Japanese legends, Davis retelling
Kwannon
The goddess of mercy and her many forms in Davis’s account.
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Names and descriptions of beings change across texts and traditions. Begin with a particular account, then follow the recorded relationships, images and stories that help explain its role.
204 entries · A–Z
Japanese legends, Davis retelling
The goddess of mercy and her many forms in Davis’s account.
Japanese tale, Davis retelling
The child found in bamboo who reveals her lunar origin and departs for Moonland in Davis's tale.
Indian traditions, Nivedita and Coomaraswamy
Rama’s devoted brother, whose loyalty can take a fiercer form than Rama’s restraint.
Celtic fairy traditions
The small fairy craftsman of collected Irish testimony, described near springs making shoes, with roles that vary between accounts.
Goethe’s Faust, Part One
The figure Mephistopheles identifies by her dangerous hair at Walpurgis Night.
Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
A silent apparition of a living person, seen before their death in the collected tales.
William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion; retained monochrome facsimile
A furnace worker who confronts his divided Spectre and compels it to join the labour of creation.
A morning-star word and its Christian histories of interpretation
Understand how Lucifer moved from a Latin word for the morning star into Christian interpretations of Satan, and why the same word can also refer to Christ.
Dante, Inferno
The immense figure whose wings keep the central lake frozen.
Buddhist traditions, Nivedita and Coomaraswamy
A tree deity who offers to suffer in pieces so that nearby trees will survive.
Celtic fairy traditions
Long-handed divine figure linked with Cuchulainn’s birth.
Dante, Inferno
The negotiating demon whose assurance about a crossing proves unreliable.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
The fallen spirit who values heavenly gold and proposes building an empire below.
Lord Dunsany, The Gods of Pegāna (1911 illustrated edition)
The sleeping maker of the gods in Lord Dunsany’s mythology of Pegāna.
Celtic fairy traditions
Sea-associated ruler and guide to the Land of Promise.
Indian traditions, Nivedita and Coomaraswamy
The serpent goddess whose struggle for recognition centres on a resistant merchant.
Temptation, mortality and the obstacles to Buddhist awakening
Explore Mara through Buddhist discourses, the challenge beneath the Bodhi tree, the nun Vajira’s reply and the meaning of the earth-touching gesture in sacred art.
Goethe’s Faust, Part One
The denying spirit who becomes the scholar’s companion and adversary.
Goethe’s Faust, Part One
The animal guest in Faust whose expanding form gives way to Mephistopheles disguised as a travelling scholar.
An angel of protection, heavenly service and spiritual conflict
Explore Michael as Israel’s advocate, a Christian heavenly commander and Mikail in Islamic teaching, with religious practice and a historical Spanish painting.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
The prince of the celestial armies whose sword first wounds Satan.
Celtic fairy traditions
Otherworld king whose reunion with Étaín crosses mortal memory.
Dante, Inferno
The infernal judge whose coiling tail signals the depth assigned to each confessing soul.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
The fierce counsellor who argues for immediate open war.