically aware,

 according to the exhibitors.

Another exhibit by Willers 

is now on long term display 

at the International Wildlife Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

 The full-mount skeleton of a Centaur, 

built by Skulls Unlimited International, is on display,

 along with several other fabled creatures,

 including the Cyclops, Unicorn and Griffin.

A centaur is one of the symbols associated 

with both the Iota Phi Theta and the Delta Lambda Phi fraternities.

 Whereas centaurs in Greek mythology 

were generally symbolic of chaos and unbridled passions, 

Delta Lambda Phi's centaur is modeled after Chiron and represents honor, 

moderation and tempered masculinity.

Similarly, C.S. Lewis' popular The Chronicles of Narnia series 

depicts centaurs as the wisest and noblest of creatures. 

Narnian Centaurs are gifted at stargazing, prophecy, healing, and warfare, 

a fierce and valiant race always faithful to the High King Aslan the Lion. 

Lewis generally used the species to inspire awe in his readers.

In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, 

centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest close to Hogwarts,

 preferring to avoid contact with humans. 

Although different from those seen in Narnia, 

they live in societies called herds and are skilled at archery, healing and astrology.

 Although film depictions include very animalistic facial features, 

the reaction of the Hogwarts girls to Firenze 

suggests a more classical appearance.

With the exception of Chiron, 

the centaurs in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians 

are seen as party-goers who use a lot of American slang.

 Chiron is more like the classical centaurs, 

being trainer of the heroes and skilled in archery. 

In Riordan's subsequent series, Heroes of Olympus, 

another group of centaurs are depicted 

with more animalistic features (such as horns) 

and appear as villains, serving the Gigantes.

Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series (1965) 

includes centaurs, called Half-Horses or Hoi Kentauroi. 

His creations address several of the metabolic problems of such creatures

—how could the human mouth and nose intake sufficient air 

to sustain both itself and the horse body and, similarly, 

how could the human ingest sufficient food to sustain both parts.

Brandon Mull's Fablehaven series 

features Centaurs that live in an area called Grunhold. 

The Centaurs are portrayed as a proud, 

elitist group of beings that consider themselves superior to all other creatures. 

The fourth book also has a variation on the species called an Alcetaur, 

which is part man, part moose.

Centaur appears in the novel by John Updike (The Centaur, 1963). 

The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town 

as seen through the optics of the myth of Centaur. 

An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, 

just like the mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, 

gave up his life for the future of his son 

who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York.

In the series Animorphs written by K. A. Applegate,

 a species called Andalites appears. 

These animals are somewhat like a centaur

 except they are covered with blue fur and have no mouths,

 eating instead from their hooves, and have extra eyes resting on stalks on their heads.

They also appear as a spell in the game "Wizard101", 

by Kingsisle Entertainment.

Centaur the nickname for intercollegiate athletics teams 

of Allentown College (CenterValley, Pennsylvania) 

and Purdue University-North Central 

(Westville, Indiana, from 1967 until 2003).

 Gay Centaur?

 Centaur is appearing in the olden Rome day

 Centaur Skeleton, is this real?

Movies that are related to the Centaur:-

 Narnia, the centaur is a warrior for the good side

Centaur also appeared in Percy Jackson

But this centaur is not that tall huh?

日本妖怪 3: 飞头蛮

见载于《百鬼夜行》，其实是人，可是由于被妖怪附身，头在睡觉时会飞离身体，到处吓人为乐，而附身的妖怪名叫“枭号”，是一种鸟的灵魂，一般会附在喜欢杀虏鸟兽、吃鸟兽的人身上，被他附身的人在7天内会变成枯骨，这也是报应吧！
飞头蛮 (Hitouban)，也就是传说中的长颈妖怪，或是「辘轳首」ろくろくび [飞头蛮] 飞头蛮 (rokurokubi)，最早起源于干宝的《搜神记》，这是中国晋代著名的奇谭异闻录，其中提到的「落头氏」就是长颈妖怪。平时它看起来和普通人没什么两样，可是一到了夜里，等到众人都睡着了，妖怪的脖子开始伸长，甚至比长颈鹿的脖子还要长，然后头部从脖子的地方彻底和身体分离，曾有人亲眼看见身体还盖着棉被，好端端地睡在床上的人，她的头却连着脖子，一溜烟从窗外飞走了，直到鸡鸣时分才回到原来的身体，这时候头部和身体会重新结合在一起，醒来后就像正常人一样行动。本人往往不记得前一个晚上看到了什么，或做过了什么事？长颈妖怪在化身成人形的时候，有些人并不知道自己就是长颈妖怪，所以是在无意识的状态下受到驱使，长颈妖怪在飞行的时候，会吃虫子，以耳朵代替翅膀。

