Rare Monsters

  To end off the one year anniversary month I'm featuring one of the strangest beast I've ever found in mythology, the khara. Also known as the three legged ass, it's a unicorn found in Zoroastrian mythology, which is like no other. Khara means donkey in Sanskrit, it's name in Persian is xar-i-se-pay. It's one of the oldest written accounts of a unicorn like creature and likely influenced every other unicorn from Europe and western Asia. The idea of unicorns purifying water with their horn certainly originated with the khara. The overall appearance is like a donkey, and the khara was said to be a divine donkey. It was as tall as a mountain. It had three legs that were like tree trunks. The khara had six eyes, two in the normal location, two on top the head, and two on the shoulders. With this arrangement of eyes the khara could see in all directions at once and no threat could sneak up on it. The strangest aspect of the khara is that it is covered in extra mouths...

  One of the most notable differences of Asian dragons from European dragons is the lack of wings, with Asian dragons having the magical ability to levitate effortlessly into the sky. This is true for most, but Yinglong is consistently depicted with wings, giving him a visually striking difference from other Asian dragons. Yinglong means responding dragon, a fitting name as his role was to respond to the emperor when he had requests to send to the heavens. Yinglong was also a weather deity, responsible for bringing rainfall. A role he shared with many other dragons. Yinglong appears several times in classic Chinese literature. In the Song of Chu , Emperor Yu was tasked with ending the floods destroying China when the previous emperors could not. He called on Yinglong to show him where to dig drainage canals. These canals then became the borders of the nine classical provinces of China. In The Classic of Mountains and Seas Yinglong and the Yellow Emperor's daughter Ba battled aga...

  In traditional Chinese folklore there are five dragon kings associated with each direction. There's Qinglong, the azure dragon of the east and of spring. Chilong, the red dragon of the south and of summer Bailong, the white dragon of the west and of autumn Heilong, the black dragon of the north and of winter And Huanglong, the yellow imperial dragon of the center and of late summer These directional associations exist in addition to the four beasts of the directions, the vermilion bird of the south, the white tiger of the west, the black turtle of the north and the azure dragon of the east, where Qinglong makes it into both groups. Already in early history there existed folk religion incantations to five seasonal dragons for rainmaking rituals. Although there were many different dragon king associated with smaller regional areas rather than one codified group of dragon kings. Later, Confucius texts associated each season with directions and colors, further codifying ...