It’s time for some trivia!
Since we’ve already had two posts about angels, I felt it was time to look at their spiritual counterpart: Demons.
Specifically, I want to look at one of my favorite demons. His name is Adramelech.
It’s time for some trivia!
Since we’ve already had two posts about angels, I felt it was time to look at their spiritual counterpart: Demons.
Specifically, I want to look at one of my favorite demons. His name is Adramelech.
What’s that? Could the mightiest beast of myth truly have foes that could best it?
Indeed, my friends, while the dragon is a fearsome opponent in any mythology, it has it’s own natural and unnatural enemies. Lets explore some of them.
So, after yesterday’s trivia about the angel Gabriel, I got curious about the expanded angelic lore of Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology. I’ve skimmed through it a couple of times before and even that experience led to some weird discoveries. This time however, I stumbled across somethings that made my jaw drop several times.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the generic description of supernatural beings so tall that their head (or heads in Typhon’s case) reached the heavens. Well, not only are several angels that tall (Israfil), but some angels are even taller and are given exact heights. Doing some basic calculating and guess-timating I’ve converted the older forms of measure to modern ones. This is gonna be a little longer than my other trivia posts. Let’s get to it!
In my first post on this site, I mentioned that the Archangel Gabriel possessed a flaming horse. It is hard to find mention of this horse anywhere except Wikipedia, but with a bit of internet elbow grease he can be found.
The horse Haizum, according to some Islamic traditions, was given to God’s gift to Gabriel after the archangel did some unnamed task that pleased him. Haizum was said to be a white, fiery, spiritual horse with a pair of wings like Pegasus which he could use to fly from one plane of existence to another in only a second.
This is not the Archangel’s only odd animal companion as Gabriel’s Hounds are apparently flocks of wild geese. Seems like he/she has quite a lot of pets. Though considering Raphael is said to carry around a fish on a stick and Jehudiel (or Jegudiel) carries around a flaming heart in some art, I think Gabriel is pretty happy with the horse and “hounds.”
First trivia post, yay! Simple one today.
A popular Greek myth is the tale of Oedipus. The part of the story that interests us today is when our hero encounters the Sphinx. This monster had the head of a woman, the body of a lion, and sometimes a pair of bird wings. She would stop travelers to Thebes and ask them a riddle, nobody had been able to guess it right and so was eaten. Oedipus solved the riddle, but that isn’t the interesting part.
Did you know that the Sphinx in this story actually has a name?
According to the Theogeny, written by Hesiod, the Sphinx that Oedipus defeats is named -drum roll- Phix!
Kind of anti-climactic isn’t it. Like, seriously, that is some Class-A laziness. I’ve heard 10 year-olds come up with more creative names for things. Echidna’s name is silly now because we named an animal after her, but there is no way Phix wasn’t silly back then.
Greek mythology, I love ya man, but you really dropped the ball here.
Phix the Sphinx, in a mythology of grandiose names, I guess someone had to draw the short straw.