Myth Creatures 1: Mermaid & Merman

Mermaid
A mythological aquatic creature
with a female human head and torso and the tail of a fish.
Mermaids have a broad representation in folklore,
literature, and popular culture.
The word is a compound of mere,
the Old English word for "sea", and maid, a woman.
The male equivalent is a merman.

Much like sirens, mermaids sometimes sing to people
and gods and enchant them, distracting them
from their work and causing them
to walk off the deck or run their ships aground.

Other stories depict them squeezing the life out of drowning men
while attempting to rescue them.
They are also said to carry humans down
to their underwater kingdoms.

In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid,
it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater,
while others say they drown men out of spite.
The sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes
portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like;
in fact, some languages use the same word for both bird and fish creatures,
such as the Maltese word 'sirena'.
Other related types of mythical or legendary creatures are water fairies
(e.g., various water nymphs)
and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans
Mermaid
Merman
Merman-King
Little Mermaid
Ancient Near East
The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria,
ca. 1000 BC.
The goddess Atargatis,
mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis,
loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him.

Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish,
but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty.
Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid
—human above the waist, fish below—

though the earliest representations of Atargatis
showed her as a fish with a human head and legs,
similar to the Babylonian Ea.

The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo.
Prior to 546 BC, the Milesian philosopher Anaximander
proposed that mankind had sprung from an aquatic species of animal.
He thought that humans, with their extended infancy,
could not have survived otherwise.
This idea reappeared as the aquatic ape hypothesis in the twentieth century.

A popular Greek legend turns Alexander the Great's sister,
Thessalonike, into a mermaid after she died.
She lived, it was said, in the Aegean and when she encountered a ship,
she asked its sailors only one question:
"Is King Alexander alive?"
to which the correct answer was:
"He lives and reigns and conquers the world"
This answer pleased her
so she calmed the waters and wish the ship farewell.
Any other answer would spur her into a rage.
She would raise a terrible storm,
with certain doom for the ship and every sailor on board.

Lucian of Samosata in Syria (2nd century AD) in De Dea Syria
("Concerning the Syrian Goddess")
wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited:
"Among them - Now that is the traditional story
among them concerning the temple.
But other men swear that Semiramis of Babylonia,
whose deeds are many in Asia, also founded this site,
and not for Hera Atargatis but for her own Mother,
whose name was Derketo"

"I saw the likeness of Derketo in Phoenicia,
a strange marvel.
It is woman for half its length,
but the other half, from thighs to feet,
stretched out in a fish's tail.
But the image in the Holy City is entirely a woman,
and the grounds for their account are not very clear.
They consider fishes to be sacred,
and they never eat them;
and though they eat all other fowls,
they do not eat the dove,
for she is holy so they believe.
And these things are done, they believe,
because of Derketo and Semiramis,
the first because Derketo has the shape of a fish,
and the other because ultimately Semiramis turned into a dove.
Well, I may grant that the temple
was a work of Semiramis perhaps;
but that it belongs to Derketo
I do not believe in any way.
For among the Egyptians,
some people do not eat fish,
and that is not done to honor Derketo."
Arabian Nights
The One Thousand and One Nights
includes several tales featuring "Sea People",
such as Djullanar the Sea-girl.
Unlike the depiction in other mythologies,
these are anatomically identical to land-bound humans,
differing only in their ability to breathe and live underwater.
They can (and do) interbreed with land humans,
the children of such unions sharing in the ability to live underwater.

