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Thursday 26 April 2018

Pterolykos


The name is Pterolykos, which also means "winged wolf". It isn't as popular and famous as the Pegasus the winged horse, but Pterolykos is part of European folklore. It's not a well known creature of legend anymore as it's become almost forgotten. The winged wolf is found in Hungarian myth, but this creature can talk and breath fire. It's associated with a crossroads and the number three, of riddles and the sky, fire and war. Such a winged wolf is able to carry knights into battle.
The winged wolf Pterolykos is a creature of the sky, a celestial wolf being that might even be linked to stories of the Wild Hunt and wolf gods that chase down the sun and moon. Perhaps not as monstrous and evil in reputation as Fenrir, Hati and Skol, but not as celebrity status as Geri and Freki. The Pterolykos isn't of Norse myth either. It comes from East European legends and even ghost stories of Dark Ages Germany. The wings of a Pterolykos are feathered like angels', hinting that this being was divine as well as an animal connected to the gods, as Pegasus was.
To know more of this vague creature of legend, lost in the mists of time, we need to know that wolves in ancient Indo European myths are part of the primitive cultures, and the warrior castes that were found in early societies. Wolves were sacred to the war god Mars of Roman mythology. In Norse mythology, the divine maidens called Valkyries rode wolves that were large and able to run across the air and clouds. There were stories of the sorceresses or Volva who rode upon wolves. Female giants rode on the backs of large wolves. These big powerful wolves resembled the primitive direwolf species and they had supernatural abilities of flight, levitation and even passing through different dimensional realms. Also wolves are associated with darkness and evil in Indo European myth, created from things of nightmares. The wolves mentioned in the Avesta described wolves as Daeva which is Persian to mean "the wrong gods". It's a term applied to certain figures of legends and life that are to be "not worshipped". For example, read The Bundahishn and it's entry XXIII "On the nature of the species of wolf".
Howls ^^     

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