In another Arabian Nights tale,
"Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman",
the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability
to breathe underwater and discovers
an underwater submarine society
that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land,
in that the underwater society follows a form of
primitive communism where concepts
like money and clothing do not exist.

Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies,
advanced ancient civilizations that went astray,
and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.
In "The Adventures of Bulukiya",
the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality
leads him to explore the seas, where he encounters societies of mermaids.

"Julnar the Sea-Born and Her Son King Badr Basim of Persia"
is yet another Arabian Nights tale about mermaids.
When sailors come the mermaids sing,
and some men are led straight to their doom.
If they follow the mermaids' lovely and beautiful voices,
they do not know what they are doing or where they're going.
British Isles
Mermaids were noted in British folklore as unlucky omens
both foretelling disaster and provoking it.
Several variants of the ballad Sir Patrick Spens
depict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships;
in some, she tells them they will never see land again,
and in others, she claims they are near shore,
which they are wise enough to know means the same thing.
They can also be a sign of rough weather.

Some mermaids were described as monstrous in size,
up to 2,000 feet (610 m).
Mermaids could also swim up rivers to freshwater lakes.
One day, in a lake near his house,
the Laird of Lorntie went to aid a woman he thought drowning;
a servant of his pulled him back, warning that it was a mermaid,
and the mermaid screamed after
that she would have killed him if it were not for his servant.

On occasion, mermaids could be more beneficent,
teaching humans cures for disease.
Some tales raised the question of
whether mermaids had immortal souls answering in the negative.
The figure of Lí Ban appears as a sanctified mermaid,
but she was a human being transformed into a mermaid;
after three centuries, when Christianity had come to Ireland,
she came to be baptized.

Mermen were noted as wilder and uglier than mermaids,
but they were described as having little interest in humans.
In Scottish mythology,
there is a mermaid called the ceasg or "maid of the wave"
Warsaw Mermaid
The mermaid, or syrenka,
is the symbol of Warsaw.
Images of a mermaid symbolized
Warsaw on its crest since the middle of the 14th century.
Several legends associate Triton of mythology with the city,
which may have been the mermaid association's origin
Other Tales
Among the Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean
the mermaid is called Aycayia.
Her attributes relate to the goddess Jagua,
and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceus.

In the modern Caribbean the mermaid is found
as Haitian Vodou Lwa La Sirene (literally, 'the mermaid')
who is lwa of wealth and beauty and the orisha Yemaya.
Examples from other cultures are
the Mami Wata of West and Central Africa,
the Jengu of Cameroon,
the Merrow of Ireland and Scotland,
the Rusalkas of Russia and Ukraine,
the Iara from Brazil and the Greek Oceanids, Nereids, and Naiads.

One freshwater mermaid-like creature
from European folklore is Melusine,
who is sometimes depicted with two fish tails,
and other times with the lower body of a serpent.

It is said in Japan that eating the flesh of a ningyo
can grant unaging immortality.

In some European legends mermaids are said to be unlucky.
Mermaids and mermen are also characters of Philippine folklore,
where they are locally known as sirena and siyokoy, respectively.

The Javanese people believe that
the southern beach in Java is a home
of Javanese mermaid queen Nyi Roro Kidul

In some ancient fairytales of China,
mermaid is a special species whose tears can turn into priceless pearls.
What's more, mermaids can also knit
an extremely valuable material which is not only slight
but also beautiful and translucent.
Because of this, fishermen longed to catch them,
but it's difficult for them to survive
for mermaids' splendid singing can simply drag them to coma.
Actually, mermaid is a symbol of wonderful creatures in Ancient China.
They are deft,beautiful and versatile.
And the fishermen who want to catch mermaids
are a symbol of nagtive character.
Thailand Mermaid's Statue
UglyFish head and two legs?
EwwwNasty
Found in Malaysia
Is this for real?
Looks like a beggar-mermaid
lol

~ Source above are from Wikipedia ~

Up till now, there's tons of movie related to mermaid & merman
I still think Christy Chung is the hottest mermaid i ever seen in movie
Ren Yu Chuan Shuo 1994
Of course, best merman will go to Brent Corrigan
Another Gay Sequels: Gays Gone Wild! 2008